Holy Trinity & St. Anskar

When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.

+ In the Name of God the holy and Undivided Trinity

The promise to guide us into all truth is made to the Apostles as a group, not severally, as individuals. The fullness of truth is not really accessible to individuals, but to communities. God Almighty is not a solitary, unitary individual, but a society of perfect Love, and when He speaks to humanity, it is to human society, not to individuals. If God does speak to individuals like Isaiah, it is to ordain them as messengers to address humanity. God does not particularly care about Isaiah’s inner life ~ his woe, his guilt, his sin. These individual preoccupations are irrelevant, and quickly dispensed with the living coal from the censer. God’s dialogue with Isaiah is strictly for the purpose of sending him to the people with a message, and not for his own individual spiritual realization.

There is such a thing as spiritual realization, but Christianity understands it as personal, not individual. The Eucharistic life of the Body gradually transforms us from individuals to persons. Born in God’s image, the Body makes us into God’s likeness: the likeness of the Society of the Three Divine Persons. Spiritual realization is the realization of that likeness. That happens in relationship to other persons, not as individuals.

It makes me sad to hear people say “I’m spiritual but not religious,” or “I am a very spiritual person, but I don’t identify with organized religion.” Now, part of this is quite healthy. There are so many products out there in what a Tibetan teacher called the “spiritual supermarket” that one had better beware. Some of them may be poison, leading straight to Jonestown (i.e.: to hell, for if hell means anything, it means that kind of deathly spiritual deception). Caveat emptor!

On the other hand, there is a positive reason for avoiding religious institutions: conflict. Children of the Enlightenment are aghast at these religious wars ~ the violence done in the name of the Spirit. That dismay is itself the sign of a godly conscience, I think. But sometimes the case can be overstated. Every apparent religious conflict is not necessarily about religion. Economic, political, and tribal quarrels sometimes masquerade in religious vestments. (Does anyone really think that the long conflict in Northern Ireland was really about the Pope? Still, it is right to be appalled by the exclusivist mentality that says “I have the whole truth and you don’t; the Holy Spirit favors me.”

AMEN

THE SPIRIT OF GOD FILLS THE WORLD

COME, LET US ADORE HIM!