God’s Unique Paths: Avoiding Spiritual Tyranny (S11, EP11)

We often mistake uniformity for unity, attempting to force our spiritual progress into a standardized "method of procedure." St. John of the Cross warns that this is a form of spiritual tyranny. Whether it comes from an overbearing director, a rigid community, or our own prideful ego, the attempt to "hew the wood" of the soul without respecting God’s unique artistry leads to a "restriction of the breath of God." This episode examines the surgery required to remove the ego's possessiveness, making room for a Holy Spirit that refuses to be localized by our limitations.

• The Tyranny of Procedure: Why treating the spiritual life as a standardized assembly line deprives the soul of its necessary freedom.
• The Wood, the Polish, and the Paint: Understanding the diverse roles people play in our formation and why jealousy arises when we fail to see the "Multiplicity in Unity."
• The Ego’s Monopoly: How claiming a "definitive interpretation" of the interior life acts as a barrier to the resurrection.
• Getting Out of the Way: Why the "method of God" rarely looks like the "method of man" and how to identify the subtle greed of spiritual possessiveness.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello there. Welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite. So this week I want to talk about a section of John's writings. He's talking about spiritual directors. And in talking about spiritual directors, he's talking about how God leads people. And he has this sentence here that really struck me. He said, God leads each one along different paths so that hardly one spirit will be found like another in even half of its method of procedure. And I just wanted to stop and talk about that. And where John's talking about this, the kind of the context is, some spiritual directors, he says, will look at the perfection of the penitent of the person on their terms rather than on God's terms. And I thought about that and that's actually, I think, an analogous way of looking at how we look at people in our lives who may struggle with things or even our own struggles is that these certain spiritual directors who are, he uses the analogy of a wood carving. He says, some hew the wood to carve the statue, but not everyone who's able to carve the statue is good with polish, and not everyone who's polished is good with paint. And there's all these different people in our lives who help or hinder making us more or less in the image of Christ. And I think that's worthwhile to examine that.

So when John's saying this, he's again, he's talking about spiritual directors and he makes this comment and he says, you tyrannize souls and deprive them of their freedom and judge for yourself the breath of the evangelical doctrine. And I feel like that again, analogously applies to pretty much a lot of other places in the Catholic church today. There's a lot of tyrannizing souls measured against someone's breath of what the doctrine is. In other words, instead of looking at the church as a place where you have a multiplicity in the unity of Christ such that different people have different talents and different gifts, like again, back to the statue, some can paint, some can polish, some can carve, some can put finishing touches on things and some can complete all those things and bring the work to completion. And all of those are meant to work together for the glory of God. But there's a jealousy and a pride where if someone's doing similar work or if someone's doing work that takes the spotlight off of people who, let's say, are, you know, prominent in some area by virtue of the institution or prominent in some area by virtue of social standing or prominence, like whatever, not making Christ prominent. Well, then you get this tyranny John's talking about. And the only way that this tyranny can keep things going in that jealousy and pride is to deprive others of freedom, and obviously an envy to tear down and to say, well, like attacking different aspects of that person's life, perhaps. And the real sin here is, it got me thinking that with this tyranny, how is that the crucified Christ? I mean, the easy answer is it isn't. And, you know, if we're going to claim the resurrection, we have to go through the crucifixion. But if someone's tyrannizing others and depriving them of their freedom and judging the breath of the gospel themselves without, you know, being in communion with the church, let's make this more concrete.

Let's say someone says, I have the definitive interpretation of the book of Ezekiel. Right. Well, there's other commentaries on the Book of Ezekiel throughout church history, you know, and to say that is kind of a tyrannizing factor. You know, instead of saying I'm contributing to the conversation about the Book of Ezekiel or I hope this commentary in the Book of Ezekiel helps people. There's a limitation of the breath of God speaking through the church by certain people in positions of power, either social, clerical, religious, laity, like whatever. There's this restriction of the breath of God that it can only appear this way. But then on the contrary, I would say there can be a tendency, defect, let's say, that there's no limitation. So you can have an excessive limitation, which is the, it's only the way the person thinks, whoever this person is. Or you can have the defect where there is no limitation. It's all relative. It's up for interpretation. Spirit moves where it wills, as in there is no ordered good when it says the spirit move where it wills, wills towards what, right? That would be the obvious question. But it's all just kind of my judgment is my judgment and back off. And what this really is is an act of jealousy and greed and possessiveness, because John says you endeavor to hold on to these people by virtue of your limitations you put on them. And it's not making room for God. It's simply, you know, inflating the ego. It's dividing the self based on these things. Again, jealousy motivated by pride and presumption or something else, as John says. And I think that this is something we have to really be watchful of. We need to make room for the Holy Spirit with Pentecost coming and try and realize that the breath of God, the Holy Spirit breathes through us and we need to get out of the way. Our tyranny of our ego, we need to not make things our procedure, but God's procedure.

And like John said here, God leads each one on different paths. The hardly one spirit we found like another, even if half of this method of procedure. In other words, God's procedures are not our procedures. Like we heard in the Easter Vigil readings from Isaiah. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. So I'll leave you guys with that. And I'll see you next time.