Unfinished Tapestry: Our Soul's Eternal Weave

By Gerard Martin

Without faith in eternal life, believing in the immortality of the human soul, human life easily becomes a puzzle. Being born into, and then to survive in human life, a healthy body has definite demands. A vigorous mind craves nourishment. The human heart searches for love. The human soul needs to trust in God's promises.

Sound Christian spirituality happily concerns itself with conscious and constant attention to body, mind, heart, and soul. How does God interact with us? Why? What's behind God's caring for us? What does God get out of this? What's in it for us? Alive Christian spirituality delves into responding to these universal human questions. Based on centuries of holy pilgrims searching out the answers to these questions, spiritual direction is one graced, proven vehicle and ministry of discovering not only God's presence, but our own personal and unique call to become holy in response.

Unfinished Tapestry: Our Soul's Eternal Weave delves directly into God's invitation to be Christlike, not only in our human lifetimes but throughout our eternity. So what's the inner workings of Christian spirituality? What's the role and purpose of prayer within it? How about conscience? What is it? What goes into conscience formation? Sin? How do I judge its varied implications and indebtedness? How does God's compassion fit in? Where's Satan in all of this? God, being defined as love, how important is it genuinely and actively to love and be loved in life? What would a loveless life look like?

Evidently, it takes more than a mere human lifetime to fully answer these queries, if indeed that's ever possible. Hence, comes the divine invitation to continue our Unfinished Tapestry: Our Soul's Eternal Weave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781639039821

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Unfinished Tapestry

Our Soul's Eternal Weave

Gerard Martin

ISBN 978-1-63903-981-4 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63903-982-1 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by Gerard Martin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Dedicated to

Mary, the Mother of God,

my co-weaving soul companions,

and

my parents,

who, by planting and nourishing

the seed of faith within our family,

proffered vision, color, and texture

for our own eternal weave.

Introduction

At the very core of our being, every person hungers and thirsts for the one true God, recognized, admitted, or not. Purposefully created and fashioned as such, we are unfinished creatures in a dynamic pilgrim search for completion. By God’s choice and design, we humans are a constituted union of passing flesh and an immortal spirit. As the body has its natural needs and demands in quest of ongoing life and fulfillment, so does the spirit. From conception to death, without food and water, the human body simply cannot survive. When requiring food or liquids, the body doesn’t hesitate to make it quite clear what its most basic needs are if it wishes to be healthy and to exist. The poetic comparison of thirst and hunger to the human soul is quite insightful. Just as natural food and drink can’t be denied the human body for very long without dire life-threatening, irreversible consequences, neither can the lack of attention to our spirits in the neglect or denial of God. O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting (Ps 63:2).

Beginners in the spiritual journey don’t always or easily recognize the focused object of that hunger and thirst. Consequently, whether through ignorance for some, innocence for others, they naively attempt to address this congenital anxiety with some immediacy. They set out to find personal meaning and satisfaction by chasing after easily-attained substitutes and illusions conjuring up vehicles and gods of their own making and design to hype their experiences.

On the other hand, persons more advanced on the spiritual journey recognize the only legitimate object and valid means regarding their spiritual hungers and thirsts quite clearly. They try to stay in a focused relationship with the Lord, only to discover, however, that the full and perfect quenching of those hungers and thirsts are not at all possible in this life—even with God’s help—but rather pertains to the awaited and unmerited prize of eternal life. Even though they drank in and tasted many decent legitimate satisfactions, ultimately, they discover that there simply is no object, no merely human person that can fully satiate their spirit. They grow keenly conscious of an inborn disappointment with this world and life, a natural frustration, an incompleteness. At the heart of the soul’s hunger and thirst is an innate sense that there’s a reality beyond one’s earthly existence, that each of us belongs to something, to Someone greater than ourselves, to a God. This belonging is not in a sense of divine possessiveness or ownership, but in the sense of both loving origin and divine destiny. God not only providentially sponsors the soul’s hunger and thirst as an effective reminder to attend to and to nourish our spirit, but not being a whimsical God, in the same instant, provides the necessary means to placate its demands. However, those God-given means to satisfy the soul, even though utterly genuine and true, are but a temporary fix. Even having experienced spirit satisfaction to its height, the gratified person still wants more! That’s exactly where God wants us. God, in fact, uses these temporary soul satisfactions as bait, to lure us back for more, to cajole us to yet deeper commitment, fidelity, and celebration.

