Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

“Why Lord?”

I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes. Job 42:3-6

Jesus does not take away all our wounds, any more than the Father erased all of his wounds. Rather, he disinfects them and glorifies them.

For Jesus, the Resurrection was not an emergency room where the Father took away all of the signs of the Passion. Jesus rose with his wounds, wounds now transformed from darkness to light, dug into his hands in time and in pain and now become eternal fonts of light and blessing and glory.

Nor is the Resurrection Jesus’ reward for having suffered. It is rather the unstoppable explosion of glory that pours forth from Love’s triump on the Cross. - Mother Teresa: In the Shadow of Our Lady

Some of us are convinced we love God, but in reality we do more to serve our own self-interests and desires. Instead of surrendering ourselves to serving God in small, simple and selfless ways which allow Him to work in our lives - we seek out “feelings” as a barometer to reassure ourselves that who we are, and what we’re doing is righteous, acceptable and holy. We desire the spiritual delights while ignoring the disciplines which are required to attain them. We hope for miracles, rather than trusting and working hard to repair our broken lives. We wander from the Way of the Cross in order to seek out our own type of spiritual condition with God (hoping that it be similar to that of mystics) - attempting to play God’s hand in our lives, instead of allowing Him to provide the gifts which He desired for us since the beginning.

How sad it is, O Jesus, when we ourselves are the cause of the loss of graces. Whoever understands this is always faithful. —Saint Faustina (Diary, 690)

Holiness is not measured with “spiritual” feelings but with obedient perseverance.

You shall accept all sufferings with love. Do not be afflicted if your heart often experiences repugnance and dislike for sacrifice. All its power rests in the will, and so these contrary feelings, far from lowering the value of sacrifice in My eyes, will enhance it

—as told to Saint Faustina, Diary, 1767

I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. For you say, “I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,” and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. —Revelation 3:15-19

We go to Mass and know all of our favorite prayers and devotions by heart and give thanks and praise to God for our charmed lives and blessings. We understand grace, sin, humility and so on. So it is, we intellectually practice our faith. We understand that we are ourselves sinners and the importance of showing tolerance, charity, forgiveness, mercy, etc..unto others. - Easy enough to intellectually understand and appreciate, “except for the grace of God - there go I“, but why is it so difficult for some of us to fully accept and embrace, to the point we faithfully live it?

By nature we are prouder than peacocks, we cling to the earth more than toads, we are baser than goats, more envious than serpents, greedier than pigs, fiercer than tigers, lazier than tortoises, weaker than reeds, and more changeable than weather-cocks. We have in us nothing but sin and deserve only the wrath of God and the eternity of hell. —Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 79

In the fallen world which we live, there are those among us who develop a type of pathological, self-hating wretchedness and choose to intellectually run away from it’s associated pain by seeking out hedonistic means of “feeling good” while convincing ourselves that we were somehow superior to our enemies (which in itself can become an addictive behavior). Those of us who pick this particular path of self-destruction eventually become blind to one’s own wickedness, and many times project the evil from within onto any enemy of choice.

There are many among us who are in the process of healing from the sins of our past while desperately holding on to this deep seeded, dysfunctional coping mechanism, which ultimately makes for a self-discovery of one’s own wretched heart a slow and often painful process. Many will choose to never venture outside of their spiritual comfort zone and remain neither hot nor cold. Others will buy His gold refined by fire, and despite the struggles and many prideful falls along the way, one may hope to attain the prize of purifying clarity. For those who persevere through divine grace, will be the hope of loving God more deeply and seeking greater and greater purification from our wretchedness, which will ultimately make us free to love others as God loves us.

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Just as children who are ignorant of the realities of dirt and disease will resist bathing, those who reject the realities of being subconsciously enslaved through one’s own past will most likely resist spiritual purification. When one is faced with personal tribulations (as we surely all will be), a golden opportunity will be lost by those of us whose only focus is to, “get rid of the problem.” If only more of us would be willing and able to look deep within our selves to critically recognize and remedy psychological ailments/emotional conflicts which are responsible for so many of our problems, we would recognize these trials as God’s way of calling us to overcome old weaknesses and develop new virtues.

An excerpt from the teachings of the sixth century abbot, St. Dorotheus:

Certainly if someone examines himself carefully and with fear of God, he will never find himself completely innocent. He will see that he has given some provocation by an action, a word or by his manner. If he does find that he is not guilty in any of these ways, certainly he must have injured that brother somehow at some other time. Or perhaps he has been a source of annoyance to some other brother. For this reason he deserves to endure the injury because of many other sins that he has committed on other occasions.

The man who thinks that he is quiet and peaceful has within him a passion that he does not see. A brother comes up, utters some unkind word and immediately all the venom and mire that lie hidden within him are spewed out. If he wishes mercy, he must do penance, purify himself and strive to become perfect. He will see that he should have returned thanks to his brother instead of returning the injury, because his brother has proven to be an occasion of profit to him. It will not be long before he will no longer be bothered by these temptations. The more perfect he grows, the less these temptations will affect him. For the more the soul advances, the stronger and more powerful it becomes in bearing the difficulties that it meets.

“It does not matter how many virtues a man may have, even if they are beyond number and limit. If he has turned from the path of self-scrutiny, he will never find peace. He will always be troubled himself, or else he will be a source of trouble for others, and all his labors will be wasted.” —from the teachings of Saint Dorotheus, abbot, Office of Readings, Monday, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

The popular press it seems is making this claim. CBS ran a story this evening based upon a new book publishing Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual director. This information is nothing new. It was in the Catholic press many years ago (e.g. see this Zenit article for example). Here is what CBS reports:

“Where is my faith?” she writes. “Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. … If there be God — please forgive me.”

