I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. – Galatians 2:19b-21 (NRSVUE)
How does Christ enter your life? Is it through the things we do? Is it through what we believe? Is it through meditation and contemplation? Is it through gathering with other people of faith? Most people, if they have religious inclinations, pick one of these routes and see that as the way to encounter Christ. Yet all of these start with us and our decisions. They are more about our spiritual sensibility than about Christ. The claim of grace is that Christ comes to us and fills us. It is not that we set out to have faith, but rather that God comes to us through Christ, and it is the power of the Holy Spirit that awakens in us a desire to know God. This is what Paul is trying to describe when he talks about being crucified with Christ so that it becomes Christ living in me. All of our attempts to reach God are put aside as Christ comes to us. From there, we respond.
Bonaventure, in the Prologue to “The Soul’s Journey into God,” starts with Christ coming to us. Bonaventure picks the path of contemplation as his way of encountering God. However, he makes clear that any spiritual experience starts with experiencing God’s love through Christ, which moves us to desire to know God more. He writes, “There is no other path but through the burning love of the Crucified, a love which so transformed Paul into Christ … This love also absorbed the soul of Francis that his spirit shone through his flesh.”
Whether we best recognize God in actions like serving others, through learning, through meditation, or through community, our spiritual life starts with a desire to know God, and that desire starts with God coming to us. It is through Jesus fully giving himself away to us out of love that we can experience a transforming desire to recognize God in our lives. In that love our focus turns away from ourselves and towards God. We might not experience it as powerfully as Paul or Francis did, but it is present within each of us in our trust in Christ. Bonaventure reminds us in the prologue that we must always return to this first step, or all of our other thoughts, actions, and prayers will be off-base.