Because we are born into a world of challenge and diversion, to offer us every possible advantage to know with assured confidence the why and the how of returning to our source, our Triune God sends a Self, a Beloved Son (Mt 3:17). This Son will be the light of humanity, lovingly and compassionately sent to dispel and dissipate a fearful darkness demonically intended to confuse, misdirect, and eventually to captivate and enslave the searching pilgrim (Jn 1:3–4).

In a searching response to this Son, for over two thousand years people of good heart and hope have asked the question of a Jesus of Nazareth: Are you the one who is to come, or are we to look for another? (Lk 7:19). If we find ourselves still asking that same question, it means we have not yet declaratively found the pearl of great price (Mt 13:45), not yet really tasted the peaceful interior satisfaction that this Jesus alone offers. We haven’t yet become conscious of the actual Divine Indwelling in an experiential or exceptional way. There is not yet the conscious conviction that we really cannot live and survive in a quality relationship with God for which we are not ready and prepared—not without great desire, not without solid and repetitive decision, not without embracing self-purification. So, at some point of life, one way or another, each and every person must answer Jesus’ piercing question to Peter: But who do you say I am? Peter responds, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then Jesus remarks, Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father (Mt 16:16–17). Within the journey into God and our completion, we each need to realize that it isn’t what we do or give to God, but of what God lavishly does and gives to us. At some point, it must become the experience and excitement of Andrew expressed to Simon Peter: We have found the Messiah (which is translated ‘Anointed’) (Jn 1:41). And the words and awareness of Peter are intimately experienced for oneself: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68).

Only God, who has those words of eternal life, can assuage our soul hunger. We forever are tending to completion, exclusively and uniquely found in this one, true God whose Son is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6). Once embracing, once falling in love with and surrendering to him, our spirits are captivated, so interwoven with his that our own lives can never be the same. It’s in pursuing this divine relationship that we discover the activating and unfolding of our completeness.

Human existence is but a beginning, a mere veil of what lies beyond. Neither the soul’s heart nor psyche can possibly be totally satisfied in this life. So the human spirit ardently stretches for more beyond this world’s limited possibilities. This reaching beyond is at the throbbing heart of spirituality itself. The human spirit chooses to follow that beckoning lead, to succumb to the clamor of one’s own interior hunger and thirst. It does its best to live in an active relationship with a caring, welcoming, if not seducing, God. Such a journey of spirit calls for a sure, dependable, and trustworthy knowledge, in place of guessing or rolling the dice.

Since spirituality is about mystery, no one—not even a saint—sounds its depth nor discovers its vast panorama in a single life span. Rather there is a desperate need of tapping into the religious memory recounted and passed down in various spiritualities of convents and monasteries, hermitages, and deserts, of lay life in homes and cottages, single and married, young and old. Hence, authentic developing spirituality is accumulative, taking in and building on the solid rock of the spiritual insights and experiences of others. Hopefully, it’s a tapestry of spirituality weaved, not only from sacred strands of religious tradition and insights of yesterday, e.g., based on a passage or line of Sacred Scripture, on something someone said, or something someone experienced and recorded, but likewise influenced by one’s own lived faith and present-day experiences. Then it’s up to the pilgrim artisan to judicially pick and choose values, truths, and experiences to weave his/her own tapestry of values, truths, and experiences that not only make sense, but substantially feed one’s soul. Why? Because they contribute to one’s own union with God, and thereby, satisfy one’s personal, inner hungers. A serious caution is not to get caught up into creampuff spirituality, in other words, it looks and sounds good and attractive, possibly more than satisfying but once bitten into, no matter the immediate taste, it doesn’t last—it can’t. It satisfies but for the moment or the situation. So, while each of us weaves our own tapestry of personal spirituality, the composing strands must be proven threads if it is to last. The expression: You get what you pay for highlights the import and value we give to our spiritual investments. Of course, the mentoring weaver is the Holy Spirit.

