Denver Catholic

23 DENVER CATHOLIC | JUNE 9-22, 2018 Helpful guidelines for the spiritual life " Y ou are anxious and trou- bled about many things, but only one thing is necessary." We recognize Jesus' response to the busy Martha in these words (Luke 10:41-42), but can we see ourselves in them as well? Do we focus on the one thing necessary or do we get caught up in the daily grind? We spend so much e§ ort on our daily tasks, sacrifi ce to make time for exercise and maintain our health, and seek help through counseling and career preparation and advancement. How much time do we devote to our souls and the culti- vation of the interior life? St. Ignatius pointed out that the spirit needs exercise, even more than the body, for when the body passes away we will be judged by the state of our soul. Therefore, with the arrival of summer, and some additional free time, it's an opportune moment to take spiritual stock and to make some new resolutions! A recent reprint of a spiritual classic can help, providing some guidelines for a reboot of our spiritual life. Sophia Institute Press has recently reprinted a classic in Father Basil Maturin's Spiritual Guide- lines for Souls Seeking God (2016). The book o§ ers a poignant spiritual vision delivered by a remarkable man. The author was an Irish-born priest of the Protestant Church of Ireland, sent to the United States to serve Irish immigrants. He converted to Catholicism in Philadelphia and, after being ordained a priest, was later sent to serve as the Catholic chaplain of Oxford. He returned to the United States in 1915 to con- duct a series of talks and booked his return passage to Europe on the RMS Lusitania. This fateful boat did not reach the shores of Europe, struck by a German submarine, and Father Maturin died heroically attempting to rescue others. What strikes me most about Father Maturin's book comes from his emphasis on relating to God. We strengthen our spiritual life and engage in exercises of the spirit not for an abstract reality, but to enter more deeply into the love of God. The priest tells us that "we must endeavor to keep near to God, to learn to know Him better, to understand the tokens of His will and the method of His dealings with us; in a word to get on terms of loving and reverent friendship with Him" (57). All of Father Maturin's guidelines come down to growing in our ability to grow in friendship with God. In order to love God more, we have to grow in a life of virtue and remove any obstacles that stand in the way. Therefore, Fr. Maturin speaks much of penance and mortifi cation, because we have to begin moving "the long clogged wheels and rusted springs of the spiritual life . . . through penitent contrition . . . the mother of all virtues" (16). Only by preserving through challenges do we come to "a love that has been tested in every conceivable way. . . . Habits are being formed here under the pressure of temptation and di± culty that unfold in perfect form and beauty when that soul has developed these habits passes into its heavenly home" (44). Father Maturin focuses on this goal, of reaching our true home, and laments that so often we forget where we are going! "There is nothing sadder to see," he says, "than an aim- less life" (33). The spiritual guidelines he o§ ers should help us to focus on the one thing necessary, teaching us how to abide in Christ and to perse- vere until the end. He describes how we can grow in our intimacy with Christ over the course of life as all of our e§ orts and the graces of God blossom in eternal happiness: "He who longs and strives to be good has already created a bond of sympathy with Christ, has returned, indeed, a long way toward Him. As one after another of these barriers that we have set up in ourselves are removed, light and love come streaming in, and the bonds of that mystical f riendship become woven, to grow stronger through eternity" (95-96). bond with them that extends beyond the morning dawn. Human sexual union is not a mere joining of bodies, but is preeminently a joining of human hearts. It is, at its core, con- senting to share one of the deepest parts of our self with another. As Dr. Angela Franks has perceptively noted: Sexuality is not simply a matter of something that I have, as though my body is another possession just like my wallet or my car. If, as Gabriel Marcel said, I am my body, then sex- uality has to do with my very person, which has a deep value. To use the language of Pope John Paul II, when a person is reduced to being merely an object for another's desire, then the experience violates the core of one's sense of self. In casual sexual encounters, the consent we give each other may seem sincere and genuine, expressing our desires within the moment, but this kind of consent is largely transac- tional and temporary. By consenting to pre-marital or extra-marital sex, we declare, in e§ ect, that we are giving ourselves, our bodies and our hearts to each other, although in truth, our giving remains partial and conditional, and we may be out the door the next morning or the next month. Our consent, limited and qualifi ed as it is, amounts to little more than an agreement to use each other as long as it's convenient, and when the break up occurs, we are hurt, because we thought we had something special, even though we didn't really want to commit to any- thing special. In the fi nal analysis, human sexual activity calls for something much deeper and more abiding than mere transactional consent, namely, the irrevocable and permanent consent of spouses. Professor William May describes it this way: In and through his act of marital consent … the man, forswearing all others, has given himself irrevocably the identity of this particular wom- an's husband, while the woman, in and through her self-determining act of marital consent, has given herself irrevocably the identity of this par- ticular man's wife, and together they have given themselves the identity of spouses. …Husbands and wives, pre- cisely because they have given them- selves irrevocably to each other in marriage, have established each other as irreplaceable, non-substitutable, non-disposable persons and by doing so have capacitated themselves to do things that non-married individ- uals simply cannot do, among them to 'give' themselves to one another in the act proper and exclusive to spouses — the marital act — and to receive the gift of life. Through the enduring commit- ment of marital consent, a man and a woman establish the foundation for personal sexual consent. In the absence of that larger marital com- mitment, all other consents, even with legalized authorization or elec- tronic notarization, ring hollow. The Catholic Reader R. Jared Staudt, PhD, is a husband and father of six, the director of formation for the Archdiocese of Denver, a Benedictine oblate, prolifi c writer, and insatiable reader. DR. R. JARED STAUDT

• Cover