The Call to Holiness, the Spiritual Journey that God calls us to, is a journey of personal relationships, a journey on which a person grows closer to God or further from God,  depending on how he or she relates to others. Many people instinctively think of the journey as an intrapersonal project – a trip into themselves, a journey to explore themselves, improve themselves and so become better and holier in God’s eyes. But the spiritual journey is not simply an intrapersonal process, something confined to self-improvement. It is an interpersonal process by which people deepen and strengthen their relationships with God and with others, as well as with themselves. Jesus put is simply: Treat others the way you would have them treat you; this sums up the law and the prophets. Jesus also said:

You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole law is based, and the prophets as well.

We are called to be in a covenant with God, a pact of lasting, loving fidelity. This relationship can best be described as an invitation to share the very life of God. God is not merely out there running this universe and waiting for us to call Him to come down and enter into our lives. God, who is love, total, complete and absolute, is already present in the depths of our being with forgiveness and power to transform. The relationship God calls us to is one of opening ourselves to that love, that forgiveness, that transforming power. It is a process by which we gradually break down the barriers within us so that God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s transforming power can flow more and more in our lives. As the God-life becomes more and more operative in us, as our lives blend with God’s more and more, we are impelled to move out of ourselves and enter into relationships with other people, in order to help them free themselves from the restraints that prison God’s love, forgiveness and transforming power within them.

This journey into deeper and deeper relationships is not easy. It is marked by struggle. If we focus simply on ourselves, the struggle will always be within and with ourselves. We will become more and more self-centered. If our journey focuses on our relationships with God and     others, then the struggle will be to connect with and respond to the others in our relationships. We will find a wider and wider world in which we can walk in love and forgiveness and transforming power.

Hopefully these thoughts clarify the journey a little more!