Eight years later, she’s still looking for the belief she’s lost.

“Such deep longing for God,” she writes. “… repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal.”

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she says, is a mask.

“What do I labor for?” she asks. “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.”

This is what this means to the reporter:

Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta’s slums, the spirit leaves her.

I have not read the context but if you read St. Thérèse’s Story of a Soul, you will see very much the same thing.Again, the context is important but here you read her pouring out her sufferings in her many years of temptation against her faith.

The popular press goes beyond its competence in trying to explain what she wrote.What the passages mean depends upon what you understand faith to be.Because the press exists in an essentially emotivist culture, I suspect that they equate faith with affective experience, i.e., feelings. That is no doubt what they mean by “the spirit” leaving her.

This is not faith. Rather, as Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux and a host of others witness, the strongest faith is that which presses on without the affective experience. So what is faith?

Faith is both a human act and it is also content. The act of faith is one of surrendering yourself to God in trust in order to believe what it is that He reveals and to do that which He wills. The content of faith is that which God reveals through His Church and as taught by the Magisterium.

However, faith is also a theological virtue. In other words, it is a gift of grace that supernaturally strengthens one’s act of faith and it provides (usually) a supernatural certitude that one’s faith is true. Recall that grace doesn’t force nature, but it heals, elevates, and perfects human nature. Thus, this grace takes the human act of faith, which is necessary because without it there is nothing for grace to work on, and grace supernaturalizes it.

Time magazine also did a rather longer article, which did do more research. In fact, unlike CBS, the reporter has heard of the dark night of the soul. With St. John of the Cross, he says that though St. John suffered for 45 years, he eventually recovered. Clearly this is a psychological experience as far as he is concerned. Here is how time magazine described it:

I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,’” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world “that radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere — “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

Of course, Time had to go to Christopher Hitchens for his expert analysis. I will spare you Hitchen’s response as you can probably guess. So why do these reporters say that she lost her faith?Do any of the statements above show that she lost her faith?

Let’s look at the act of faith.Is there any evidence in the above that Blessed Teresa chose not to surrender herself to God? No, she continues to long for God but she does not experience His consoling gift.Let’s look at her public actions. They were continually vivified by faith, even when she did not experience it. She did not surrender to doubt or she would have not continued to suffer the doubts. In fact, to the end she preached the gospel in every occasion. So she never refuted the content. This is heroic faith, to perdure against the greatest of temptations. In fact, as the Zenit article above, as does a careful reading of the Time article, indicates that those closest to her did not have a clue that she was undergoing this intense suffering but that she did not stop offering herself to God. This is Christian heroism.

So if she did not stop offering herself to God in trust, she did not lose this aspect of her faith.  Then how about the theological virtue, the gift? Do we say that God did not give her this gift if she didn’t experience it. Given what she was able to continue to do and the experiences of grace people in her presence received while she was living, and finally, given the fact that we believe that this gift of grace is given in the Sacraments which she continued to receive, it must be assumed that she never lost this gift of faith. So what was there for her to lose, if anything?

The only thing she lost was the experience of consolation, the affective assurance of her faith that was always there. This is a universal experience of those who experience the dark night of the soul. One might ask why would God ask people to go through this experience?

Well, we are made in the image of total, self-giving Love. That is what the Trinity is. Thus, we are made to give ourselves totally to God and then to others. With respect to faith, when we experience affective reinforcement for our faith, there is always a part of us that is motivated to give itself to God for the positive feelings that we experience. These feelings, in a real way, deprive us of the opportunity to make this total, disinterested gift of ourselves.

Those, who in this life, experience this dark night, are those who God knows will remain faithful and so they are given the great grace of embracing the Cross and Christ’s dark night (”My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me”). They are given the opportunity to most perfectly give themselves totally. They continue to love God–they give themselves totally to Him for His sake and not for anything that they receive in return.

The press is understandably ignorant of this and interpret her experience from an emotivist and utilitarian (i.e. that something is only good if it results in pleasure) world view. Emotivism tells us that if we do not feel something then it is not there. If we do not “feel” sorry, then we are not sorry. If we do not “feel” in love, then we are not in love. This makes feelings the arbiter of truth. It is a very dangerous error because while our feelings are good, it is our reason and free will that make us human. To surrender our freedom to our feelings is to deny our humanity and make us slaves to ourselves and almost defenseless against Satan’s temptations.

It is no doubt why this is “important” news to the mass media. It helps them to placate the burning emptiness the vast majority of them (polls suggest) experience for their lack of faith. They want to believe that faith is not possible and so they think that this is their assurance–if a great Blessed like Mother Teresa seems to have lost her faith then faith must not be possible.

There is a great difference between the emptiness that Mother Teresa experienced in her dark night and the emptiness that those without faith experience. Mother Teresa experienced hers in love, knowing but not feeling that she was united to Christ and she was given the grace to press on in her mission and her growth in holiness. She did not try to fill the emptiness with material goods but left it there to be filled by God.

Those without faith attempt to fill their emptiness with “stuff” of the world. Eventually they will experience despair of this longing ever being filled.They do not grow in holiness but regress into selfishness and look with disdain at those who tell them that faith and peace are possible. They cannot receive the grace they need for their healing and so they continue to take when their healing only comes through giving.

