Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
For today's reflection, we're going to continue our series of counsels for a healthy and holy spirituality. The fourth counsel that we'll offer is that of right knowledge. So, having a right knowledge of myself, of who I am, and a right knowledge of God.
Regarding ourselves, firstly, it's important to know that we are created in God's image and likeness, as we read in Genesis 1:26 and 27. The Catechism at number 1700 echoes this truth, saying the dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God.
The second source of our dignity is that we are recreated through the sacrament of Baptism. We are adopted into God's family through the sacrament, which the Catechism at number 1213 says is the gateway to life in the Spirit.
The third source of our dignity is very simply the fact that God became one of us in the Incarnation. He forever united Himself to our human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. And Franciscan theology and spirituality teaches that we were specifically created for Jesus Christ and that we were created in His image and likeness. So you were created for Jesus and Mary and for the Blessed Trinity, and through Baptism you belong to Them.
So healthy spirituality will accentuate your personal dignity and our call to live up to that dignity with the choices that we make. It won't gloss over our fallen nature or inclination to sin, but it won't be sin-centered or shame-centered either.
Regarding our knowledge of God, holy and healthy spirituality will present us with a true knowledge of God's nature, His attributes, His character, and His plan for us. God's nature is that He is one God in three Persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Among His attributes, we know that God is perfect, that He is holy, that He is goodness itself. God is immutable, meaning He cannot change. He's perfectly simple. He's eternal, omnipotent, meaning all-powerful. God is also truth itself; He is infinite, meaning He's boundless; He cannot be measured. God is omnipresent, so He's present everywhere. He's all-seeing; He's all-just; He's love and beauty itself. He's also humble. We see that in the Incarnation.
Regarding His character, God is always faithful to His promises. He is merciful, kind, patient, understanding, generous, considerate, righteous, honorable. Everything He does is for our good, and it's all done out of love.
And as far as His plan goes, St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:5 that God has predestined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ. And along with that, Romans 8:29 says that God's plan for us is to make us a living reflection of His Son. So a healthy spirituality will make us conscious of these truths regarding God, His nature, His attributes, His character, His plan.
Just to be clear, we do need to avoid the illusion that God is excessively lenient or excessively harsh. God's not a pushover or a senile, old, kindly grandpa. That's not who He is. He does punish sin. He doesn't bless evil or sin, and He does condemn the unrepentant to hell, as our Lord explicitly states, for example, in Matthew 25:41.
At the same time, God is not unfair in His ways or unjust in His judgments, and He's always ready to help us and to forgive repentant sinners. That being said, a holy and a healthy spirituality will have at its heart a deep understanding of the goodness and love of God, because His essence is love and goodness.
And as a side note, we'll mention here that there is a difference between having a head knowledge of God and a heart knowledge of Him. Or to put it another way, there's a distinction between an intellectual or a conceptual knowledge of God and an experiential knowledge of Him. So you can call it an informative knowledge versus a transformative knowledge.
Head knowledge, intellectual knowledge, informative knowledge regards truth. It's important. So theological and philosophical principles about God that are true, for example, that He is spirit, that He is one, that He's all-powerful, that He's Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Heart knowledge, experiential knowledge, transformative knowledge, means that I have had an encounter with the Lord in some way, an encounter which has left a lasting impact on me. So both types of knowledge are important.
Our Lord hints at this in the episode with the woman at the well in John 4 when Christ first encountered the woman. So He makes Himself present in an unmistakable way. And then He proceeds to tell her that those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth, John 4:24.
So experiential knowledge of God, encounter, and intellectual knowledge of Him—those need to go together.
As far as head knowledge goes, what I know in my head needs to guide my choices because we need to be guided by what's true. If we're guided too much or primarily by our emotions or simply by other people's opinions, we're going to be led astray. And I've seen this happen even with very spiritually minded people.
If on the other hand, we are guided by what's true, by what the Church teaches, then we'll be on, or soon enough, we will find ourselves back on the right path.
And also a healthy spirituality will help me distinguish and separate my understanding of God from my understanding of my earthly authority figures. Very easily, children confuse the two. They often attribute to God the qualities and characteristics, including the defects of their earthly parents or earthly authority figures, because children are very concrete in their thinking. They don't think abstractly. They associate the big guy, so God, with the big people in their life.
For example, if dad's always critical or angry or absent or aloof or unpredictable or impossible to please, guess what those children tend to think about God? Pretty much the same. As a result, often you'll have adults who are very learned and very skilled and accomplished in different areas of life, but they'll still have the understanding of God of a five- or six-year-old. With all the frustrations with God and disappointments and misunderstandings that they had with Him back then, they never matured in their spiritual understanding.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:20, “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking. In respect to evil, be like infants, but in your thinking be mature,” he says. So be innocent of heart, but be mature in mind. And he adds in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, think as a child, reason as a child. When I became an adult, I put aside childish things,” meaning that we need to grow in our understanding of life and of God and of ourselves as we get older.
And lastly, saints like St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila tell us that growth in the spiritual life is rooted in an increased knowledge of God on the one hand and an increased knowledge of ourselves on the other hand.
So let's strive to have a clearer head knowledge of the Lord based on what the Church teaches. And let's ask our Lord and our Lady for a greater heart knowledge of God and how precious we are in His eyes. The truth and true theological philosophical knowledge fosters greater love. And ultimately, that's why the truth is so important. It sets us free, as Jesus says in John 8:32.
In our next reflection, we'll say something about the knowledge of God and of herself that guided the life of St. Teresa of the Child Jesus.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.