Gaudete et exsultate: Catholics Online

Christians too can be caught up in networks of verbal violence through the internet and the various forums of digital communication. Even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can become commonplace, and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned. The result is a dangerous dichotomy, since things can be said there that would be unacceptable in public discourse, and people look to compensate for their own discontent by lashing out at others. It is striking that at times, in claiming to uphold the other commandments, they completely ignore the eighth, which forbids bearing false witness or lying, and ruthlessly vilify others. Here we see how the unguarded tongue, set on fire by hell, sets all things ablaze (cf. Jas 3:6). (115)

I quote that section of James often enough with penitents; the tongue is a small organ but it gets us in all kinds of big trouble.

I first came online back in 1993 when I was a senior in college. Before long I discovered the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and its Catholic channels, as well as a Catholic listserv for which I promptly signed up. I was very innocent in those days, having been a Catholic for only about a year and with most of my knowledge of the Church having come from books, and I wasn't sure what to make of what I found, which was a lot of arguing and fighting. That's not to say that I didn't jump in myself when I knew that I was right about something ... because I had looked it up, thank you very much. I still have some of that attitude in me and it continues to get me in trouble. (More on that in the planned final post on Gaudete et exsultate, tentatively titled 'examination of conscience.')

Gaudete et exsultate: The Real History of the World

Pope Francis exhorts us, with the help of Edith Stein:

Let us be spurred on by the signs of holiness that the Lord shows us through the humblest members of that people which “shares also in Christ’s prophetic office, spreading abroad a living witness to him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity”. We should consider the fact that, as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross suggests, real history is made by so many of them. As she writes: “The greatest figures of prophecy and sanctity step forth out of the darkest night. But for the most part, the formative stream of the mystical life remains invisible. Certainly the most decisive turning points in world history are substantially co-determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe the decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed” (8)

This reminded me of something from Thomas Merton:

I wonder if there are twenty men alive in the world now who see things as they really are. That would mean that there were twenty men who were free, who were not dominated or even influenced by any attachment to any created thing or to their own selves or to any gift of God, even to the highest, the most supernaturally pure of His graces. I don't believe that there are twenty such men alive in the world. But there must be one or two. They are the ones who are holding everything together and keeping the universe from falling apart. (from "Detachment" in New Seeds of Contemplation)

One of the gifts of priesthood for me has been the opportunity to meet, usually in confession, some of these hidden saints. It is they, not the robbers writ large that one sees each day in the news, who are the protagonists of the true history of the world, which is the creation's pilgrimage toward full transfiguration in the Risen Christ.

Correction

Once in a while in my wish to live a spiritual life I have wandered into a dead end or a blind alley. Usually it involves the wrong use of religion. I seek to do something appealingly religious while not paying attention what grace may be really inviting me to do or look at, which may be something less appealing on the surface, that is, to the flesh.

These moments have been very helpful and instructive for me, for they both warn me about my capacity to use religion poorly and leave me better able to discern. In this sense they are missteps that become gifts of grace, for through them God helps me grow in awareness and in the ability to see better what I am supposed to attend to.

Reflecting on a conversation with a confessor the other day, it became clear to me that my 'observance' of the Lent of Benediction was one of these moments. This is not to say that the blessing of God through the intercession of St. Francis isn't upon the friars who observe this 'Lent' according to the Rule we have promised, but that in my case, at this moment, what I imagined to be an inspiration to observe this 'Lent' was really a way to avoid paying attention to what grace is really inviting me to at this particular moment in my story.

The journey on which being a disciple of the Lord sets us is not always so easy and nor is it even pleasant insofar as we have not been delivered from our addiction to comfort and easy consolations. It is all too easy--and indeed the world invites us to this constantly--to self-medicate rather than seek the true health that is our salvation. And religion can be one of these false medications as much as any other created thing that the flesh can learn how to use wrongly.

And so I gratefully let go and try to begin again to be attentive to what grace invites.

Untie my hands and deliver my heart from sloth. Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not required of me, and from the cowardice that does what is not demanded, in order to escape sacrifice. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 45)

Back From Retreat Ramble

I'm back in Rome after the week in Assisi. The 'spiritual exercises' were good, just not what I would call a retreat. It's a nice time to be with the brothers, to hang out, to have some time away from work and the usual routine. And of course it's always a privilege to be able to visit Assisi, to pray at the tomb of Francis and before the relics of St. Clare.

