From time to time people tell me about their worry over doubting God or some truth of the faith. I become concerned for them, not because they may be doubting, but because such anxiety easily gets in the way of using the experience of doubt well. I tend to offer these sorts of reflections to those who say they are struggling with doubt:
First of all, the human mind is a creation of God. Therefore, there can be no fear of being led away from God by the right and thoughtful use of the mind God has given us. Indeed, the mind is mysterious, spiritual, and sublime and can be thus overwhelming in its incomprehensibility, but this is only part of its imitation of the God to whom it is similar. In other words, we shouldn't be afraid to think. Opening up our minds to the Mystery may wrench some of what we thought were our beliefs, but this is not doubt or danger.
Second, we need to recognize that the truths of faith, though often expressed in simple language, are often quite subtle in their meaning, and are complex combinations of metaphorical, symbolic, sacramental, and narrative expressions. In the Creed we make utterances like, "I believe in God," or "begotten, not made." These are deceptively simple in language, but demand for their understanding at least a partial grasp of many difficult concepts, e.g. eternity, divinity, etc.
Far too often I find that people have not been helped to own a faith that goes beyond a simple intellectual assent to claims that they aren't sure how to understand. I once knew a religious sister in the prime of life who would omit the line, "is seated at the right hand of Father" when praying the Creed, because she found it unbelievable that "heaven was a place with chairs." How bad I felt for her that she had never come to the realization that the language (compare iconography here) is a window into eternity and not a discourse on furniture!*
Most of the time, in my experience, people who think they are struggling with doubt are actually being invited into a deeper relationship with the truths of the faith. They are experiencing God's invitation to give up the role of spectator--those who worship God and his Mysteries as something beautiful and praiseworthy, but without relationship to themselves--and to accept that the Truths of faith are mysteries that we are to step into with our lives.
*Here I have to mention, parenthetically, the error that is commonly made by the world when someone arrives at this spiritual moment. The world suggests the civil theology of 'many paths to one spiritual something-or-other' in which all religious language is more or less inadequate, but all of it points to something, perhaps spiritual, perhaps ultimate, that we call "God." Conveniently, this pseudo-doctrine leads to no demand on anyone and no dogmatic claims, except for the "dictatorship of relativism" in which no one is allowed to say that anything might be wrong or unacceptable.
No. Language is important, not because someone says so, but because we believe in the Incarnation. Christianity is and will always be a kind of 'scandal of particularity' because it proclaims that God is perfectly revealed in the very particular human life of Jesus of Nazareth. By his Resurrection into the Eucharistized community that we call his Body, the mystery of the Incarnation is extended through time. This is why the particular language of the successors of the apostles gathered in ecumenical council is privileged as an unfolding of our understanding of divine revelation.
May 31, 2009
Urgent Prayer Request
Please pray for the eternal rest of Dr. George Tiller, who was shot to death in church this morning.
Pray for the consolation and the peace of his family, friends, and for the other members of his church.
Pray for his killer and for our country.
Pray for the consolation and the peace of his family, friends, and for the other members of his church.
Pray for his killer and for our country.
The Outpouring
Each of the baptized is called to fulfill their Marian vocation by consenting to the Holy Spirit's conception of the Word of God within them, and thus to become "another Christ" for the reconciliation and salvation of the world. My homily for Pentecost Day is posted here.
May 30, 2009
Thank You
This afternoon I am alerted by the referrer log that some kind soul (or souls!) has put this little ministry into contention for the 2009 Catholic New Media Awards in the category "best blog by a religious."
As always, thank you for your prayers and encouragement. I'm going to put up the nominee badge right away.
As always, thank you for your prayers and encouragement. I'm going to put up the nominee badge right away.
The Desire of our Hearts
Today we wait for the surpassing gift of God, the Holy Spirit. My homily for the Pentecost Vigil is posted here.
May 28, 2009
Discerning the Diabolical
More often than you might think, people ask me whether or not I think their temptations and struggles are of diabolical origin.
