The Cross Walk: Self-Denial Part 5
The Slippery Slope of Attachments
So, how can we honestly evaluate our attachments? How do I know if an attachment I have to a person, place, thing or more is harming my spiritual life or not? Is an obstacle or impediment in my relationship with God or not?
Again, this is where we can draw upon the great wisdom of the Doctors in the Spiritual Life that the Church gives us. Let’s look at what Saint John of the Cross offers - he was a contemporary and close friend to Saint Teresa of Avila and partner in reforming the Carmelite order. Saint John of the Cross (clearly a Cross Walk role model!) gives us four criteria, which really represents progressive stages of backsliding spiritually:
First, does this attachment cause a “clouding of the intellect” to the things of God? Asked another way: Does this attachment distract me in my spiritual life, occupy the majority of my mental life and energy and/or lessens my desire for prayer, devotion, etc? Saint John says to think of our attachments at this stage as being like clouds that conceal or interfere with the sun’s rays and light.
Am I noticing an increasingly lenient attitude toward the passing things of this world? In other words, am I finding greater pleasure, joy or gratification in the passing things of this world than I am in the things of God? Am I becoming lukewarm in my faith? Here, we may find ourselves beginning to short God in small or subtle ways so that we can give time, attention, and efforts to pursuing or enjoying a particular good. For example, I begin to trim back my time in prayer so that I can watch more of a favorite morning talk show. I start missing worship so as to play more golf.
Thirdly, Saint John says is the stage of “the complete abandoning of God”. From the carelessness of stage (1) to the lukewarmness of stage (2), we now fall to mortal sin. In terms of disordered attachments, a person can find her or himself returning to the captivity of one of the Capital Sins, especially Avarice or Greed, Envy, Gluttony and Lust.
Lastly, we find ourselves arriving at what Saint John of the Cross refers to as “forgetting God”. This is place of indifference to a hardening or heart or something in-between. This spiritual blindness and deafness results in idolatry of our attachments.
Let’s close these words of wise counsel from Saint John of the Cross:
“Spiritual persons must exercise care that in their heart and joy they do not become attached to temporal goods. They must fear least, through a gradual increase, their small attachments become great…what is small in the beginning can be immense in the end…And they should never assure themselves that, since their attachment is small, they will break away from it in the future even if they do not do so immediately. If they do not have the courage to uproot it when it is small and in its first stage, how do they think and presume they will have the ability to do so when it becomes greater and more deeply rooted.”