Fishy Ramble

Today it was my turn to be principal celebrant at Mass. I've come to hold such days precious in my current circumstances. When I was in the parish I would preside at Mass once a day at least; here, in a community of many priests without an external ministry, my turn only comes around once or twice a month. I treasure it even more when it falls on a Sunday. After all, Sunday is, as the Office of Readings reminds us today in the passage from the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, "the first and greatest festival...the foundation and the kernel of the whole liturgical year."

On a Sunday, of course I also get to preach. (I tend to give a homily here only on days when the brethren have a right to one, namely on Sundays, other solemnities, and feasts. I sense that the brethren appreciate this discretion.) The gospel for today is Matthew 4:12-23, Jesus' move from Nazareth to Capernaum and the call of Peter and Andrew, James and John. Because of the limits of my Italian, I have to preach very simply, though I did play a little bit on 'fishers,' pescatori, and 'fished,' pescati. Pity I didn't think to mix peccatori and peccati, 'sinners' and 'sins,' into my Italian word salad.

I think the forced simplicity is a good thing spiritually; it makes me pay attention to what is essential, to what is the simple good news of the Scripture and how it can be communicated simply. But this also leaves my own personal reflection free of any demand that it be pointed toward the pastoral or even the communicable.

"I will make you fishers of men," says Jesus to Peter and Andrew. I think about myself in that context, as someone fished out of the world by the apostolic preaching, that is, by the New Testament and Sacred Tradition. Ever since I was little I've had a mysterious attraction to Jesus Christ and him crucified, and for this I stand in grateful awe before God in my prayer because I firmly believe what our Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure teaches us, that there is no way except through the burning love of the crucified. But at the time of my exterior conversion, it was the apostolic preaching that hooked me. I read the New Testament and decided that I wanted to be a Christian. I studied, thought--and finally prayed--to know which sort of Christian I ought to become. I finally decided that it had to be one of the apostolic Churches, which for me at the time meant Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Considering myself a Westerner, "rehearsed in the rigors of Western thought" as we used to think of ourselves back in college (in our vainglory) I decided to become a Roman Catholic.

And what of me, as one thus fished? What happens to a fish when it comes to be fished? It struggles, it flops around in the hopes of returning to the sea, it dies, and is turned into food.

When you convert, at first it seems like a smooth and glorious thing to be thus fished, to be "saved from immersion in the sea of lies and passions which is called 'the world'" (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation) But soon you struggle because the worldliness and the lies within begin to have trouble breathing. So in their panic they make us flop about, here falling into doubt, there slipping into sin. But eventually they die, buried in baptism, and you find yourself free to be turned into food, into nourishment for your sister and brother sinners. In this regard I think of an ordination homily I once heard from Seán O'Malley. The Cardinal remarked that each day, when a priest consecrates the offered bread saying, for this is my body, which will be given up for you, he is also talking about himself, his own body, his own life, united to the sacrifice of Christ, handed over to be broken in the nourishment of the People of God and the world.

Struggle, death, nourishment for others. So our being fished offers us a description of stages of the spiritual life, not unlike many others. Purgative, illuminative, unitive. Selfishness to self-oblation. Death to life. When I was younger I used to read about such plans and stages of the spiritual life with great delight, and the more steps the better. I would imagine myself reaching the highest stages of prayer and contemplation, of sanctity and self-abnegation before too long, without a lot of effort, and along a bright and consoling path. But years later I realize that spiritual things are not conformed to the time we measure in the passing days and years. It is not a neat progression from one stage to another, such that the flesh might feel a sense of advancement through some set of grades or ranks. The truth is that I am always flailing around as the selfishness and attachment in me panics and suffocates, hoping to catch, just one more time, a couple nasty breaths of the dirty air of sin. I am always entering the peace that comes with the death of this person I thought was me but is unknown to the Creator. I am always discovering the delight that the very brokenness that results from this process leaves me broken open for others, for nourishing my fellow sufferers.

Docta Ignorantia

For a few days each year around this time we get, in the Office of Readings, St. Augustine's Letter 130, to Proba, on prayer. It touches me every time.

