Stages of the Spiritual Journey

6.19.23            The four Stages of the Classic Spiritual Journey

 

Benedict J. Groeschel, a Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, in his book, Spiritual Passages: The Psychology of Spiritual Development, writes about the traditional journey of following Jesus Christ with its four stages of spiritual depth: Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, and Union.[1] As I work on my book about following Jesus, I am changing the names of three of the stages of this journey to: Entering the Narrow Gate, Letting Go and Letting God, and Living in Wisdom. The last one, Union with God, remains the same.

 

The first stage is the shortest, Entering the Narrow Gate (Matthew 7:13) that Jesus talked about, the gate that leads to abundant life and the narrow road ahead. When we decide to follow Jesus, He will lead us off the wide road of the world that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13) and a limited life into the life that is specifically designed for us. When the time comes that we can hear His call, and we answer, “Yes!”, that completes the first stage. From there, we are being led down a path where we’re called to Let Go and to Let God, the longest part of the journey. Step by step, we are led by God who knows us inside and out and exactly what we need at any point in time, for He created each one of us. As we walk this path, we will, bit by bit, see what He has in mind for us, until further down the road when He reveals our purpose.

 

Even then, as we begin to follow Jesus, we enter the Letting Go/Letting God stage. We still don’t know what lies ahead, so always Jesus is asking us to surrender to one thing after another as we walk the way. We can anticipate little of the way ahead, so we are often surprised by what comes into our lives. Of course, we love the blessings, but it takes quite a while to accept the challenges that also come. For me, I wanted to know why something was in my life, whether it was a small roadblock to what I wanted or a big one. After years of resistance, I finally decided that the “why” wasn’t important; the thing was already in my life and that I needed to deal with it, not resist it. Later I realized that each of these challenges had a lesson in it for me, and the sooner I learned the lesson, the easier my life got. Amazingly, to me, I realized that my resistance just increased my suffering immensely, whereas with acceptance and surrender, my suffering went way down!

 

So, we could look at this second stage of the path as one of learning lesson after lesson that God is trying to teach us about His love and care and support no matter what is happening to us. Most of all, to follow Jesus is to be healed of all the grief, the challenges, and difficulties of our lives and, most of all, our very negative self-images. So that we come out whole and loved and loving as we move out of the Letting Go and Letting God Stage. It’s the longest one that we go through. Before we’re ready to enter the Promised Land into the Fourth stage, there is quite a pause as we Live into the Wisdom that has been shared with us, to see ourselves as we truly are, to see all other people as who they truly are, and to be ready to enter the last part of the journey, Union with God. At this stage of the journey we are taking in what we learned in the Letting Go/Letting God state. Some of these lessons are:

 

1. That every human being is made in the image of God and deserving of our care and compassion.
2. That we are all imperfect as long as we live in this human body.
3. That we aren’t in competition with every other human being, for we are all brothers and sisters in the family of God.
4. That putting God/Jesus first in our lives actually brings us to knowing and loving ourselves as we were created to be.
5. That God knows us so much better than we can ever know ourselves and designs a life for us that fulfills us.
6. That we were so conditioned by our family and culture and our own self-image which enslaved us to these limitations.

All of this journey of movement/healing/transformation of who we were in the world into who we are to God is a wonder.  With our purpose to fulfill us and God at our side always, the Lord has brought us to the true fulfillment of our lives.

 

And then, the path leads into Union with God, to live as Jesus lived in God, never separated from Him, always attentive to what He is saying to us, asking of us, and held securely in His arms no matter what happens in our lives. We have to look to the saints of the ages to see what that Union with God looks like. From their lives, from Paul and the apostles on, we know that Union does not mean an easy path for us. It will be full of challenges and who knows what else. But, we always have God’s presence in our lives supporting us, loving us, directing us, and so much more. There is nothing like it in this world. And yet, His love and care is expressed in every part of the earth, in every natural thing here.

 

It is halfway into the journey during that second stage before gratitude starts to be your major response to all that God is doing in your life, for you. As we experience His presence, hear His voice, His suggestions for what is next, as we see the changes in our lives that He has given us, as we cease to live out of fear, as we’re experiencing peace within us, gratitude is the most loving response that we can give back to God. And then that gratitude just reinforces our willingness, every step of the way, to follow Jesus. Amen!

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Questions to ponder over the week: Have I given my life to Christ? If so, what are the blessings and challenges that I have experienced? If I haven’t given my life to Christ, what is holding me back for a fulfilling life that would totally allow me to be me, not just what the culture would make of me.

 

Blessing for the week: May we be the people of God who have given our lives to Christ to heal and transform us into the people we were created to be. May we be true to our love of the Lord and true to ourselves as we come to understand who we were created to be.

 

Check out my two websites: patsaidadams.com and deepeningyourfaith.com.

 

Two Announcements

1. I am giving away a 10-week journaling guide to Jesus’s Two Great Commandments. If you are interested, email me at patsadams@gmail.com and I will email it to you, free of charge.
2. My latest books, “Called to Help the Poor and Needy” and “A Study Guide to the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount” are now in bookstores and on line. The first is about the more than 2,000 verses in the Bible which detail God’s instructions for caring for those in need. The second is a journaling/pondering guide to Jesus’s most complete sermon.

 

[1] Published by Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1983, pp.66-87