Our Christian quest for holiness
“I am with you always; yes, till the end of time.” These were Jesus’ last words to his apostles; reassuring, consoling words.
“From them we must gain new impetus in Christian living,” Pope John Paul II tells us, “making it the force inspiring our journey of faith. What awaits us, therefore is an exciting work of pastoral revitalisation—a work involving all of us.”
It is significant, John Paul points out, that a whole chapter (5) in the Second Vatican Council’s document on the Church (Lumen gentium) is about the “universal call to holiness”. The Council Fathers laid stress on this, in order to make personal holiness of all its members an intrinsic and essential part of their teaching of the Church, as the Bride of Christ, who gave his life precisely in order to make her holy (Eph 5: 25-26).
“All the Christian faithful, of whatever state or rank, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity” (Lumen gentium 140).
“The gift of holiness,” Pope John Paul adds, “is offered to all the baptised, but the gift becomes a task which must shape the whole of Christian life. ‘This is the will of God, your sanctification’ (1 Thes 4:3). It implies the conviction that, since Baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity.”
Personal holiness — unreserved love of God and of our neighbour — is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, as Pope John Paul emphasises, our task in the New Evangelisation requires that we must be people of prayer; which is not the same as “saying” more and more prayers. Prayer is not a monologue: we pray, God listens. We have to learn to pray, like the first disciples; to ask: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1).
“Prayer develops that conversation with Christ which makes us his intimate friends. ‘Abide in me and I in you’ (Jn 15:4),” according to Pope John Paul. “Wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, this reciprocity opens us, through Christ and in Christ, to contemplation of the Father’s face. Learning this Trinitarian form of Christian prayer and living it fully, above all in the Liturgy — the summit and source of the Church’s life — but also in personal experience, is the secret of a truly vital Christianity.”
John Paul recalls the great mystical tradition of the Church of both East and West in this regard, showing how prayer can develop as a genuine dialogue of love, until the person is wholly possessed by the divine Beloved. The pope stresses the importance of teaching this method of contemplative prayer to our young people.
“There is no doubt,” Pope John Paul concludes, “that primacy of holiness and of prayer is inconceivable without a renewed listening to the Word of God… Since the Second Vatican Council, which stressed the pre-eminent role of the Word of God in the life of the Church, great progress has been made in devout listening to Sacred Scripture and attentive study of it,” he says. Listening to the Word of God should become a life-giving encounter, in the ancient practice of Lectio divina (sacred or prayerful reading) which draws from the biblical text the living word which questions, directs and shapes our lives.”
John Paul repeats his summons to the “new evangelisation”, to a new sense of mission, as the responsibility of all the members of the People of God.
“Those who have come into genuine contact with Christ,” he affirms, “cannot keep him for themselves; they must proclaim him to the world.”
