Theses on the Parable of the Prodigal Son

(Luke 15: 11-32)

Those who deny, ignore, or hate God are still happy to make use of the good things he has given them. In fact, we have all done this because we have all used or sought gratification in ourselves, from other people, and in other created things apart from the proper identity and purpose with which God creates these persons and things. And this is what we call sin.

We tend to think of repentance as a returning to God, but it is more properly a 'coming to our senses,' a 'coming back to ourselves' that puts us back in touch with our most real and best selves, the true selves that God created and that recognize that this God is always arriving in order to meet us.

Sin is a sort of death. Repentance is a participation in the Resurrection.

The confession of the sins that have separated us from God's embrace is only of interest to him insofar as it is the means by which we accept that embrace anew.

It is just as easy for 'religious' people to lose their sense of God's goodness as it is for 'sinners.' Perhaps even easier. This is because righteous people easily forget that they are just as much sinners as are the 'sinners,' first, because all sin is overwhelmingly offensive before the infinite loving-kindness of God, and second, because people who ought to know better are that much more guilty. It is also because righteous people sometimes don't recognize--and confess--that the righteousness of their religion (as it is for everyone) is mixed with some elements of the flesh, such as fear, vainglory, or pride.

Helpfully, however, this latter condition is revealed by the emotion of resentment that arises at the gifts God gives to another, and in this it can be recognized and perhaps mortified.

Spiritual Life

Spiritual life is a funny business.

It's less about getting something than letting go of everything.

It's less about getting somewhere than awakening to the truth that you are arriving at blessedness in this very moment.

It's less about accomplishing anything than letting go of what you always took to be your agency and your individuality, the following of which has always led you into misery and isolation.

It's less about doing something than surrendering to Someone.

And there's always an invitation to a more profound and more complete surrender, new surrenderings that at first seem overwhelming, then become possible by the grace of willingness, and finally reveal themselves as who we always were, though we were asleep to it.

Theses on Prayer from Mary Magdalene

More and more over the years, I turn to Mary Magdalene's encounter with the Risen Lord as both a means to understand prayer and a model for praying. I've written the same stuff before, but instead of linking some old post I thought to make a new one in the 'theses' style.

Theses on Prayer from Mary Magdalene (John 20: 11-18)

• Getting up early helps
• Stay still, stay where you are inside. Don't get up and do something else either physically or interiorly at the first thought of doing so, even when others have run away.
• Even when all you have inside seems like emptiness, look into it.
• Whatever question or concern or hurt happens to be on your heart, address it simply to whatever presence seems to be there, whether you recognize the presence or not, whether it seems like anything or not.
• Know that when you recognize the presence of God, this is how we, in our limited perception, experience God recognizing and calling to us. So like many aspects of prayer--and indeed, prayer itself--things feel like our action and our perception when in fact they are the action of the Holy Spirit praying within us. This is a sort of optical illusion of the interior vision that happens because of our being limited to time and space.
• Accept without discouragement that the experience of God in prayer feels fleeting. It feels this way because God is not a 'thing' that can be possessed like our other created experiences and still less like a physical, temporal good. In this sense prayer is the first and primary school of evangelical poverty, because the object of our desire cannot be grasped and possessed. Prayer trains us in letting go, because we have no choice with God but to let go.
• Further, even if it seems as if God flees from us in prayer, he is not fleeing in order to be rid of us, but as a way of drawing us, seducing us even, deeper into the mystery, that we may begin again with an even more profound gaze into the empty tomb.
• The fruit of prayer is witness to and announcement of the Resurrection, that the world may know that the new creation has begun to arrive.

Theses on Community Relations in Religious Life

People are a complex mixture of conscious and unconscious motivation.

Presume that the darker side of your own unconscious motivation conspires with that of others to make dysfunction in relationships and hinder the salvation of both parties. This is what it means to take the effects of original sin seriously in community life. Therefore, work on bringing the best parts of your conscious and rational motivations to bear in relationships.

