Three Myths About The Spiritual Life Many Believe

F

irst: God is Watching Us From A Distance. Fr Ramon Bautista SJ, my novice and tertian master comments on the song entitled, "From a Distance" by American singer-songwriter Julie Gold saying that it is potentially misleading.

It risks portraying God as an observer looking down on human activity. The image unintentionally echoes a dualistic view of God: present, but uninvolved.

Fr Ramon points out, echoing saints and spiritual teachers like St John of the Cross, that God cannot be distant because He is, by nature, a God of relationship. God always takes the initiative: He calls, reaches out, and draws us toward Himself.

Every discernment can only be possible because God is not far away. We can discern because God is with us. He is present, involved, and at work in our lives. If we do not believe in a God with us then discernment becomes, if not impossible, difficult, even distorted. Christian discernment stands firmly on our faith in God who is already near and already speaking to us. We can discern because we can hear him. Before we can truly discern our own vocation, we must first be clear about the kind of God we believe in. Otherwise the discernment suffers.

The second myth about the spiritual life is that love is a command.

I once had a retreatant who shared a simple line she heard from Jesus in prayer: “Let me love you.” At first, she instinctively took it as a command, thinking she had to work harder to open herself to being loved. Like someone who, when told “Sit and rest,” begins cleaning the house instead. But later, something shifted. The same words became a plea, not an order—Jesus revealing his desire to love her before anything else.

This exposed a common myth that love is a command, or that love has a laundry list of conditions or things that need to be done.

Albert Nolan writes: “How can someone be commanded to love? Love is an emotion that wells up inside us in certain circumstances. It is not a matter of obedience or duty…” Likewise, in Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI writes: “The commandment of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be ‘commanded’ because it has first been given” (Deus Caritas Est, 14). The “commandment” to love God is not a burdensome demand, but a response to being loved first.

If we think God commands us to love Him first, the spiritual life suffers. We begin to treat prayer like a task. We count rosaries, fasting days, holy hours—not as encounters, but as requirements. We think we must work our way up to God and earn His favor. The result is that love turns into trying too hard. From God’s loving perspective, we do not have to earn our way to Him. We do not need to be perfect. God comes to us first and loves us as we are.

Richard Rohr reflects on this beautifully. He says we struggle with divine love because we think in terms of adding and subtracting. Yet Thérèse of Lisieux reminds us that “there is a science God knows nothing about—addition.” God’s love is infinite. It does not increase or decrease. There are no conditions. God does not love us more on our good days or less on our bad ones. It is like a parent who loves a child just as fully when the child is sick, failing, or lost as when the child is doing well. In this way, divine perfection is not the exclusion of imperfection, but the loving inclusion of it.

Whenever we fall into counting, earning, or proving ourselves, we grow tired and end up trying too hard to love God. And if we are honest, most of us have been there—myself included. The grace, again and again, is to hear Jesus say not “Try harder,” but simply: “Let me love you.”

There is a song entitled “Pag-ibig Ko” (My Love) by Fr Charlie Cenzon SJ.

You don’t need to change,

Even though that is what I desire most.

You don’t need to try so hard

For me to love you.

Refrain:

I love you—please believe it.

I am by your side,

Even when you feel far away.

When will your hiding finally end?

I am waiting for you.

Just come close and let my heart embrace you.

My love is everlasting.

Third myth about the spiritual life: God Can Leave Us or We Can Outrun Our Relationship With God

We return to our first point: God is relationship. And if God is relationship, then Jesus reveals God in the most personal way possible—not as an idea or a distant force, but as someone who can be personally encountered, trusted, and loved. This is what Jesus came to show us. If we ever wonder how Jesus became so loving, so free, and so trusting, the answer is simple and profound: it all flows from his relationship with the Father.

Everything Jesus came to teach us is summarized in the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray it, it must arise from relationship, because relationship is everything. There is a second version of the Lord’s Prayer—the Luke’s version (Lk 11:2–4) that reveals a God much nearer and more intimate.

This version simply begins with "Father." Unlike in Matthew's version, there is no mention of God in a separate heaven. So imagine prayer as coming home. A place where you are safe. A place where you will be fed—not only with bread, but with every word that comes from the Father’s mouth. At home, you do not need long explanations. You do not need to justify yourself. Often, you do not even need to say much at all. Before you even arrive at your place of prayer, remember this: your Father is already there, waiting for you. And when you arrive, all you need to say is one word: “Father.” This is why I especially love the Lukan version. It begins simply with one word: “Father.” More than a word, it is a relationship filled with love. In Deuteronomy, Moses marvels at the extraordinary gift given to Israel: a God who is near. “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?” (Deut 4:7).

I often tell my retreatants that if calling God “Father” is difficult because of painful experiences, they need not force it. What matters is remaining open—open to learning, through Jesus, a new way of relating to God. In time, we discover that the Father we come home to is not the one who failed us, but the One who has always been waiting. As St Augustine once said, “God loves each of us as though we were the only one” (Cf St Augustine’s Confessions, 3.11.19). This Father’s love is personal and unique for each daughter and son. When we stay away, the Father’s heart feels the ache of an absence that only you could fill. What does he do? He goes out in search, like the shepherd who looks for the lost sheep. No matter how many times we wander, we are never orphaned because God never abandons us—a sheep can never outrun the Father’s love.

As St Irenaeus wrote—and St Ignatius echoes—"Through the adoption of sons God has enabled man so generously and bountifully to know him as Father, to love him with his whole heart, and to follow his Word unfailingly" (From the treatise "Against the Heresies").

So let me ask: Is your prayer a coming home to your Father? Do you feel that deep homesickness—the sense that our true home lies elsewhere and that we are meant to arrive there? Or is it an effort to prove yourself first—to be worthy before you can draw near? Do not waste time, go and call him "Father." Amen. Fr JM Manzano SJ