The other day I got an email from the kind folks at the Boston College School of Theology & Ministry telling me that I wasn't registered for any classes and wondering whether I was still a student there. You see, I've never been able to figure out how to use the registration software, so at the beginning of these past two semesters I've gone to another nice lady in the school office (or as it seems to be called, the 'Service Center') and had her register me. But in order to get my scholarship money I have to be registered, so the person with whom I was emailing kindly enabled me in my incompetence and registered me from something called "TM 980," which is what you're in when you aren't in any actual courses anymore.
Following this email conversation I thought that the very fact of it perhaps meant I no longer had an 'F' in the Medieval Trinitarian theology seminar from last semester. And behold, when I checked my BC identity online, the F had been changed to a passing grade. So my grade in the course journeyed from an 'I' for incomplete at the end of the semester to an 'F' for 'administrative failure' on August 1 and then finally to a passing grade.
Of course in my vanity I enjoyed having an F in the course, at least for a little while, and even though it wasn't really an F. I had never had an F before. A couple of Ds along the way, but no F until now.
I got to reflecting on this as a metaphor for the spiritual life. We start out with the incomplete; without God there is something missing. Then, having let ourselves be found by God, we discover ourselves as a failure, unable to live up to the desire this new Presence works in our souls. And we live in the hope and prayer that this God who has come into our life is gently renovating our humanity so that in him we will become a passable human being. Perhaps with all of our resistances and hardness of heart we won't succeed in letting God make us into saints in this life, but in his mercy God has provided the searing joy of Purgatory as a mercy for those who need to continue this process after the end of earthly life. Either way, in the humanity of Christ our blessed incompleteness is offered salvation from the failing mess we tend to make of it, and that's what is meant by Christian hope.
August 31, 2011
August 30, 2011
Confessing our Deicide
These past couple of days I've enjoyed a visit from my sister. It was very good to see her and catch up. We spent yesterday morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. Because of my general Philistinism, I had not been there before despite having lived in Boston for a total of six years.
It's a lovely place, and we saw many interesting things. I have to say, though, that the visit troubled me a little. Journeying through the history of European art, it became clear to me that God, or at least a certain explicit way of expressing divine things, goes away. At the beginning one sees so many beautiful depictions of the Lord and the saints. Over the course of time, the dominance of the mysteries of revelation and the saints evaporates.
It brought Nietzsche to mind:
I don't want to beat any culture war drum and bewail that our civilization went wrong by doing away with God. It may be true but that's a judgement that certain cautions with me prevent me from making. But I will say two things about what seems to follow. First, our civilization, as I think Nietzsche warns, has not understood the implications of having killed God. And now, as 'God' becomes a concept without any intelligible content at all for whole sections of society--sometimes even for religious people, though many times it's not their fault--we don't even know why it becomes impossible to make value judgments or avoid slipping into the relativism in which there is only the rule of power.
Second, and this is the thing that's really been on my mind, I wonder if we who are believers have really done any better with taking the death of God seriously. Have we found ways to preach and catechize that both confess and confront that all of us who are heirs to western civilization are implicated in deicide? God is dead. And remains Dead. And we have killed him. Does our religion admit this? Or worse, does it just live in denial in such a way that we become functional agnostics or even atheists?
To be fair to the Church, I think that Gaudium et spes, for example, was something like an attempt at answer to this sort of question. But the more I read it, the more I become convinced that it was the Church's shot at embracing the humanistic optimism that western civilization tried to substitute for God, and that just as the rest of the world was giving up on it after witnessing its rotten fruits during the bloody twentieth century.
For us who have killed God and put him out of the human civilization he himself created, I'm wondering if something more radical is called for. But I admit I'm not sure what it is.
Update: I'm not sure what it is primarily because the execution of the God who failed to live up to our best religious expectations is at the heart of Christianity, and I haven't put this truth together with the historical data yet.