Whether members of the community are attracted to or repelled by each other is likewise usually based in a mix of the good and the bad, the conscious and the unconscious. Therefore, there is little confidence to be taken from others being friendly to you, nor discouragement from them staying away.

We all tend to reproduce in community the place in the relational system that we had in our family of origin. This is neither good nor bad in itself, depending on the nature of that role and its relative utility for our salvation and the good of the community. It's not all toxic and maladaptive, though sometimes a lot of it is.

The more skilled and accomplished the manipulator, the greater the rage will be against him when those who have allowed themselves to be manipulated realize what has happened. Therefore, strive against your own tendency to manipulation.

Celibates do not have the experience of being parents, and so tend to be very out of their element when it comes to the discipline, teaching and care of very young children. Unfortunately, people who are still very young children on the emotional level are sometimes found in the community. Therefore, if you don't know how to love such persons such that they can grow, or are not permitted to try, stay away. The more they are not helped, or are appeased and spoiled rather than loved, the greater will be their tantrums.

Of those who suffer in community, some are victims. But most are volunteers.

People find change in the system upsetting. Therefore, even if you are changing in accord with your salvation, expect push-back from the community.

If you get along with everyone, worry that perhaps you are putting getting along ahead of your own heart. If you can't get along with anybody, worry that you are selfish.

If nobody is ever annoyed by your opinions, you probably don't really have any. If everybody is annoyed by them, perhaps you are an ideologue.

The point of community life is being brother to others, not having them be brother to us. It is not to say, 'I'm a brother' but 'I'm your brother.'

The community does not exist primarily to be a support on the natural level, and still less to provide for anyone's unrealistic emotional needs. It does not exist to provide some 'intimacy' that we have allegedly renounced by our celibacy. The community exists to be a sign of the arriving Kingdom of God, to be a sort of laboratory where practitioners of the Christian life can learn a certain wisdom that they can then pass on in ministry, and to be a place of interior asceticism for those whom God--in his mercy--calls to embrace the Cross of Jesus Christ in this particular way.

Theses on Helpfulness in Community

Every grown person is ultimately his or her own responsibility.

Thus, taking responsibility for the feelings of another is a failure in charity, because we are giving someone else permission to be less than an integral, mature being.

Everyone can be helped, but not every situation can be fixed. Awareness of this distinction is critical.

What people think or say they want or need isn't always what they actually want or need.

God, who has the best boundaries of anyone in community, is notorious for his failure to always give us what we say we want or say we need. Perversely, however, we sometimes insist that this is what ministry is supposed to be. This is because niceness is easier than love.

Someone may need help but not know it, or be unwilling to accept it, or ignorant of how to accept it. Others may know they need help and be willing to accept it, but ignorant of what sort of help they need. Sometimes someone may even ask for help but only mean to refuse it as an act of passive aggression. Therefore, it is intensely dangerous to base one's sense of self or vocation on feeling helpful.

When we fail to accept help because we are indulging pride, fear, or an unwillingness to be vulnerable, we fail in love because we risk making fruitless the charity that God has inspired in our neighbor.

Theses on Love of Neighbor

To love means to will the best for the beloved, that the beloved might enjoy the best in happiness and flourishing.

God is the best 'thing' there is.

God, in giving himself to his creatures by adopting us in the Spirit into his own blessed life by the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son, is the perfect practitioner of love of neighbor.

Therefore, if we wish to love our neighbor, our desire must be that our neighbor have God.

But since God has already given himself to our neighbor in Christ, we must not think that it is our job to give God to our neighbor.

Instead, both love of self and love of neighbor mean the facilitation and encouragement of the acceptance of and surrender to the Gift already given in Jesus Christ.

Therefore, we who are Christians much ask ourselves each day how we may live our lives such that those around us will desire what it is we have come to have in Christ. If the joy, peace, and confidence in God we have in the Spirit attracts someone else to the acceptance of the Gift who is Jesus Christ, then we have loved our neighbor in the most supreme way.

What I Learned At Supper Tonight

We had some guests for supper tonight and in the fertile conversation that ensued, I learned many new things:

Beard and union suit is an acceptable fire-fighting outfit.

