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Review of Book: To Believe in Jesus

IN her third book, Ruth Burrows attempts to present the message of her previous works in a form less specialized and more attractive to lay people. Her basic theme is that faith involves a total commitment of our whole being, through an absolutely unfragmented dispossession of the ego and the self, to our Lord Jesus in an act of loving abandonment and trust. The measure of our self-gift is precisely Christ's total self-gift: we must not impose any limits to our surrender, nor may we attach conditions of any kind to our belonging to Christ. This self-gift is totally undramatic, obscure and even scandalously unheroic. No pretensions, no airs of sanctity, no comforting preconceptions are involved. Indeed we have to shrug off many long-cherished notions of holiness and prepare ourselves to feel nothing exceptional. Mystical graces, so long the stock-in-trade of the would-be aspirant to union with Christ, must be dismissed as nearly always the mere sign of human weakness. Ruth Burrows deals in turn with the various elements in this work of giving of ourselves to Christ in a manner that is both forthright and astute. She is not afraid to destroy several idols and the blunt reappraisals which were so impressive in her Guidelinesfor Mystical Prayer are once more to be found here. Particularly effective is her way of tackling our human nature and its needs. Physical satisfaction is in no way to be regarded as disgraceful, unspiritual or a bar to true holiness. She rightly corrects what she terms the Jansenistic attitude and shows that it is simply unfaithful to the Gospel. The result of this faith in Jesus is not being more virtuous, more efficient in the perfecting of ourself, but simply belonging to Jesus so fully that we are not really ourselves any more. The famous phrase of St Paul explains this: 'I live now, not I, but Christ lives within me'. Again we may recall the words of St Catherine of Siena: 'My Me is God'. The book has several defects, though not so obvious as in Guidelines. In the first place, there is a persistent note of gloomy pessimism about the very small numbers of people who really believe in Jesus. One is frequently left with the feeling that there is not much hope for most of us, who for reasons of selfishness and inertia must content ourselves with a second-class Christianity. The book ought to express more hope, based not on weakness, of course, but upon God's love. With him all things are possible. Second, Ruth Burrows frequently shows a certain harshness of tone which reminds one more of a Headmistress than of a guide in spiritual matters. Lay people may indeed be shiftless and lazy about their faith, as may religious too, but the diagnosis must be geared to the cure. Thirdly, there seems to be some confusion about religious experiences, which tend to be dismissed as worthless illusions. It is important to be clear that, while so-called mystical graces and experiences are not signs