Lukewarmness

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“How blessed is anyone who rejects the advice of the wicked,” we are told in the Psalms, “and does not take a stand in the path that sinners tread, nor a seat in company with cynics, but who delights in the law of Yahweh and murmurs his law day and night.

“Such a one is like a tree planted near streams; it bears fruit in season and its leaves never wither, and every project succeeds. How different the wicked, how different, just like chaff blown around by the wind” (Ps. 1:1-4).

We are invited to be “like a tree planted near streams: bearing fruit in season, with leaves that never wither.”

This meditation is about lukewarmness.

The Scriptures, and also St. Josemaría, will invite us to take an account occasionally so that we keep ourselves in good shape. We don't drift into a lukewarm status.

“Let us be demanding on ourselves,” said Don Álvaro in a letter in 1988, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of Opus Dei.

“With greater motive,” he says, “my children, when time passes, and we have been spending a lot of time serving Our Lord in Opus Dei, we shouldn't allow that with the passage of time, the fervor of our initial self-giving would get weakened.”

Occasionally we have to go back and look again, and begin again, and foster that generosity of the beginning, keep our fire burning.

One time, St. Josemaría was in a get-together in—I think it was—Venezuela and he had not slept well the previous night. Some people had prepared a song for him, and so he sat down in a chair that was there, while they sang the song.

It was unusual for him to sit down in those get-togethers. He was always moving around.

But he listened to the song, and towards the end of the song, he said in a low voice that was only heard by the person beside him: Salto de mi comfortaleza–“I jump up out of my comfort," as he moved out of the chair.

Occasionally, we have to examine ourselves and see if perhaps there is a little bit of a bourgeois spirit that may have crept in from time to time. Our love of comfort, our love of self is always there.

Don Álvaro says, “Our love of God does not have to be shining as brightly in maturity as it did in the early stages of our youth, but it does have to maintain itself alive and strong.

“Like embers that are consumed in silence, perhaps without any flames, but radiating around them a great warmth that lifts up the temperature of the atmosphere with optimism, always with the conviction that we have done the best business with our soul, and always with the thought that many others will look at our example, in order to know and to deal more with God.”

Don Álvaro, with these words, is calling us to a new responsibility and a maturity; a new care about everything related to our vocation—to take care of the small things, to keep our soul shining brightly in all sorts of moments, particularly through our norms and customs, so that with the passage of time, things do not cool down.

“In the history of Opus Dei,” he says, “long and short, how many times there are people, mature people sometimes, sometimes far away from Opus Dei, already advanced in years, who go back to feeling the joy of God in seeing the way that young people of the Prelature function.

“And how many young people there are who are moved to have a new light and fire in their ideals, contemplating the spirit, which is always young and joyful, of those who have spent many years at the service of God in the Prelature.”

God wants to use our example, our fire, our apostolic vibration, our enthusiasm for the things of always, so that we keep the noble ideals of Our Lord that St. Josemaría has placed in our soul pretty much before us all the time.

And that new enthusiasm, that conviction, the faith that God is making use of everything, our daily Mass, to bring things forward, to sow seeds for our prayer, to bring those vocations that we dream about.

“For this reason,” he says, “men and women, young and less young, healthy and sick, married and single, lay and priests, all the faithful of the Prelature, have to constantly aspire to that specific holiness to which God has called us, each one along our pathway, and becoming more sure each time in that effort, without weakening it in any way.

“Help each other to be Opus Dei, children of my soul, with your prayer, with your good example, and with your fraternal correction. All of us have to feel on our shoulders that sweet weight of the responsibility of the sanctity of the others.”

These ideas can lead us to go back to our prayer, to pray more for other people around us, to think of the apostolic goals of the region, of all the corporate apostolic works—how all of that depends on our personal struggle, and to see, maybe, we could struggle a little more in certain areas.

Or we could focus on different virtues that we haven't focused on before. Or we could listen a bit more attentively to what may be said to us in the chat or in fraternal correction, because we know the Holy Spirit is there, and there are new horizons that are waiting for us, new fruits that God wants to bring.

