"Run so as to win..."

Tempus fugit.  Time flies.

Not only does the clock turn unremittingly, but the march towards the future never slackens.

When I was with my family this past Christmas, I kept saying to my nieces and nephews about their own children, "Can they please stop growing up?"  On this, grandmothers universally agree.

In the wonderful movie Babette's Feast, there is a scene where the community of Christians gather after a sort of agape-meal, hold hands in a circle, and sing--

    The clock strikes and time goes by
    Eternity is nigh!
    Let us use this time to try
    To serve the Lord with heart and mind
    So that our true home we shall find!
    So that our true home we shall find!

Lent almost invariably catches us by surprise.  In the Byzantine Church, a two weeks' warning is given with "Meat-Fare Sunday," then "Cheese-Fare Sunday" in order to wean believers off meat and dairy products in preparation for the Great Fast.  In the Western Church, in both the usus antiquior and in the Anglican usage of the Ordinariates, a seventeen-day Pre-Lent period gears us up for Lent.

Not only that, but in many monastic communities, there is the "Monastic Lent" or the "Monastic Fast" that begins on the preceding Feast of the Holy Cross (14 September) to help monks, nuns, and canons to prepare for the Easter Season.

With that in mind, the older form of the Roman Rite anticipates Lent with a reading from St Paul, comparing the spiritual life to athletic training:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it... (1 Cor 9:24-27).

The Apostle compares the Christian to the athlete who competes hard because only one will win the contest.  Of course there will be more than one winner in the "Christian contest," but the point remains:  A certain "spiritual athleticism" is required of us.

There are two "pastoral sicknesses," as I call it, whereby parish leaders infect believers, which undercut St Paul's exhortation.  These "pastoral sicknesses" are peculiarly Catholic anomalies--or rather, 'bastardized Catholicisms.'

First, there is the tendency to reduce the spiritual life to a set of minimum standards.  "You can do this much before committing a mortal sin..."; "You must do at least this to remain in good standing..."  It is the transposition of rubrical minimalism to the ascetic life.  Just as we say, "At least the Words of Consecration must be said" in order to confect the Eucharist, or "At least the head must be immersed in water" for the baptism to be valid, there is also that minimalism that says "You must confess your sins at least once a year" or "You must be present at least from the Gospel onward for your Sunday obligation to count."  In effect, the "at least rubric" has become the "no-more-than rubric" whereby the minimum standard becomes the highest bar to reach, thus vacating these standards of their value.

To misquote Gandalf addressing Saruman, "The spirit of casuistry...endures!"

Second, there is the tendency to go on autopilot or cruise control in being a Catholic.  The life of discipleship is not about routine but about ascent.  Very often, Catholic believers carry the attitude that Christianity simply "happens" without it being intentional.  Following Jesus is about growth; in fact, if one remains on a "plateau" in terms of intensity of prayer or acquisition of virtue, one is really receding from Christ.

A number of years ago I attended a conference where John Maxwell, the famous Wesleyan minister and motivational speaker was talking to a group of entrepreneurs.   He challenged them, "What is your plan for personal growth?"  In other words--what is your plan for enhancing your leadership skills, your interpersonal relationship-building, and your attitudes?

The very same can be said about the Christian spiritual life, except more urgently:  What is your plan for spiritual growth?  What vices need to be eradicated, and what virtues need to be acquired?  Which of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit need to be exercised more earnestly?  How is our personal relationship to God--not just rattling off transcripts of prayers but speaking conversationally with the Lord--going to improve?

We do not, I repeat, do not attain eternal life on autopilot or cruise control.  That is, in the language of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "cheap grace."  Or, in the language of Catholic ascetical theology, it is the sin of presumption.

May believers take the cultural approach to Lent by "giving up" something so as to make Easter feasting more anticlimactic.  But to do so is to miss entirely the purpose of the Lenten preparation for Easter.  This is because Easter isn't just about the Resurrection of Christ, it is also the resurrection of Christians.  We are baptised principally at the Paschal Vigil and we renew our baptismal promises on Easter Sunday precisely because the reality of our baptism--and therefore our resurrection (Rom 6:3-7)--derives its power from the Lord's own Resurrection.  The Lenten preparation, rather, is to help us live up to the perennial grace of baptism by "dying daily" (1 Cor 15:31) of being "crucified with Christ" (Gal 2:20), and, as St Paul said above, by "pommeling" our bodies in order to be subject to the indwelling Holy Spirit.

As a researcher whose specialisation involves searching out how the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit operate in the various parts of the soul, I am increasingly horrified when pastors tell their flock that meeting Jesus' standards is "too hard" or the bar is set "too high" (I'm looking at you, National Catholic Reporter) completely ignoring that the entire purpose of Confirmation is to strengthen us (hence the Latin confirmare, 'to strengthen-with') for the life of discipleship).  To decline assistance from the Sacrament of Confirmation is to effectively say to the Holy Spirit:  "I don't want your help" when he is the veritable pot of gold freely given to a thief intent on robbing a bank.

The icon at the top of this post is from St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, where St John Climacus once flourished.  His spiritual playbook, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes a ladder reaching to heaven, with each of its thirty rungs representing a particular struggle for virtue (hence 'asceticism,' from the Greek word for 'struggle').  It is a sobering icon, as it shows some monks pulled off the ladder by apostate angels early on, and others later on, as they struggle to ascend.  At the top of the ladder is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the goal of our striving, not so much to earn heaven (Pelagianism be damned!), but to acquire the character of Christ Himself:  "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ!" (Rom 13:14).

The wonderful thing is that we do not do this on our own.  "...for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure!" (Phil 2:13).  As St Augustine explained, grace invites, graces moves us to consent, and grace works in us to be Christlike.

At the end of the day, it's not so much that becoming like Christ is difficult.

Rather, it's that we underestimate the greatness of the human soul which, out of all of material creation, alone is able to have indwelling us nothing less than the Holy Trinity.