Today I landed on one of Augustine's somewhat famous expressions, docta ignorantia, 'learned ignorance.' In prayer there is an ignorance, an unknowledge that we learn, for our not knowing "how to pray as we ought" in which "the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26) is not just something we lack because of our distraction and sin, or even because of our innate limitedness, but is something positive that we learn in prayer, one of its precious fruits.

Indeed there is much to unlearn in prayer; it is, as Evagrius says, "the shedding of thoughts." I must unlearn about the deity that the flesh weaves out of its lusts and even ideas of the divine that give more rarefied delights to the intellect. True prayer means unlearning the unvirtues of the those false religiosities the flesh concocts to serve its purposes under sacrilegious cover. I am even invited to unlearn cherished ideas and attributions about myself.

In the end, it is all aimed toward the searing unlearning that "there is 'no such thing' as God because God is neither a 'what' nor a 'thing' but a pure 'Who.'" (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, chapter 2) And it is precisely this awakening that bears the most blessed fruit of prayer, the shedding of the 'whatness' and objectification of other people, learning to see them only as persons, as 'who.'

The Call to Holiness

We are taught that the 'universal call to holiness' was one of the great gifts and insights of Vatican II, and it's quite true. But like all good doctrines, it wasn't new at all but something that the Church had always taught, as they say. It's just that at certain moments it seems good to the Holy Spirit to highlight certain truths anew or to give them a new expression so that they may be more joyfully and confidently received by the Churches.

I was thinking about this today, namely the doctrine of the universal call to holiness winding its way through the last couple of generations before Vatican II. For us Capuchins today is the feast of Blessed Andrea Giacinto Longhin, who was a a Capuchin spiritual director, seminary reformer, and bishop of Treviso from 1904 until his death in 1936. He also suffered imprisonment during the First World War. Here's the selection we are given from his writings for the Office of Readings:

New Breviary Hopes

I heard yesterday with great delight that our bishops in the United States had voted in favor of a project to develop a new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours. This is, of course, a necessary thing given the new translation of the Roman Missal. At the very least, we need to be relieved of the funny situation of using the new Sunday and sanctoral collects for Mass while still having the old ones printed in our breviaries.

So, given that I am full of opinions about breviaries--and for this I make no apology, since, as one notes, breviaries are the only things (apart from our clothes) that the Rule permits us to have--I offer my hopes for the glorious day when I unbox a new English Liturgy of the Hours. Please, my brothers...

• Let us have the three Magnficat and Benedictus antiphons for each of the three Sunday hinge hours, instead of this stingy business we have now where Evening Prayer I gets year A, Morning Prayer gets year B, and Evening Prayer II gets year C, such that the antiphon only corresponds to the Sunday gospel once during the Sunday hours. Every other edition I have ever seen gives all three for each.
• Point the psalmody for singing.
• It's a little thing, but put the daggers for when the antiphon doubles the first line of a psalm so that it might be skipped, as is right and just. I don't know why we don't have these.
• Include the Latin hymns, or at least translations of them. Both would be best.
• Make the cards for the gospel canticles, festal psalmody, Te Deum, etc., tough.
• Dump the psalm prayers.
• Six ribbons are better than five. That way there's one each for Proper of Seasons, Ordinary, Psalter, Night Prayer, Proper of Saints, and Commons.
• Give us books just as tough as the Catholic Book Publishing Company's 4-volume set we have now. Say what you want about them, but those books are strong.

Thanks in advance for all of your work!

It was no longer possible to consider myself, abstractly, as being in a certain "state of life" which had certain technical relations to other "states of life." All that occupied me now was the immediate practical problem of getting up my hill with this terrific burden I had on my shoulders, step by step, begging God to drag me along and get me away from my enemies and from those who were trying to destroy me. 

I did not even reflect how the Breviary, the Canonical Office, was the most powerful and effective prayer I could possibly have chosen, since it is the prayer of the whole Church, and concentrates in itself all the power of the Church's impetration, centered around the infinitely mighty Sacrifice of the Mass--the jewel of which the rest of the Liturgy is the setting: the soul which is the life of the whole Liturgy and of all the Sacramentals. All this was beyond me, although I grasped it at least obscurely. All I knew was that I needed to say the Breviary, and say it every day. 

