5. First Thursday of Advent
Meditations no. 5 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
We cannot serve two masters. The dangers of lukewarmness, and its symptoms.
By the grace of our vocation, God has placed in our souls a longing for sanctity, an intense, burning desire to become saints, even though we are aware of our many failings.
The Lord is God, and he has given us light. He has kindled in our hearts a divine flame which is incompatible with lukewarmness. Lukewarmness is the first step towards coldness and indifference in our dealings with God; it can slowly but surely extinguish the fire which God has lit within us. The fire of love for God, the reality of our dedication, needs fuel; if it doesnât increase, it will go out.
We shouldnât confuse lukewarmness with spiritual dryness or the disappearance of fervour. Nor is it the same as repeated falls caused by weakness, so long as these are fought against and deeply detested. Lukewarmness arises when the soul, attracted by two opposite goals, tries to satisfy both of them and thus serve two masters. A lukewarm person makes the effort to avoid serious falls, but also wants to enjoy the comforts of an easy life. This situation gives rise to infidelities and carelessness, those little foxes that spoil the vineyards. If not remedied, they end up devastating the soul.
A lukewarm attitude leads a person to say to God: âIn this point and in that one - only in these very few points - Iâd prefer not to give what youâre asking of me.â This is the first sign that the soul is ill, that it already has within itself the seeds of death. It seems not to amount to very much; the wounds are small, and looked at individually they donât seem important. But when the number of them greatly increases, writes St Gregory, they put an end to life, and are as lethal as a serious open wound to the chest.
The symptoms of lukewarmness are unmistakable. You are lukewarm if you carry out lazily and reluctantly the things that have to do with our Lord, if deliberately or shrewdly you look for some way of cutting down your duties, if you think only of yourself and your comfort, if your conversations are idle and vain, if you do not abhor venial sin, if you act from human motives.
We have to be on guard against lukewarmness; it is a great enemy of the interior life. It hurts me to see the danger of lukewarmness in which you place yourself when you do not strive seriously for perfection within your state in life.
Say with me: I do not want to be lukewarm! Confige timore tuo carnes meas. Grant me, my God, a filial fear that will make me react.
Maintaining our initial enthusiasm. God asks us to renew our first love.
This Advent is like a call to vigilance. The Lordâs command about vigilance, St Ephraem comments, holds good for both parts of man. The body must avoid being overcome by sleep, and the soul must guard against sluggishness and timidity. We must constantly renew the enthusiasm we had when we first started out. We want to love God with a burning, youthful affection. Jesus isnât satisfied with âgoing halvesâ: he wants the lot! We cannot bargain with him. We cannot begrudge him anything, no matter how insignificant it might seem. We want to keep on loving God with the same generosity and joy with which we first gave ourselves to him, with an ever deeper, firmer and more faithful love.
Always cum gaudio et pace, with joy and peace. Like a good artist and a faithful lover, we are never satisfied with what we have achieved in the spiritual life, by Godâs grace. Our spiritual quest, since it is Love, must be a yearning for the Infinite: taste and see that the Lord is good.
In contrast, lukewarmness involves coldness and indifference in carrying out the duties of our dedication. As such, it cannot be attributed to natural causes or passing circumstances. Rather, it is a failure to be generous when faced with the sacrifices which sanctity demands. In a soul that is not truly committed, these demands lead to regret. Then it becomes easy to slip still lower and give up the ascetical struggle, or at least approach it in a half-hearted way.
We may have been serving God for many years now. Nevertheless, we will always find a stimulus in those words of the Book of Revelation to the Church at Ephesus: I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my nameâs sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. This first love that God asks of us, which we may have to revive, is a supernatural love that proves itself by its results: namely, faithfulness, constancy and sacrifice. It is a love that never grows old, and that ensures that the willingness of our dedication remains vigorous and fresh.
The lukewarm, our Father used to say, have hearts of clay, hearts of miserable flesh. There are hearts that are hard and cold, but noble: on coming into contact with the warmth of Christâs heart, they melt like bronze into tears of love and atonement, and are set alight! And there are other hearts that are made of clay: these crack and crumble into dust. Disgusting! My children! O Jesus, keep lukewarmness well away from us! Anything but lukewarmness!
Practical ways of allaying the danger of lukewarmness: piety and true prayer.
One of the clearest signs of lukewarmness is an unwillingness to make the effort to match our specific actions to the demands of our vocation, even in small things. If we were not to react energetically, the spiritual edifice could collapse, like the house built on sand which our Lord talks about in the Gospel: and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.
We cannot remain passive. St John Cassian says that to counteract lukewarmness and oppose its evil influence, we must not flee, but must face up to it and fight.
Our life is a battle, our Founder tells us; a war, but one we fight âin peaceâ. And what will you do to win? Be a man or a woman of Opus Dei, which means, be genuinely pious. I want my children to be pious, with a childâs piety. Piety, my children! You have to bear the seed of doctrine together with the seed of piety. If you have piety, your work as sowers of doctrine will not be affected by the microbes that try to undermine it.
Our Father never tired of telling us to take great care of our life of piety by doing the Norms well: whether in fair weather or foul, whether we are sick or healthy, whether there are reasons for joy or for sorrow. And he used to say: I have told you that we must have the faith of children and the doctrine of theologians. Now I add: and the piety of an old lady sighing for love in the corner of a church. She doesnât use big words or pseudo-scientific theories, but her piety has tradition and maturity, like good wine.
In our struggle against lukewarmness, the first thing is to re-establish a personal dialogue with God in our prayer. Et in meditatione mea exardescit ignis. And in my meditation a fire shall flame up. You go to pray to become a blaze, a living flame giving off light and heat.
From true prayer we will acquire the energy needed to begin a sincere struggle against anything that might be a source or occasion of lukewarmness. Once again we will put love into fulfilling the Norms. We will recover our supernatural outlook and our joyful spirit of obedience. We will take advantage of opportunities to make sacrifices for others. We will work eagerly in the apostolic activities entrusted to us. We will rediscover the value of small things. And we will draw fruit from our Lordâs words in todayâs Gospel: Not everyone who says to me, âLord, Lord,â shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Above all, let us ask for our Ladyâs help. Devotion to her will prevent us from ever again becoming lukewarm. Love for our Mother will be the breath that kindles into a living flame the embers of virtue hidden in the ashes of your indifference.