It's a lovely place, and we saw many interesting things. I have to say, though, that the visit troubled me a little. Journeying through the history of European art, it became clear to me that God, or at least a certain explicit way of expressing divine things, goes away. At the beginning one sees so many beautiful depictions of the Lord and the saints. Over the course of time, the dominance of the mysteries of revelation and the saints evaporates.
It brought Nietzsche to mind:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann)
I don't want to beat any culture war drum and bewail that our civilization went wrong by doing away with God. It may be true but that's a judgement that certain cautions with me prevent me from making. But I will say two things about what seems to follow. First, our civilization, as I think Nietzsche warns, has not understood the implications of having killed God. And now, as 'God' becomes a concept without any intelligible content at all for whole sections of society--sometimes even for religious people, though many times it's not their fault--we don't even know why it becomes impossible to make value judgments or avoid slipping into the relativism in which there is only the rule of power.
Second, and this is the thing that's really been on my mind, I wonder if we who are believers have really done any better with taking the death of God seriously. Have we found ways to preach and catechize that both confess and confront that all of us who are heirs to western civilization are implicated in deicide? God is dead. And remains Dead. And we have killed him. Does our religion admit this? Or worse, does it just live in denial in such a way that we become functional agnostics or even atheists?
To be fair to the Church, I think that Gaudium et spes, for example, was something like an attempt at answer to this sort of question. But the more I read it, the more I become convinced that it was the Church's shot at embracing the humanistic optimism that western civilization tried to substitute for God, and that just as the rest of the world was giving up on it after witnessing its rotten fruits during the bloody twentieth century.
For us who have killed God and put him out of the human civilization he himself created, I'm wondering if something more radical is called for. But I admit I'm not sure what it is.
Update: I'm not sure what it is primarily because the execution of the God who failed to live up to our best religious expectations is at the heart of Christianity, and I haven't put this truth together with the historical data yet.
August 26, 2011
Receiving the Stigmata
Thomas Merton:
Edith Stein:
The Risen Lord continued to bear the wounds of the Crucified Christ. In the same way, the wounds of sin remain in the redemption-in-process that is the humanity of the Christian. For better or for worse, nothing makes us who we are more than our suffering. We find ourselves as human beings in an injured state, often foiled by our own faults and sins and subjected to misery because of the sins of others. This is the mystery of the effects of original sin in the world.
God redeems us in Christ by meeting us exactly in this miserable and alienated condition: This is the mystery of Christ crucified. Though killed in his human nature, death could not contain Christ as God. Thus the Cross blazes a new path for the humanity he shares with us, a path out of the deathly misery we have insisted upon for ourselves with our sins to a new and risen life.
As we become redeemed by consenting to let our own humanity be drawn into the humanity of Christ--and this is the mystery of baptism and Holy Communion, by the way--the wounds and broken parts of ourselves remain, but in a transformed way. Though freed and redeemed, our sufferings and struggles are still the things that have made us who we are. But these wounds, previously just a source of meaninglessness and pain, have been transformed into stigmata, signs of transformed suffering that illustrate to those around us the possibility of resurrected humanity.
Thus, in a sense every Christian is a stigmatic. But it's not that we 'receive' the stigmata, for the wounds have always been there. The hurts and brokenness that were meaningless and so often a source of the desperate cycles of violence of the world that does not know God, have now been transformed into the redeemed wounds that bleed only compassion.
To live "in Christ" is to live in a mystery equal to that of the Incarnation and similar to it. (New Seeds of Contemplation, 158)
Edith Stein:
Thus a new incarnation of Christ takes place in christians, which is synonymous with a resurrection from the death on the cross. The new self carries the wounds of Christ on the body: the remembrance of the misery of sin out of which the soul was awakened to a blessed life, and a reminder of the price that had to be paid for that. The pain of yearning for the fullness of life persists until, through the door of actual physical death, entrance into the shadowless light is gained. (The Science of the Cross, trans. Josephine Koeppel, OCD)
The Risen Lord continued to bear the wounds of the Crucified Christ. In the same way, the wounds of sin remain in the redemption-in-process that is the humanity of the Christian. For better or for worse, nothing makes us who we are more than our suffering. We find ourselves as human beings in an injured state, often foiled by our own faults and sins and subjected to misery because of the sins of others. This is the mystery of the effects of original sin in the world.
