I am amazed with the kind of spiritual life which God shows me in my life here and now. Because this is so clear, pure and real. This life style and 'art' are very deep and wonderful, yet this is very near and simple. This has so many mysteries and revelations of high metaphysical things, but The Lord has made even the humble understand it! Great is the mystery of our faith.
I reflect this to my past work frame and what I still see around me in my campus religious life here. And what I see is, sometimes someone more interested to just speak, discuss and babble about the life or certain rule of spiritual life. This is very good thing actually, but unfortunately even I my self sometimes am attempted to consider that that's all. So, just listen or speak about it and then, everything is done! When I think about this, I am realized that there is the missing point here.
How could if we want to learn how to ride a bicycle, and we just speak or listen about the way and keep wondering about that. Or, if I attend the literacy tutoring program and discuss about so many great skills training in it but I don't start to apply it in my writing. That wouldn't work!
It is very good to listen carefully and attentively. And I consider as well that in my own context, this is the most important thing to apply in encountering the peoples around me. And of course, the wise and venerable responses would have come from good listeners. The problem is if we are more attracted only to speak or listen about the spiritual matter and yet not really live it. There is a time to listen and there must be a time to act them out, not by our own strength but of His.
And I am very glad to notice the ancient treasure of The Church regarding this because The Church does not only 'remember the past', or draw a philosophical or metaphysical matter that is abstract, but truly celebrate it with beautiful Feasts, live it out now in the daily life bases and hope for the promised blessing and eternity. So, in the life of The Church, there is a strong and great harmonic cord of past, present and future. And this is because the consistency, timelessness and unconquerable of The Truth.
The same thing applied also to the spiritual life in each day. We do not only speak about fasting, making concepts or get the philosophical theory about it,yes we do that but beyond that we live it! In living it then, under the faithful guidance of The Church we may understand and live out our faith by his mercy.
Christianity should not stop there and thus only becomes a philosophical religion. The truth is more than that, more than the cognitive domains or wonderful reasoning, because Christ is so real and God has entered our reality. The Faith is as real as the Lake in which He calmed down the storm, as real as the nails with which He was hung. And once we heard He said, that not those who called him "Lord, Lord!", but those who do The Father's will who will come to his kingdom.
Therefore we listen to the Church, the pillar and the foundation of the truth. We learn from our Holy Fathers and the saints who not only lived out the faith but also were willing death for the sake of their love to Christ. We do not just speak about the faith and stop there, but more than that, we keep it in our hearts and live it and practice it every time in our daily life through prayers, fasting, and self-denying practice in the faithful companions of our spiritual fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters!
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy on us!
Very many excellent points here, Yudhie! You write very well that it is good to talk about God and spiritual things, but not if that is all we do and nothing else. I don't have to add anything to what you wrote, only to say, you have found the Truth, my brother, and so be faithful in carrying it out in your life. You are on something greater than a mere journey: It is transformation, metamorphosis, changing you into the image that you reflect, and that image is Christ's.
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