Buying those books at Benziger's that day was one of the best things I ever did in my life. The inspiration to do it was a very great grace. There are few things I remember that give me more joy. (Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, 329-330)

All Saints Ramble

Everywhere I've been to Sunday Mass in Italy, both inside and outside of religious houses (with the exception of Santa Susanna in Rome, where you can go if you just want to sing out of Gather Comprehensive and have that slightly-to-the-liberal-side-of-center standard American sort of worship-experience), they seem to use this little Sunday bulletin/worship aid published by San Paolo and called La Domenica. It's actually pretty good. It has the readings and proper prayers of the day, as well as the Gloria and Creed printed in it. There's a little reflection on the front and a formula for the Universal Prayer inside. I usually expect such things to be not very good, but these aren't bad.

Today, however, on this solemnity of All Saints, I was a little disappointed. The reflection was too much history and not enough eschatology. And on the front are the patron saints of Europe: Benedict, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Edith Stein. Now I have nothing against these saints in their service as patrons of Europe (although, as I expressed in this post, I have worry that Italian devotion to St. Benedict risks giving new birth to the excesses of Joachim of Fiore); indeed patron saints of Europe must be very busy in this tempo di crisi, as the phrase goes here in Italy. Personally, I've been praying to St. Benedict recently. My first priest, the good Fr. Larry at Connecticut College, has always maintained that I am supposed to be a Benedictine rather than a Franciscan. I have always dismissed this, but lately I've started to wonder. Maybe it's just the temptation of living near Norcia. And of course I'm more or less in love with Edith Stein; probably the best homily I've given in Italian was just a quote from her Kreuzeswissenschaft for the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis. When I think about her description of her famous conversion-prayer moment in Frankfurt, it touches my own experience so strongly. It's funny; for my mothers and fathers in religious life the iconic moment in this mold seems to be Merton on the corner of 4th and Walnut; for me it's a struggle between feeling like Edith Stein in Frankfurt or like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.

But to get back to the patrons of Europe, all those saints have their proper days in the calendar; they don't need to be on the cover of the bulletin today. To me the feast of All Saints is about them, for sure, but also for all the saints who are unknown, who will never be canonized for the veneration and encouragement of the Church Militant. Indeed, we go through the cycles of the liturgical year celebrating the feast of this or that saint, we can read the Martyrology each day and meet even more. But to believe in the salvation we have in Christ, it seems to me, is to confess that all of these are but a small fraction of the members of the Church Triumphant. And because we who are still on the journey of this life hope to join the saints one day, but because few of us will ever be canonized, today is the day we look forward to as our own future feast day. Indeed, that is our hope as we pray through this day; that one day we will find ourselves on the other side of the praise and veneration that goes up from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant on All Saints Day.

As St. Bernard reminds us in the Office of Readings today, this is, in fact, the function of All Saints Day. Not that the saints should gain anything from our venerating them, but that our recollection of their destiny should kindle in us the desire to share it.

resurgamus cum Christo, quaeramus quae sursum sunt, quae sursum sapiamus

says St. Bernard, riffing on the great Pauline Easter slogan, 'seek the things that are above,' sursum sunt quaerite. (Colossians 3:1)

"Let us rise again with Christ, may we seek the things that are above, may we taste what is above."

That's the spiritual life; seeking after a taste once tasted. Yearning for a God once glimpsed, but who seems to recede from our understanding and who seems to resist our comprehension. And indeed, it is supposed to be this way, because God refuses to be reduced to a 'thing' that can be possessed, that can be had like any other created good, much less any other consumer commodity. And this is why prayer is the first and best school of evangelical poverty, because what we seek can't be possessed in any way that our created bodies and minds can understand, and because as we settle into the 'uninteresting wilderness' of prayer, we find that our very desire for what we have tasted is itself the bread for our journey. It is the desire that turns out to be rest, and this is the way in which our prayer takes shape, as we journey to the Father, as the mirror image of the self-emptying God, of the immolated Christ.

non enim dispositus est aliquo modo ad contemplationes divinas, quae ad mentales ducunt excessus, nisi cum Daniele sit vir desideriorum.

"One is not ready in any way for the divine contemplations, which lead to interior ecstasy, unless he be like Daniel a man of desires." (St. Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God, prologue, 3)

New Vocation Video

Those are the current postulants from my province of the Order. I was impressed with their work in the video. A couple of things in particular struck me.