God redeems us in Christ by meeting us exactly in this miserable and alienated condition: This is the mystery of Christ crucified. Though killed in his human nature, death could not contain Christ as God. Thus the Cross blazes a new path for the humanity he shares with us, a path out of the deathly misery we have insisted upon for ourselves with our sins to a new and risen life.
As we become redeemed by consenting to let our own humanity be drawn into the humanity of Christ--and this is the mystery of baptism and Holy Communion, by the way--the wounds and broken parts of ourselves remain, but in a transformed way. Though freed and redeemed, our sufferings and struggles are still the things that have made us who we are. But these wounds, previously just a source of meaninglessness and pain, have been transformed into stigmata, signs of transformed suffering that illustrate to those around us the possibility of resurrected humanity.
Thus, in a sense every Christian is a stigmatic. But it's not that we 'receive' the stigmata, for the wounds have always been there. The hurts and brokenness that were meaningless and so often a source of the desperate cycles of violence of the world that does not know God, have now been transformed into the redeemed wounds that bleed only compassion.
August 25, 2011
Why I Stay
It's a commonplace in religious life to say that why you came isn't exactly the same as why you stay.
This is largely because religious life wasn't quite what you thought it would be. But perhaps more importantly, you also find out that you weren't exactly who you thought you were. Some of this is can be a painful purification. When the honeymoons are over and first fervor is gone, afflictive emotions that arise in community life reveal to us that our attraction to religious life wasn't entirely pious and pure. We realize our mixed motivations, that our hearts are mysterious and messy fields of weeds and wheat. We can let this teach us patience with each other and humility for ourselves, or we can refuse growth and just flail around in a doomed project of trying to get our disorderly emotional needs met. But no matter which we choose, we find ourselves a different person than we were when we started.
And so, because religious life doesn't turn out to be what we had imagined, and because we become different people within it, why we came usually isn't why we stay.
I was just thinking about this stuff because someone challenged me the other day with the question, "Why do you stay?" It's a good challenge, and the response ought to be dynamic and growing, parallel to the work of grace in a vocation. So here's where I am right now:
I'm a religious because it gives me peace to know that I have disposed of my life on earth. One of my confreres in the Order likes to say that my primary desire in life is to feel 'all set.' By my perpetual profession and my vow 'to give myself to this fraternity' I feel all set. I may be living it less than adequately, but I have dealt with and disposed of my earthly life. How much time have I wasted in life already, and how poor a steward of my life have I been! Who knows how much time is left? The time to begin preparing for my death is now.
I'm a Franciscan because I am convinced that the Franciscan way is my antidote to the world. I have always been looking for an alternative to the bleak and pointless tastes and attitudes that are the given in this world. When I was eleven I thought the answer was to escape into fantasy. When I was fourteen I thought it was the alternative taste and uniform of Heavy Metal. When I was seventeen I thought it was in the uncompromising cultural critique of Punk. When I was nineteen I began to become convinced that the only coherent answer was Christianity. Soon after that I met St. Francis in a history class, and ever since then it has seemed to me that the Franciscan way has been the best way for me to be a Christian.
I'm a priest because in living my priesthood I have become convinced that the vocation to priesthood has been God's way of redeeming my particular humanity, and making me useful for his work in the world.
This is largely because religious life wasn't quite what you thought it would be. But perhaps more importantly, you also find out that you weren't exactly who you thought you were. Some of this is can be a painful purification. When the honeymoons are over and first fervor is gone, afflictive emotions that arise in community life reveal to us that our attraction to religious life wasn't entirely pious and pure. We realize our mixed motivations, that our hearts are mysterious and messy fields of weeds and wheat. We can let this teach us patience with each other and humility for ourselves, or we can refuse growth and just flail around in a doomed project of trying to get our disorderly emotional needs met. But no matter which we choose, we find ourselves a different person than we were when we started.
