THE P RTAL
November 2014
Page 22
Perfection,
how do we attain it?
This month Antonia Lynn meditates
on this important element in the Spiritual Life
God’s work of art.
That’s me?
Then beauty must lie
in the eye of the beholder.
I feel more like one of those statues
Michelangelo left
half emerging from the marble block;
full of potential, on the verge of life,
but prisoned still by
circumstance and fear.
Yet part of me is free and you are still creating,
Bringing to life the promise that is there.
Sometimes by hammer blows
which jar my being,
Sometimes by tender strokes, half felt,
which waken me to life.
Go on, Lord, love me into wholeness.
Set me free to share with you
in your creative joy; to laugh for you
at your delight in me,
your work of art.
(Ann Lewin)
The blood and darkness of crucifixion don’t look very
much like perfection.
I’m told the word teleios was used by the Greeks in
connection with sculpture, to refer to a piece of stone
which had been hammered, chiselled, chipped and
polished until - at last - the beauty the artist had first
seen within it was completely revealed. A long and
painful process which, as Ann Lewin’s poem suggests,
is still unfinished in us.
Imperfect, flawed human beings
We begin November by celebrating All Saints, and
so often the saints are held up to us as examples of
perfection - all too impossible to follow. But look at
their earthly lives... for example St Augustine, who
deserted the woman he loved - and their child; St
Catherine of Siena, who defied her confessor in the
severity of her fasting, and starved herself to death.
Imperfect, flawed human beings, ‘half emerging from
the marble block’.
They were not yet saints on earth. Surely, it is the
saints’ imperfection in this life which fuelled the
compassion with which they now pray for us, and with
which they still encourage us: ‘Be who God meant
‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is you to be, and you will set the world on fire,’ said St
perfect.’ (Matthew 5:48). Two people sat with me in Catherine.
the space of a week; both spoke about this text. The
The long and difficult passage in Matthew which
first was a new Christian. She was full of despondency
after hearing this Gospel read in church: as the first ends with ‘be perfect’ begins with the words ‘blessed
enthusiasm of her conversion evaporated, she felt she are the poor in spirit’ (sometimes translated as ‘who
could never live up to what seemed to be demanded know their need of God’). Richard Rohr comments
on these words: ‘This is what the saints mean by our
of her.
emptiness, our poverty and our nothingness... God
The second was a man about to retire after long years alone can sustain me in knowing and accepting that I
of ministry. ‘If I’d translated that passage,’ he said with am not a saint, not at all perfect, not very loving at all
a wry laugh. ‘I wouldn’t have used the word perfect: it’s - and in that very recognition I can fall into the perfect
love of God.’
haunted me all my life.’
teleios
The word in question is teleios. It doesn’t mean quite
what we mean by ‘perfect’. It means ‘finished’ in the
sense of