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Allow me to give one example of an aspect of the “loss of Christian patrimony,” which I think we would do well to rediscover, both as individuals and as a wider ecclesial community, that our integrity before God and our witness before the world may both shine more vibrantly with the light of Christ. Actually, allow me to let Bishop Erik Varden say more than I, for he says it better. I shall only follow upon his words as best I can. Here are his answers to two questions posed to him about the practices of Lent:
Historically, many Christians observed a “Black Fast” during Lent, consuming one meal a day after sunset. Today, Orthodox Christians still avoid meat, eggs, and dairy products during what they call the Great Fast. But for Latin Rite Catholics today, there are just two obligatory fast days: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. On those days, Catholics may eat one full meal and two smaller “collations.” What do you think of the relaxation of fasting practices? Is it good, bad, or unimportant? Like all changes in the Church, this one was certainly well intended. I think the intention was to emphasize the spiritual nature of Lent and not to make it into just an ascetic marathon. It was also, I think, a desire to be humane and not to place excessive burdens on people. And those are good considerations. It’s a way in which the Church shows itself our Mother. But we are perhaps, on the whole, lacking in ambition as far as ascetic practice is concerned. Obviously, in fixing a minimum, the Church doesn’t oblige people to limit themselves to the minimum. What could be quite helpful is to rediscover the benefit of fasting as a spiritual and prayerful practice. It’s very edifying to see how many Eastern Rite Catholics and Orthodox Christians observe a very serious Lent, as it’s very edifying to see how many Muslims observe Ramadan. A little bit of trial is part and parcel of us being reminded that it is in fact a serious matter; it’s not just an optional devotion. There’s quite a lot there which we can rediscover with profit. What do you think of the rise in the Church today of challenging ascetic programs like Exodus Lent? Do you see it as a response to the relaxation of Lenten norms? I think so. Deep within us, we do actually want someone to place demands on us. Because if no one places demands on us, it’s because they don’t expect much of us. There’s also a generous desire in very many people to want to give something extra as a way of manifesting their seriousness and their love. And I see that as a very positive thing, as long as it doesn’t just become a self-realization trip and an occasion to manifest the triumph of the self-will, because the whole point of Lent and of Christian fasting is to show the limitations of self-will, to free us from imprisonment in self-will and not to systematize it and glorify it. i He is absolutely right, particularly in the final thing he mentions: the ascetical disciplines of our patrimony are not meant to imprison us in self-will, to systematize and glorify it (and how easy this is to do!), but to simply be a voice of our communal and individual poverty crying out to the God of mercy and love. The readings and rituals of Ash Wednesday, and indeed of the entire Lent and Sacred Triduum, manifest this beautifully. Even while emphasizing the importance of the interior reality, which is utterly decisive, I nonetheless think a rediscovery of fasting is a beautiful and fruitful thing. I think we Latin Christians can look with admiration upon the practice of our Eastern brothers and sisters, and even that of the adherents of Islam, and listen to the Spirit for an individual and ecclesial renewal and “recapturing of our patrimony” in this area, as in so many others. Of course, the emphasis on freely chosen practice, and on not placing excessive burdens on people, is truly a maternal attitude, and should not be lost. Nonetheless, it has had the undesired effect of lessening the seriousness of ascetical and spiritual practice in the Western Church almost universally, and also thereby of weakening the witness of her unified praxis, those defining cultural expressions that give a witness of Christian identity before the world. Perhaps it would be good for us, as communities (and certainly as individuals), to vigorously rediscover the beauty of fasting and ascetical practice. And doing so need not—indeed must not—become an expression of self-will or a Pelagian (make-yourself-a-saint) approach to the life of faith. Rather, we must discover in the midst of these practices their true nature as offerings to God of our utter poverty and need, enabling a yet deeper and more authentic cry to God from the depths of our weakness and frailty, and from a more truly lived and deeply felt solidarity with all of those who bear the burdens of poverty, hunger, and suffering throughout the world. Let us discover that in the very heart of the poverty of faith does the truest and deepest poverty open up within us, where we push against the limit and come face to face with the eternal love of the Three-in-One who is ever pressing in upon us to give, to redeem, and to save. ******************* i. https://coramfratribus.com/archive/conversation-with-luke-coppen-3/ The truth of the faith seeks to touch, heal, and transform the world not only through theology or proclamation, through truth and evangelism, but also through culture, through praxis, through the incarnate practices and ways of living of the Christian life, both individual and communal. This is the genius of monasticism, which, more than merely a theological vision, is a way of life communicated down the ages through a simple, practical rule of life and, even more, the handing on of this life from one generation to the next by those who live it. Monasticism truly saved civilization in the dark ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, and it did this because it provided what every culture, and indeed every individual heart, needs to flourish and grow: obedience, stability, and conversion of life, embraced each and every day in continuity with what came before, but discovered ever anew as if at the first dawn of life. As Anthony of the desert said: “Today, I begin.” Or in the words of Saint Paul: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:12-14).
