ADORATIO BLOG #37: We Must Decrease, but God Must Increase
"You are she who is not, and I AM HE WHO IS.”
Two years ago, I began working with a spiritual director. We began with a year-long “retreat in daily life” using the Daily Examen of St. Ignatius of Loyola. We have continued to build on that foundational practice. This Lent I have been attempting to take on the difficult discipline of detachment, especially detaching from the “stuff” to which I have been inordinately attached.
The scripture that has been particularly present and poignant is John 3:30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” These are the words of St. John the Baptizer, spoken about Jesus.
One way to practice decreasing is to actively detach from, or become indifferent to, certain created things to which we may be overly attached, so we can be spiritually free to attend fully to God’s will and direction. St. Ignatius wrote, “Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.”
For me, one of the most difficult acts of detachment is to throw away my orchestral arrangements. They represent years of work, years of creativity, something that once had a purpose, but no longer does. As an artist, they represent me, my identity, who I am.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) writes, “. . . prayer, the self-opening of the human spirit to God, is true worship. The more man becomes ‘word’ –or rather: the more his whole existence is directed toward God—the more he accomplishes true worship.”[1]
He goes on to say, “True worship is the living human being, who has become a total answer to God, shaped by God’s healing and transforming word.” This worship, he says, “…transform[s] people into an offering to God and make[s] the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer.”[2]
Let me ask you what I ask myself:
Are you allowing yourselves to “become word, with your whole existence directed toward God?”
Are you being shaped daily by “God’s healing and transforming word?”
Are you leading others to be “transformed into an offering to God, making the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer?”
If so, may God sustain you in that. If not, may God place that in your heart.
We must decrease, but God must increase.
The great 14th-century mystic and doctor of the Church, St. Catherine of Siena, received this word from the Father: “Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things, you will have beatitude within your grasp. You are she who is not, and I AM HE WHO IS.”[3]
Don’t read that as nonexistence. Rather, read that through the lens of John 3:30. Everything we arecomes from Him.
Something transcendently beautiful happens in a life committed to continuous worship and prayer (like St. Catherine), rooted in God’s Word and God’s Church. It seems the worshiper, and even the whole of creation, is saturated and transfigured by the Divine life. We decrease joyfully, and He increases, filling our lives with His presence, forming us powerfully for mission.
We are called, all of us, to a life of worship shaped by scripture, formed by the Divine life of the Great Tradition of the Church, revealing and embracing the apostolic faith, and bearing the holiness, righteousness, and transforming power of Christ to the entire created order.
So friends, what is the thing in your life that you are holding onto so tightly that it feels like part of who you are? What would it mean to place even that into God’s hands?
We must decrease, but God must increase.
“You are he and she who are not, and I AM HE WHO IS.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
[1] Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week, From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 238..
[2] Ibid.
[3] Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine of Siena, trans. Conleth Kearns (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1980), 85.
Ratzinger was such a gift to the Church!