Improving All the Time

When we were young children, we were getting guidance from many sources all the time. Some of it was good guidance, some, not so good.  Parents, teachers, and other figures are in a child’s life to influence the child in a process of formation. Ideally, these figures are loving and wise, so the child is being formed in the best ways possible. We want high virtues accentuated in all lives, and destructive ways discouraged. We all remember a scolding here or there that started off with a phrase like, “What is that about? That is not how you were raised!” Think of it as a kind of purifying process. Let’s face it; this process goes well beyond childhood. We are never through with learning, and we are never through with improving and purifying. This is because we are human.

As Christians, we think of ourselves as guided and shaped by the Holy Spirit throughout our lives. The language of the New Testament sometimes uses the term sanctification. We are being made holy. Whenever we cooperate with the guiding grace of the Holy Spirit, we are being transformed into the image of Christ. We are free creatures, so we do not always cooperate, but when we set our wills informed by reason and intuition toward God’s leading, we realize progress in the ways of the Spirit.

Take a look at the lesson for this Sunday. In the language of the first epistle of the Apostle, John, we are all children of God, and this is seen as an incredible result of God’s love. We are on the way from knowing God the best we can for now to knowing God more perfectly when we encounter the full revelation of God, seeing the Author of Love face to face. We are not at all sure what we are becoming in the future, but we hope that reality will breakthrough so we can reflect God’s likeness more purely.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be, has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. —John 3:1-3

So, we are in a process of purification. With hearts of hope, we move and work toward purity, knowing how pure Christ is. This is not a light program such as one we would learn in a self-improvement book. Rather, this is a discovery that being children of God, our resemblance with God can become more recognizable over time. Sanctification is a serious lifelong movement toward godliness.

All of the things you already best trust in your relationship with God, worship, study, kindness, and the like, are means of refining this formation process of purification. In my recent years of developing habits of faith, I have been accentuating Christian Meditation. From the early Church ascetic, John Cassin (360 to 435 AD) we learn his recommended practice of pure prayer. He speaks of the unmistakable value of the whole spectrum of prayer. He says it moves us along like a wheel of multiple spokes along the ground. He also says prayer moves us at length to what he calls “pure prayer.” He describes this as prayer beyond images of God. Classics such as The Cloud of Unknowing and works of Gregory of Nyssa also point to this.

There is nothing strange in the Christian tradition that prayer moves us ultimately beyond thought, because God who is the goal and aim of prayer is, after all, beyond perceptions, images, and ideas. We know God a little more purely when we seek stillness, seek the presence of God, allowing our being to be present with God’s being.  John Cassian shows this pure prayer is related to all the other forms of prayer. When we make meditation an integral part of our process of purification, we do not give up any other form of prayer we find useful. I am always glad to talk with people about the practice of Christian Meditation. In fact, what I really like is to learn from others what helps them in their deepening progress of life in Christ. I love to learn; if you can help me, I am all ears. I have a long way to go. I behold the incredible love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; so, of course, I am eager to move further in formation, and so, know Christ’s purifying ways.