I am very concerned about the two-tiered system of holiness which has been promoted by some in the Church and which came to my attention last night with some good questions from a person studying the chart I put on June 6th last week.
These questions follow with answers:
1) Why do the priest and maybe the Vatican emphasize that the lay people are active and that their holiness is in activity?
This is one of the greatest fallacies of our times. Actions, or the external life, accompany the path to perfection. For example, in the first stages of the first purification for beginners, fasting, alms-giving and mortification are all externals necessary for becoming holy.
Being an EMHC, or a lector, or an altar server does not automatically make one holy. The interior life is where holiness grows. In fact, until one is in the Illuminative State, and look at the graph, works are tainted with self-love and self-will and not totally of God.
Lay people have active vocations, of course, especially as mothers and fathers and in their vocations as teachers, lawyers, whatever. But, without the interior life, those jobs are not sanctified.
Prayer and meditation, especially an hour a day of the Lectio Divina, are necessary.
Those who think lay people cannot be made perfect are wrong.
The only action which directly brings holiness is martyrdom. I have written about that in the series.
2) I thought only nuns and priests became holy because they gave their lives totally to God. Can a lay person do this?
Yes, and we must. All good Catholics give their lives totally to God as this would be a result of our baptismal promises.
If we do not, we shall slide back into sin and corruption.
Nuns and priests choose to serve God directly, and lay people serve God indirectly by serving others in the family and at work, as well as in the parish. But, all are called to perfection through the development of the interior life. To be a contemplative nun is absolutely a call to perfection in a life which is a short-cut to that state. See previous postings.
3) I am surrounded by people in New Age stuff who are Catholic, and in a parish where many Catholics skip Church on Sunday. I cannot find a community who will help me on my way. What should I do?
Pray as this might be your call to the Cross, to be isolated. Be strong and follow the steps as best as you can. If you can move or go to another parish where there are holy people, do so. I always suggest trying to get to the nearest Latin Mass, as my experience is that there are more priests in the TLM who understand the way of perfection than in the NO.
Also, find a good Confessor. In my entire life, I have only found five priests who understood the way of perfection. One is a Latin Mass priest in Oklahoma who is in his late 40s, and four are English priests, of various ages, two aged about 65 and 62 and the other two aged 50. Four are in the Westminster Diocese and one in Arundel and Brighton Diocese.
If I could afford to live in their parishes, which I cannot, I would, as going to Confession to them revealed to me the maturity of their own walk with Christ. This is rare, that one can talk about the way to perfection and the need for the purging of venial sins and imperfections, in the Confessional.
If you find a priest who is walking this way of perfection, try and move close to where he is working.
I have been tempted to go to the SSPX because many of those priests seem to understand the way, but until the Sunday Mass is meeting my obligation, I cannot do that.
Good questions from an earnest searcher.