"Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: ripeness is all," wrote Shakespeare in King Lear. That ripeness is the measure of one's maturity. Like a fruit fit to be eaten, so is a mature person fit for the next stage in the unceasing pageant of life that transcends all phases of transition that we call death. In the three vignettes of dying people that we considered in the previous chapter, maturity was seen to come to its fullness as the sufferers contended courageously with their drawn-out final adversity, and then they were ready for their next commission. My mind goes back to the Nunc Dimittis, where the aged Simeon calls to God for his discharge in peace now that he has seen with his own eyes the living Christ, the deliverance prepared in full view of the world to enlighten the heathen and to be the ultimate glory of the Jews - both of whom up to the present have either ignored him or else categorically rejected him. And yet our Lord lives in the hearts of all people as a seed of conscience, and will never cease to make his presence known until germinated in each one of us and grown in stature to the full tree of life. In him alone is the way to the abundant life, the life of complete, fulfilled healing in which every aberrant element has been restored to its place in the pattern of a fully alive person.
Maturation is a process, and maturity is not so much an end-point as a climate of existence in which the person can emanate his unique essence to the world in tranquil joy while he imbibes the essence of all the world around him. In giving we receive more of the Spirit of God; in receiving we draw an unending stream of life to us, so that we in turn can contribute even more of ourselves to the demanding thirst of the wider community. Having nothing to fear, since God is active within us as a germinating seed, we can respond positively to those who would know more about the life of completeness. We now have nothing of our own while possessing all things in their own fullness. What we cling to acts as a blockage preventing us from being available to the full challenge of present experience; finally we have to be so full of our own integrity that we become the little child who alone, in the words of Christ, can enter the Kingdom of God.
Even Mary of Magdala was told by the risen Christ not to cling to him, not to touch him any more, for he had not yet ascended to the Father. Jesus himself can all too easily become an idol to worship from afar rather than an ever-present reality to know as we grow closer to him in our own lives. And yet the very presence of Christ within is the impetus of personal growth. In maturity he permeates our unique personalities, making them even more radiant and individual as we are transformed into his likeness. The name is ours but the presence is his. The mature person has fulfilled his life on earth. To be sure, he has not attained perfection - the greatest saints know of their unworthiness - but he has completed a phase of his growth into full personhood. Even our weaknesses are illuminated by a divine love so that they too are part of his glory. Above all, we can forgive wholeheartedly even as we are humble enough to seek and receive forgiveness both from God and from our fellow-creatures struggling on the path of life.
One person I know well is striving towards maturity within a stunted personality, and his story is worth close attention. His background was appalling; his parents had little love for him, while his brother was the favourite. He was regarded as merely second-rate, and when he grew up he was fortunate to attain a minor clerical post. He had an ear for music and was quite a skilful performer on the piano and later on the organ also. He was obsessed by one theme only - his failure in the theatre of worldly affairs. And so he tried, precariously placed as he was, to assert himself. To this end he contracted a marriage that turned out disastrously. His wife had severe personality problems of her own, but her condition was not helped by her emotionally damaged, inadequate husband, who now had the guilt of a divorce added to the burden of impotence and failure he had been accustomed to bear for so many years. It was in this state of despair, as a man in later middle age with little apparent future, that he first came to me. I in fact did little more than minister to his dereliction in the solicitude of undiverted awareness. He was at this time in the process of moving in the direction of his native Christian faith that he had previously rejected, and we talked around various biblical passages that had in them the seeds of contemplative silence. He also was able to bring his meaningless existence to the surface, and see the positive aspects of the paroxysms of anger that so disrupted his private life. In my experience most situations of blind fury have a background of fear which has to be acknowledged and confronted. Once the fear is lightened by the counsellor's instructed compassion - and this is a real commodity only when the counsellor has come to terms with the mosaic structure of light and darkness which is his own psyche - love can make its quiet, unhurried entry into the souls of all those involved in the situation, and slowly the fear is illuminated by that love. Fear is, in the end, related to self-preservation, and on one level is an innate mechanism of defence that keeps the body alive: without it we would endanger ourselves recklessly day by day. One has to be in dire straits before one seriously considers the self-annihilation implicit in suicide - if, indeed, any significant part of the personality other than its encompassing physical body is destroyed at the event of death.
