Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a three-part essay drawn from talks given to a men’s retreat. The next two will appear successively this week.
Part I
The word becoming implies that we are not yet men of prayer. That could be either because we are not yet fully men or because we are not yet fully prayerful. Or perhaps both. In any case, we are not yet what we are meant to be. The first epistle of St. John says as much: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”
This is very much future-oriented. And I would suggest that “seeing Christ as he is” is really the essence of prayer in its fullest and deepest sense.
The word becoming suggests that this is something that we are aiming at, not something we have achieved. So, to begin with, there is an in-built consolation: don’t be frustrated with yourself because you aren’t perfect.
I often make this point to people who are seriously sick. “How are you doing?” is an interesting question for such people, always hedged about with qualifiers. I think, for example, of someone I know and love who had a stroke last year. Initially he couldn’t move his right side, let alone walk. But with much physical therapy, he got to where he could scuttle about with a walker. I was pleased to see recently that he had graduated from a walker to a cane. A bummer for him, as he isn’t walking normally; but on the other hand, he is moving in the right direction. And that’s the key point. Who knows what sort of function he will be able to attain? “It doth not yet appear what he shall be,” but he is moving in a salubrious direction.
In Philippians, Paul made this dynamic into a spiritual principle. He said, “but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward [Greek: epektasis] the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (3:13-14).
The great teacher of this principle in the early Church was St. Gregory of Nyssa, especially in his Life of Moses, and his sermons on the Song of Songs. He said this “pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” goes on forever. It’s epektasis, the “pressing toward” that constitutes salvation, and it never ends, because God is infinite and eternal.
“[T]he soul’s indefatigable yearning for God stands in perpetual tension with God’s inexhaustible beauty and mystery. The upshot is a continuous conversion to the Good, a sublime frustration, an ongoing process of mystical union with God, with every spiritual advance being merely a new beginning in the never-ending mystery” (Paul M. Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress’”; emphasis mine).
So our hope is to become men of prayer, and by implication not to delude ourselves into thinking that’s what we already are. We want to be on the right path and moving in a salubrious direction, and in a sense that should suffice. We should be content with that.
The New Testament is rife with imagery suggesting this. Jesus said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). That might mean a lot of things. But one of the things it might mean is that children are always growing and developing. Their bodies and minds are by no means static.
I like the old phrase in the Creed, “the quick and the dead,” quick being an archaic word for living, but also suggesting movement. Dead things don’t move. And moving things aren’t dead. This is true in the spiritual life too. Our options are spiritual movement, spiritual progress, or spiritual death. Be converted and become as little, growing children, and enter the kingdom of heaven.
But, of course, we don’t want to remain children. We are about “becoming men of prayer,” and that means first becoming men. And Christ is the exemplar of perfect manhood. St. Paul makes that point too: we “press onward” until “we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man [to maturity], unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13ff). In another place (1 Cor. 13:11-12) Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
So, there are stages of spiritual development. And evidently it goes on forever. Perfection is always in front of us, in a sense because Christ himself is always in front of us. I am never perfectly him. I am, I hope, forever being conformed to him. This is the “sublime frustration, the ongoing process of mystical union.”
Becoming Men
When we invoke the idea of “becoming men,” we are using a specific word, viz. men. Not people, and not women. Men. It is important in our day and age to note the simple fact that the use of this word, even just the existence of this word, implies a distinction, namely the distinction between men and women.
At the heart of the spiritual life are the categories of unity and plurality. This is suggested in the very opening of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In the beginning: God. In the beginning: nothing but God. In the beginning: profound and absolute unity. And God speaks, and there is plurality.
The very act of creation, even in its most elemental aspect (“Let there be light”) implies distinction where formerly there was only unity. It’s the distinction between Creator and creature that is introduced. And the heavens and the earth are formed, and men and angels, and all the rest.
But there is another unity within creation that Scripture suggests is a sacred icon of the unity of God apart from, or prior to, his creation; and that is man, Adam, who in his nature is distinct from the rest of God’s works. In other words, Adam is alone. Man is alone. But Genesis notes that “it is not good that man should be alone,” and so plurality — and specifically duality — is introduced into the microcosm that Adam embodies.
A woman is brought forth from the body of the man. From one there is two, e uno plures. But Genesis notes that from these two, which emerged from one, a future unity is envisioned: “the two shall be one” (cf. Gen. 2:24). And this becoming one, of which sexual union is a sacramental symbol, is an icon of the destiny of mankind, men and women together, vis-à-vis the Creator.
In Ephesians 5, St. Paul calls this “a great mystery,” and he says that while he is speaking of the marriage of men and women, “I speak concerning Christ and the Church.” The imagery is taken up again in the Book of Revelation, when John sees the Church in its splendor, which he calls “the heavenly Jerusalem,” coming down from God “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2). And he says that this heavenly city, this cosmic bride, has no need of artificial light because it is illuminated from within by the slain lamb, which of course is Christ, the Bridegroom (v. 23).
At the bottom of all this, in practical terms, is a mutual laying down of selves, of lives. And this is the essence of manhood: laying down your life — which might be why heroism in war is so appealing to men. The spiritual archetype for men is the slain lamb, making his bride pure and luminous by his self-donation. This is unique to men, a uniquely masculine charism. It’s not something women do for men. It’s something men do for women. It’s even physiological, and as we have seen, the physiology is sacramental. Men give something to women, and women receive something from men, and in the process of this giving and receiving, new life comes into being. It takes both, but men (physiologically speaking, in sex) do the giving.
I don’t want to suggest that women don’t have anything to offer. They very much do, and what they offer is no less caught up in this whole spiritual dynamic. Nor is the female charism of a lesser quality or significance. You can ask the women in your life to confirm this. Among many other things, a woman offers her body to be a habitation for the new life that the becoming one of what were formerly two has generated. It’s a very profound mystery indeed. It’s as though a woman says to her unborn baby: “take this; this is my body… this is my blood… for you.”
My point, broadly speaking, is that when we talk about “becoming men of prayer,” we should be attuned to uniquely masculine charisms, the unique spiritual gifts of men, for example (and not least) as sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands. We don’t relate to God, or to one another, as homogeneous blobs. We relate to God and one another in our particularity — which means, in no small part, that we do so as men.
And to reiterate: what it means to be a man, in the fullest sense of that word, is to grow up into the perfect man, into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, the only and eternal Son of the Father.
I’m sending this on to my three adult sons, Will.
Really inspiring !!
Jean
Thank you, Jean! I hope they like it.