It is not surprising that Satan can turn a great life of heroic faith into an argument against its possibility. This is simply because love is misunderstood in our society. Only those who experience self giving love can understand how the dark night can be God’s gift to those who He loves most. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!

Here is a link to John Brown, S. J.’s, website who, along with some Jesuit companions, is doing a series on the Society of Jesus.  It is very well done and informative.  It is also very enheartening to see that it appears that at least the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus seems to be returning to its charism of authentically teaching and defending the faith.  The first installment is on Ignatian Spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises.  It is now available (which you can also see below if you want to check it out before going over) with subsequent installments being released over the next 9 weeks (click on Jesuit Review when you get there).

He has some other helpful information available on his website as well.  Take a look and see if you might be ready for an Ignatian silent retreat.  I hear that the Lousiana retreat house is especially good.

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 As the antithesis of the retiring Archbishop Flynn, incoming Bishop John Nienstedt will most likely be patient and avoid making any immediate policy changes in the notoriously troubled archdiocese. I have seen and heard of the frustrations that some have with Cardinal George in Chicago, and expect there may be similar expectations of immediate and revealing changes in St. Paul and Minneapolis with Bishop Nienstedt. While sometimes we would rather our Bishops assume the role of Jesus with the money changers in the temple, we also need to recognize the patience of our Lord in our own baby steps in our pursuit of holiness.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you might be asking yourself what the heck is this guy doing writing about Catholic, or for that matter any, literary matters. This would be an excellent observation. I don’t intend to write about the literary arts per se, rather, on a particular concern associated with the. Some time ago I posted on a book by a Catholic novelist on the issue of chastity.

It was a good book but I had some misgivings about some of the content (actually a quite small part). However, it was very much in line of what you might read from Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. There was the use of obscene language and some mild sexual scenes. So what’s my problem?

There are three issues here as I see them. First, there is the issue of purity. Second, we have the matter of material participation in evil. Finally, we have the issue of scandal. I will take them one at a time.

Flannery O’Connor had some misgivings about her style and how it corresponded to her faith but after consulting with her spiritual director, he told her that she did not have the obligation to write for a 15 year old girl. True enough; I suppose that we are guilty here at C-L-S of assuming this as well. However, there ought to be more said about this. While we do not have the obligation to limit everything we write or say to audiences that are not sufficiently mature to deal with certain topics this is not the same as saying we do not have the obligation to attend to the concern of avoiding putting others into the near occasion of sin. We are our brothers’ keepers and must help to guard others’ purity. This is not the same as puritanism.

O.k., so what is the difference between purity and puritanism? Purity is a single minded commitment of the will to be in accord with God and therefore to look upon other human beings in the way that God created them. In other words, purity recognizes that each human person is made in the image of God and created for their own sakes. The person is made body and soul and purity recognizes, therefore, the beauty and goodness of the body and its important role in manifesting the person. It also recognizes the importance and goodness, nay holiness, of marital sexual intercourse. Purity recognizes that the only proper attitude toward a person is love. Others cannot be treated as a means but must always be looked upon as ends in themselves. Thus, no one can be reduced to their physical (or any other) attributes. They cannot be looked upon as a means to pleasure.

Purity also recognizes that we are in a fallen state and that it is a constant struggle to avoid the reduction of the other to a means to an end. This is very often sexual or emotional pleasure, but not always. And so purity recognizes that there are certain things that can lead one to see and treat others as objects. As an example, men are very visual and can be, in varying degrees, visually superficial. Thus, those wishing to be pure must avoid such occasions that would subject them to impure thoughts. While these are often visual, as I will discuss below, words can be powerful occasions for returning one to problematic visual experiences. Women wishing to guard men’s purity will not subject reveal their bodies in such a way as to make themselves the occasion of temptations against purity.

Puritanism, on the other hand, sees the body and even marital sexual intercourse as dirty, as something of a necessary evil. So while the response of someone motivated by puritanism and one motivated by an authentic concern for purity may sometimes externally appear to be the same, it will not be such in all cases because of their different motivations. For example, while respecting purity, the naked human body may be portrayed in art if it is done in such a way as to reveal the whole human person rather than to evoke an erotic response. Puritanism would never allow this to be done.

So now that we have these terms defined, we need to look at what we are doing in literature with words and word images. Words are symbols and have symbolic value. They point to a reality beyond themselves. I suppose that our post-Cartesian mindset has led us to view symbols in a disembodied, even arbitrary manner. A rose by any other name…

There is some truth to the claim of arbitrariness to the assigning of names to things, but this is not universally true. Nor does this fact negate the mediation of the thing symbolized, in a very real way, through its symbol. Symbols are more than just arbitrary signs of something else. We recognize this in our human experience. For example, the way a person’s name can mediate their presence to us in such a way that we actually experience in a certain manner, their presence.

Another example might be the way we react when someone says something kind or hateful to us. Even if we know what they are thinking, the experience of hearing or reading the words gives us the sense that the words have an ontology of their own. We are cut to the quick with hateful words or uplifted in an almost transcendent way with words of affirmation. There is a weightiness to the spoken and written word that goes beyond simple affective or psychological response.

Thus, words and word images can and do mediate to us the object or experience they symbolize, in way that cannot be reduced to the cognitive. That is why words are so powerful and must be used with much care. This brings us to the second issue: material participation in evil.