And so, because religious life doesn't turn out to be what we had imagined, and because we become different people within it, why we came usually isn't why we stay.
I was just thinking about this stuff because someone challenged me the other day with the question, "Why do you stay?" It's a good challenge, and the response ought to be dynamic and growing, parallel to the work of grace in a vocation. So here's where I am right now:
I'm a religious because it gives me peace to know that I have disposed of my life on earth. One of my confreres in the Order likes to say that my primary desire in life is to feel 'all set.' By my perpetual profession and my vow 'to give myself to this fraternity' I feel all set. I may be living it less than adequately, but I have dealt with and disposed of my earthly life. How much time have I wasted in life already, and how poor a steward of my life have I been! Who knows how much time is left? The time to begin preparing for my death is now.
I'm a Franciscan because I am convinced that the Franciscan way is my antidote to the world. I have always been looking for an alternative to the bleak and pointless tastes and attitudes that are the given in this world. When I was eleven I thought the answer was to escape into fantasy. When I was fourteen I thought it was the alternative taste and uniform of Heavy Metal. When I was seventeen I thought it was in the uncompromising cultural critique of Punk. When I was nineteen I began to become convinced that the only coherent answer was Christianity. Soon after that I met St. Francis in a history class, and ever since then it has seemed to me that the Franciscan way has been the best way for me to be a Christian.
I'm a priest because in living my priesthood I have become convinced that the vocation to priesthood has been God's way of redeeming my particular humanity, and making me useful for his work in the world.
August 21, 2011
The Caves of Francis and Edith Stein
'The cave' is an iconic part of the accounts of St. Francis's conversion that have come down to us.
As Edith Stein points out, following John, this makes caves out of our interior faculties:
If we are to be Temple wherein the Presence of God abides and perfect Sacrifice finds a home, we too must empty ourselves and then enter into the emptiness in prayer. It is there that we will find the sweetness of the Spirit and the burning desire for our vocation.
Moreover, flooded with a new spirit, Francis frequently entered a certain cave, while his companion entered outside, completely ignorant of what Francis was doing inside. There, in secret, Francis prayed with tears to his heavenly Father that, as his guide on his way, he might show him his will more clearly. Thus praying at great length, he harshly afflicted himself, and until he knew by divine inspiration how he should begin, the distraction of his changing feelings would allow him no rest. There alternated within him happiness for the sweet taste of the spirit, the gravest sorrow for sins of the past, not a little fear of the future, and a fervent desire for what he had begun. (The Life of St. Francis by Julian of Speyer, chapter I)But the caves into which we go to allow ourselves to be found by God are also the empty darknesses of ourselves. By reducing our attachments to created things and our appetites for them, we begin to empty ourselves that we might be filled anew by God. This is what John of the Cross calls the active Night of Sense.
As Edith Stein points out, following John, this makes caves out of our interior faculties:
The first cave is the intellect, its emptiness is a thirst for God and it longs for divine wisdom. The second cave is the will, which hungers for God and clamors for the perfection of love. The third cave is the memory. It is consumed with the desire for the possession of God. (The Science of the Cross, 207)The incarnation has made the human person the locus of saving sacrifice. The humanity of Christ is the New Temple. As members of his body by our baptism into his death and resurrection and our communion with him in the Eucharist, our individual personhoods also become that Temple. But we must also remember that when the Temple was rebuilt after the Captivity the Holy of Holies remained empty. The Ark of the Covenant was gone. The space was filled only with God's own silent and invisible Presence.
If we are to be Temple wherein the Presence of God abides and perfect Sacrifice finds a home, we too must empty ourselves and then enter into the emptiness in prayer. It is there that we will find the sweetness of the Spirit and the burning desire for our vocation.