On a more psychic level of existence we are threatened continually by those who seem to be more powerful than we ourselves, whether in matters of material success, interpersonal relationships or spiritual authority; if we do not take a definite stand we feel we could easily be taken over by various powerful personalities, armed with an arrogant self-esteem, who would ride roughshod over all that resists them. We yearn for their defeat and deflation. However, in the end, if we cannot defend ourselves by the strength within us, we will react by projecting our hatred on to convenient scapegoats who can be identified with the manifold groups around us that, by their success, impress us with our own inferiority. The person at peace in himself is most unlikely to feel threatened inwardly; or, as Jesus would put it, if our house is built on rock it will withstand the onslaught of the elements of the weather, but if the foundation is merely sand the house will soon collapse to the ground. The analogy is especially helpful when we recall that God is frequently identified as the Rock of Israel in the Psalms, while in 1 Corinthians 10:4 St Paul extends the analogy to Christ himself.
To return to the person I was describing earlier: as love gradually warmed his heart by a conscious presence and not merely a spiritual injunction, so he began to open out more to those around him. He performed simple acts of kindness such as reading to a blind man and helping patients in hospital. In due course he tremblingly embarked on a second marriage, this time to a woman some years his senior, whose presence eased the way of his unfolding to a more adult state of mind. Her love for him was genuine, proved by her support for his faltering steps. She acted as the Bible portrays God's providence in Isaiah 40:29-31: giving strength to the wearied and powerless even in excess of the overflowing vitality of the young; these may tire, but fatigue does not touch those infused by God's presence in their lives.
He gave music lessons and played the organ at his church, thereby also becoming more integrated into the congregation. At the same time he became reconciled to his more prosperous brother without, however, striking any great depth of loving-kindness in the restored relationship. This takes a long time to achieve, and is, like all other experiences of conversion, a pure gift of God, his grace that suffices in our daily work. The reconciliation was the outer evidence of his conversion, whose end will, I believe, be gloriously effected in the life ahead of him. This is true for us as we quit the mortal body and assume our spiritual vesture, as pure ultimately as the white gown worn by the redeemed sinner who is then the bride of Christ.
The sense of lonely frustration is still very much a part of this man's character. Recently his wife's health has deteriorated so severely that she needs constant assistance. This has in its turn drawn out of him a sense of responsibility that would at one time have been inconceivable: he now has to make decisions on his own, dogged as he is by the constant fear of bereavement and the loneliness that will follow in its wake. I have assured him not only of my own support but also of the friendship that will be extended him by the many people he has befriended on his slow, tortured path towards completion. Time will show how well he can cope with the difficulties ahead of him, but there is little doubt that the healing relationship between us has provided the impetus for an expansion in his awareness of the things that really matter in life and the way towards their attainment.
To me the finest example of maturation in the Bible is the life of the prophet Jeremiah. Though chosen even before his conception in the womb to be God's special mouthpiece to the recalcitrant Israelites, his forthright denunciations of the corrupt regime estranged him more and more from the people around him, even his close relatives. His life became increasingly restricted because of the vicious hostility his honesty evoked, and he bemoaned his fate, even cursing the day of his birth (as did also Job, possibly a fictional reconstruction of the character of the earlier prophet). However, God gave him no material support whatsoever apart from seeing that his life was preserved. Indeed, the Almighty on one occasion told him to stop grumbling and proceed with the work, otherwise he would select another more obedient prophet. In fact, when one is under the driving power of the Holy Spirit one can no more desist from doing God's work than one can voluntarily hold one's breath to the extremity of being asphyxiated. As the prophet matured, so his ministry became calmer, even though his suffering, if anything, increased in intensity. He accepted the obvious fact that he was under divine commission, and learned to trust even in situations of terror that would seem logically to have had within them the seeds of total destruction. Death is in any case the inevitable end of all mortal life, but we can at least enter its portals with nobility. It was this that Jeremiah was learning; the mature person can face whatever the future holds with equanimity, a calm acceptance suffused with joy.
The peak of Jeremiah's prophetic ministry was reached in his proclamation of the new covenant God was to make with his people Israel: an interior spirituality superseding if not eclipsing outer religious instruction, as the heart becomes the place of divine meeting (31:31-34). With the Law deeply implanted within them, they will at last learn to do good, which is essentially the same as knowing the divine presence as an intimate friend. In the face of such a prophecy all worldly rewards pale into insignificance: the work for the Kingdom is its own reward, for it brings that Kingdom into the place of immediate concern. Time and eternity intersect at the point of the present moment. We may with confidence sense the inner freedom enjoyed by Jeremiah even when he was carried off to Egypt by a rebellious band of his own people. The body remained rooted in the earth, but the soul ascended to the world of the immortals. It is of interest that Jeremiah's reputation rose high in the esteem of later generations so that in the Maccabaean period he ranked as a protecting saint of the people (2 Maccabees 15:13-16).