Your confreres in religion many not find it as funny and lighthearted as you do to jump in a fountain with your habit on.

Electricity may, or may not, have a hard time going up hill.

Italian bats are smarter than you, so don't even think about it.

Magicians who give magic shows in Latin have no need of stage names.

In the olden days when a young and liberated man would grow his hair long, it made the conferral of tonsure very entertaining.

Germans always want to sing.

There are places, houses of Franciscan friars to be more precise, where one is only allowed to smoke inside.

Theses on Holy Communion

For the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ today, I was just reflecting a little on Holy Communion. I was putting some theses on Twitter, but then I decided to make a blog post out of them:

1. Holy Communion is God's passionate desire to unite His divine life with us, not our reaching out to try to grasp some grace we might think we need.

2.. Holy Communion is not a reward for good behavior, but medicine for those striving to be converted from sin.

3. The words of the minister, "The Body/Blood of Christ" are a personal address. At this moment we are called by our deepest name, our most durable identity. This is why it's reducing and misguided to say, "So-and-so, the Body of Christ."

4. To receive Holy Communion is to consent to becoming the Body of Christ, a Body both broken for the healing of this world and glorified for its salvation.

5. Thus, receiving Holy Communion is both a consent to be converted and the very source of this willingness.

6. In Holy Communion we consent to take the sacrifice of the Cross into our bodies and thus become instruments of the divine humility which defeats all human violence and misery.

7. Holy Communion both signifies and accomplishes the unity of all the faithful, but it also displays to both the Church and the world the judgment between those who assent to revelation and those who do not. Sometimes we try to dismiss the sign of division that Holy Communion becomes, but this is to impoverish the real unity it accomplishes.

Lessons from Cinderella

On the long ride to BC yesterday, I was able to finish Aschenputtel. (For German practice, I've been reading in a little bilingual edition of the Brothers Grimm.)

It's another rather gruesome story with a lot of mixed messages. Here's what I learned:


The advice of one's mother is worth heeding.

Fathers cannot be trusted to protect their children from abusers.

Sometimes the pretty ones are evil.

Sometimes you have to put with oppression, but nevertheless you must be on the lookout for a way out.

Prayerful grief at the graves of loved ones is dear to God.

Be modest in what you ask of other people, but bold in what you ask of Providence.

People sometimes make promises without any intention of keeping them.

Lentils are worth the trouble.

The natural world is on the side of the good.

Nice clothes matter for making a first impression, but after that not so much.

Playing 'hard to get' works.

Doing violence to yourself to fit in will backfire, and you will end up crippled and bloody.

Men prefer women with small feet.

Theses on Choosing Lenten Observances

I wrote these up a couple of Lents ago, but I think they are still helpful in our discernment of how we may enter into this 'joyful season.'

1. The classic practices of fasting, praying, and giving alms are the best starting point. Concentrate on one or do something for each.

2. Make it too challenging and be set up for failure; make it too easy and lose interest.

3. All spiritual practices can be misused to focus on self rather than God. Be careful.

4. 'Giving up' something that is already objectively sinful doesn't count; ascetical effort at reorganizing our lives to eliminate occasions of sin does.

5. Spiritual practice and prayerful ascesis that also serves physical health is nothing to be ashamed of.

6. Everyone knows that Sundays don't count, but don't make the Sunday relaxation an occasion of backsliding.

7. Doing something is easier than not doing something.

8. Doing something for others is more blessed than doing something for yourself. But if you have a tendency to neglect spiritual self-care, this principle isn't an excuse to continue.

9. Pelagianism is a heresy, but the idea of it is not an excuse for laziness.

10. The engineering principle known as the 'airplane rule' is useful here: complexity increases the rate of failure. Conversely, simplicity increases robustness.

11. Secret practices are better than ones that will be obvious to everyone. Secret saves us from both vainglory in success and embarrassment in failure.