First, the saints. Why join the Capuchins? Because the Order has produced so many saints and blesseds. That's a great answer, and one that I would have been too ignorant and self-involved to think of when I was first entering religious life. It reminded me of the conversation with Robert Lax recalled by Thomas Merton in which Lax challenges the newly-baptized Merton to want to be a saint. To be a 'good Catholic' was hardly worthy of human desire; one ought to want to be a saint. And in fact, said Lax, it was a very simple thing; one only had to want it.

(I think it also has to be said, in course, that the Capuchin Order has the sort of life in which sanctity tends to get noticed by the Church and the world, and so canonized saints happen. I'm sure that, for example, cloistered institutes produce plenty of saints. We just don't know about them in this life.)

Second, prayer. I'm encouraged by their emphasis on prayer and it calls me back, making me remember some of my first love and fervor in this life. It brings back to me the greatest compliment I have ever received: when I was applying to the Capuchins one of the things I needed was a recommendation from my pastor. I had been a parishioner of St. Lawrence in West Haven, Connecticut (I lived right near the church on the corner of Main and Washington) but I didn't know the pastor very well. I had hardly spoken to him, apart from the occasional confession (I usually went to the Dominicans at St. Mary's.) But when I approached him to explain that I was applying to religious life and to ask for the recommendation, he said that he would be happy to do it. He said that I seemed to 'have a desire for prayer.' That might be the most encouraging thing anyone has ever said to me.

After all, a desire for prayer is nothing other than a desire for God, for prayer is nothing other than our surrender to the life of the Blessed Trinity and his holy manner of operation within us. By our baptism we are folded into the Dynamics of the Source, the Father eternally speaking the Word by the breath of the Spirit, the Son praying through the same Spirit back to the Father. And if the desire for prayer is nothing other than the desire for God, the desire for God is the same thing as the desire to be a saint.

Adjustments

As perhaps you noticed, this blog disappeared for a couple of days, along with my Twitter account. I just needed that little bit of space in my ongoing project--or perhaps the ongoing project of grace!--of clarifying for myself my voice, who I am online, what this blog is for me and how I use it. Writing, after all, is a spiritual practice not to be taken lightly. As Thomas Merton put it:

“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.”

That's from New Seeds of Contemplation. It's amazing what an influence that book has had on me over the years. Right now I'm reading an Italian translation; since it's a text I know pretty well, it's good practice.

So, coming back from a couple days of retreat into the void, I've made a couple of adjustments. First, I've marked the occasion with a new layout. The old template was one I had been using since I started this blog over six years ago, which was before Blogger was part of Google. Not everything on the template was working rightly any longer, and it was also full of my amateurish efforts at hand-rolling some of the HTML. (In those days there wasn't yet the widget-based layout editor we have now.) I've edited out some old posts of which I've repented. I've also reduced the lists of blog on the sidebar to one. When I started this blog, I knew of only a few other blogs by Franciscans, so I thought it would be right and just to start a particularly Franciscan blogroll. At this point I couldn't even read all of the blogs by my Capuchin confreres, let alone all the Franciscans who are out there bringing some pax et bonum to the web. So now there's just one list for everyone: old and new blogging friends, bloggers I just find interesting, and those I feel like it's only right to link out of filial piety or because of visitors sent.

The licensing information as well as the disclaimer are unchanged, and both still appear all the way at the bottom.

In Paradiso Con Altro Titolo

It's interesting living close to the administrative center of the Order; you learn the answers to questions you never knew you had. Today provides a good example.

If you are a Catholic, you are no doubt familiar with holy cards of the saints. You probably have some in your missal or your breviary. I have a holy card of Our Lady of the Angels that's been in my wallet for almost twenty years, long story.

Now, perhaps you have had a holy card of someone who has been beatified, a holy card of blessed so-and-so.

Have you ever wondered what happens to the holy cards of blessed so-and-so if and when blessed so-and-so gets canonized and becomes saint so-and-so? Me neither. But now I know. The person who was in charge of the causes of those former blesseds, from whom the holy cards of blessed so-and-so originate, finding himself home alone on a very hot day, puts them in the fireplace.

He even had a little chant to go with his raking around in the fireplace,

In cielo, in cielo con altro titolo ...

"In heaven, in heaven with new title."