I read a book once about the Battle of Monte Cassino. It was an abbey just south of Rome, on the approach road to Rome from the south.

The Nazis had occupied this abbey. They had carefully put away all the valuable art treasures that were there, and the Allies had landed in the south, in Anzio, I think, and made their way up through the center of Italy.

It was the winter of 1944, very cold, very miserable, and the journalist who wrote this book was describing the conditions on the front lines.

People were hungry. They were cold. Anyone in their right mind would have wanted to be somewhere else.

The temptation to desert was very great. The mules that brought the provisions sometimes were shot, so the food didn't get through.

Every evening, the mules that were there would carry the wounded back to the home lines. There was a sergeant who was checking on all the wounded to make sure they were really wounded, because the temptation to desert was very great.

He said he once found two soldiers who decided to pretend that they were injured to try to escape from that place. However, the sergeant produced his gun and ordered them back to the front lines.

He said these tired, battle-weary soldiers went back to their position on the front lines and they fought on.

Eventually, the Germans were pushed back off that promontory, and they withdrew to the north of Italy. Rome was spared. It was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War—one with tired soldiers.

So sometimes, God wants to use our tiredness. There are a couple of books about the reality of tiredness.

John Paul II in his apostolic letter on the Day of the Lord, says there is something sacred about our tiredness that God wants to use.

Jesus allowed Himself to be tired out from His journey, and so He allowed Himself to sit down beside the well (John 4:6).

But even in that state of tiredness, He was always open to souls, ready to do a little bit more, ready to be demanded from or to use that situation or that experience that came about to reach out to the soul that was there.

“I want to direct myself,” Don Álvaro says, “in a special way to those daughters and sons of mine who have jobs of government or formation entrusted to them, and to my priest sons who cooperate in the spiritual direction of the other faithful of the Prelature, very united to the directors.

“But at the same time, I direct myself to everybody, because all of us, each and every one of us, have to be both sheep and shepherds.

“My children, don't allow any one of your brothers or sisters to become cold. Help them with the refinement of a mother and with the fortitude of a father in their pathway of holiness. Don't allow that anyone might lower their guard and soon give in some concessions to lukewarmness, and allow themselves to get enveloped in a situation of spiritual mediocrity, with ways of living that are not compatible with the joyful duties that are inherent in our vocation, and in the pathway of a Christian who must always act at all times in nomine Iesu.

“With Our Lord, through Our Lord, for Our Lord. And with the others in Him, and with Him and through Him.”

We have to examine our conscience and see: Am I praying enough for the others? Do I notice things that are important? Can I be led to have that great act of supernatural affection?

The greatest act I can have with the people I live with is fraternal correction—to show them that I care for them, I really love them, they're not alone, they're part of a family, I want the best for them, I want heaven for them, and so I make those joyful demands on them, all those reminders.

“Be attentive,” he says, “to detect when a person confided to your care, through tiredness or situations related to his professional work, or for any other reason, might begin to weaken in their spiritual journey.

“Encourage them so that they react, giving them the spirit of Opus Dei without diminishing in any way those demands. Sustain them in their difficulties, facilitate the necessary rest. Apply the appropriate remedies that Our Lord has given to us in Opus Dei.

“But don't give in or allow a situation that is not proper to our spirit to carry on or to take place. That spirit that we've received from St. Josemaría—see how wonderful and attractive is this battle of ours, so that Christ may reign.”

We come to the Feast of the Angels. We think of the work of St. Raphael, St. Gabriel, also St. Michael. The tremendous reach of those works that God has placed in our hands: “tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10).

The work of St. Gabriel and St. Raphael for us is enormously attractive. We have to try and keep that attraction before our eyes all the time.

That's what I'm here for. That's why God has given me this vocation. That's what it is all about, so I don't get distracted or unfocused with other things that may come along, no matter how good or noble or attractive or interesting they may be.

We're here to cast our nets (cf. Luke 5:4-5). That's what it's all about.

That shout of St. Josemaría that he always heard, and he wanted us to repeat frequently as to sound in our ears: “Regnare Christum volumus!–We want Christ to reign!” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 11; The Forge, Point 639).

