Making True What is True
Spiritual discipline involves following the Lord, in the sense of becoming who he says we are, making true what is true, that is, claiming our connected relationship with God and one another and living it out. This is something that is foolish in the eyes of the world, since the world makes us believe that we need all kinds of things that we really don’t.
It is out of the privilege of realizing who we really are that we become relevant socially: we want to love more; we admit to evil more clearly in and around us; and we learn to live together in mutual confession and forgiveness. Our power of diagnosis (which literally means “knowing through and through”) is deepened, and we can say yes and no to things with more discernment. We become ecumenical in the sense of knowing our connectedness. Indeed, spiritual development is the center of real ecumenism.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
- James 4: 7
Reflection Question: How might realizing our true self as God’s beloved help us to discern and nurture healthy boundaries?