Another of the people to whom I ministered was Deirdre, a woman afflicted from her youth with severe diabetes that was later complicated by progressive affection of the blood vessels. She had one leg amputated because of gangrene, her sight was impaired, and the diabetes itself was hard to control even under strict supervision. Though she was in her middle years when I knew her, she had a fairylike youthfulness about her and she carried on her work remarkably well as a physiotherapist. It was always a joy to be with her because of her unselfconscious outlook and freedom from obvious resentment at the cruel blow that providence had dealt her. It was in the 1960s that I first met her, and she was sympathetic to the "new age" metaphysical outlook which was very prominent at that time. This is in fact a paganism brought up to date with gnostic accretions culled from psychic sources and heavily flavoured by theosophical speculations derived from unorthodox offshoots of the world's major religious traditions. It is still the current esotericism, and is liberating in the generous sweep of its sympathies, but it fails very often in its inability to discern facts from fiction, acknowledged truth from individualistic opinion. It shares with its theological adversary, the Renewal Movement, a confidence in its own sources of inspiration and an enthusiasm for miraculous healings and other spectacular phenomena which can then be enlisted as proof of higher forms of intelligence directing the course of human destiny.
Whereas Renewal trusts implicitly in what it regards as the working of the Holy Spirit and the power of Christ (the Father is often bypassed in Charismatic enthusiasm), the New Age Movement puts its trust in vast cosmic powers, spiritual "masters" and lesser "teachers", all emanating from exalted sources in the intermediate psychic sphere. It tends to dismiss traditional Christianity as out of date, confidently assured of having a more enlightened view of "The Christ", who seems to be identified even more with an enhanced consciousness of reality than with a personal presence (considered a "master", one among others). Both Renewal and New Age conferences are often stunning in their exuberant fellowship and faith, but both approaches again tend to be less impressive when the darkness of human tragedy descends like the dusk after a sunny day. Each is in fact a witness of aspects of truth, particularly in what it affirms; in their dogmatic denials lies their inadequacy. Both traffic in psychic phenomena which are morally neutral. What matters in the end is the emergence of a new individual modelled on the person of Jesus Christ. This is the measure of a real healing, though, of course, our sights have to be lowered to what is practicable in our world of ambivalent values and destructive discord, lest we give up in despair even before we start the great work of transmutation.
It has to be admitted that the Christian faith is often presented with a narrow-minded intolerance and a discouragingly negative regard for human nature as hopelessly rooted in sin. While this view is not without its truth, when it is pressed to an extreme position it tends to encourage an attitude of guilt and fear, seldom far below the surface of consciousness even at the best of times. This spoils the natural pleasures that God has prepared for our enjoyment. As a result the flow of the life-giving Holy Spirit is sadly quenched. It is no wonder that many seekers who find the Christian way inhibiting, even in its Charismatic exuberance, have embraced the New Age lifestyle. This tends to dispense with sin as it views the world through rose-tinted spectacles of blissful credulity, while averting its gaze from the jarring contrasts of light and darkness that are the very bases of human existence. If Renewal lays too much stress on the battle against demonic agencies to the point of cutting itself off from large areas of human experience, the New Age consciousness is so open that it is liable to swallow any new idea as a fresh revelation of cosmic truth. In fact, to the person using his innate spiritual intuition, both these ways, even when bathed in the light of fellowship, are suffused with an underlying darkness that evokes deeper misgivings.
It must be said that not every "word of knowledge" uttered in a Renewal meeting is of the Holy Spirit, nor are all New Age "messages" to be accepted as coming from trustworthy sources. Illusion creeps in, especially when we are sure of ourselves, handing over our intellectual discrimination and intuitive awareness in blind trust to an external source of spiritual direction, even if that source claims divine authority. Both ways have their individual use in bringing the agnostic seeker or the conventional worshipper, as the case may be, to a realm of experience far beyond that of the unimaginative world in which he pursues the common round of existence. But the spiritual path soon leads beyond these approaches to a deeper, more silent communion with God. In him alone do all the antitheses coinhere, for the divine wisdom can take within itself both the linear truth of the scientist and the holistic understanding of the mystic. In God the peaks of pagan awe can be illuminated by the simple love of Christ. There is no question of the one approach eliminating the other. On the contrary, each gives of its genius to the whole, and in so doing effects its transmutation to divine essence.