We truly want Christ to reign in humanity all over this planet in which so many people still don't know Him, or others who separate themselves from Him.

We have to try and free from that state of lukewarmness that can come about in all sorts of ways. “Would that you were hot or cold. But because you are lukewarm…I will vomit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16). Our Lord has said some very strong things.

In that battle against lukewarmness, it means that we try to keep the important things in their place.

There was a story of a man in Mexico many years ago who got married, and for twenty-five years of their life, they loved to go to the bullfights every Saturday afternoon. His wife would accompany him. She was not particularly interested in the bullfights, but she would go along anyway.

But then one day, after twenty-five years, she finally said, ‘Let’s not go to the bullfights. I'm fed up going to the bullfights.’

And he said, ‘Okay, let’s not go to the bullfights. Let's go somewhere else. I never really wanted to go to the bullfights anyway.’

There was a man who knew how to keep his first love in first place. Because we know how, with the passage of time, it is so easy for our first love to slip into other places. Fifth place perhaps, or sixth, and for other things to take its place.

We have to try and come back frequently and fall more in love with Our Lord; with our vocation; with the apostolate; with the means that God has given to us.

Love is a mystery. God is love (1 John 4:8,16). Our vocation is all about love. Sometimes we have to come back and learn how to love again—and learn what love is all about.

There was a lawyer in Sydney once who told a story of how he was approached by a couple. The husband was 86 and the wife, 83.

And the lawyer asked them, “Well what can I do for you?”

They said, “We want to get a divorce.”

“And why do you want to get a divorce?” he asked.

“Because we don't love each other anymore,” they replied.

“And how long have you been married?”

“Forty years.”

The lawyer tried to remember the meditation or talk on charity that he heard at his last retreat, and tried to give them an impromptu talk about what love is all about.

“Love is kind, love is patient” (cf. 1 Cor. 13:4). Love is loving other people with their defects. It's forgiving. It's letting the water flow under the bridge. It's not making a mountain out of a molehill—all the little points that he could remember, as much as possible.

He asked them to go away and think about it for a while and come back another day and they would talk a little more.

They said they'd give it a try, but they were not very convinced. They went away.

Three years later, the wife came back to say, “My husband just passed away. But I want to thank you because we have just had three of the most wonderful years of our whole lives.”

The moral of the story is that we are always beginning again in love. We are rediscovering what this mystery is all about.

Occasionally, the Holy Spirit gives us new lights so that we can see things in a different way—perhaps things that we never saw before, or discover some joy in our vocation that we haven’t experienced.

“I write to you,” said St. Josemaría in 1974 in one of the last of the three bell rings, “that you may be forewarned against the assaults of the devil, who may attack at the eleventh hour, almost at the end of this pathway of ours here below, when he tries to stir up the prudence of the flesh, la prudencia carnal.

“You and I, keep this in mind, have come to give our lives completely. Honor, money, professional progress, talents, possibilities of influence in the environment, bonds of blood—in a word, everything that can accompany the career of a man in his maturity. All of that has to be submitted to a higher interest: that of the glory of God and the salvation of souls.”

St. Josemaría warns us against these realities: how the devil can try to catch us out occasionally with things that may be incompatible with our holiness and with our pathway.

Lukewarmness, as an attitude towards God, takes root when our response is characterized by mediocrity or delays.

We have to look at the little delays: Do I do my norms on time? Do I take care of my expense account on time? Do I do these other little things on time?

The cause of that lukewarmness is not so much tiredness, but lack of fight, omissions, lack of courage, lack of fortitude, lack of self-giving, lack of a sense of responsibility—possibly, of not fleeing from the bad influences of the environment, putting off our duties.

Sometimes, we may have to make radical decisions about our lifestyle or things that have happened in our lives. We make real changes.

One time, I was giving a class in Singapore. I happened to mention how if you are in some bar someplace, and you find that suddenly the curtain goes up, and the dancing girls come on, you wouldn't like your wife or your children to see you in this place. Well, probably God doesn't want to see you there either.

