On Spiritual Discipline

In a previous life, I was a competitive athlete. My sports were Cross Country and Track. During my years as an athlete, an expression often quoted on the track was “it’s 90% mental, 10% physical”. Knowing most coaches, there was probably very little academic or quantifiable research that would demonstrate the truth of this statement. But this should not be read as a condemnation or an insult to their intelligence. The phrase is true, and coaches and athletes alike know this by experience with each other and the athletes and coaches that have gone before them.

When an athlete hears these clichés, they never say “Well, what exactly do you mean by ‘mental’ and ‘physical’, Coach?” The athletes, the good ones at least, know what the words mean. It’s usually meant to get the athlete to reflect on something interior in their life, rather than merely working out harder and doing more stuff to get faster. This cliché of success being 90 percent mental works, not because there is some Ivy League school out there with mountains of research conducted by a mind whose brilliance radiates genius and has affirmed its effectiveness. Coaches and athletes have known its effectiveness for a long time because athletes and coaches don’t just know the sport, they live the sport. They know of athletes who have overcome great physical challenges that were greater than their physical ability “on paper.”

It is the same way with the Christian life. Christianity and her teachers, often use theological principles that are tried and true to exhort us in the faith. One of these is the idea that God must be first. We all know this to be true, and we do not need a scripture verse to prove this. God is God, and I am not, ergo, He is first; He must increase, I must decrease.

But just as athletes roll their eyes at their coach’s clichés, so we Christians, whether reading the Bible or hearing a homily will, out of a spirit of disappointment bred from unrealized expectations that were grounded in the Gospel of Self, mutter in our spirit, “What a “cliché”. We call it a cliché because it’s a truth we don’t like, or it’s one that we think doesn’t work quite the way we think it should.

I had this realization myself while reading my devotions this morning. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says,

How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?

Jn. 5:44

It is so easy to equate worldly praise as an affirmation of God’s praise. But Jesus points out that most of the time worldly praise is a sign of temptation to ignore God and seek man’s approval. I know I’m not the only one who has equated God’s praise with man’s praise. I think this is because we are often consumed by two spirits, either anxiety or complacency.

Anxiety usually manifests itself in concerns about the unknown or the inevitable suffering we all will one day have to endure. Similarly, complacency is one that is more comfortable. Pleasures of this world act as an opiate for the soul, offering us a spiritual complacency rooted in a false sense of happiness and security. The prescription for both of these, is to seek praises of God, not man.

The solution to break us from our anxiety and complacency is found only in divine suffering. This is not a suffering that is self-inflicted out of a hatred of self or a desire to contrive a feeling of “seeking first the Kingdom of God.” Rather, it is a suffering that God permits and that we must receive in order to heal us of our complacency or anxiety.

How often have we read the story of Job and, like the disciples witnessing Christ’s transfiguration, felt the dark cloud of God’s presence begin to surround our soul.

While [Peter] was still speaking, a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud.

Lk. 9:34

When the cloud comes, fear is the natural response. Runners who did not have some fear before the gun went off, often did not perform well. Likewise, all of us are in the race of life and we will have great suffering in it, where we echo the words of Job and say, “Thine eyes are upon me, and I shall be no more.” When that moment comes, everyone is afraid to enter the cloud.

In life, God manifests Himself to us most profoundly in the Eucharist. But He also does this through the lives of His saints, like St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. John Paul II, St. Thomas Aquinas, and of course, the Saint of all Saints, Mary the Mother of God. Like the great athletes that went before us, the next generation of great athletes would study, not just the training of those who went before them, but their actual lives. Athletes studied the lives of previous athletes to obtain the wisdom that could only be obtained from someone who had lived life as an athlete, with all its failures and successes. They recognized that those athletes had something they didn’t, and that this “something” was necessary to be successful not just on race day but in life.

Similarly, we look at the saints and recognize they had great virtues and sufferings. This is especially true of Mary, the Mother of God, whose suffering was so great and mysterious it could only be described ominously by the words, “Your soul a sword shall pierce.” Like the athlete, we know that our race day is coming, that day when we will enter the cloud of God’s presence. Some of us overthink it and others of us never think about it. But the best way to prepare for it, is abandon ourselves to God,

When I find no consolation in man, then it is I feel indeed the happy necessity of having recourse to God, and of depending on Him….

— Imitation of Christ

But we learn this by looking to those great athletes of the faith who have gone before us, who demonstrated that these “clichés” of the faith are not merely good slogans to put on a car or post on the internet. They are the mysteries of the faith that are only realized in the lives and faith of the saints, that includes you and me. These mysteries are obscured from complacent and anxious Christians because complacency and anxiety are signs that one has not truly given themselves to God. And until we do, we will never overcome our fear of entering the cloud.

— DR