Deirdre herself attended as many conferences on the "new consciousness" as her physical condition would permit. Her Christian background was pushed even further aside in the wake of fascinating New Age teachings. She continued gallantly as a physiotherapist, even when her health was at a lower ebb than that of many of her patients. She sent me a number of people for help, one of whom was amazingly guided through a severe psychic brainstorm to a healing maturity that continues to this day. Another was a beautiful young married woman, a medical practitioner suffering from cancer, whom I was privileged to tend up to the time of her death some months later. But with Deirdre I had a deep, though distant, relationship that lasted for many years. Her diabetic condition deteriorated, as is the rule when the blood vessels are severely affected by the disease. As the body failed, so the soul rose in glory. She ceased to be attached to the nebulous psychic realm, and practised an inner silence that brought her close to God. She radiated a peace that no longer depended on the assurance given by mediums or esoteric teachers, useful as both may be to seekers on the lower rungs of the ladder of self-knowledge. The same note of caution is necessary in respect of regular attendance at church services, as a way of spiritual growth, if there is not a burning desire for self-transcendence in the heart of the worshipper. The very Body and Blood of Christ may be consumed, but the will is necessary before the elements of the Eucharist can start to heal a diseased body or a broken mind.
I remember especially vividly my last visit to Deirdre in hospital. Her kidneys were failing, a common event in the terminal stages of diabetes, and she knew, far more precisely than I, that her end was in sight. She was concerned only about my welfare, that I had travelled some distance to see her and that I looked tired. She was full of concern also for her fellow-patients in the long ward, strangely a place of peaceful sharing despite the busy nursing routines with their inevitable clamour. Though she had moved far away from the traditional Christian faith of the denomination into which she was born, she found the Eucharist a comfort, and was a living representative of the Lord, so often concealed rather than revealed by the insensitive and the intolerant. At the end I gave her the laying-on of hands followed by a blessing, and we then remained together in silence for some minutes. Despite the open character of the ward, my private ministration evoked no comment; probably the others present were so engrossed in their own affairs that they did not so much as take in what we two were doing. I purposely refrained from wanting the curtains around Deirdre's bed to be drawn, since I was a visitor and not an attending doctor or nurse; my role was that of a minister of healing and not a medical practitioner. After the silence we took leave of one another, and a celestial radiance emanated from Deirdre. As I walked along the outer corridor, I was assailed by the stench of urine and faeces coming from an adjacent sluice room where bedpans and urinals were emptied and rinsed. The contrast between this and the heavenly peace around Deirdre showed me how necessary it was to bring that unearthly beauty right down to earth, as Deirdre had done in her own way when she was still active both as a physiotherapist and a vibrant individual.
One of the sure hallmarks of the maturing process is a growing insight into one's own character with special reference to previous blind spots and glaring faults - these are of a different order to the endearing foibles that are part of oneself. I have known people of high professional attainment blissfully unaware of the havoc they were wreaking upon their associates because of their selfishness and inability to respect other members of their profession as individuals in their own right. Quite a number of such disruptive people have high moral principles and sincere religious convictions. There are yet other individuals who are steeped in a spiritual tradition, yet who behave with crass insensitivity to a friend in sore need of rest and quietness. Maturity and nobility of character in fact proceed hand in hand. The naturally self-aware person who can project himself into the personality of his neighbour is a spiritual aristocrat whatever his religious belief; in his sensitive, caring attention he brings the power of God to whomsoever he meets in the course of his labours. Being integrated around the centre of God in his personality, he becomes the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. One can read spiritual classics without ceasing, but until one leaves them for a time and, instead, offers oneself without reserve to God in the moment in hand, one will remain outside the Kingdom, groping for the door key while the whole cosmos lies open for inspection and participation.
Maturity can also lead to a widening of spiritual perspective. One of my dearest friends, Stephen, was a priest in the Catholic tradition of the Anglican Church. Its ritual was the staple of his existence. He defended Catholic principles to the bitter end, on one memorable occasion striving to install the Reserved Sacrament in a church with a much more Protestant tradition. The conflict ended in a court case and he was, not surprisingly, the loser. The outcome nearly destroyed him. When we first met he was a widower of some years' duration; his wife had been seven years older than he, and they were childless. We met through the introduction of an osteopath who was treating him for a painful back. As is not unusual with practitioners of alternative medicine, her sympathies, basically Christian, extended liberally to other avenues of thought, and she felt, having heard me speak at a conference on the interaction of faith and healing, that I could be of some assistance in opening Stephen's vision to a larger vista of reality than was contained in the rather narrow confines of his concerns. She little guessed the important role she was destined to play in both our lives.