One learns these things because inquiring minds always want to know why someone would make a fire in the fireplace in Rome in August.

Amen. May we all learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.

On Being From New York and Kentucky

When you're living in a foreign country, it's a common question in various settings. Mostly I say I'm from New York. This isn't exactly false; in most of my life here in Italy the from-ness pertaining to me that matters most is that I am a friar of the Capuchin province of New York (and New England.)

Most of the time it's too hard to say that you're from Connecticut. It's a hard word on the Italian ear, and you just end up saying that you're from north of New York anyway. I've found that with academic types I might be able to say that I'm from New Haven, but mostly I don't bother.

A not insignificant number of times when I've told a priest or religious that I'm from Connecticut they hear instead 'Kentucky' and start talking about Thomas Merton. Since Kentucky also has a New Haven, I suppose I could contrive an even more confusing conversation if I were in the mood. To cause even more trouble, I could try to explain how my first experience of religious life was the summer I spent as a volunteer at the Benedictine sisters of Floyd County, Kentucky, which is nowhere near the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Sabbato Sancto

I have always loved Holy Saturday. The emptiness of it just speaks to my praying heart. "There is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep," says the homily in the Office of Readings today. Jesus Christ sleeps in our death. As both a good Jew in his humanity and as the one God in his divinity, he rests on the Sabbath, on this last day.

I used to notice the emptiness of this day most strongly when I was a parish priest. There was hardly anything to do, that is, apart from decorating, rehearsals, and set-up. No morning Mass, no possibility of a wedding or funeral, not even much to eat given that I try to accept the Church's exhortation to keep the paschal fast. Just prayer, and the cauterizing quiet of contemplation:

"What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, cliches, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing my occupy the place that God has commanded be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply 'is.'" (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 13)

Let us rest with the Lord in the renovating emptiness of this Sabbath. In it we sit, once again for the first time, in the last day of the old creation. As this last day ends with the setting of the sun, let us go with quiet and open hearts to the great Vigil that opens the new creation. Let us hear the effective word of God calling us forth from the water as his new creatures, and let us know our renovated hearts bursting with the Easter slogan, sursum sunt quaerite, 'seek the things that are above.'

Renounce and Remain Empty

One of my great teachers, John of the Cross, has been with me in a special way this Lent. From the Subida de Monte Carmelo:


Cualquier gusto que se le ofreciere a los sentidos, como no sea puramente para honra y gloria de Dios, renúncielo y quédese vacío de él por amor de Jesucristo. (1,13,4)

"Renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God. Do this out of love for Jesus Christ" (trans. ICS)

Emptiness is not an option; our ontological poverty as created beings and our temporal and cognitive limitation make us experience ourselves as lacking. We find ourselves as beings who long for something solid and eternal, but without much reliable or solid in ourselves nor with much time left. Emptiness is our condition, but what sort of emptiness we want to be is our freedom. We can have the searing and grasping boredom that is the emptiness of sin, or the blessed emptiness that makes our souls like unto the no-thing that is God. We are either the rotten and inverted pride that is the emptiness of despair, or the dark and blessed emptiness of the Holy of Holies at the heart of God's Temple.

The glorification and glory of God is my happiness. Each time I try to enjoy any created thing apart from this glory, I allow myself to be tricked into choosing my own misery and non-being.

"Everything you love for its own sake, outside of God alone, blinds your intellect and destroys your judgment of moral values. It vitiates your choices so that you cannot clearly distinguish good from evil and you do not truly know God's will." (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 203)

Humanity exists in the image and likeness of God that God himself might be incarnate in it, perfectly sharing the glorious, infinite, and perfect delight that is his own being. In and because of Jesus Christ, my deepest and most real identity is the glory of God. "The glory of God is man fully alive," said St. Irenaeus, famously. For the converse we go to St. Paul: 'Life' means Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth, as a human life, is the Word of God conceived by the Holy Spirit. The fruit of this mystery of the incarnation and the passing of Jesus through the alienation, suffering, and death we insist upon for ourselves with our violence and sin is this: we realize ourselves in the Love that makes us beloved sons and daughters in the Beloved of the Lover who is the Father of all.