12. Succeeding in observing a practice does not mean it was a spiritual success, and failing does not necessarily mean spiritual failure. Successes used poorly can be spiritually ruinous, and failures used well can be providential occasions for learning humility and honesty.

13. Concrete is better than vague.

14. This is not about our doing or accomplishing something, as if salvation were another thing for us to do or get. It is about surrendering and responding to grace. As Paul says, "God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work." (Philippians 2:13)

Theses on Charity

Isaac of Stella caught me in the Office of Readings today: Charity is the reason why anything should be done or left undone.

Charity is the only good reason to do anything, but it also sometimes demands that we not do something we might think we want to do. There are a lot of fine distinctions one has to make in this area to live spiritually in common life and ministry. For example:

• We are called to support one another, but not to enable maladaptive behaviors, debilitating addictions, and sins.
• We must bear with the burdens of others, and be willing to wash feet, but we should not take responsibility for the feelings of others.
• We must seek ways to invite both individuals and institutions to benefit from our strengths, and invite them into the success that derives from them, but--again--we should be careful not to take interior or exterior responsibility for situations that the Holy Spirit has not, or not yet, seen fit to put in our care.
• Sometimes the greatest charity--and often the most painful--is not giving someone what he thinks he wants.
• We must be good to ourselves, practicing good self-care, but that doesn't mean taking it easy and just 'being nice' to ourselves. On the one hand, we must not be so hard on ourselves that our whole spiritual life becomes a rehearsal of faults and sins, for this is one of the devil's tricks in making us fail to notice God, and on the other we must also be careful not be overly forgiving of ourselves so as to effectively give up struggling with certain selfishnesses and sins. We must practice the sort of self-charity that nourishes our gifts and virtues, and is ruthless in the unwillingness to put up with sin.
  

Lessons from Hansel and Gretel

Over the winter break I came across a little bilingual edition of selected stories from the Brothers Grimm. I've been using it for my subway reading as a way to try to learn to read some German. I started with Hansel and Gretel, as it's a familiar story. Or so I thought. Truth be told, it's a rather macabre and depressing business. Not the least trouble is my nagging suspicion that the stepmother and the witch might be the same person, given that mom is announced to be (conveniently) dead after the children return home from Gretel having cooked up the witch in the oven.

However, certain lessons are to be learned from the glorious maladventure of these poor children. For example:

Grownups are not be trusted.

Even the good ones can be nagged and convinced to do horrible things to you.

It's a good idea to eavesdrop on those who are discussing what to do about you.

Make sure nobody locks you in the house.

Faced with mortal crisis, it is important to encourage one another, pray to God, and not to lose heart.

Sometimes sweet things are a trap.

People don't give you pancakes with milk, sugar, and nuts for no reason.

Witches can be recognized by their red eyes. Remember also that they can't see very far, but have a heightened sense of smell, like an animal.

It's not only acceptable to trick and kill those who enslave and try to kill you, it's a moral imperative.

Passive aggression and playing dumb can be powerful weapons in the hands of oppressed persons.

Don't be afraid to ask for help, even if it seems like an unlikely source. (i.e. the duck at the river)

Money fixes problems.

Deaths in families necessitate the reconfiguration of all other relationships.

Three Theses on Epiphany

Epiphany is one of my favorite days of the year. This morning I was thinking about general doctrines that arise from the scripture today:

The natural world, properly interpreted, leads us to its logical center in the incarnate Word. (The star)

Our deepest human vocation (and happiness) is found in the adoration of Jesus Christ, and in giving him the best of ourselves and our resources. (The homage and gifts of the magi)

Worldly power exists in a tense--and often directly opposed--relationship to the Kingdom of God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. (Herod)

Theses on Getting Along in Community

(A collection in progress)

1. Pray for the other members of the community every day. Not only is this the right thing to do before God, but it practices the disposition of charity toward them.

2. Presume the best motives in others.

3. Presume that others are quietly putting up with your awkwardness, idiosyncrasies and annoying behaviors that you aren't even aware of. Try to do the same thing for them.

