I Didn't Build It For Me

I went to Mount Saint Benedict's Monastery in Harbor Creek last night for their first Spiritual Connections group of 2005. The program was about Saint Catherine of Sienna, who lived a full life that was an intriguing combination of mysticism, servanthood, and activism. In Catherine's eyes, prayer wasn't just a way of petitioning God -- it was a gateway to a mystical union with God. It was integrated into every area of her life so that it was a continual "stream of living water." I contrasted that with the modern view of prayer as a way of "recharging" before a person goes back into secular life, i.e., the real world. It also made me consider my own steps into mysticism... Am I using spirituality to escape from the realities of life? Saint Catherine would say that the more spiritual a person is, the more that person should be engaged in the world. We ended the evening in the chapel of the monastery where I prayed for a deeper hunger for God, and for God to fill that hunger.

This morning as I was working through Celtic Daily Prayer, I was struck by how lowly and humble was the ministry of Christ: "...who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2: 6 - 8)

I guess what amazes me is how the church is obsessed with big, slick ministries, when its founder was born in a barn, lived a life in service to others and was executed as a criminal. I know that some people would argue that "you have to tell 'em to sell 'em," meaning that you have to compete with the best entertainment and advertising to get people's attention so you can get them in the doors of your church. And to a point I agree -- after all, I was a public relations whore for five years. But at what point does it just become self-promotion and self-aggrandizement?

Last evening and this morning weren't messages that I wanted to hear. Perhaps that's all the more reason to be mindful about heeding them...