What does it mean to live a life in the Spirit of Jesus Christ? It is a personal [question], a [question] born out of struggles which in the first place were and still are my own. But during the years it became more and more clear that by deepening these struggles, by following them to their roots, I was touching a level where they could be shared….the quest for an authentic Christian spirituality is worth the effort and the pain, since in the midst of this quest we can find signs offering hope, courage and confidence.
During the last few years I have read many studies about spirituality and the spiritual life. I have listened to many lectures, spoken with many spiritual guides and visited many religious communities. I have learned much, but the time has come to realize that neither parents nor teachers nor counselors can do much more than offer a free and friendly place where one has to discover his own lonely way. Maybe my own deep-rooted fear to be on my own and alone kept me going from person to person, book to book and school to school, anxiously avoiding the pain of accepting the responsibility for my own life. All that is quite possible, but more important is that the time seems to have come when I can no longer stand back with the remark, “Some say . . . others say,” but have to respond to the question, “But what do you say?” (see Mark 8:27-30).
The question about the spiritual life is a very challenging question. It touches the core of life. It forces you to take nothing for granted-neither good nor evil, neither life nor death, neither human beings nor God. That is why this question, while intimately my own, is also the question that asks for so much guidance. That is why the decisions that are most personal ask for the greatest support. That is why, even after many years of education and formation, even after the good advice and counsel of many, I can still say with Dante, “In the middle of the way of our life I find myself in a dark wood.” This experience is frightful as well as exhilarating because it is the great experience of being alone, alone in the world, alone before God.
It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human.
One way to bring all… together is to say that the spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human beings and to our God. “Reaching out” indeed expresses best the mood and the intention…. In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God. To do that, however, we have to face and explore directly our inner restlessness, our mixed feelings toward others and our deep-seated suspicions about the absence of God.
For a long time I have been hesitant to write this…. How can I tell others about reaching out, while I find myself so often caught in my own passions and weaknesses? I found some consolation and encouragement in the words of one of the most stern ascetics, the seventh-century John of the Ladder, who lived for forty years a solitary life at Mount Sinai. In his chapter on discernment, step 26 of his spiritual ladder, he writes:
“If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet can teach by mere words, let them teach…. For perhaps, being put to shame by their own words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach.”
These words seem sufficient to overcome my apprehensions and to make me free to describe the great human call to reach out to God and to those created in his image and likeness.
~ Adapted from Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: the Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