If we wish for our post-secular culture, which is tasting so vividly the failure of atheistic and materialistic views of life, to rediscover the joy and freedom of faith in Christ, we need to be willing to offer it, in an indivisible unity (one that is castus and integer!) intellectual answers to its questions, a missionary evangelism truly alive, and a life of both moral transparency and spiritual discipline, harmonizing together to shine the radiance of Christ upon the face and throughout the Body of his Church. But above all and throughout all, what the world needs is something deeper: the experience of the cherishing love of God who delights in each one of us, his children, and invites us into intimacy with his own life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything else in the Christian life finds meaning only in springing from this love and leading to this love, and in serving it, giving expression to it in all the different facets of life and relationship. Perhaps indeed some of us have walked, in our own “flesh” and experience, through the drama of our century, indeed through the drama of our civilization since the dawn of modernity. Through the wounds inflicted upon us by others, through the lack of transparency (or even the scandal) offered by the members of the Church, through the dissolution of religious life and the forgetfulness of so many aspects of our Christian patrimony—and perhaps indeed through the “night” into which God plunges us so that we can truly feel in our very heart and bones the utter loss felt by humanity today—perhaps through all of this we have come to feel that we are condemned to a loss of the experience of the joy and abundant life that mark the promises of Christ, who seeks to be within us the “hope of glory” (Col 1:27). We have tried so many times and failed, and the scars of our infidelities, of our brokenness and failure, seem to define us. How could we possibly begin afresh? The fullness of Christian radicalism that we have witnessed in the past, in the lives of the saints...well, perhaps when we were young and naive we yearned for it, were enthralled by it, but now, after years, perhaps decades of human messiness and confusion, we cannot find in ourselves the courage to start out anew, today, as if on the very first day. But the words of Saint Anthony, who lived to the ripe old age of one-hundred and five, words which he continued to pronounce until the end, give us hope: “Today, I begin.” But let us not, in beginning anew today, try to recapture something from the past which no longer exists, nor indeed try to recreate in our own life something that we admire in the life of another person, however holy they may be, nor seek to realize some ideal that we have set for ourselves, nor a comprehensive vision of our own life. Rather, let us open ourselves anew, in all of our innate poverty and need, to the loving gaze of God. And let us not for a second assume that our experience of “brokenness and failure” are incompatible with our growing into God’s love, or indeed the transparency of our living for him, and him in us. After all, even as Saint Paul complained to the Lord about the “thorn in the flesh” that he bore, he received the gentle yet firm response: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Yes, he found the ability to rejoice in his very weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon him. He found “Christian radicalism” not in the perfect fulfillment of a program of external practices or even in living a life free of struggles and wounds, but in the ever-renewed encounter with the loving mercy of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, at work in his heart through the Holy Spirit. And so it is meant to be for each one of us, in our own unique and unrepeatable way, in the story that God is writing in our life, far more beautiful and harmonious than we yet realize, and certain to be realized in us by the God for whom nothing is impossible, and who will surely bring to completion in us the good work that he has begun. The truth of the faith seeks to touch, heal, and transform the world not only through theology or proclamation, through truth and evangelism, but also through culture, through praxis, through the incarnate practices and ways of living of the Christian life, both individual and communal. This is the genius of monasticism, which, more than merely a theological vision, is a way of life communicated down the ages through a simple, practical rule of life and, even more, the handing on of this life from one generation to the next by those who live it. Monasticism truly saved civilization in the dark ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, and it did this because it provided what every culture, and indeed every individual heart, needs to flourish and grow: obedience, stability, and conversion of life, embraced each and every day in continuity with what came before, but discovered ever anew as if at the first dawn of life. As Anthony of the desert said: “Today, I begin.” Or in the words of Saint Paul: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:12-14).
