I want to share with you the fruit of a discussion I had with a friend about spiritual growth last December. Many of us experience, at one time or the other, a deeper yearning for goodness, truth, beauty—God and His righteousness (cf. Mt 6:33). At some point, we might be wondering if we are making any progress at all or retarding on the journey. The discussion I had with my friend was an attempt to answer one question: What does it mean to grow spiritually?
It means to grow in the personal
realization of how much one is loved by God. This deepened awareness of God’s
love as experienced by the believer constitutes spiritual growth. This is based
on the fact that it is God who loved us first, and our love for God, therefore,
is a response (1 Jn 4:7-12). It implies then that we can only respond to the
extent that we are aware of God’s love for us. This response to God’s love is a
pilgrimage of faith! Furthermore, since God’s love is Incarnate, it implies
that our daily experiences can now testify to God’s love. Even our negative
experiences (sin) can equally remind us of how we have distanced ourselves from
God’s love, for where sin increased,
grace increased the greater (Rm 5:20).
Though the realization of God’s
love, which leads to spiritual growth, is personal,
it nonetheless, draws from and leads back to communion. Since our spiritual
growth is a function of our realization of how much we are loved personally by
God, it is obvious that any activity that does not deepen this realization will
have little or no impact on us spiritually, no matter how strenuous such
activity might be.
IMPLICATIONS
If our spiritual life can be
summed up as a response to God’s love, the following implications are inherent.
1. HUMILITY:
The realization of God’s gracious love for the believer humbles him. Humility
is the bedrock of the Spiritual life. Therefore, the practice of acts of
humility accelerates spiritual growth.
2. HISTORY:
Through the Incarnation the love of God has come to share in our history. And a
believer who experiences and responds to God’s love will begin to understand
how it has shaped his life. In other words, a personal realization of God’s
love implicitly includes a realization of the history of this love in one’s
life. By connecting this awareness of God’s love to one’s history, the deepened
realization translates into a lived experience! There is history of experience.
Since the love is incarnate, our realization of this love follows the pattern
of our lived experiences and accumulates a residue of the history of God’s love-journey
with the individual. Therefore, being conscious of one’s journey with God
enhances spiritual growth.
3. Time:
Though the realization of God’s love as expressed in spiritual activities takes
cognizance of the past, with an eye
into the future, it can only be
actualized in the present (cf. 2Cor
6:2). We live ‘now’ in the presence of God. Therefore, a believer can only
progress spiritually if he realizes in his present experience that God loves
him, and allows this realization to become intricate part of his present
experience.
Mary, Mother of love, is a sure way to deepen our response to God’s love for us. Devotion to Mary keeps on the steady path to spiritual growth.