4. Do not avoid conversations that tend toward gossip or detraction. Instead, by your own speech, try to turn them positive.

5. Do not take responsibility for the feelings of others, nor try to make anyone else responsible for yours. Do not surrender your moods and emotional states to the control of others.

6. Commit to some form of prayer or spiritual practice that helps you transcend moodiness and dis-identify with the flux of your own thoughts and feelings.

7. Seek always ways to be helpful around the house, but also be careful of enabling anyone's learned helplessness or negligence.

8. Be free to challenge anyone who is having trouble accepting help or kindness. Be humble enough yourself to ask for help when you need it. Be humble enough to accept compliments and kind words. Those who refuse to accept love deny others the chance to practice charity.

9. Use humor wisely. It can be a powerful too for speaking difficult things in a safe way, but it can also be used to belittle or to prevent what needs to be said from coming out.

10. When you cook, pay attention not to what they say at table, but to whether anyone eats the leftovers. That's what indicates whether they liked it or not.

11. Be approachable and available. If nobody ever asks you for help or if they can talk something over, it might be because you seem unapproachable.

Theses on Blame and Merit in Community

(This is a collection in development.)

If a brother piously declines to have something assigned to him for personal use (e.g. a car, computer, cell phone, etc.) under the title of holy poverty and simplicity of life, but then needs to borrow the same thing from another brother when he needs it, it is actually the latter brother who is practicing the higher degree of charity and evangelical poverty.

If a brother carelessly picks up and walks away with your breviary, and you cannot then pray the next canonical hour properly on account of it, it is the first brother who incurs the guilt of the sin.

If someone is being passive-aggressive toward you, it might be because you have failed to make him feel safe enough to do or say something openly.

Emptying the dishwasher is always a righteous act, even when grumbled about. Leaving near-empty containers in the refrigerator or the cupboard is always condemnable, even when done with bemusement.

Names are written on leftovers not to claim them, but to warn potential snackers about who has already touched them.

People given their voice and freedom will not always want what you think they should.

If you never let another brother help you or do anything for you, you deny him his opportunity for holiness through charity.

Theses on Choosing a Lenten Observance

Tomorrow will begin my seventeenth Lent, and, believe it or not, I have kept records on the observances I have tried to keep, and whether or not they were a material or spiritual success. By material success I mean whether or not I kept the observance, and by spiritual success whether or not it turned out to have any spiritual utility. I have experienced all four possible permutations of success and failure. So, based on my experience as a practitioner of Lent, here are my maxims on discerning a personal observance for this "joyful season."

1. The classic models of fasting, praying, and giving alms are the best starting point. Concentrate on one or do something for each.

2. Make it too challenging and be set up for failure; make it too easy and lose interest.

3. All spiritual practices can be misused to focus on self rather than God. Be careful.

4. "Giving up" something that is already objectively sinful doesn't count; ascetical effort at reorganizing our lives to eliminate occasions of sin does.

5. Spiritual practice and prayerful ascesis that also serves physical health is nothing to be ashamed of.

6. Everyone knows that Sundays don't count, but don't make the Sunday relaxation an occasion of backsliding.

7. Doing something is easier than not doing something.

8. Doing something for others is more blessed than doing something for yourself. But if you habitually fail at spiritual self-care, this principle isn't an excuse to continue.

9. Pelagianism is a heresy, but the idea of it is not an excuse for laziness.

10. The engineering principle known as the "airplane rule" is useful here: complexity increases the rate of failure. Conversely, simplicity increases robustness.

11. Secret practices are better than ones that will obvious to everyone. Secret saves us from both pride in success and embarrassment in failure.

12. Succeeding in observing a practice does not mean it was a spiritual success, and failing does not necessarily mean spiritual failure. Successes used poorly can be spiritually ruinous, and failures used well can be providential occasions for learning humility and honesty.

13. Concrete is better than vague.

14. This is not about our doing or accomplishing something, as if salvation were another thing for us to "do" or "get." It is about surrendering and responding to grace. As Paul says, "God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work." (Philippians 2:13)