Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [11]
Yet our life will acquire immutability in the degree in which we are transformed in Christ. So long as we evade being thus transformed, and insist on maintaining ourselves, this remaining fixed in our own nature cannot but deliver us up to the world of flux and reflux, and the forces of change. Such a solidification would actually mean an imprisonment within the precincts of our own changeable selves: it would prevent us from transcending our limitations as vital beings and from being drawn into the sphere of divine unchangeableness. In the measure only in which we yield like soft wax to the formative action of Christ, shall we attain genuine firmness, and grow into a likeness of divine immutability. In that measure, too, shall we rise above the terror which—seeing our status as rational persons distinct from physical nature—the rhythm of death and life’s law of transiency portend for us.
Natural readiness to change diminishes with age
A glance at the normal course of human life, considered from a purely natural point of view, will show that a character of comparative fluidity, in intellectual as in other respects is proper to youth.
By that we mean not only a love of change for its own sake, but an aspiration towards higher values: an eagerness for education, for enriching and ennobling oneself. Such a disposition is the natural gift of youth.
Examine a person enlivened by the vital rhythm of youth, and you will find in him a certain forcefulness and daring which facilitate that aspiration towards higher things. But when men become older and, within the framework of natural tendencies their characters and peculiarities undergo a process of solidification, the natural mobility and urge for change will tend to disappear.
Such persons will then become much less accessible to elevating influences, less receptive to fresh stimuli (we are still speaking on purely natural presuppositions). We can no longer expect them to revise their mentality and to re-educate themselves, for they are already cast in a rigid mold.
This description does not refer merely to an inveterate habit, owing to the lengthy accumulation of similar experiences, of looking at things in a certain way. What is meant is a general condition different from that which youth implies. The natural readiness to change is gone; its place is taken by the attitude of a person conscious of his maturity, who considers himself to have achieved his period of formation and arrogates to himself the right, as it were, to endure and to settle down in his peculiarities such as they are.
These psychic peculiarities—which may not infrequently be eccentricities—are never so marked during youth. Only at a later period do certain natural tendencies assume such a character of rigidity. From the mere succession of the phases of life one seems to derive the right to be no longer a pupil or an apprentice but a master.
Supernatural readiness to change should grow with age
But if we envisage the vital phases of youth and old age from a supernatural point of view, the picture will be different. Here, in fact, an inverse law will appear. The readiness to change, the waxlike receptiveness towards Christ will tend not to vanish but to increase as man grows into a state of maturity. Accidental concerns and complications recede into the background; the pattern of life wins through to simplicity; the great decisive aspects of life become more clearly accentuated. The unrest incident to youth, the vacillating response to disparate appeals, the insatiable hunger for whatever appears attractive or beautiful will subside, and a steady orientation towards the essential and decisive become dominant.
This progress towards simplicity, which is part of the spiritual significance of advancing in age, is linked to a consolidation in Christ. A number of vital tendencies, longings of all kinds, and a certain ubiquitous unrest fostered by expectations of earthly