Most of the time I don't think so, but I tend to take the practical approach: bracketing off the question of the devil's possible role, I ask whether or not guessing him to be involved will help someone take action. In other words, I ask myself whether the idea of the diabolical will tone someone up for fruitful spiritual combat or further absolve him from taking responsibility for himself.
That being said, there are a couple of cases of spiritual erring and sin where I am inclined, at times, to consider diabolical influence:
1. When someone is "inspired" to be intensely religious, but in such a way that is not about God, but about himself. I think it's a mistake for a devout person to think that the devil will try to tempt her to sin in ways that are obviously crude and worldly. It is the devil's joy to have us be as religious as could be, so long as we do it his way. So the diabolical attacks on devout people take the form of temptations to spiritual vanity, self-righteousness, abuse of church power and control of others, etc. To form a very religious person who only reflects on the sins of others and the punishment they have earned for themselves, a proud religious, or a priest who delights in vanities, power, or ambition, are examples of the devil's proud accomplishments.
2. In certain temptations that make a tricky inversion of self-indulgence and humility. Say someone is working hard at the spiritual combat against a habitual sin, like an addiction of some sort. A suggestion comes into his mind saying, "Just sin and get it over with, then you can at least pray in repentance." Of course this is a trick because the good of repentant prayer--which is a familiar place for our victim--is set up (falsely) as a way to get him to give up the fight. His greater familiarity--and hence comfort--with the state of praying as a repentant sinner is used to get him to give up the newer and much more awkward and uncomfortable position of being in the spiritual combat.
UPDATE: Credit where credit is due. Since this morning I have begun to suspect that I got at least the idea of 2. from Fr. Benedict Groeschel's The Courage to be Chaste. I can't check or give a citation because I gave away my copy some years ago. Nevertheless, it's a good book and I recommend it.
Most of the time I don't think so, but I tend to take the practical approach: bracketing off the question of the devil's possible role, I ask whether or not guessing him to be involved will help someone take action. In other words, I ask myself whether the idea of the diabolical will tone someone up for fruitful spiritual combat or further absolve him from taking responsibility for himself.
That being said, there are a couple of cases of spiritual erring and sin where I am inclined, at times, to consider diabolical influence:
1. When someone is "inspired" to be intensely religious, but in such a way that is not about God, but about himself. I think it's a mistake for a devout person to think that the devil will try to tempt her to sin in ways that are obviously crude and worldly. It is the devil's joy to have us be as religious as could be, so long as we do it his way. So the diabolical attacks on devout people take the form of temptations to spiritual vanity, self-righteousness, abuse of church power and control of others, etc. To form a very religious person who only reflects on the sins of others and the punishment they have earned for themselves, a proud religious, or a priest who delights in vanities, power, or ambition, are examples of the devil's proud accomplishments.
2. In certain temptations that make a tricky inversion of self-indulgence and humility. Say someone is working hard at the spiritual combat against a habitual sin, like an addiction of some sort. A suggestion comes into his mind saying, "Just sin and get it over with, then you can at least pray in repentance." Of course this is a trick because the good of repentant prayer--which is a familiar place for our victim--is set up (falsely) as a way to get him to give up the fight. His greater familiarity--and hence comfort--with the state of praying as a repentant sinner is used to get him to give up the newer and much more awkward and uncomfortable position of being in the spiritual combat.
UPDATE: Credit where credit is due. Since this morning I have begun to suspect that I got at least the idea of 2. from Fr. Benedict Groeschel's The Courage to be Chaste. I can't check or give a citation because I gave away my copy some years ago. Nevertheless, it's a good book and I recommend it.
May 27, 2009
Telling the Conversion Story
As an adult convert, the telling of the conversion story becomes a regular part of religious practice. You are called upon to tell your story to brothers and sisters who also marvel at God's grace, but also to people who are just curious. You also have an awareness of the conversion story as an internal narrative that forms a kind of self-apology in the consciousness of yourself as a praying person.
Since the day of my Baptism almost seventeen years ago, I have told my "conversion story" more times than I know, both to myself and to others. What is fascinating to me is how the story has changed.