If we wish for our post-secular culture, which is tasting so vividly the failure of atheistic and materialistic views of life, to rediscover the joy and freedom of faith in Christ, we need to be willing to offer it, in an indivisible unity (one that is castus and integer!) intellectual answers to its questions, a missionary evangelism truly alive, and a life of both moral transparency and spiritual discipline, harmonizing together to shine the radiance of Christ upon the face and throughout the Body of his Church. But above all and throughout all, what the world needs is something deeper: the experience of the cherishing love of God who delights in each one of us, his children, and invites us into intimacy with his own life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything else in the Christian life finds meaning only in springing from this love and leading to this love, and in serving it, giving expression to it in all the different facets of life and relationship. Perhaps indeed some of us have walked, in our own “flesh” and experience, through the drama of our century, indeed through the drama of our civilization since the dawn of modernity. Through the wounds inflicted upon us by others, through the lack of transparency (or even the scandal) offered by the members of the Church, through the dissolution of religious life and the forgetfulness of so many aspects of our Christian patrimony—and perhaps indeed through the “night” into which God plunges us so that we can truly feel in our very heart and bones the utter loss felt by humanity today—perhaps through all of this we have come to feel that we are condemned to a loss of the experience of the joy and abundant life that mark the promises of Christ, who seeks to be within us the “hope of glory” (Col 1:27). We have tried so many times and failed, and the scars of our infidelities, of our brokenness and failure, seem to define us. How could we possibly begin afresh? The fullness of Christian radicalism that we have witnessed in the past, in the lives of the saints...well, perhaps when we were young and naive we yearned for it, were enthralled by it, but now, after years, perhaps decades of human messiness and confusion, we cannot find in ourselves the courage to start out anew, today, as if on the very first day. But the words of Saint Anthony, who lived to the ripe old age of one-hundred and five, words which he continued to pronounce until the end, give us hope: “Today, I begin.” But let us not, in beginning anew today, try to recapture something from the past which no longer exists, nor indeed try to recreate in our own life something that we admire in the life of another person, however holy they may be, nor seek to realize some ideal that we have set for ourselves, nor a comprehensive vision of our own life. Rather, let us open ourselves anew, in all of our innate poverty and need, to the loving gaze of God. And let us not for a second assume that our experience of “brokenness and failure” are incompatible with our growing into God’s love, or indeed the transparency of our living for him, and him in us. After all, even as Saint Paul complained to the Lord about the “thorn in the flesh” that he bore, he received the gentle yet firm response: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Yes, he found the ability to rejoice in his very weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon him. He found “Christian radicalism” not in the perfect fulfillment of a program of external practices or even in living a life free of struggles and wounds, but in the ever-renewed encounter with the loving mercy of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, at work in his heart through the Holy Spirit. And so it is meant to be for each one of us, in our own unique and unrepeatable way, in the story that God is writing in our life, far more beautiful and harmonious than we yet realize, and certain to be realized in us by the God for whom nothing is impossible, and who will surely bring to completion in us the good work that he has begun. Let us recall, in the light of our previous words on the practical aspects of spiritual struggle which includes many traditional actions and practices such as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, an essential insight of John of the Cross, which alone allows us to understand everything else in the right perspective. He writes:
[The soul] is conscious that love is so valuable in her Beloved’s sight that he neither esteems nor makes use of anything else but love, and so she employs all her strength in the pure love of God, desiring to serve him perfectly. She does this not merely because he desires it, but also because the love by which she is united to him moves her to the love of God in and through all things. Like the bee that sucks honey from all the wildflowers and will not use them for anything else, the soul easily extracts the sweetness of love from all things that happen to her; that is, she loves God in them. Thus everything leads her to love. … Because we said that God makes use of nothing other than love, it may prove beneficial to explain the reason for this before commenting on the stanza. The reason is that all our works and all our trials, even though they be the greatest possible, are nothing in the sight of God. For through them we cannot give him anything or fulfill his only desire, which is the exaltation of the soul. Of these other things he desires nothing for himself, since he has no need of them. If anything pleases him, it is the exaltation of the soul. Since there is no way by which he can exalt her more than by making her equal to himself, he is pleased only with her love. For the property of love is to make the lover equal to the object loved. Since the soul in this state possesses perfect love, she is called the bride of the Son of God, which signifies equality with him. In this equality of friendship the possessions of both are held in common, as the Bridegroom himself said to his disciples: I have now