His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.”
-2 Peter 1:3-4
Divine Intimacy…that closeness of our heart with our Lord’s. We were made for Divine intimacy, which is to be partakers in His Divine nature. Since the times of the apostles, the Church has taught that by grace, God wants to develop this intimacy with us now. This relationship is built through the process of perfecting us throughout our life here on earth, and then it is completed in Purgatory. More than the shedding of sin and vice, it is spiritual growth. It is the healing of the underlying wounds that leads to those behaviors. This process of our perfection is known as our ‘divinization’ or deification as it is referred to by the saints and Church fathers. In this process, the weights of wounds and vices (especially those that we were not even aware existed) are discarded. We begin to see others through God’s eyes and come to truly understand Jesus’ commandment to love (John 15:12). Made in His image, this is how we grow in His likeness. We become interiorly free.
“This deification, so well known to the Fathers but unfortunately forgotten today, is the primary purpose of the Christian life” (Arintero, 1978, p. 23)
“So common were these ideas concerning deification that not even the heretics of the first centuries dared to deny them” (Arintero, 1978, p. 29)[1]
God created each of us unique and unrepeatable. But there is much similarity between us in our sins, vices, and imperfections! From birth, we experience wounds of the heart from which comes fear and self-protection. These manifest in our thinking and acting, our behaviors. We can’t quite see ourselves and others as God sees us, nor love them as He has commanded us (Mark 12:30-33), even when we intellectually assent to it.
We need Him.
This perfection isn’t a do-it-yourself project. It isn’t a home remodel, one we design, plan, and complete ourselves, running to the store when we’ve run out of necessary supplies and only bringing in others to help in those areas we can’t do ourselves. God is the designer, planner, and supervisor of the remodel of our hearts. He gives us the desire for His love; our job is to respond to that with a big “Yes!”. He then gives us grace to do our part, which is our willingness to love Him more than our bad habits and sin. Our role is to let Him be in charge and to always be asking for, then cooperating with, His grace. Too often, we do the opposite—take charge and only ask Him for help when we think we need it. Thus, there are certain steps that must be undertaken to remodel our hearts.
In a home remodel, there is a certain order in which it is best to conduct the work; it does no good to replace the old bathroom linoleum floor with beautiful tile until after the plumbing has first been fixed! Similarly with the heart: changes that are only surface-deep quickly lose their shine when grave sin and a destructive mindset lurk beneath.
This remodeling of the heart is referred to as the spiritual life, and it follows a common pattern, too. But this process doesn’t begin until mortal sin is vanquished from one’s life and the person is earnestly seeking to never let it back in. They fall less and less often until grave sin, along with most venial sin, no longer is given entrance when it comes knocking on the proverbial door of the heart. This stage is the purgative stage in which sin is purged and our sights are set on God.
As we progress (which is often two steps forward and one step back!), we experience His illuminations of His truth in our hearts: truths about our ‘hidden’ sin which in the past we ignored or suppressed, and the truth of the many ways His love for us is demonstrated in our everyday life. The soul is inebriated with His love, desperately seeking more and more of it and cooperating with His grace to grow in virtue in every aspect of life. This is the illuminative stage, and, while most ardent Christians remain in this stage throughout their life, we were all made for much more than this.
We were made for union with Him, the fullest partaking in His Divine nature. He perfects us in this life to the extent we cooperate so that, at the end of time when He returns to take us home to Paradise, “we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
This is the living in Divine intimacy and, like all relationships, it is an intimacy that grows over time. The effects of sanctifying grace in the Sacraments are critical to this taking place.
This remodeling is a work that is beyond the abilities of the human creature. Only our Creator can perfect us. And while the stages of this process seem academic, the living out of the process is a repeated experience of God’s love more fully each day as we have more room for Him in our hearts. Thus, the stages of the spiritual life are actually the progression of our relationship with the One with whom we were created to spend eternity.
So what does this have to do with spiritual direction?
Spiritual direction is a means that God provides to help us on this path. The director acts like guardrails on the narrow road that winds up the steep mountain. The journey is lived through the reception of the Sacraments, time in mental prayer, examining how one’s relationship with God has been lived out each day, and then making resolutions with God for real change. The process is only lived to the extent that a person has sincere and honest conversations with God. The director’s role, through guidance by the Holy Spirit, is to help the person with these conversations and to take that growing intimacy into their daily life activities.
In upcoming articles in this series, we’ll follow the guidance of the esteemed teacher Fr. Jordan Aumann O.P., who distills the teachings of scripture and our Church Tradition into a very practical portrait of the spiritual director in action. The role of each the director and directee, along with the qualities of a proper spiritual director, are clarified as well as when it may be time to change spiritual directors.
Until then, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
(All references to the writings of Fr. Jordan Aumann are taken from Spiritual Theology, published by Continuum 1980-2006 https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/spiritual-theology-9781472975393/ )
[1] Arintero, John. (1978). Mystical Evolution, Vol. 1. TAN.
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