We must always avoid evil, but there are times when as an unintended side effect of a good act with a good intention, we find that the good done results in bad consequences. Sometimes we find that accepting the unintended consequences is justified by the greater proportion of good that will come from the good act and good intention. The Catholic tradition refers to this as the principle of double effect. Just war teaching relies upon this principle. In the case of using words or word images that might evoke impure responses in others but the intention is to explain circumstances and/or actually counter the effects of such events and words the use of them may be justified. However, we must first recognize that they are evils.

If we look at obscenities, we can see that they usually have to do with the bathroom or the bedroom. Most others tend to reduce the human person to something less than human. Most all have the same goal. They take what is holy or sacred (an act or a human person) and try to reduce it to the profane. Even if they are not always intended in this way by those who use them, that is their etymology. Thus, the use of them is at least a material participation in evil. Formal participation would be actually intending, to some degree, to convey the evil sentiment. Material participation can sometimes be licit and necessary. Formal participation in evil can never be justified.

Therefore, one must recognize the gravity of choosing to use obscene words or word images. It seems to me that literary merit in and of itself cannot be the only consideration. Rather, the gravity of material participation in evil dictates that one must ensure the use of obscene words or word images is an absolute necessity with no other effective way to bring about the good. Furthermore, one can never employ obscenities with the intent that the reader will experience a lurid response and furthermore, the writer must use all his skill to ensure that this is avoided. This would be formal participation and no good result can ever justify it.

The final issue is scandal. There are two aspects to this issue. The first is that which we have been discussing all along. Christian scandal is not what is often meant colloquially by the use of the term, mainly shocking sensibilities. Rather, the Christian meaning can be found in its Greek etymological origin, scandalon, which means a stone upon which one stumbles. In other words, in this context one is guilty of scandal when he causes others to sin or he makes it at least a near temptation. Today, so many have been exposed to pornography that this becomes a dicey issue. It does not take much for some (many?) to be led back to these images impressed forever in their memories. This ought to be taken into consideration, at least in deciding how to craft the use of one’s literary material.

However, something else ought to be considered as well. We are conditioned by our culture with the idea of “adult” humor, content, etc. into a mistaken notion about adult abilities. Now, while it is true that adults do have a greater maturity and therefore, capacity and obligation to master themselves and their responses to exposure to impure, or suggestively so, experiences, we too often naively assume that these exposures have no effect on us. All have varying degrees of self-mastery, but no one can be so confident in themselves that they would unthinkingly expose themselves to impurity. In fact, I would submit that exposure to impurity has a tremendous, cumulative, and perhaps almost imperceptible effect on our thinking and willful responses to temptations against purity. Being an “adult” does not give anyone license to expose himself to impurity with the presumption that their are no negative consequences for so doing. In fact, just the opposite is true. As an adult, one has the obligation to recognize and avoid all temptations against purity.

The other aspect of scandal is that by use of obscenity one can lead his readers to assume that obscene words or word images are “no big deal.” I think that this does happen when, for example, someone reads Walker Percy, knowing that he was a very faithful Catholic and sees his use of obscenities, the reader comes to think that there is nothing wrong with or at least no caution necessary with their use.

This is why you do not see the use of such words here and that we edit out or delete any such use as seems appropriate. Thoughts?

I found a link to this video at kris’s blog where Mother Theresa gives advice on doing small things with great love.

I love the simplicity and holiness of this woman.  This one on forgiveness from the heart.

Here is an old article from First Things on the Dark Night of Mother Theresa.

Today is the feast of the North American Martyrs, the eight Jesuits who were martyred by Iriquois and Huron natives between 1642 and 1649. Especially noted by the Church this day are St. Isaac Jogues and St. John de Brebeuf. I taught about these Martyrs recently and so I had the opportunity to investigate the manner of their lives and deaths. All of these saints were enlivened with zeal for Jesus Christ and spreading His gospel, but these two stand out.

St. Isaac Jogues was concerned for the Natives’ spiritual and temporal welfare. During his missionary activities, he was captured, tortured and kept in slavery for over a year until Dutch Calvinists helped to rescue him. During his trials, several fingers from his hands had been chewed or burnt off. He was returned to France where he was given a dispensation to say Mass by the Pope since at the time his mutilated hands made that a canonical impossibility. He begged his superior and eventually was allowed to return to North America where all knew he would eventually suffer martyrdom. This came to fulfillment within two years of his returned. For more on St. Isaac see the Catholic Encyclopedia.

St. John de Brebeuf was one who prepared Jesuits for their missionary activities. He would admonish his pupils that if they were to be successful in winning the natives to Christ, they must sincerely love them. He was also eventually captured and here is a description of the torture that he suffered:

On entering the village, they were met with a shower of stones, cruelly beaten with clubs, and then tied to posts to be burned to death. Brebeuf is said to have kissed the stake to which he was bound. The fire was lighted under them, and their bodies slashed with knives. Brebeuf had scalding water poured on his head in mockery of baptism, a collar of red-hot tomahawk-heads placed around his neck, a red-hot iron thrust down his throat, and when he expired his heart was cut out and eaten. Through all the torture he never uttered a groan. The Iroquois withdrew when they had finished their work. The remains of the victims were gathered up subsequently, and the head of Brebeuf is still kept as a relic at the Hetel-Dieu, Quebec.

From his diary, which is in today’s Office of Readings, it is clear that he both expected martyrdom and desired it. He was also quite aware of what awaited him but he was confident that if this was God’s will, that he would be given the strength to endure it. He writes:

Jesus, my Lord and Savior, what can I give you in return for all the favors you have conferred on me? I will take from your hand the cup of yours sufferings and call on your name. I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most Holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles, and martyrs, before my blessed fathers Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier–in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Savior, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day you in your infinite mercy should offer it to me, your most unworthy servant.

