Monday, April 23, 2012

Formation and Information in the Spiritual Life

Inviting us to a spiritual life, the columnist  in the Catholic Times reminds us that we are fugitives and aliens if our aim in life is worldly success or money. Looking at this style of life from a spiritual perspective we are escaping from God's world.

Looking at it from God's point of view we were created to be spiritual beings. This is the mystery of formation. If all that we are concerned about is our personal interests than we are fleeing from what we are meant to be. We are living a life not in consonance with the blueprint that is our default plan.

We have been made to live in harmony with all of creation, but many are not in harmony with this plan, either because of dullness or because we do not care to see otherwise.  We have been called to be God's people and his lover.

Consonance means form and the luster of formation. All of God's creation has a form or shape. A frog, a peach, all have their form and to intend the form that God endowed each creature is the work of formation. When the formation does not harmonize to what was meant at creation we have non-formation.

It is our duty to follow what God intended for our formation. This is the true meaning of life. What was my form as a baby, in middle school, what is it now, what will it be in 20 years? It may be good or not; it  is my job to make it good.

Of course, we are not talking about our exterior form, which can be changed with cosmetics, diet, and so forth.  We should take an interest in the exterior, but we are talking about the interior form. To achieve this we have to be concerned with formation, which is difficult. And the reason this is so, the columnist reminds us, is because information is required.

In all information there is an interior element which we should be of interest to us.  When we see the information of a flower blooming we should be able to see the formation that God has intended. This requires prayer and meditation.  

From the information we received we should be able to understand the formation that is required. This will change the way we see reality and we will desire liberation and to be one with God. We will desire to be in harmony with God's will and united with him. This, says our columnist, is the reason Jesus came to us.