“We cannot see Christ and remain as we are,” says Carmelite friar, Père Jacques, in the book, Listen to the Silence.

 

“If we are tepid and still attached to our ease ... it is because we have not exchanged glances with Christ; we have not really ‘seen’ Christ ...”

 

“There are only a few genuine Christians, because only a few souls have seen Christ,” he continues in the book from a 1943 retreat he gave for Carmelite nuns. “Countless baptized persons ... remain lukewarm in spirit. Such tepid souls do not pulsate with life nor are they enthusiastic enough to give their life for Christ ... Their knowledge of the Lord is verbal, not vital.”

 

In St. Teresa of Jesus’ book, Interior Castle, she speaks of the Third Mansions (of Seven) as dwellings for those who have begun and advanced in prayer. Their lives are pious and in order. They strive not to commit sin. They live in an upright and well-ordered way. 

 

After many years, Teresa says, God “will try them in some minor matters, and they will go about so disturbed and afflicted ... they have been engaged so long in the practice of virtue they think they can teach others and that they are more than justified in feeling disturbed ... (and they) think they are suffering these things for God ...”

 

She also notes that those in these Third Mansions may seek to do penances for God, but, “Have no fear that they will kill themselves, for their reason is still very much in control. Love has not yet reached the point of overwhelming reason.”

 

Most of us in the pews on Sundays are likely right in this spiritual spot. We find Jesus to be someone very worth emulating — to a point. He, after all, is God — far beyond us.

 

Even as St. Teresa admits she herself often seems to be in these mansions, she tells her readers, “I should like for us to use our reason to make ourselves dissatisfied with this way of serving God, always going step by step ... everything offends us because we fear everything: we don’t dare go further.”

 

How can we get past these rooms and advance closer to God? How can we ‘see’ Christ in the way Père Jacques describes?

 

Jesus, of course, must show Himself to us — we can’t make it happen. However, we definitely can prepare ourselves and become willing to do what the “tepid” souls will not do: throw our measured discipleship to the winds and step forth into new, more personally-costly, horizons.

 

“Let us exert ourselves ... for the love of the Lord,” Teresa says, adding “let’s abandon our reason and our fears into His hands; let’s forget this natural weakness that can take up our attention so much.”

 

Regular, earthly logic can hold us back from truly serving God. His tug at our hearts to give something a try makes no sense and seems utter foolishness to us. We tell ourselves we are not talented in that area and would be a complete failure. If nothing else, that all-time classic excuse, “I’m not a saint,” will work at turning us away from God’s inspirations every time.

 

And yet, if we can only get over ourselves, we can advance beyond this “verbal, not vital” knowledge of Jesus and get past our tepid discipleship in great and small ways.

 

“When we have diligently devoted ourselves to charity, obedience, service, and self-control, and when Christ has seen the constancy of our commitment, then He Himself comes to us,” Père Jacques insists.

 

Such intimacy with Christ is “glorious,” he says. But then he describes the “dark night” that often follows, where the conscious sense of God’s presence disappears, and the person “must then rely solely on the dim light of faith (as it is) plunged into spiritual aridity, incapable of loving anything earthly ... (it) can be satisfied only by the love of God, but that love seems to have vanished.” An intense growth in faith results — a faith more real than anything the soul has experienced before.

 

True faith is freedom from the fears our logic creates.

 

Père Jacques lived what he taught. His efforts to rescue Jewish students from the Nazis inspired the film “Au revoir, les enfants.” He was arrested in 1944 along with three Jewish students he had sheltered at a boarding school in Avon where he was headmaster. None of them returned from the Nazi camps.

 

He, Teresa, and all the saints lead the way.