For more on St. John go also over to New Advent.

These men were moved by the Holy Spirit with a burning desire to witness Trinitarian Love made Incarnate in Jesus Christ and manifested by His total gift of Himself to the Father on the Cross, for us. It is with this love, made efficacious for us on the Cross, that we are called to participate as the medicine for the restoration of harmony on earth and the conquering of sin and death by drowning evil with love. Evil is not destroyed through violence, it is destroyed only by love joined to the Cross. In other words, the Cross triumphs over evil in our day and time only through God’s grace working through His unworthy servants who have incorporated themselves into Christ’s Mystical Body.

For those such as myself raised and nurtured in the arts of applying military tools as the solution to problems of aggressive violence, the Church’s wisdom of celebrating martyrdom is a continual blessing. It is easy to confuse the rightful honor given to those who selflessly serve others by protecting them, often at the cost of their lives, with the sometimes violent methods that need be employed. However, it must be clear that violence itself is not honorable, it is a necessary evil that is often too quickly employed. This is especially true of those who have the greater capacity to wield it.

In reading St. John’s diary, I am reminded that if I am to truly imitate Christ in trying to bring peace and safety to the world, I must have much more zeal for giving myself back to Him in imitation of His total self gift than zeal for attempting to bring peace through violence.

When a good man says or does something bad, do we discover the “real” person? “When only curruption is authentic” is Eloquently written by David of Be Here Mondays

“No matter the terrible thoughts that beset a man, they do not represent him truly, unless he pertinaciously and characteristically indulges them. A man’s character, after all, is what he wills of himself.”

Another fascinating post by the SheepCat on sexual sin with self-distrust & humility.

Reactions after falling into the occasion of sexual sin.

How confession after a sexual lapse is used as a sense of ritual and external cleansing.

Mis-use of their spirtual father through their wounded self-love.

“Souls begin to enter what is called “dark night” when God, gradually drawing them out of the state of beginners (those who practice meditation on the spiritual road), begins to place them in the state of proficients (those who are already contemplatives), so that by passing through this state they might reach that of the perfect, which is the divine union of the soul with God.”

“The soul must ordinarily walk this path to reach that sublime and joyous union with God. Recognizing the narrowness of the path and the fact that so very few tread it — as the Lord himself says [Mt. 7:14] — the soul’s song in this first stanza is one of happiness in having advanced along it to this perfection of love.” Spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, one of which, can be described as spiritual lust. Without a person’s will or consent, impure feelings may be experienced in the sensory part of the soul. It may happen when one is deep in prayer or even while receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one’s control.

First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from sex, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit experiences renewal and satisfaction in God. The sensory is gratified through it’s senses. It may happen that while a soul is in deep spiritual prayer, it will passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure. “This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy in this act of love, the sensory is gratified, each according to its mode. Since these two parts are joined, each one shares in what the other receives.  Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more in the advanced ones, God’s spirit is frequently received in the imperfected part of the sensory. Once the sensory is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it is no longer afflicted by it’s previous infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul (not the sensory part) receives God’s spirit, and the soul thus receives everything according to the mode of the spirit.

“The second origin of these rebellions is the devil. To bring turmoil and disturbance on a praying soul, he attempts to excite impure feelings in the sensory part. If one is to pay any attention to these, the devil does them great harm. Through fear, some souls grow slack in their prayer — which is what the devil wants.  Many times, this is too much to endure and many give it up entirely, or they think the feelings come while they are engaged in prayer rather than at other times, and this is true because the devil enjoys to torment the soul while they are at prayer, so that they might abandon prayer. And that is not all; to make them cowardly and afraid, he brings vividly to their minds foul and impure thoughts. The thoughts will concern spiritually helpful things and persons. Those who attribute any importance to such thoughts, therefore, do not even dare look at anything or think about anything lest they thereupon stumble into them. These impure thoughts so affect people who are afflicted with melancholia that one should have great pity for them; for these people suffer a tormented life. Some who are so troubled with the profanity of evil, they clearly feel that the devil has access to them without their having the freedom to prevent it. Yet there a some who are able to endure this power of the devil. If these impure thoughts and Feelings arise from melancholia, individuals are not ordinarily freed unless they enter the dark night, which in time deprives them of everything.”

“The third origin from which these impure feelings usually proceed and wage war on the soul is the latter’s fear of them. The fear that springs up at the sudden remembrance of these thoughts, caused by what one sees, is dealing with, or thinking of, produces impure feelings without the person being at fault. Some people are so delicate that when gratification is received spiritually, or in prayer, they immediately experience a lust that so inebriates them and caresses their senses that they become as it were engulfed in the delight and satisfaction of that vice; and this experience continues passively with the other. Sometimes these individuals become aware that certain impure and rebellious acts have taken place. The reason for such occurrences is that since these natures are, as I say, delicate and tender, their humors and blood are stirred up by any change. These persons also experience such feelings when they are inflamed with anger or are agitated by some other disturbance or affliction.”

“Sometimes, too, in their spiritual conversations or works, they manifest a certain sprightliness and gallantry on considering who is present, and they carry on with a kind of vain satisfaction. Such behavior is also a by-product of spiritual lust (in the way we here understand it), which generally accompanies complacency of the will. Some spiritually acquire a liking for other individuals that often arises from lust rather than from the spirit. This lustful origin will be recognized if, on recalling that affection, there is remorse of conscience, not an Increase in the remembrance and love of God. The affection is purely spiritual if the love of God grows when it grows, or if the love of God is remembered as often as the affection is remembered, or if the affection gives the soul a desire for God — if by growing in one the soul grows also in the other. For this is a trait of God’s spirit: The good increases with the good since there is likeness and conformity between them. But when the love is born of this sensual vice it has the contrary effects. As the one love grows greater, the other lessens, and the remembrance of it lessens too.”

