Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [219]
Holy sobriety is essential to our transformation in Christ
Not unless we rid ourselves of all illusory exaltation, not unless we keep dwelling in the truth, can we attain to a veritable union with God. For God is Truth. Therefore, we must relentlessly clear away whatever illusions still survive in us. Holy sobriety should form the basis of our life. We must gladly recognize our limitations and firmly free ourselves of any imaginary claim to qualities or accomplishments we do not really possess. Nor must we yield to despondency when we meet with failure or come to discover our defects; when, perhaps, all of a sudden our task appears to be too difficult and we see nothing but darkness around us.
Advancing along the steep path of our transformation in Christ, we shall inevitably come across obstacles and have to pass through phases of the “dark night.” Then must our implicit faith in the light we once saw—our fides in the strict sense of the term—reassert itself; then must the luster that once shone upon us from Mount Tabor brighten up our night.
We must treasure in our heart the great Call we have received and the promise of comfort we hold. We must in holy sobriety expect in advance the manifold limitations of our nature which are sure to appear, and be prepared for the “dark nights” that will come. True self-knowledge, freedom from all illusions, and a clear recognition of our metaphysical situation are indispensable conditions of our transformation in Christ.
It is, then, holy sobriety that seals with the stamp of truthfulness, of genuineness, and of full reality all the Christian virtues—such as confidence in God, the readiness to change, contrition, hunger for the kingdom of God, simplicity, patience, meekness, mercy, love of God and one’s fellow creatures.
Not only is holy sobriety compatible with a life inspired and sustained by Faith, with that supernatural ecstasy—that drunken love of Jesus—which makes the saints appear as fools in the eyes of the world: it is a necessary presupposition of these things. The rapturous love of Jesus, which a St. Paul or a St. Francis of Assisi had, necessarily springs from the soil of that holy sobriety which the Church, in the hymn Splendor paternae gloriae, praises thus: “Joyously let us drink the sober drunkenness of the Holy Spirit.”
18
True Surrender of Self
AT THE beginning and at the end of the road we navel in the process of our transformation in Christ, we hear Our Lord speak these mysterious words: “He that shall lose his life for me shall find it” (Matt. 10:39). They convey to us the demand that we die unto ourselves and the promise of a new life derived from and centered in Christ.
But the phrase to lose one’s life (indeed, as it is sometimes translated, one’s soul) implies another, more particular element besides that renunciation of one’s natural self whose various aspects have been set forth in the preceding pages. It is the holy paradox of Death and Resurrection that flares up in these words—the mystery of dying with Christ, and awakening to life again with Him. Our study of the theme of transformation in Christ may therefore properly be terminated with a consideration of this aspect.
Surrender to the call of natural values prefigures our surrender to Christ
Even on the natural plane, there is to be found a reflection of the truth of these words in the Gospel. For what determines the spiritual measure of a man, the inner wealth of his personality? Obviously, it is the degree of his awareness of values and the intensity of his adequate response to values. The more aware of values one is, and the more able to display an adequate response to every value, the more he participates in the world of values. In every act of conforming to a true value, there lies a union of our mind with this value. Yet, this conforming involves a kind of surrender: a certain detachment from our self, a certain subordination and abnegation of self.
This surrender involved in our response to values constitutes the only possible way to inward growth; it