What do you mean when you say “I’ve grown spiritually”?

Two Fridays ago with 5 minutes left in a two-hour one-on-one Italian conversation class, my teacher in Assisi asked me what I meant by the statement “I’ve grown spiritually over the past year.” I thought for a few seconds and knew I didn’t have the time to give an adequate answer in English, let alone Italian so I promised to compose my thoughts over the weekend (in Italian) to talk about it the following Monday.

To begin I wrote that it’s interesting that the word “seminary” is derived from the Latin/Italian verb “seminare” meaning “to sow” and hence a seminary is a place “to sow” future priests. Therefore the common link made to the Gospel account, which explains that only seeds which die can bring new life---only those who die to themselves will bear fruit in abundance.

Someone once asked a saint what he did in his years of seminary formation and he responded “There were two of us, and I threw the other one out the window.” For me and the other guys of the diocese, this is what transpires. It’s a very painful process as we purify our hearts and intentions breaking from the world that we were attached to in varying degrees, and then we seek to one day re-enter it charged with the life and fire of the Spirit as ordained priests.

A deacon at my previous seminary once half-joked in a class that he should see guys hanging out the window screaming in pain because they are dying to themselves day in and day out. Sadly many stop short of throwing “the other guy” out the window because he’s bound tight with the shackles of past sins he doesn’t want to touch because he has rubbed the skin off his bones due to repeated failure, but others persevere each day and month trying to live selflessly for those we will be serving because you in our diocese deserve it.

This spiritual intensification over the past year here in Rome, happened in great part by somethings I find hard to admit. One thing was struggling to learning theology in a foreign language (Italian) The other was doing this 6 time zones away in a foreign city (Vatican City-Rome) far from friends and family. Don’t get me wrong, it has had huge benefits of traveling the world (Lourdes, Sydney, Medugorje, and Assisi- this summer alone), but really struggling with studies for once in my life (because of the language barrier) and being away from the USA (14+ months now) really is dying to oneself and is made manifest in a regular praying via prostration, where you don’t just prayer with your soul, but your body as well lying on your face with your hands extended on the cold floor, just as one plants bulbs in the cold winter grounds so that they die, freeze, and become flowers in the spring. This is a prayer of desperation, in which you declare dependency on God--that you can’t survive another class taught in Italian by a Spaniard speaking “pazzo” (crazy) fast with a Spanish accent or that you can’t come to grips that you’re serving Christmas Mass in a chapel with seminarians in the pews that you imagined your family and parish could have been.

This spiritual development is like the development of a friendship between two friends or spouses in which by communicating intimately they learn more of the other and grow in knowledge of love of the other. This happens most beautifully when both persons everyday share their own life with one another. Particular things must happen, if a true and real friendship clearly exists. I believe these things are equivalent to the classical types of prayer that my parents taught me by my bedside when I was younger: ACTS (Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, and Supplication). This ways of communicating must have an equilibrium to be healthy for no real friends just ask for things, but adore, praise, and render thanks to the loved.

In the world of today we tend to be impatient receivers. We want to know things right away. We want to speak Italian right away. We want to make friends right away. We want God to answer our prayers right away. And after not having been instantly gratified, we are tempted to immediately disown these things or persons, as silly and non-existent. Yes, we want something, but often we’re not willing to give, to let others in our lives for fear that they might see some flaw, as if they aren’t present to others already. But the price of friendship demands vulnerability and requires no secrets, limits, or barriers.

Our God craves to be with us every day, but he will not accept the masks that we try to hide behind. If we want to have this intimate and eternal relationship with God (which Benedict XVI calls heaven) we must stop lying to him, we must stop being afraid to talk about him in public, we must become proud to say our graces before meals instead of a hurried sign of the cross slouched deep in the booth at a restaurant, and furthermore we must practice our faith more than that “one-hour Sunday clause” that was in our “Fire Insurance Policy”. It must be every day, every second, every breath...

This is what intensified spiritually this past year and become more real and true. When one prayers more he more easily resists sin, not because he gets better at following rules and laws (even if they may seem absurd or backwards), but because he has fallen more deeply in love and has experienced the infinite love of God and therefore is not bound by laws, but seeks the good of the other. By daily acts of mortification: fasting from food or the internet, watching less TV or giving up pop music, taking a lukewarm shower to remind you not to be lukewarm in your faith, not feeling sorry and hopeless for yourself in the tasks that you never got done, doing things you don’t like because they must be done, making more time for others instead of trying to avoid them---these things help us die to ourselves and become living sacrifices for a real and living person (Jesus Christ), and they are signs of an authentic relationship.