“If the inordinate love increases, then, as will be seen, the soul grows cold in the love of God and, because of the recollection of that other love, forgets him — not without feeling some remorse of conscience. On the other hand, as the love of God increases, the soul grows cold in the inordinate affection and comes to forget it. For not only do these loves fail to benefit each other, but, since they are contrary loves, the predominating one, while becoming stronger itself, stifles and extinguishes the other, as the philosophers say. Hence our Savior proclaimed in the Gospel: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit [Jn. 3:6], that is: Love derived from sensuality terminates in sensuality, and the love that is of the spirit terminates in the spirit of God, and brings it increase.”

“And this, then, is the difference between these two loves, which enables us to discern one from the other. When the soul enters the dark night, all these loves are placed in reasonable order. This night strengthens and purifies the love that is of God, and takes away and destroys the other.”

 

Source Article: Extensive quoting used.

Awhile back, I did a short series on the human person. In one of the articles, I touched on the relationship between the human person’s ultimate end and that which we often confuse for it. To be more specific, I discussed how man’s ultimate happiness is to be found in his participation in Trinitarian Communion and the way that consumption in the material world often disguises this end and often diverts us from the path leading to it.

Given that we have come to the end of the Christmas Octave, the liturgical time in which we commemorate the Incarnation that made possible our incorporation into Trinitarian Communion by means of the Hypostatic Union, I thought I would jot down a few more thoughts on this topic based upon reflections from other theologians, especially John Paul the Great’s theology of the body catecheses.

John Paul reminds us that we were made in the image of a Communio Personarum, a community of divine Persons. However, unlike divine Persons, human persons were created with a potency, a capacity, to cooperate in perfecting themselves. This perfection is described as holiness. What holiness means is that we achieve total self-possession by cooperating with grace, through prayer and practice of the virtues, such that we are able to readily and totally give ourselves to God first and then to others. This need for total self-gift for human holiness, read human happiness, derives from the fact that God is Love. John Paul shows what this means by using the tradition of the Trinitarian Processions to find that Love means total self-gift (see our About post for more of an explanation of this). Thus, on earth we are given the task to develop the habitus, the habit, by which we can totally give ourselves to God. But John Paul reminds us that we cannot give that which we do not first possess.

This task remains for us as long as we live out our lives in this fallen state. Here on earth we must cooperate with grace, which is the partaking in the divine nature (see 2 Peter 1:4), through the Sacraments in order to overcome our fallen desires. In our fallen state, our appetites for the goods which satiate the needs of the material aspects of our being become disordered when they do damage to the higher goods which perfect our whole personhood. For example, our desire to have communion with that extra donut when we know we ought not becomes problematic when we habitually give into our desire for this material good. Doing so deprives us of the self-possession necessary if we are to give our whole selves to God. While, this might seem a minor example, the principle is the same for more grave examples. In fact, the habitual submission to lesser temptations, makes it more and more difficult to resist graver temptations.

Notice above that I characterized eating the donut in terms of a communion. Eating is the predominant form of communion available to the aspect of our nature that we share with lower life forms. In this “communion” we take up the lower organic materials and incorporate them into our own bodies. This, however, is not the true communion for which our whole being pines. The communion by which the lower life forms give way to the higher life forms is called consumption. Consumption is solely a temporary satisfaction of an affectivity or appetite by which the lower forms are annihilated by the higher.

It is no surprise then, I suppose, that Adam and Eve’s fall is depicted in terms of consuming the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. This is what I mean. Though it is not a necessary result, creation arises out of the overflowing of Trinitarian Love, from total Self-gift. Created being, because it’s archetype is in God, must reflect God’s perfection in some manner. The Early Church Fathers, especially Pseudo-Dionysius, characterized the manner the entire cosmos reflects its Trinitarian archetype as the eternal cosmic return to the Father, where all that was given by the Father will ultimately all return to Him. They saw this truth firmly revealed in Scripture when all creation will be recapitulated in Christ.

Adam and Eve, who on behalf of all of visible creation, were called to freely complete this eternal return after the archetype of Trinitarian love, by totally giving themselves back to God in trusting thanksgiving for their existence. This free act of total self-gift was destroyed when instead of trusting in God and receiving as a gift all He intended to give them for their happiness, they decided they needed to “take” instead. They were tempted to believe God was withholding from them something that they needed for their fulfillment, for their ultimate happiness. This taking seems to be presented as the antithesis of the gift. Instead of returning themselves to God and bringing forth a communion with Him, they chose another path. Notice, they not only take, but they consume. Consumption has now replaced communion as the dominant mode by which mankind is motivated and, thereby, so often deceived into replacing the true good with apparent goods.

With the Fall, we lost original communion, original grace. God reconciled this grave situation through a new creation. To transcend the infinite gulf between God and man, a rupture opened up by an act of consumption, indicating self-trust at the expense of divine trust, God became Man. On behalf of all creation, the God-Man returned to the Father all He was given, which included His human life. The Cross is, par excellence, a manifestation of Trinitarian love. It is also the singular saving act of human total self-gift because it has an infinite character due to its having been performed by a divine Person. With the Cross, humanity now has renewed access to divine nature. However, this access comes only through each person’s incorporation into the Incarnation. We must become new creations as Jesus told Nicodemus and as St. Paul advised, through Baptism. Baptism incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church. In the Church we are wedded to divinity through the Bridegroom and through which we become what we eat. We are the Mystical Body of Christ because we consume Him, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist. Only by this act of consumption can we have real communion.

