Progress or Perfection

Growing spiritually through mine, ours and yours

05/18/2021

John 17:1-11a Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him. “I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

The great spiritual masters categorize progress in the Christian life into three stages. They are the purgative stage, the illuminative stage and the unitive stage. Have you heard of these three stages? The purgative stage is where we purge ourselves of pernicious and serious sins; the illuminative stage is when the light of faith shines brightly on our life; and the unitive stage is where our wills, our goals, our desires become perfectly one with God’s will, God’s goals and God’s desires.

As helpful as those classic categories are, I prefer Archbishop J. Peter Sartain’s subdivision of the spiritual life. He explained the stages using these three words: “mine,” “ours” and “yours.” The first stage of Christian life, therefore, corresponds to a small child who tenaciously tugs at his toys and cries “Mine!”

The second stage dawns maybe at marriage when a couple share their life together and declare, “Ours.” But the high point of holiness is achieved when we come to the end of our life and we humbly acknowledge, “Yours,” and leave everything behind for others. In the purgative stage we overcome the tendency to cry “Mine!” In the illuminative stage we learn to share and say “Ours.” And in the unitive stage we only want God’s will and so we say “Yours.”

We can discover these three stages in our Lord’s life as well, at least in his human nature. Jesus’ human nature was perfected by going through the purgative, illuminative and unitive stages of Christian life, and thus he can show us the way. Jesus triumphed over temptation during his forty days in the desert dueling with the devil. That was his purgative stage, when he never uttered the word “Mine.” His human nature also experienced the illuminative stage at the end of Luke 2. There we read: “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” That is when he went home after 3 days in the Temple and declared to Mary and Joseph “Ours,” and he spent the following 18 years with them in Nazareth.

And in the gospel today, Jesus prays to his Father for his apostles saying: “Because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine.” Can you hear that perfect unity of wills as Jesus uses the word “yours” three times in the same sentence? In other words, Jesus’ human nature passed through the 3 stages of the spiritual life – not because he was sinful or imperfect – but in order to show us the way to grow in holiness.

My friends, where would you rate yourself in the three stages of perfection in the Christian life? We all would like to think we are at the “unitive stage,” and our will is perfectly aligned with God’s will. But we see we are far from the unitive stage when the bishop transfers me to another parish, or when the bishop asks us to wear masks at Mass. Instead of praying in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done,” we would rather utter under our breath: “My will be done.”

It is easy to feel we are in the “illuminative stage” on our wedding day and the word “ours” leaps so lovingly off our lips. But when it comes to spending or saving money, sending a child to Catholic school, or even how to squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube, it is not so easy to say “Ours.” It’s like that very honest prayer: “Dear Lord, so far I have done alright. I haven't gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, selfish or overindulgent. But in a few minutes I am going to get out of bed, and then I will really need your help. Amen.”

My friends, we are probably more like that tiny toddler who tugs at his toys and with trembling lips crying: “Mine!” than we like to admit. We insist: this is my pew that I sit in at Mass, my parking space in the parking lot, my parish where I am the pastor, my life that I want to life as I see fit. If we are honest, we probably say “mine” a lot more frequently than we like to think, and a lot more often than we say “ours” or “yours.”

Progress in the Christian life can be measured in three stages: the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive. Or, it can be measured by three words: “mine,” “ours” and “yours.” When we study these three stages closely, what we learn about the progress we have made in the spiritual life is how much progress we have yet to make.

Praised be Jesus Christ!