But this deepest identity for which we were created still suffers frustration. Because of the lingering effects of original sin, my thoughts are confused and my affections disordered. That's why I try to enjoy created things for their own sake, apart from the glory of God. Each time I do, I reinforce the misery which is the law of sin and death that festers in my mortal nature. To "renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God," as John teaches, is the beginning of recovering my real self, the particular humanity created by God to be a unique and unrepeatable expression of his glory.

Compunctus

There was a lot to strike--and even the pierce--the heart in the new prayers for Ash Wednesday yesterday, but I was grateful most of all for the Prayer over the People:

Pour out a spirit of compunction, O God, on those who bow before your majesty, and by your mercy may they merit the rewards you promise to those who do penance. Through Christ our Lord.

 But when...you see that your nature is still twisted and disfigured by selfishness and by the disorder of sin, and that you are cramped and warped by a way of living that turns you incessantly back upon your own pleasure and your own interest, and that you cannot escape this distortion: that you cannot even deserve to escape it, by your own power, what will your sorrow be? This is the root of what the saints called compunction: the grief, the anguish of being helpless to be anything but what you were not meant to be. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 263)

Humble and Precious and Chaste

Yesterday I put on Twitter the old gag about the recipe for holy water: take regular water. Boil the hell out of it. It got retweeted a bunch of times, and immediately I felt bad because I don't know if this is an old joke in the public domain or if it belongs to someone. So if it does, I apologize.

Nevertheless, I like the joke for the theology embedded in it. It's not that something has to added to the water to make it holy; the holiness is already there (apparently) but for the hell that needs to be boiled out.

Sanctity is not something new to be found, but a deeper identity to be uncovered as distractions, sins, and false selves are cleared away. Holiness is the real identity of the creature; we have just forgotten about and become distracted from who we really are.

This is why the old advice we've been fed for so long, 'be yourself,' is so right, but at the same time often unhelpful. Of course we should be our real selves, the flourishing and happy saints free for compassion and care that God has created us to be. But this isn't something you can just do.

When I try to just 'be myself' I usually end up reinforcing a false self and any number of vain self-attributions that I have wrapped like dirty bandages around the festering injury that is the lingering effect of original sin. Being myself ends up being a very hard and ongoing work that requires letting go of all kinds of stuff that I thought was me, of struggling to be free of the tyranny of the self, of abandoning what I thought was me in favor of the creature I am in the mind of God.

This is why we're like the recipe for holy water. We are already saints, but for surrendering to having the hell burned out of us by the burning love of the Crucified, apart from which there is no way.

Via autem non est nisi per ardentissimum amorem crucifixi.

The Beginning of Humility

As I continued to reflect on the 'examination of conscience' post from yesterday, a quote from Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation came to mind. This happens often; the book had an early and deep influence on my Christianity.

"Everything you love for its own sake, outside of God alone, blinds your intellect and destroys your judgment of moral values. It vitiates your choices so that you cannot clearly distinguish good from evil and you do not truly know God's will." (203)

The problem with being a sinner isn't just that sin offends God, or that by our sins we not only insist on our own misery but also inflict that misery on each other. Each and every sinful act we commit also deforms our mind and imagination. Every evil or detracting word forms and reinforces both interior and exterior speech in uncharity. Every unchaste movement to which we consent deforms our ability to see other creatures as God made them. Every self-indulgent act reinforces our taste for whatever it is.

The sinner must recognize and admit that because of sin, he or she can't think straight. Though we are made free and clean from original sin in baptism, the wounds of sin still fester in our bodies, minds, and personalities. To know oneself as a sinner is also to admit that all of our reflections and thoughts are also so tainted.

This is the beginning of humility: to recognize that, because of my sins, even my judgments, reflections, and discernments are not entirely trustworthy. I don't see things for what they really are because I have refused to do so by attachment to my sins. I don't know everything, I don't have the sense to say something about a lot of things, and I'm certainly not fit to direct myself in the spiritual life.

Whenever we notice that we are giving ourselves every benefit of the doubt and excuse for our failures and sins, but doing no such thing for others, we can remember that it's time to get back to this beginning of humility.

Gossip, Detraction, etc.

One of my disappointments with religious life as I have found it is that in some ways we seem to have abandoned the classic concerns of the spirituality of our state. Not that I think old-fashioned ideas about spirituality are good just because they are old, but sometimes I feel that common life is very much in need of listening to our spiritual fathers and mothers from the past.

