Nikos Kazantzakis once suggested that there are three
kinds of souls and three kinds of prayers:
-
I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me, lest I rot.
- Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break.
- Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!
When I look at life, I also see three great struggles, not
unlike those so poetically named by Kazantzakis. And each
of these has a corresponding level of Christian
discipleship. What are those great struggles and those
levels of discipleship? There are three major phases in
our human and spiritual journey:
-
Essential discipleship - The struggle to get our lives
together.
-
Generative discipleship - The struggle to give our lives
away
-
Radical discipleship - The struggle to give our deaths
away
Essential discipleship and the struggle to get our lives
together is our initial task in life. Beginning with our
first breath, we struggle to find an identity and to find
fulfillment and peace there. We are born in a hospital and
soon taken home to where we have parents, a family, and a
place that's ours. This period of our lives, childhood, is
intended by God and nature to be a secure time. As a
child, our major struggles have not yet begun. But that
will change dramatically at puberty.
Simply put, puberty is designed by God and nature to drive
us out of our homes in search of a home that we ourselves
build. And it generally does its job well! It hits us with
a tumult and violence that overthrows our childhood and
sends us out, restless, sexually-driven, full of grandiose
dreams, but confused and insecure, in search of a new
home, one that we build for ourselves. This struggle, from
being restlessly driven out of our first home to finding a
place to call home again, is the journey of Essential
discipleship.
Normally we do find our way home again. At a certain
point, we land. We find ourselves "at home"
again, namely, with a place to live that's our own, a job,
a career, a vocation, a spouse, children, a mortgage, a
series of responsibilities, and a certain status and
identity. At that point, the fundamental struggle in our
life changes, though it may take years for us to
consciously realize and accept this. Our question then is
no longer: "How do I get my life together?"
Rather it becomes: "How do I give my life away more
deeply, more generously, and more meaningfully?" At
that stage, we enter the second phase of discipleship.
Generative discipleship and the struggle to give our lives
away is a stage most people reach sometime during their
twenties or thirties, though some take longer to cross
that threshold. Moreover, the crossover is never pure and
complete, the struggle for self-identity and private
fulfillment never completely goes away; but, at a certain
point, we begin to live more for others than for
ourselves. Generative discipleship begins then and, for
most of us, this will constitute the longest period of our
lives. During all those years, our task in life is clear:
How do I give my life away more purely, more generously,
more generatively?
But being the responsible adults who run the homes,
schools, churches, and businesses of the world is not the
final stage our lives. We still must die; the most
daunting task of all. And so our default line must shift
yet one more time: There comes a point in our lives, when
our real question is no longer: "What can I still do
so that my life makes a contribution?" Rather the
question becomes: "How can I now live so that my
death will be an optimal blessing for my family, my
church, and the world?"
Radical discipleship and the struggle to give our deaths
away is the final stage of life: As Christians, we believe
that Jesus lived for us and that he died for us, that he
gave us both his life and his death. But we often fail to
distinguish that there are two clear and separate
movements here: Jesus gave his life for us in one
movement, and he gave his death for us in another. He gave
his life for us through his activity, through his
generative actions for us; and he gave his death through
his passivity, through absorbing in love the helplessness,
diminutions, humiliations, and loneliness of dying.
Like Jesus, we too are meant to give our lives away in
generosity and selflessness, but we are also meant to
leave this planet in such a way that our diminishment and
death is our final, and perhaps greatest, gift to the
world. Needless to say that's not easy. Walking in
discipleship behind the master will require that we too
will eventually sweat blood and feel "a stone's
throw" from everybody. This struggle, to give our
deaths away, as we once gave our lives away, constitutes
Radical discipleship.
When we look at the demands of discipleship, we see that
one size does not fit all!
Fr. Ron Rolheiser
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