I found that Stephen radiated love. He was at that time chaplain to a women's religious community, all of whose members were well advanced in age. His ministry extended to other convents in the region where he functioned as confessor and spiritual adviser. I have met no other man who could form so beautifully chaste a relationship with so many different types of women. At that time I was starting to emerge from my own shell of reserve, and I found we could relate to one another at once in the closest harmony despite the broad, undogmatic scope of my own spiritual sympathies. His personality as well as his words made the Catholic faith the ultimate truth to me, a stance that remains my own to this day. But I, almost as a fool in comparison with his own background, broadened his vision at the same time, not only by my innately freer relationship with God, but also by introducing him to classics from other spiritual traditions. A book I have long especially valued is Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's translation of the Bhagavadgita, with his memorable commentary on its verses. He was at one time Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at Oxford and later became President of India. Stephen, too, found many good things in this book, the product of a truly catholic Hindu mind, and encountered little in its depth at variance with the heart of the Catholic faith by which he ordered his life. Of course, the theological stance of this great classic of Hinduism differs considerably from the Christian revelation; especially in its treatment of human destiny and the place of Jesus Christ in the salvation of the world. (The Hindu would see Jesus as one avatar - a descent of the Divine into the human frame - among an assembly of other great world teachers, rather than as the unique Son of God proclaimed in the Christian faith.) But the deeper truth of spiritual life, the "perennial philosophy" as Leibniz called it, is one and the same. In Aldous Huxley's book of the same name, he defined the "perennial philosophy" as the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being - the thing is immemorial and universal.
Stephen was the one who arranged my final reception into the Anglican Church on Easter Eve 1971. We both knew intuitively that this was a preliminary to priesthood within the denomination's broad domain - he with pleasant anticipation, I with mounting apprehension, as I felt that such a ministry would both cut me off from my wide spiritual roots and separate me from many of my professional colleagues in the medical field. A year after this, I preached my first Good Friday addresses from the pulpit of the convent chapel, a meditation on Jesus' seven "last words" from the cross, starting at noon and ending three hours later. Not a year has gone by since then without my preaching this most moving meditation on the day that commemorates Christ's final identification with the pain of the world and his transcendence of it by sheer love. Only as the Holy Spirit inspires one in the course of preaching the service does one begin to participate in the reconciliation of the world to God effected by that life, cut short so terribly by agonizing pain and then resurrected to full glory in God's power.
Stephen was privileged to know that agony in the course of his own life soon after I had preached in his chapel. He had had a severe heart attack, and at the same time the aorta (the large artery that leads off from the heart to the back of the trunk, supplying branches to the whole of the lower part of the body) became weakened and dilated almost to the point of rupture. This "aneurysm", as it is called, should be repaired as soon as possible, for otherwise it may either burst and lead to rapid death by sheer blood loss, or else it may press on vital structures and interfere with their function. Stephen was in constant pain, and his helpless weakness was in stark contrast to his former strength of voice that issued forth so beautifully as he sang at the Eucharist and the daily Office. I consulted him on one occasion about the Holy Spirit, who was to be the theme of a retreat I was soon to conduct. All he could do in his extremity was to point me to the great Russian Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov, from whom that same Spirit issued forth as a dazzlingly radiant presence when he prayed to God that a certain disciple should see the Spirit directly. This episode is recorded in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, by Vladimir Lossky. Yes indeed, the Holy Spirit is known and shown in our own lives, and he speaks, not on his own authority, but as a guide into the whole truth, imparting all that he hears and leading us to the full knowledge of God's glory as revealed in Christ (John 16:13-15). We do not define the Spirit so much as be unceasingly informed by his presence, as he leads us into vaster areas of truth such as we are able to comprehend in our own state of spiritual progress.
The operation for the repair of the aneurysm of Stephen's abdominal aorta was postponed at the last moment, an unfortunate hitch that completely undermined his confidence - how often do medical staff cavalierly alter arrangements without so much as a moment's thought about their patients' psychological state! When he was readmitted to hospital a month later, he was at a very low ebb, and I was not surprised that he failed to rally after the aortic repair. I visited him the day before he died - he was inarticulate, but his profound distress was very obvious. He died after a further heart attack, a passing as bleak as that of Jesus himself. The greater glory was his, however, when his body lay in state in the chapel he had served so well, and the crowds of mourners paid their last respects before his interment alongside his wife. He, too, had experienced a resurrection from a restricted view of Christ to a greater revelation of the divine splendour. This splendour was poured out in the love of all those who mourned him: not a single relative that I can remember, but numerous close friends from all walks of life. It was sad that he died before I was ordained deacon and then priest, the latter event taking place four and a half years after I had been received into the Church (on the Feast of St Matthew, 21 September 1975). But he stood with me at the threshold of a ministry that has been the final seal on a friendship which thrives now as strongly as it did when he was last alive with me in the flesh some sixteen years ago. He is with me each afternoon when I remember my deceased friends in prayer.