called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have manifested to you [Jn. 15:15]. Here again we stand at the heart of another beautiful paradox. First, it is clear that before God the external circumstances of an action or the difficulty of its accomplishment is nothing, as if through it we could give him something that he does not have, or something that he desires. God does not desire our sacrifices, as if through them we became more pleasing to him or our prayer more welcome in his sight: “For you delight not in sacrifices and offerings, but in an ear open to obedience” (Ps 40:6). We cannot bargain with God. Nor can we force our growth in holiness and love through performing intense or extraordinary actions, actions that sparkle in our eyes and the eyes of the world. Such a preoccupation with externals is a profound snare for the heart that longs for holiness, that longs for God; and the only way to avoid this snare, to surpass it, is to abide in the poverty of humility which loves God for his own sake, and does so from a heart that has nothing to offer but itself. Only in this disposition can we discern the unique contours of our own unique response to God, our own journey to healing and wholeness, to sanctity and union with the Trinity. All of our actions find their meaning and beauty in God’s sight insofar as they manifest and give voice to this vulnerability of our heart before him, expressing it, deepening it, and consolidating it within us. This also means that, as the verse quoted above indicates, it is obedience that conditions the fittingness of our actions in God’s sight, and not anything else. What matters are hearts that listen in docility and trust to the voice of the Beloved, allowing him to speak through his Spirit and to guide us, in both interior dispositions and external actions, according to the love with which we have first been loved. However, on the other side of the paradox, we have the profound realization of the incarnate truth of the world that God has made, which operates by certain laws and has certain contours, and which is a sacramental mystery through which, at every moment, the invisible mystery of love is made flesh and expressed. To affirm only the first half of the paradox can lead to quietism, to a complete disregard of the moral life, of the importance of human actions in this world, and of the contours of our cooperation with the grace of God. Or in a more subtle form, it can lead to a spiritual relativism or myopia, which is focused more on myself than on God, on finding “my way” than on the objective truth that sets me free. To affirm only the second half, on the other hand, is to give way to pharisaism and externalism which places too much emphasis and importance upon external actions, regulations, and practices, and mistakes them for the essence of sanctity or is too rigid in affirming their necessity. Or it leads, in its more subtle form, to a kind of “anonymizing” of sanctity, in which I feel there is no place for me in the laws of God and his will, and the truth of reality is understood so narrowly and strictly that I do not understand the various ways in which a single truth can be manifested in different lives and circumstances while remaining one and universal. Indeed, the truth seeks precisely such a unique incarnation in every life. Either extreme, and the severing of the two sides of the paradox, ultimately limits God’s beauty and transcendence, and his unique presence and work in the lives of all his children, and closes the heart in upon itself and its own notions. This is what Pope Leo XIV calls “ideology,” and why he speaks of the narrow traditionalist supporters of the Tridentine Mass as “polarizing” and “politicizing” the sacred liturgy “in the name of ideology.” Ritual is good and important; as is tradition. But obedience is more important than all. And this is an obedience that adheres both to the living tradition of the Church in its newness and variety of expression, as well as affirming and cherishing the manifold lives in which the universal truth of God and the Church becomes incarnate as a personal word of intimacy and love. True obedience is thus not a mere external submission, but a true openness and listening, a mutual discernment and sensitivity to the voice of the Spirit resounding in the living Church, so that those who listen may come to see together and together to interiorize the Spirit’s word to the churches. Obedience leads not to resentment or burdensome acquiescence, but to joyful liberation from myopia into the true height and depth, breadth and expansiveness, of the Catholic fullness. What does all this mean for the way we began this fragment? What does this mean in regard to the sacramental contours of reality, and regarding the rich fabric of the law of God inscribed in all things that exist, calling for our acquiescence and our ardent living? It means that we cease to gauge the significance and fruitfulness of an action by how “big” it appears, how heroic it appears, but rather by how much love is manifested in and through it, even as we discern in every action, however insignificant, the sacramental mystery of a world charged with the grandeur of God. Here the first side of the paradox and the second side are united together: love is the soul, but action is the flesh, and both are necessary. If I do not contemplate the Word of God and receive it into my heart and my life, how can I ever know God as he is, as he reveals himself, and as he seeks to enter into intimacy with me? How, if I am not willing to struggle against the disordered tendencies and sins that bind me, engaging the means necessary to detach from them and overcome them, shall I ever be free of them? Further, if no one is willing to reach out to the poor and the suffering, to work for the betterment of their lives, how shall the injustice and pain of our world be alleviated? If no one is willing to expend himself or herself to preach the Gospel to the farthest corners of the world, it shall not be heard and received. And yet who will preach if they do