Cleaning Me With Fire

Spiritual growth requires tending our inner fires with caution.

In the Methodist church of my youth, I loved singing in the folk choir. One year, we performed a cantata based on the Catholic Order of the Mass. (Liturgical purists are absolved for raising their eyebrows at this point.)

The chorus of the confiteor (the “confession” prayer just before the Gloria) still rings in my head: “Cleaning me with fire, that is my desire, burning me up, consuming my whole heart, ‘til it’s all aflame!” The chasm that existed between my sins and the consuming fire was large, but my desire for such a cleansing was kindled.

Many years later, I reluctantly scheduled my “first confession,” convinced it was an unnecessary condition for receiving my first Eucharist. Why did I need to purify myself? Wasn’t it enough that Jesus already knew my sins, and died on the cross to set me free?

I thought, “Those repetitive Catholics, keeping guilt nipping at their heels, hiding their sins behind the velvet curtains, mumbling a few Hail Marys.” Confession seemed like a therapeutic end-run on Jesus’ mercy. Grumbling, I pulled back the veil. There I sat, warts and all.

I changed my mind after one confession. The patient priest helped me realize that mercy was a long-term project. A one-time bonfire was too scary, but I could handle a regular application of penitential singes, in and out of the confessional. When the fire burns too brightly, it is hard to see what God might want through all the smoke.

Dr. Edith Stein served as Dr. Edmund Husserl’s post-doctoral assistant in 1917-18. Although she competently organized his notes and taught an introductory philosophy course, Husserl rebuffed her attempts to be a colleague, and refused to sponsor her for a university professorship. Finally, she quit. Although she remained cordial with Husserl, her closest friends were aware of her pain and disappointment over the situation.

In 1932, a friend visited the elderly master, and wrote to Edith that she had conversed with him about the “last things” (death, judgment, heaven, hell). Edith chided her against such attempts at influencing the souls of others, saying, “...doing so heightens his responsibility as well as our responsibility for him...After every encounter in which I am made aware how powerless we are to exercise direct influence, I have a deeper sense of the urgency of my own holocaustum.”

What haunting words! Repentance and conversion involve fires which must be tended by our Savior himself. Transformation must remain a slow fire until the disciple is ready for the blaze of Christ’s very passion. May the warmth in your life be a source of renewal for you!

Peace be with you,