In the "Spiritual Exercises" by Karl Rahner, in which he is writing to those taking the Jesuit retreat, one of the most sophisticated statements to me reads: "The Other Things: By the 'other things' St. Ignatius (of Loyola) understands everything between my ego and God. They embrace many natural gifts with which I am perhaps 'actually identified,' and with which I naively try to identify myself. In this retreat, I should try to separate myself from them, and I should try to understand that I am different from them. I should realize interiorly that nothing can take the place of my pure ego, that I cannot run away from it, that I cannot relinquish my self-responsibility to the world around me. This type of separation from self is one of the main tasks of the Christian-and it takes a whole life to complete it. It is a necessary part of the road to Christian sanctity. Let us ask ourselves very concretely what these 'other things' are from which we must separate ourselves. They are not only material possessions, time, friends, but also my activity, my abilities, even my nature that has been formed by my own free decisions, health and sickness, honor and dishonor, thoughts and desires, and so forth. This process of freeing the self from the self includes everything that can be said about the ego- these all belong to the 'other things'. That which remains is the 'peak of the soul' that is, the free, self-surrendering person posited by God. This person has mastery over all other things, takes them or leaves them, orders them or forms them, and in this dealing with things finds God and itself and comes to an understanding of the relationship between God and self. Therefore, the 'other things' are not an obstacle between God and me. I cannot desire simply to eliminate them. We may not strive stoically to remove ourselves from them in such a way that we are no longer affected by them. The question here is how to use them properly and how to direct all of them to God." (pp. 19, 20).
I will stop here for now...In the above writing it is clear to me that although the Christian has to live in the world - indeed work in the world to attract it to Christ- he, nevertheless, has to separate himself from the world so that he may find holiness which is in God alone. In the Old Testament, if I remember correctly, the holy is the one set aside from the world or dedicated completely to God. It is a very fine balance, I think, that Christians need to find and walk always through prayers to Christ from the heart. We need to read again Scriptures and ask the Tradition of the Church mainly traditional writings of the Fathers including the Second Vatican Council. May the Lord help all with their sincere walks in life in order to finally attain holiness and eternal life.
