All this human effort and structure to try to access God and grace?
Is is just another ego project, and a futile striving, or is it the necessary and ordinary path to sanctity?
The answer hinges on on Love.
If acts of piety are done humbly and lovingly like a child, then it is something beautiful for God and useful for us. It is like a young boy bringing a little gift to his dad. The dad has no need of it but he treasures it and it moves him and the relationship deepens because the boy made an effort. Piety is the little boy’s gift brought over an over to the father. If it becomes boring and devoid of any inspiration it may because we have lost the childlike humility and love. If the act of piety, whatever it is, be it mass, Rosary, night prayer, act on faith, sign of the cross, meditation, reading, is an act of love it does not matter what we experience from it. There is great hidden fruit born for us and others.
If there is no struggle, there is no interior life. If there is no beginning again and again to attempt what seems impossible, then there is no love, and then we have true boredom.
We are called to seek God, and yet we can even begin to find him without his help. So why strive if it is all grace anyway?
Because He is often hidden in the struggle, and his grace is a cooperation with nature. Our suffering in this struggle is our greatest teacher and mentor. Not to try, not to have any plan of life seems to me a lack of love, an escape from the ordinary means God have given us.
Some would say that all religion is futile and the truly enlightened person is one that is free of all constructed ways of seeking God. That the struggle for self improvement is somehow a block in and of itself because it is rooted in the ego. The Mystical traditions seem to transcend the organized religions they spring from, yet they do not negate them. They go through them to a deeper state of maturity and oneness. But there remains the need for the structure of a shared faith including the demands of love within a community to light the way to perfection.
Finally, I think religion and piety is a necessary part of human development. The Angels have no need of any of this because they are pure spirits. But we need this struggle to perfect our love for a God we cannot see, and to learn abandonment, compassion, and acceptance.
Sept. 2016