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There are a number of spiritual masters who see that there is clearly a spirituality for the first half of our lives and a spirituality for the second half of our lives. But it’s not necessarily chronological. In other words, just because you hit the midway point in your life (and we never know when that will be), doesn’t mean you automatically transition into a second half of life spirituality. I’ve met some young people who, because of suffering or extraordinary parents are already in the second half of life. I’ve also met some fuddy-duddies, my age (57) and older, who haven’t grown up. While the first half of life spirituality leaves us incomplete, it is necessary; we all have to go through it. The first half of life spirituality is just the starting point for the greater wisdom of the second half of life. John the Baptist and Jesus are images of these two halves of life. The goal is to grow from John the Baptist into Jesus.

John the Baptist is our starting point. Like him, in the first half of life, you’re overzealous. You’re so sure about what is right and what is wrong. You’re overly concerned about being perfect, the brightest, and the best. And if you just apply yourself, work really hard, everything will present itself as a big reward for your efforts. You’re the reason for your own success. You believe your work, and not God’s grace, is what’s going to get you places in life. It’s idealistic and naïve yet, like I said, it is the necessary starting point of all of us. I remember being that way starting at seminary. In first year, we were all zealous, more followers of John the Baptist than Jesus than we would ever admit. So many students in first year theology wanted to challenge the theology professors and tell them how wrong they were and how their distorted theology was anti-Christian and about to ruin the world. By third year, these students came around to a more mature and nuanced way of thinking about theology or they left the program still clinging to their self-righteousness and bitterness. 

In the first half of life spirituality, you always feel you’re taking the moral high ground, and you almost delight in the failures of other because, obviously, they’re not doing it as well as you are. When John the Baptist sees the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he says, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It’s almost like he doesn’t want them to be converted. In that early stage of spiritual development, you assert your righteousness over and against others. A lot of people never get beyond this stage, the religion of John the Baptist. John moves at people, in today’s gospel, by pointing out their faults and accusing others. Today’s gospel account even ends with threats of burning up people with unquenchable fire. I don’t know how that’s supposed to make you fall in love with God. 

The second half of life spirituality is characterized by Jesus, and the line that gives it away is when John says, “I baptize with water.” Pouring water over peoples’ heads isn’t going to change anything. After all, God is able to raise of children of Abraham from mere stones. God can make Christians out of the pebbles in the parking lot. Did you know that? I had water poured over my head when I was 14 days old, and I’ve poured water over a few hundred people. I’m all for it. But pouring water over people, in and of itself, will not change your mind, will not change your heart, or will not change your attitude about reality or the world. John the Baptist says the real baptism comes from Jesus, a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. 

This is when you really get the point. Hopefully that begins to happen somewhere in the middle of life, after you’ve loved a bit, suffered a bit, failed a bit, rejoiced a bit, lived a bit. John the Baptist was a prophet and is a saint in the Church, but he’s more a saint for the first half of life. If you’re not zealous and excited about something as a kid or a teenager, you’re probably not going to be excited about anything in the second half of life. We all have to build our house in the first half of life, and John the Baptist is very good at helping us do that. Every young person has to live within a world of containment and structure and feeling affirmed and thinking they are a big shot because they are the star of the basketball team or the prettiest girl in high school or they drive a muscle car. It’s all stupid, but it’s what you think is important at that stage. It all screams, “I’m important. I matter. Notice me.” We were all teenagers once, so we wanted to be numero uno. Everything about you, including your country and your religion was the best. When you see this in younger people, you smile and look the other way, because you know it doesn’t mean much by the time you’re 40. But never take this away from the young people, because we were all young once and we were given permission to build our own houses by elders in our lives who smiled and looked the other way. 

But that very house, that identity you’ve built in the first half of life, is very zealous and righteous and very opinionated (that’s why kids are hard to raise, they’re so opinionated about things that don’t matter). The very house we build–here’s the bad news–has to fall apart in order for us to grow up. The axe is set to the root of the tree. Darn it. You thought you were the best, you belonged to the best country, the best religion, the best political party, the best gender–pick whatever category you want. It doesn’t matter; it’s always the best. That has to fall apart because it isn’t true; it isn’t all about you. It isn’t all about me. You just can’t hear that in the first half of life very well. Initially, it’s not about life or love or God. If the first half of life is about zeal and ambition, then the second half of life is basically about compassion. It’s a whole different agenda. 

You are here because you are interested in the second half of life. You want to be led to wisdom instead of just knowledge; you want understanding instead of just information. That’s the second half of life; that’s the religion of Jesus. Some Christians only get there on their death bed, in the last five days of life. They finally wake up and realize what really matters and all the things that didn’t matter at all. There are some really good things about the first half of life, but just don’t get too attached to them. The best is yet to come. 

The second half of life is about falling, failing, making mistakes, and even sinning, if you will. Everybody sins as St. Paul says in Romans. You got to taste it, feel it, admit it, suffer it. You’re not the great person you made your religion, your gender, or your country to be. You’re just like everybody else. Darn it, again. We all need the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. The descent of the Spirit will tell us what really matters, what is really true, what is universally true, not just in our culture or our country but what’s true everywhere and all the time. Then you are ready to be a universal woman, a universal man. That’s the meaning of Catholic. The word Catholic means universal. There’s more to creating Catholics than just pouring water over them. We tend to be more in our little tribes rather than loving the universal body of Christ, where we all belong, where we all have our place, and where we are all a combination of good and bad. Let’s allow love, and God, and grace to make us all Catholic in the truest sense of the word.

Fr. Phil