As I mentioned above, consumption incorporates lower life into higher life. Communion, rather, weds lives together. In the Eucharist we can see the way that God redeems consumption, showing us that the material aspect of our humanity is a good if kept in the proper order. In Holy Communion we consume God, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, but instead of bringing him down into our nature, we are brought up into His. We become divinized. Neither person is absorbed into the other, but we are wedded to Christ and thereby, incorporated into Trinitarian love.

Through this communion, we are given the strength we need to overcome the “man of lust.” That is, man in the dispensation of sin in which he is subject to the threefold lust of which St. John the Divine speaks: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are an ever present temptation. We are continually tempted to try to satisfy our desire for communion with God with consumption of food, drink, and other pleasures of the flesh. We are tempted to distort the life giving love of marital communion with the consumption of another soul in selfish sexual intercourse for the sake of pleasure or the sake of binding another to ourselves in seeking a sense of security or self-worth. We are tempted to replace our trust in God with a misplaced faith in the gods of science who promise us health, wealth and power, even power over life itself.

It is only through authentic communion with God in Christ that we can prepare ourselves for our ultimate communion with God in heaven. Sacramental communion gives us access to grace and the supernatural virtues, which alone heals, elevates and perfects nature. Grace alone can perfect the natural virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude whereby we gain the total self-possession we need to escape slavery to our passions so that we can become slaves to Christ. It is through prayer where we perfect our thirst for total self-giving by which we become holy.

In the end, the only consumption upon which we dare rely for our salvation is Holy Communion.

Today is the Feast Day of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I deeply love this little doctor of the Church. Reading her autobiography, Story of a Soul, is an eye opener in the ways of humility, and serving God and others in the same profound way that C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters is an eye opener about temptation and spiritual sloth. St. Thérèse’s little way is a brilliant approach to the spiritual life. In fact, it is the way that we should approach all aspects of life.

EWTN began their 25th anniversary tour today. Fr. Charles Connor took the opportunity to demonstrate the way the God can use a humble servant who has no pretenses other than to serve God in whatever way He desires. He explained that Mother Angelica began EWTN with $200 in the bank and some equipment in her garage, broadcasting for just four hours a day and now EWTN is the largest broadcasting network in the world. It reaches over 100 million viewers a day, all over the world and has thousands upon thousands of testimonials of lives they have changed by being faithful to the gospel in their apostolate.

St. Thérèse, on the other hand, never saw in this life the scope that her humble obedience to God would have. However, that did not stop her from giving herself totally. Both of these courageous women suffered greatly in their lives and both were humble, obedient servants who have affected millions of lives for the better. 

For most of us, I suppose, it would be best if we did not see much fruit from our labors, lest it puff us up too much . . . perhaps that is why God, like with St. Paul, in His great mercy will give those with humble hearts who have great success, a thorn to keep them humble. While we should not shrink from large tasks when it is clear that is where God is leading us, care must be taken to ensure that it is not our pride leading us there. However, great visible success is not the way God calls most of us.

Most of us will not see, until the final judgment, the impact we have had on others. Another great and humble servant of God, Blessed Theresa of Calcutta, who by the way was named for St. Thérèse, gave great wisdom and encouragement for those of us who will never see the fruits of our spiritual labors. She reminded us that God calls us to faithfulness, not success.

This is normally a recipe for moral disaster. However, in this case our own John Lalley was on the scene to take care of things. No, this wasn’t his bachelor party. John recently spoke at a session of Theology on Tap in Dayton, OH on John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which he entitled “The Man Show.” He made some of the same important points that we have been discussing here. One insightful observation that he made is the paradoxical other side of the coin in what is happening to our sexual identities in our egalitarian (i.e. equality equals sameness) culture. I have mentioned that women have been masculinized to a great degree in our society. In other words, all too many are rejecting their femininity as a precondition of moving into (and rightfully so) areas of society traditionally adopted by men. For example, vulgar language and interpersonal aggressiveness are fallen masculine traits. Sadly, this is extending into sexual sinfulness as well. While they are both equally sinful, these fallen behaviors are even more damaging to the feminine person then they are to males because they distort her very feminine identity. As John Paul the Great says in Mulieris dignitatem: 

 

even the rightful opposition of women to what is expressed in the biblical words “He shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16) must not under any condition lead to the “masculinization” of women. In the name of liberation from male “domination”, women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine “originality”. There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not “reach fulfillment”, but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness (10).

The flip side of the coin is the push to move men toward femininity. There is now a general sense that men should adopt feminine modes of behavior, especially in interpersonal relations with women. Men certainly have a more of a task to become “civilized,” in general, than do women. However, even though they have much to learn from women, adopting their feminine traits is not one of them.

The same is true of men. Men must not feel pressured to be feminized in order to be more like women, whose natural gifts do tend to make them more “civilized” on average. Rather, our interpersonal relations, by disinterestedly giving ourselves to others, expecting nothing in return, will enable us to become more authentic men. It is in fact better to give than receive or perhaps one could also so, it is in giving that we truly receive. When we give ourselves we receive our more authentic, fulfilled, holy selves in return.