Like any other journey, in preparing for the spiritual excursion, a prudent pilgrim considers not only what the unqualified necessities are, but what are the helpful extras? For instance, to prepare mentally for the demands and price of a significant journey, possibly for the unexpected on the spiritual road, it’s paramount to be clear about not only what and who do I believe? i.e., from whom do I accept directions and encouragement, but Why? How we respond is at once integral to the painstaking weaving of our personal soul tapestry. For example: Just how central to my own private tapestry do I want Jesus to be? What is conscience all about anyway, and how exactly does conscience formation nourish—or endanger—my tapestry and my spirit’s completion? Beyond general norms, how do I figure out what God wants of me in particular? What does personal sin do to my tapestry? What is the place and purpose of forgiveness and mercy—God’s and mine? How does the human body, the reality of a material world, along with even its legitimate pleasures and powers, impact my own godly trend and thrust? If God is so personal, how do I get in touch with God? How do I communicate with God and God with me? What’s the purpose and advantage of silence and solitude? If God’s essence is really unconditional love, what does love have to do with my own spirit’s tapestry and its completion? How is true, human love a veritable living parable of God’s own professed and undying love for me, and mine for God? What role does my memory play in this? What’s the pointed interest of a malicious spirit called Satan? How do I recognize him and his ploys? How do I react? My spirit clearly wants and definitely needs to know for the good and safety of the tapestry and journey.

Every tapestry is as exceptional as the hand of the artistic soul that fashions it. Though some tapestries may look alike, each tapestry is utterly unique, as are identical twins or triplets. The plan set by God regarding our unfinished spirit and tapestry is that of celebrating a type of milestone at death’s call. At what point of development will our spiritual tapestry be? Has it become inexorably enmeshed with and by Christ? Key to our soul’s tapestry is how we use what we have been given. Since eternal life itself is revealed as being anything but static or established once and for all, will even the fire and face of God offer any ultimate completion? Does divine love have a height or a depth beyond which there is nothing more? Trust in divine invitation and mercy suggests that there will truly be a continued eternally unfolding and weaving of our soul’s tapestry—but under better conditions of being thoroughly drowned in and nourished by God’s own compassionate essence of love. Our tapestries, i.e., our souls, are not only a lifetime endeavor but an eternal enterprise. The meticulous weave of eternity will be an echo of the weave of life. We don’t turn them in at death. They are but viewed and assessed. In surrendering to this expressed, divine overture we say yes to the open-ended touches of holiness and fulfillment that will be brought to living perfection, ultimately only in God’s unifying and unending divine embrace—but the weave will go on.

Note: Presuming the goodwill of those cited in this work, all text and quotes have intentionally been adapted to use inclusive language, if indeed the quote still makes good sense. Unless otherwise indicated, all the scripture passages referred to in this work are taken from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Third Edition, New Revised Standard Version (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Chapter 1

What Is Spirituality

English mystic Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), in referring to the title of one of her books, The Spiritual Life, called it a dangerously ambiguous term. Why? Because the simple-sounding term spiritual means such totally different things to so many different people. That’s the basis of its ambiguity, and that’s due to the fact that spirituality is essentially about mystery. Consequently, by name and nature, it’s difficult to get a handle on it. Human knowledge of mystery is so limited. The most we get is a whiff, a mere hint, of what actually lies behind its sheltering veil. Even when it comes to supernatural mystery, i.e., what we know through divine revelation, we understand only incompletely. That should raise cautions also.

Just what is spirituality? How does it differ from theology? When you consider religious knowledge, there are at least two types of learning—one, of the head, that we call theology, or the study of Theo, which is Greek for God. The other is of the heart, which we insightfully term spirituality. Theology’s primary search is for truth; its primary instrument, the mind; its first fruit, wisdom. Spirituality’s primary search is for love; its primary instrument, the heart; its first fruit is relationship, getting to know experientially that Spirit of Christ and the trinitarian Theo one ponders in theology. Another way of saying this is, theology is the seed of one’s faith; spirituality, its bloom. Both bring truth; both are needed, one evoking the other. That being stated, if a person really desires a vibrant spirituality, it will take more than just knowing one’s faith. In other words, as keenly important as knowledge of the message of faith is, spirituality is the loving, personal knowledge and experience of the messenger. Spirituality integrates message and messenger. Operative, alive spirituality doesn’t reside in books, outlines, or homilies, any more than the sumptuous meal resides in the cookbook.