My sense of my conversion story has changed in two basic ways: it's starting point has been steadily retreating to an earlier point in my earthly life, and the agency of the story has been shifting away from me and onto God.
When someone asked me to tell my story around the time of my Baptism, I started the story a couple of years before, when I became interested in this or that, concerned about what it meant to be a human being in this or that way, how I picked up the gospel of St. Matthew on a hot summer night and read the Sermon on the Mount, and how my inability to know any criteria by which I might "choose" a church was my first school of the surrender of prayer.
But as time went on, the starting point of the story retreated into the past. After a couple of years I realized the importance of choices and influences that came upon me several years before. My discovery of punk rock and hardcore rock and roll, for instance, was helping me to make the "critical turn," to know that the values and given wisdom about the world were not always the best or what the heart really wanted. An interest in mathematics combined with the awakening of reading Plato for the first time had both helped me to understand what it is meant by a spiritual reality.
Even later I began to remember certain experiences of the Infinite Mystery that I had when I was real little. Returning to such experiences from time to time in prayer, I have begun to see how God was drawing me into the grace of prayer--unaware as I was--even from early childhood. This helped me to understand certain spotty attractions to Christ crucified and to the life of faith that I also experienced as a kid.
All this is to say that it has been an amazing experience to see my conversion story unfold backwards. When I was baptized I thought that this was a process I had begun a year or two before, but now I can see it as something that was going on as far back as I can remember.
All of this makes for the second shift in my consciousness of my conversion story, which is the question of the main character. When I was baptized, I admit that it was mostly me. I had decided to do this bold thing because of what I had to come to believe and to desire. More and more I know that this is a story about God and not about me; about how God--in his tremendous mercy--has given me the opportunity to be relieved of the tyranny of my life being about me. In other words, it's not my conversion story anymore. It's a story about grace in which I play a supporting role, and not even very well. But that doesn't matter, honestly. God is so good, who cares about me?
Since the day of my Baptism almost seventeen years ago, I have told my "conversion story" more times than I know, both to myself and to others. What is fascinating to me is how the story has changed.
My sense of my conversion story has changed in two basic ways: it's starting point has been steadily retreating to an earlier point in my earthly life, and the agency of the story has been shifting away from me and onto God.
When someone asked me to tell my story around the time of my Baptism, I started the story a couple of years before, when I became interested in this or that, concerned about what it meant to be a human being in this or that way, how I picked up the gospel of St. Matthew on a hot summer night and read the Sermon on the Mount, and how my inability to know any criteria by which I might "choose" a church was my first school of the surrender of prayer.
But as time went on, the starting point of the story retreated into the past. After a couple of years I realized the importance of choices and influences that came upon me several years before. My discovery of punk rock and hardcore rock and roll, for instance, was helping me to make the "critical turn," to know that the values and given wisdom about the world were not always the best or what the heart really wanted. An interest in mathematics combined with the awakening of reading Plato for the first time had both helped me to understand what it is meant by a spiritual reality.
Even later I began to remember certain experiences of the Infinite Mystery that I had when I was real little. Returning to such experiences from time to time in prayer, I have begun to see how God was drawing me into the grace of prayer--unaware as I was--even from early childhood. This helped me to understand certain spotty attractions to Christ crucified and to the life of faith that I also experienced as a kid.
All this is to say that it has been an amazing experience to see my conversion story unfold backwards. When I was baptized I thought that this was a process I had begun a year or two before, but now I can see it as something that was going on as far back as I can remember.
All of this makes for the second shift in my consciousness of my conversion story, which is the question of the main character. When I was baptized, I admit that it was mostly me. I had decided to do this bold thing because of what I had to come to believe and to desire. More and more I know that this is a story about God and not about me; about how God--in his tremendous mercy--has given me the opportunity to be relieved of the tyranny of my life being about me. In other words, it's not my conversion story anymore. It's a story about grace in which I play a supporting role, and not even very well. But that doesn't matter, honestly. God is so good, who cares about me?
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