It often seems that taking the morally correct choice often demands a considerable amount of moral courage and a considerable bit of moral strength. I suppose that this is because we live east of Eden. Living outside of the Garden, we are not only faced with our own concupiscent desires, we are also pressured, cajoled, threatened, persecuted, even killed by those who seem to require our assent to their submission to their concupiscent desires.

Sometimes the assaults come from those who bring with them science and common sense to support their ideological agendas of making the world free from those who would oppose libertine orthodoxy. One such example is the assault by many, some well meaning ”most not, against the Church for Her stand against using condoms for any purpose, even to stop the spread of AIDS. The canards that have been slung are astounding, including those critics who try to place the AIDS epidemic at the feet of John Paul the Great. There are many unstated and unproved presuppositions which go with these criticisms proceeding from the presumptuous to the absurd. For example, many assume that condoms are effective, theoretically and practically, in stopping the spread of AIDS. Zenit published an article over the weekend which shows that those who make this assumption do so without data to support their view. In fact, the data points in the exact opposite direction. The rates of AIDS infection in African countries which push condom use ranges from 37-43%. However, in Uganda which pushes abstinence only and has the highest percentage of Catholics, is down near 4%.

So much for ideological ignorance. As for the absurd, is one actually supposed to believe that Catholics, or anyone else, will listen to the Church’s opposition to condoms and so not use them when they would disregard Her teaching against sex out of wedlock”the primary cause in spreading of the AIDS epidemic? As it turns out with a host of other issues, including embryonic stem cells, the morally correct choice is also the best”even more, it usually seems to be the most pragmatically correct choice as well.

No, I am not so bold as to propose that I personally know the mind of Christ. However, in the second reading for tomorrow’s Mass (Phil 2:1-11), St. Paul gives us the mind of Christ in a very important way. I think that this text reveals in a very profound way what John Paul the Great has called the “Law of the Gift.” This law is the fundamental orientation of Christ’s mind. St. Paul writes (I am using the RSV instead of the NAB which most U.S. Catholics will hear in Mass because it is a generally better translation and I do not want to incur the wrath of the USCCB lawyers):   

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We must have one mind with Christ. The sense of the Greek is that this oneness is more than intellectual but a complete agreement of the entire person. In order to share Christ’s mind, we must recognize that we cannot be inward turned but we must be oriented as was Christ, to give ourselves to others. This self gift is what we were created for. Christ, though He was God, emptied Himself to become Man and then humbled Himself even further in order to serve us by emptying Himself completely on the Cross; sparing not even the last drop of His most Precious Blood. In this He revealed Trinitarian Love; the total emptying of the Father by giving Himself completely to the Son. The Son then received the Father and returned Himself completely to the Father. The result of this total Self-Gift of Father to Son and Son to Father, the Love that binds Them, is fruitful. It is a Third Person—the Holy Spirit. Because we are made in the image of a Trinitarian God, we are made to give ourselves totally to God and to others. Jesus demonstrated this truth, par excellence, on the Cross.

St. Paul puts this in terms which we often cringe from—obedience. We are obedient when we act in a manner for which we were created. We are disobedient, we rebel against our natures and therefore against God by choosing to act in a contrary manner. This very act is the cause of our separation from God; whether explicitly or not, it is what we choose. When this act is grave, we completely cut ourselves off from divine life. We must recognize this . . . and it should be frightening—though fear should not be our primary motivation for giving ourselves or loving God. After all, we have complete freedom, which is a necessary precondition for a total gift of self. This freedom means that God wants us to choose but He will not force us. It is God’s will that all men be saved; but there is one way that we are stronger, in a sense, than God. That is, He will not force unity with Him upon us if we choose to live for ourselves and not for Him. By our very wills, disordered though this may be, we can thwart His will for our salvation. However, when we see that this total obedience, this total gift of self is the mind of Christ, and the love with which He manifests it, how can we choose anything else?

The law of the gift is a phrase which comes via John Paul the Great and it means that we really only fulfill ourselves when we give ourselves unselfishly to others. This truth is found, par excellence, in marital union. In his theology of the body, he shows that this is revealed through sex differences, masculinity and femininity:

The body which expresses femininity { through masculinity and vice versa masculinity  through femininity,} manifests the reciprocity and communion of persons. It expresses it by means of the gift as the fundamental characteristic of personal existence. This is the body a witness to creation as a fundamental gift, and so a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving springs. masculinity and femininity namely, sex is the original sign of a creative donation and an awareness on the part of man, male-female, of a gift lived in an original way. Such is the meaning with which sex enters the theology of the body (John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 61-62).

The ability to recognize the law of the gift in the body’s sex differences is what John Paul refers to as the nuptial meaning of the body. The body shows that the human person is made for love that is authentic love. Authentic love is one that gives the whole of oneself and receives the whole of the other person, soul and body including fertility. Obviously then, It is most perfectly expressed in marital intercourse open to fruitfulness. This grammar of the body is falsified when intercourse is engaged in when there is no irrevocable, lifelong commitment to one another or when this exchange is centered on pleasure and closed to fruitfulness. It is also clear that there is no nuptial meaning to be found in same sex intercourse. It is sterile by its very nature.

When we refuse to recognize that we are in a fallen state and that not all of our inclinations may be authentic, then it is inevitable that we will embrace the lowest temptations of our fallen nature. The solution is Christ through His Sacraments; the intellectual evidence is found in returning to this nuptial meaning of the body which shows us we are made to give ourselves as gifts in authentic acts of love.