The following week, a man came to me and said, “You know, I work in a bank and I'm in auditing and I have a regional job, so I move around quite a lot. I'm in different cities. We finish work at five or six, and very often we go out for a few beers. I precisely find myself in some of those sorts of places.”

He married late in life and he had one daughter and his wife. He loved them very much.

He said, “I realize they wouldn't like to see me in those places. I've made a new resolution. Before I even go into these places, I will think of them and ask myself, ‘Would my wife and my daughter even like to see me going into this place?’ Most of the time the answer is no.

“I tell the guys, ‘Okay, guys, I'll see you some other time. I'm going to go and have dinner somewhere else.’”

That was a man who knew how to identify things that were not right.

There could be little negligences in our life also—little attachments here and there, compensations, little pleasures that are not completely compatible with our spirit, or situations that are perhaps not as apostolic as they might be. Or we might not be thinking apostolically in certain situations.

Maybe Our Lord wants us to think out of the box. How can I convert this situation or this opportunity into a real apostolic opportunity?

How can this produce fruit for souls? Because if it doesn't, then what am I doing here? What's it all about?

A lukewarm soul can be a soul without love. It is a rather ugly situation.

For a person of Opus Dei to be in a lukewarm situation, it's not a healthy thing. Because a soul who loves knows how to give themselves completely—ready to change the direction of my life, or change my plans, or change my lifestyle, or whatever may be necessary.

That means that we have to be ready to make sacrifices, so that we don't end up wanting to make compatible with our vocation things that in reality are not compatible.

There may come a series of little giving-ins here and there, of abandoning the struggle to improve, of not giving importance to venial sins, of not having that desire to be better.

I remember in a remote part of Asia one time, coming to March 19, there was a person of Opus Dei there who was very isolated and could only be reached a few times a year. And they would get a Circle and they would try to get to retreat once a year.

They might have been the most remote person of Opus Dei in the whole world. I asked them if they were ready to renew on March 19.

Very quickly this person said, “Yes, I want to improve! I want to be better!”

I was rather impressed with that answer. “I want to be better!” That is the whole reason I'm in Opus Dei. In spite of the difficulties of my situation, and a whole pile of other things, “I want to be better.”

It is a very beautiful and healthy thing to have that deep desire in our soul, in our heart—and therefore, to love the great treasures that God has placed beside us and the means that He’s given to us.

How can I improve today? What is the virtue that my director is speaking to me about during this period of time that I need to grow in, to be a little better?

There are three specific people in the Gospel who are lukewarm. There is the older brother (Luke 15:28-30). There is Judas (Luke 6:16, John 12:4-6).

And there is the rich young man. “‘Go, sell all that you have. Give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ … He went away sad because he had great possessions” (cf. Matt. 19:21-22).

There's a bit of the rich young man in each one of us. We all have great possessions. But we have to be careful that those things do not take a hold of us, or that we are like the older brother.

We are working in Our Father's field all the time, but with sort of a bitter zeal. Our heart is not really in the things of God. The older brother is full of self-righteousness. He is all tied up in his own things.

‘What about me? Nobody told me. Nobody gives me a goat to make merry with my friends.’

He has no mercy in his heart. No love for his brother or his father. We are not told that he actually comes to dinner with his father and with his brother. He is cold-hearted.

It is a very ugly picture. He is fulfilling his duty, he’s a good worker, but he’s not doing it out of love. That bitter zeal. He is counting the cost. He is full of pride.

It is everything that we should not be. Even though initially he looked like the person to imitate, because he doesn't go away from his father's house and he doesn't waste all his money, in the end, it’s the younger brother who is the one to imitate.

The younger brother makes a deep examination of conscience, he realizes his situation, he realizes the things he has to change and improve. He comes back to his father's house. He begins again.

There might be little dialogues with temptations that God has permitted in our lives.

I read in a book recently how God permits temptation for us to realize our nothingness. “We are vessels of clay” (cf. 2 Cor. 4:7). All the most terrible things can pass through our minds.

But yet, those are opportunities—opportunities for us to show Our Lord that ‘I want to be better. I want to improve. I really want holiness.’