One area where I think this is especially true is in the use of speech. Writing from the tradition of religious life is full of admonitions, warnings, and invitations to ascetical practice (we would say 'spiritual practice') in the use of speech. The dangers of gossip, detraction, and idle chatter have long been recognized. And yet, in the course of my own training and formation in religious life, I have never heard anyone recommend examination of conscience on these sorts of things, nor indeed much concern for their harmfulness at all.

I was thinking about this and confessing to God my own sins in this area as I said my prayers this morning. In the Office of Readings today, St. Columban reveals that he knew well these temptations and dangers: "Men like nothing better than discussing and minding the business of others, passing superfluous comments at random and criticizing people behind their backs."

It's a very destructive business, and not only rampant but more or less uncriticized in religious life as I have experienced it. Here's a real-life example: Apparently two brothers had a tense and unsuccessful conversation. This conversation was reported to me several times by various other brothers. In each case, the details, setting, and motivations presented were different in such ways as to present one of the brothers at fault and the other innocent. In one telling one of them was totally open and good, and the other dismissive and cruel. In another the analysis was reversed. What really happened? I don't know. But what I do know is that in the reporting of the incident it got to be about blaming rather than anything spiritually useful. The devil is quite happy to make use of our idea of right and wrong, so long as it convinces us that what is wrong with our communities is someone else's fault.

Thus we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 115-116)

Beyond all of the well-known negative effects of gossip, detraction, and calumny, the ultimate spiritual problem is that we become to one another not the persons created by God, but the narratives that are told about us. We begin to treat each other according to this constructed identity, because it's easier than getting to know each other in all of our complexity. At worst, we can begin to act ourselves either in conformity or reaction to this false and shallow caricature of our true self. If we do this long enough, we can even forget who we really are. Because this false self is also unknown to God, we will also always feel like there is something fundamentally amiss with our prayer life, but not be able to name it.

Let us rather accept the admonition of our holy father Francis: "Blessed is that religious who takes no pleasure and joy except in the most holy words and deeds of the Lord and with these leads people to the love of God in joy and gladness." (Admonition XX)

Being a Unique Snowflake

Thinking on St. Bruno for his feast day this morning, I opened up the home page of the Carthusian order. I don't know if it's some kind of quote or motto or something, but I was struck by the greeting to visitors:

"Friend, whoever you are, whatever led you to this site, welcome. You will not find anything fashionable, not even a concern for being different."

I find that profound and challenging. Anyone who wants to live a devout life of any sort must forever struggle with the rotten intuition of the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men. This is especially true in a society that has given up not only on the truth of eschatology but even the erstatz eschatologies of the worldly philosophers of history and thus craves novelty and celebrity as the only things left to provide temporary relief from the general aimlessness.

When we decide each day that we want to live a spiritual life, the devil will do everything he can to stoke our vainglory and encourage us to think it zeal and righteousness. The injury of original sin has left each of us with a little narcissistic celebrity inside. It's easy to get convinced that this person is our 'leadership potential' or our zeal for the reform of others. Since it's easier to worship a celebrity than to worship the living God, the devil sees a lot of potential for damage to souls through ministers who let themselves become their own worst selves.

The good news is that God wills to save us from ourselves. The very work of prayer teaches us interior poverty because God refuses to be a commodity or a possession. A life of prayer doesn't make us special, but instead teaches us that the need to be special is a dead end that leads only to alienation. The God who desires us in prayer is no-thing that can be had and no credential that can be pinned to our insecure heart. Prayer delivers us from the horrendous cut-throat system of this world in which I can only be somebody if everyone else is a nobody. Prayer opens us to the truth that we are all somebody only because of the Someone who is the Ground and Love out of which we are all spoken into being. The spiritual life exists not to help us indulge our need to be special or different, but to let go of it.

'Be yourself', as we were told as children. True enough, but they didn't know what they were talking about. Being yourself does not mean what the world thinks it means, namely indulging one's quirks and so-called individuality so as to wrap a certain uniqueness around the meaningless and moral chaos that the world asks us to accept. No, being yourself means letting God love the person he created, and discovering the liberating humility of journeying through the discovery of who that person really is.

"The way to contemplation is an obscurity so obscure that it is no longer even dramatic. There is nothing in it that can be grasped and cherished as heroic or even unusual." (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 250)