“If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” – John 14:23
The Interior Life is an elevated form of intimate conversation with God––the everyday life of a personal relationship between the Christian and his Lord––that ought to be constantly developing in our souls as a progressive sanctification (an ongoing process of purgation and purification, illumination and conversion, communion and salvation), for it is the very Way of salvation.
The Interior Life is lived in the depths of the soul, and is the life of the whole man, not merely of one or other of his faculties. Thus the Interior Life is something far more profound and more necessary in us than our intellectual life, than artistic or literary endeavors, the cultivation of the sciences, and even our active, social and political duties. “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?
The end of the Interior Life is holiness and perfection, which is divine union through love with God and partaking of His divine nature and life (deification). The Way of perfection is true devotion (pure religion), which is the summation of the Christian’s duties laid out for him by God. Its reward is eternal salvation: the beatific vision, our eternal beatitude (blessing)––to see God face to face.
Therefore to achieve the goal of spiritual perfection and to receive the reward of eternal life, it is necessary to first make certain wherein lies the Way of perfection, which is the virtue of true devotion and religion. For there are many counterfeits but there is only one true devotion, one true religion, and one Way of perfection as there is only one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.
And if we do not find that which is real, we will deceive ourselves and vainly pursue an idle superstitious form––most likely a shadow or reflection of ourselves, which is a form of idolatry and a path to destruction. “For there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” Devotion, which is derived from the Latin word devoveo, means precisely consecration to the divinity; and the soul gives itself entirely to God, not by bursts of enthusiasm in its feelings, but by an act of the will.
Let us then be content with what God has given us––for only one thing is necessary––and it is not beauty, not health, not talent, not fame, not power, not riches. It is the salvation of our souls. Therein lies the best part, which will not be taken away from a faithful soul even though it should lose everything else.
THE INTERIOR LIFE