I heard someone say once that following a vocation is like jumping off a cliff. Humanly speaking, it doesn’t make any sense.

You jump off a cliff and you see the waves there below you, like in Kilifi some place, the waves crashing against the rocks. You see all the human things.

But when you jump off that cliff, Our Lady is there, six meters out from the edge of the cliff, and we jump into her arms.

Sometimes God places us back on the edge of the cliff again and says, ‘Jump again. Show me again that you love me, that you really want to follow me, that you want to leave everything.’

If we allow those little temptations to take over a little bit; we give in to them a little bit; we don't reject them as fast as we should, then they can easily take a hold.

“You are lukewarm,” said St. Josemaría in The Way, “if you carry out lazily and reluctantly those things that have to do with Our Lord; if deliberately or 'shrewdly' you look for some way of cutting down your duties; if you think only of yourself and of your comfort; if your conversations are idle and vain; if you do not abhor venial sin; if you act from human motives” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 331).

If we find ourselves thinking apostolically all the time, that's a very good sign. How can I get in contact with more people? How can I make the means of formation or the corporate apostolic works more effective?

How can I reach more people? How can I think out of the box in this funny situation that maybe God has placed us in?

A rio ro alto garanto a pescadores. When the rivers are in flood, the fishermen have a boom time, because the fish come to the surface.

If we are all the time thinking of others, thinking of the apostolate, how to bring things forward, that is very healthy.

In 1975, when Don Álvaro was speaking about the interior struggle, he said, “Our Lord wants us to be saints.

“In reminding ourselves of this divine commandment, we are not talking about people who are above good and evil, far away from any bad temptations—but we are here talking about ourselves.”

There are so many others who, moved by grace, unite themselves to Opus Dei, the Work of God.

Each one of us knows the little of which we are made. But that is not enough to be humble, because there is so much more: a long pathway to walk along before we reach that goal that Our Lord has placed for us, and which we want to reach.

Santos de verdad los estaremos en el cielo. Truly, holy, we will be in Heaven if we remain faithful in the struggle here on Earth, even though we might seem to be ourselves always sinful; sinners who struggle to make a reality of what St. Josemaría mentioned about himself.

We are sinners who love Jesus Christ.

We are always willing to go back with a new humility to start again: a refinement in the sacrament of Confession; a love for divine grace; a new sensitivity; a new warmth—because we want to have a tender love for Jesus.

“We are people,” he says, “who are very conscious of the fact that we have passions and weaknesses—poor men and women who live disposed to two fundamental things because we love or we want to love very much Our Lord Jesus Christ, to recognize ourselves in a humble way our own miseries, and to struggle for love to overcome them with the grace of God.

“Let us go through this struggle, very convinced, very focused to carry out ourselves or behave ourselves each day a little bit better, a little bit less bad or less evil, to go forward along the pathway of holiness.”

God allowed St. Josemaría to contemplate, with the universal expansion of Opus Dei, this immense quantity of children of his in the whole world, who transformed their lives with this shout of love of God.

Truly that prayer that St. Josemaría made in those years when he felt those deep feelings of his vocation, and those since that 2nd of October, have been converted into a sort of a violent shout in the souls of so many people.

Ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo nisi ut accendatur?–“I have come to spread fire on this earth, and what would I but that it be enkindled?” (Luke 12:49).

That prayer of his has been heard by Our Lord, and he was given the consolation of seeing here on earth that fire of love that has been provoked in so many souls, spreading from his own soul.

In the Book of the Apocalypse, we are told, “Nevertheless, I have this complaint to make: you have less love now than you had formerly” (Rev. 2:4).

Our Lord sort of challenges our conscience a little bit. In the Book of the Apocalypse, it also says, “So far I have failed to notice anything in your behavior that my God could possibly call perfect” (Rev. 3:2).

We can ask Our Lady for that grace to keep our struggle pretty much alive and stir up that fire of love as much as possible; and to ask, as we come close to these great anniversaries, these feast days of the angels that are in front of us, that we might know how to begin again, as St. Josemaría did, and as Our Lady always did, along the pilgrimage of her life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

NJF