Spirituality refers to a person’s intrinsic values. As values, they closely affect one’s mind, soul, and emotions. As such, they shape a person’s lifestyle, or ought to. Spirituality speaks to one’s basic stance in an ongoing liaison with God. First, a person needs to choose those intrinsic faith values to be personally formative, i.e., a foundational norm of life. Second, s/he then makes operative choices to bring these to a measurable reality. Only then can one say s/he is living an honest, viable spirituality. In other words, spirituality looks to an interior word, a desire, a reason, a conviction upon which to found a relationship with God, self, and others. It pays attention to an inner divine presence and then determines to live out the imports of such sacred awareness.

Christian faith is anchored in the values, teachings, and prophetic witness of Jesus precisely as the Christ. Using faith as a springboard, Christian spirituality seeks to know this Jesus Christ as one’s own Beloved. While faith is a heady reality, love is of the heart. It is a resultant love that bursts forth in a chosen way of life inspired by values intrinsic to Christianity.

Values: Espoused, Experienced, Operative

Values can be viewed and considered from three varying vulnerabilities.

Espoused: e.g., I know it’s important to be a person of prayer. I know it’s at the heart of the gospel to be compassionate and sharing with the poor. I may even talk, teach, and write about these values with fervor and conviction. But if the reality of my life is I really don’t pray very often, like those Teresa of Avila talks about who pray a mere two, three times a month; if the reality is I seldom, if ever, actually help the poor, such a value is referred to as being espoused. I can properly name the value as being important to a particular way of life, in this case, a Christian way of life, but the value is rarely concretely incarnated into my life.

Experienced: Today I receive a call that my twin brother has been in a most serious accident and it could go either way regarding his life. Triggered by this timely event, I hasten to prayer as an honest and sincere need. The prayer is no less authentic. Or, while out taking my walk today, I come face-to-face with this evidently hungry family. I am touched and moved sufficiently to give them adequate money for food. My actions are sponsored by the experience. That’s precisely why it’s dubbed an experienced value.

Operative: Means that I am a person of ongoing and regular, that is to say habitual and sincere, prayer as part and parcel of who I choose to be, no matter what is going on in my life. It means that I’ve decided not only to be conscious and watchful for opportunities to help the poor, but as a matter of fact, I do. It’s my consistent, working operative value.

Christian spirituality is based on those operative values that come to us in faith and trust in the person of Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6), and hopefully—sooner than later—as one’s Primary Love of life.

Everyone, in fact, has a values-based spirituality. Such values are part of life’s vision and purpose. They are what make a person tick, make sacrifices for, and invest in. They give meaning, purpose, and direction to life. We give our time, talent, and treasure in pursuit of fulfilling our cherished values. To have or to live a spirituality sounds downright positive. But the truth is, it all depends. For instance, what if my inner working values are predominantly ego based? What if my life’s ambitions are based actually on pure materialism or narcissism, popularity or power? What fantasy would allow me to think I’m honing in on living a life of the beatitudes? Values are that strong, that determining of time, talent, and treasure. They indeed set the tone for one’s spiritual bent.

The Pneuma of Christ

The New Testament Greek word pneumatikos translates as spiritual. It refers to whatever pertains to the Spirit or is influenced by the Spirit. Jesuit John Sheets talks about the pneumatic person into whose life the pnuema of Christ has been transposed. This means, he continues, that a person united to Christ through the Spirit has the same inner direction as Christ and the Holy Spirit.¹ No insignificant reality. But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (1 Cor 6:17). So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God (1 Cor 2:11–12). If we live by [with] the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit (Gal 5:25).

This process of spiritualization begins with