A guide was leading a group of people on a hike through some mountains. He pointed at a fairly majestic looking peak and said “the ascent, depending on your skill level, can take between two and five hours. The descent, again depending on your skill level, can take four hours or … thirty seconds but it is a very hard STOP!”
Trappist Monk, priest, and mystic, Thomas Merton described his conversion from atheist to Catholic in a book called the Seven Story Mountain. The Seven Story Mountain is what medieval poet Dante Alighieri described as the Mountain of Purgatory, where souls are purified from the seven “deadly” or capital sins. These sins are pride, covetousness, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. One must conquer each sin as if climbing up a difficult mountain.
These capital sins are human attitudes that push us or down into the cesspool of mortal sin. For example, covetousness leads to stealing, adultery, or even murder. Pride can lead to rejection of God. Sloth can lead us to inaction, those nasty sins of omission. Unless we purge ourselves completely of these sins, the summit of the mountain is unattainable. The top of the mountain is the heavenly paradise, or as Dante calls it, Eden.
I have often had the dream, or should I say nightmare, where I am trying to climb to the top of what seems to be a climbable mountain but I can never quite make it to the top. If the summit of the mountain is heaven, and all we have to do is love in order to get there, how hard can that be? Yet it is impossible. I have dreamt that as I climb, things begin to surround me, entice me, distract me, and cause me to forget about the summit. The distractions force me to go back down the mountain, losing all progress. That loss of ground is troubling. I recall in my dream obsessing about the time I need to make it to the top of the mountain. The clock is ticking.
I have dreamt that I have gotten close to the top of the mountain but the closer I get I get caught in slippery, boot-sucking slime and so again, though the summit is in reach, I can’t quite make it. At least once in the dream, I slip and start taking the speedier 30 second descent down the mountain as the guide described. Thankfully, I do not recall that sudden STOP at the end of the fall.
The fact of the matter, in both my dream and the mountain of purgatory, is that the summit is unreachable without some supra-natural help to get me to the top. This “help or gift” is the grace that St Paul describes in the first reading when he writes: “by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:8) The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes grace as;
“the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God...” (CCC 1996)
Heaven is unattainable without God’s gift of grace. This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God’s gratuitous initiative ... It surpasses the power of human intellect and will. (CCC 1998).
In the spiritual life, we cannot, under our own power alone, climb to heaven. The summit, like the summit in my dream, is unattainable. Yet St Paul DOES NOT suggest that we need not climb at all. That is to take Scripture out of the context. Our work is essential. Heaven is NOT attainable without us doing our part. As St Paul writes in the next verse, you are “created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)
God does not save us by His grace in order to sit around and do nothing. Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that our lives will be judged on our works of mercy.
[The King] will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25:45–46)
We are not saved by a magical incantation that “I have accepted Jesus in my heart.” In these words alone there IS NO SALVATION. We have work to do. As St James writes,
Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. (James 1:22) Faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:17)
In the spiritual life we are called to climb, to work, such that we not only attain the heavenly summit, but that heaven’s summit may be just a little closer to earth. In every dream I have, despite the distractions, enticements, and mud, there is in me, and I think everyone, a need to climb. We know innately, its logical; if we stop climbing, then the summit, heaven, can never be within reach. So, climb!
Endnotes:
Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd Ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000. Print.
Well said! Thank you!
Well written Mark. This week is Veteran Buddy Check Week. I hope you are doing well.