August 20, 2011
Actual Graces
An important truth of the spiritual life which is vital to remember but easy to miss:
When we become aware of needing some particular grace, such as God's help in the struggle with some temptation, or with overcoming some sin, or in obtaining some virtue, this awareness itself is the grace of God at work.
It's easy to get the idea that the pursuit of holiness works like this: we examine ourselves, find ourselves deficient and miserable, decide that we need certain graces to become more holy and less unhappy, and then go to God in prayer to ask for what we have figured out we need.
When things get really bad on this impoverished idea of religion, God can get to be imaged as kind of ultimate spiritual clerk. Prayer is like going to the DMV. You know just what you need, and you hope your request and materials are in order to have it fulfilled. Of course it's even worse than that, because often you walk away from the DMV having succeeded in taking care of your business. If you treat God this way, he will allow you to continue to fail at happiness and fall prey to sin, because you have not understood the most basic of graces God wants to share.
When the desire for grace and God's help arise in the heart, perhaps suggesting that we pray, this already is the grace of God at work. Of course God wants to give us all the graces we need to overcome our sins and to obtain the virtues that will make us happy ourselves and beneficial to each other, but most of all God wants to freely consent to our created condition as persons made from and imagined in the creativity of his own overflowing, trinitarian love.
The thought that I need a certain grace is not my spiritual self-diagnosis, but God's invitation to consent to my dependence on him.
When we become aware of needing some particular grace, such as God's help in the struggle with some temptation, or with overcoming some sin, or in obtaining some virtue, this awareness itself is the grace of God at work.
It's easy to get the idea that the pursuit of holiness works like this: we examine ourselves, find ourselves deficient and miserable, decide that we need certain graces to become more holy and less unhappy, and then go to God in prayer to ask for what we have figured out we need.
When things get really bad on this impoverished idea of religion, God can get to be imaged as kind of ultimate spiritual clerk. Prayer is like going to the DMV. You know just what you need, and you hope your request and materials are in order to have it fulfilled. Of course it's even worse than that, because often you walk away from the DMV having succeeded in taking care of your business. If you treat God this way, he will allow you to continue to fail at happiness and fall prey to sin, because you have not understood the most basic of graces God wants to share.
When the desire for grace and God's help arise in the heart, perhaps suggesting that we pray, this already is the grace of God at work. Of course God wants to give us all the graces we need to overcome our sins and to obtain the virtues that will make us happy ourselves and beneficial to each other, but most of all God wants to freely consent to our created condition as persons made from and imagined in the creativity of his own overflowing, trinitarian love.
The thought that I need a certain grace is not my spiritual self-diagnosis, but God's invitation to consent to my dependence on him.
August 19, 2011
Age in Religion
In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, seniority means something in religious life. From deference at table to who gets his choice of rooms, one's 'age in religion' comes into play.
In past generations, one's biological age and religious age were often more or less the same. Most candidates came to the community at the same or very similar ages, and so seniority tended to match up with age.
Of course this is no longer the case. Candidates come to religious life at quite a range of ages. Some are right out of high school while others have already had whole careers in the world. Most communities have an age limit for entrance, but these tend to be generous and even with them exceptions seem to be common.
I've just been thinking about this little topic as I try to reflect and pray about this friary in which I've been asked to be the guardian or 'local superior.' By age in this world, I am the third youngest of eight friars. But by age in religion, I am the second most senior. It's a curious thing.
In past generations, one's biological age and religious age were often more or less the same. Most candidates came to the community at the same or very similar ages, and so seniority tended to match up with age.
Of course this is no longer the case. Candidates come to religious life at quite a range of ages. Some are right out of high school while others have already had whole careers in the world. Most communities have an age limit for entrance, but these tend to be generous and even with them exceptions seem to be common.
I've just been thinking about this little topic as I try to reflect and pray about this friary in which I've been asked to be the guardian or 'local superior.' By age in this world, I am the third youngest of eight friars. But by age in religion, I am the second most senior. It's a curious thing.
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