Session 79 The Most Excellent Path

Session 79 The Most Excellent Path

Father Keating is concluding the Spiritual Journey series with this video from Snowmass, CO.  The Spiritual Journey series consists of over twenty videos by Father Keating in which he takes the listener on the spiritual path, using psychology, theology and spiritual practices.  These videos have been used by the retreat directors as the basis of this online retreat.

Father Keating begins with the gospel reading of 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 in which Paul exhorts us “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. It does not put on airs. It is not snobbish. Love is never rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not prone to anger. Neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong; but rejoices in the truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure. Love never fails.” 

Keating notes “The wisdom of this passage is enhanced by that other saying of John, which is simply: “God is love;” that is to say, God doesn’t just show love; but God is love.”  This helps me to comprehend chapter 12 a bit easier as some of the expectations of human love seem pretty high in this gospel.  It is good to realize it is God who is patient and kind and when I open myself to God and act through God, I am also capable of this love but it is God who gives me this capability and it is not of my own means, as hard as I try at times. 

Keating hopes we realize we cannot understand wholly how much we are loved by God but we get glimpses of this through the love we experience in our families, our friends, our neighbors and at times, from those strangers who help us when we mistakenly think we are all alone. 

As Father Keating reminds us, “This word that Paul is using in that text I described is not just any kind of these loves; but is everything that is good and beautiful and true in each of those relationships magnified trillions of times to a presence that is burning with love, a fire that is so intense that we can’t see it in this life without turning into a grease spot. No one can see God and live, as the Scripture tells us in another place. And so, God has to sort of veil his presence with various forms of hiddenness and by working through secondary causes so that we don’t feel the intensity of his love in such a degree that it forces the soul out of the body.”   Saint Augustine uses the metaphor of an infant beginning with milk and moving on to soft foods to help us realize what we can first understand about the love of God for us.  And as we move into a closer relationship with Christ, we begin to know more of the love we receive and more of the love we can carry to others through our relationship with Love, or Christ.  

We come to know this more through the Eucharist.  Father Keating notes “We think of the Eucharist perhaps; too much as a ritual. And the ritual is important, but it’s a sign to us of a mystical peak of Christian experience when it’s properly understood. When we receive the Eucharist, we’re plunged instantaneously into the depths of the Trinity. Through contemplative prayer this extraordinary inflow or explosion of energy is gradually unpacked so that, little by little, we begin to perceive what great gifts we have received in the communication of the divine life which could not be more intimate. When we eat something, what happens to the food? It’s transformed into our very bodies and cells and bones and sinews. So here the intensity of God’s love recommends itself to us because God gives himself into our hands to be eaten. This is the ultimate vulnerability of God, the ultimate expression of the divine humility which literally is giving himself away to sinners, and sometimes to people who don’t care, sometimes to people who haven’t the remotest idea of the incredible love behind this, this gift in which God is saying: ‘Don’t you love me enough that you want to eat me up too?’”

And so, by partaking in the Eucharist, our cells become cells in the Mystical Body of Christ.  Father Keating goes on to discuss how much we are loved by Christ and how intimate this love is, yet the Kingdom of God is like a narrow gate and only a few will be admitted.  Keating discusses how the wisdom teachings of Jesus were greatly exaggerated to make the points He tried to give to his disciples. And the gospel story of the rich young man who cannot follow Christ because of his many possessions is a metaphor for all of us and our attachments.  The love that we experience in this life, which gives us a “sense” of the love we are receiving from God at all times, must also be realized as a form of attachment to be let go of.  Our attachments to our families, our friends, our neighbors and our possessions can keep us from realizing the full glory of the love of Christ for us. 

Father Keating concludes with “All these are symbols that the love that lies on the other side of the narrow gate is so pure, so precious, that you just can’t live there or be happy there or feel at home there if you bring with you the self-centered projects for happiness, especially those that we’ve described earlier as the emotional programs for happiness which are false values and which are basically self-centered values, or identifications with the group; whether ethnic, family, national or even religious, in which we have an attachment – usually to be accepted by the group. This divine love, then, is totally gratuitous. But it’s realistic. It challenges us at the same time as offering us this immense gift. What we have to let go and allow God to take away any attachment that is self-centered. So, the divine action goes after our selfishness. And this is the source of what we call sin: our unwillingness to let go of the support systems that we counted on to keep our false values in place and our idealized image secure.”

Further Study: Chapter 5, "The Most Excellent Path" from Manifesting God by Thomas Keating.