not love? And who shall love if they have not first been loved? Love must fill us, but it also must move us to act. So too, if no is is willing to pray and to offer their loving heart as an oblation to the merciful love of God in order to purge away the evil inhabiting so many tormented and sinful hearts in this world, the grace of Christ’s saving Passion will be unable to flow as freely as it is meant to flow, in and through those who “in their flesh fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of his Body, the Church” (Col 1:24). Simply put: let us allow ourselves to be loved, ardently, radically, totally, by the perfect Lover, and let us allow him to awaken in us an all-consuming longing to love him in response, and to love in him our brothers and sisters. And let us surrender utterly to him, so that he may breathe freely in us and guide us, in heart and in action, to the fullness of life and love that he wills for us, and which, while encompassing our cooperation, is ultimately the sheer work of grace and mercy within us, the gentle victory of God’s reign in us. We have spoken above about the mystery of salvation as more than “making it to heaven” or even than “deliverance from sin.” It is, we said, a global reality of making-whole in which all is restored in us through our ever-deepening union with God: the fulfillment of our humanity, which is the image of God, through our divinizing transformation in Christ unto the full likeness to Christ. In all of this, we must therefore never think of sin only in terms of guilt, for as true as this perspective is, and as much as we cannot dismiss it, let us also recognize that sin is also a wound, an inheritance that mars our integral humanity from the very beginning. Yes, we are not merely victims of this inheritance, and we should never pity ourselves for the burdens of our humanity; rather, we should acknowledge our own responsibility in making the inheritance of sin our own. Let us respond with courage and sobriety to the need for conversion and change of heart and life, for laying our hearts bare before the One who alone can both judge and forgive, both diagnose and heal. Thus we can recognize that in us the two dimensions have become inseparably interlaced: guilt and wound. And they are healed only together: in the repentance that is simultaneously openness to the divine Physician, and the openness to healing that is simultaneously confession to the merciful Father who showers us with kisses and brings out the best robe of the nobility that we have willingly forfeit. Let us not conflate the two as if they are identical, neither avoiding the need for true repentance nor feeling shame and guilt for the burdens we carry and which we resist, but simply living peacefully in the truth of God’s love and in what it reveals to us in our own heart and life, ever yielded up to him.
As we grapple day by day, in humble filial confidence, with the wound of sin that afflicts and burdens us, we tap into the very central drama of human life, poised as it is in the eschatological tension between the fall in Eden and the restoration in the new Jerusalem, and pervaded already with the grace flowing from Calvary, even as the seed-grace pouring from the opened Heart of the Crucified Jesus is still spreading out to permeate and transform all. The only true and definitive healing comes, not through our own self-directed efforts or own own cooperative activity (as important as this is), but ultimately from the touch of grace working within us and weaving itself into the very fabric of our life and our being. And this, too, is why the act of yielding all of our wounds to the loving and tender gaze of Jesus, and to the Father in the face of the Son, is all-important. Whether they be wounds of personal sin and fault, or wounds of being hurt by others, or wounds of the disorder and fragmentation that we all bear within us, something in which we are complicit but which is also so great that we can hardly begin to comprehend it—whatever the nature of these wounds, let us yield them up to the love and the mercy of God. Let us allow our wounded heart, flesh, and life to be joined to the wounds of the Crucified, the wounds of the Son of God who out of love for us not only became human, but took upon himself all of our wounds, “becoming sin who knew no sin, so that in him” we “might become the righteousness of God,” and was nailed to a tree as a curse on our behalf, so that we may be free (2 Cor 5:21; Deut 21:23). And what happens as the fruit of this mysterious and powerful process by which we, each one of us in our unique way, find ourselves standing with Mary and John at the foot of the Cross of Jesus? Bishop Erik Varden says it well: Our wounds will finally heal when they have become so one with Christ’s, so fully surrendered, that we no longer know where his passion ends and ours begins. We are caught up, then, in the inexorable victory of his life over our death, of his light over our darkness, of his wholeness over our fragmentation. United with him in death, we are drawn into his life, over which human mortality and sickness have no power. The process takes time. The anguish is real before the prospect of broadness opens. But sooner or later we no longer look into the darkness of the cleft in which the dove hides, but out of it. We see, then, a world infinitely loved, transfigured, worthy to be loved. Peering out from the dove’s nest, we perceive that the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. We hear the Beloved call to us: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ We who sow at times with weeping, at a loss, shall return home with shouts of joy, bearing fragrant golden sheaves. i ****************** i. From his book, Healing Wounds, quoted at: https://coramfratribus.com/archive/conversation-with-paula-gooder/ In all of these aberrations, further, there can be a temptation to focus on certain particular external practices as if they were the prime indicators of sanctity or more important than they truly are. In fact, they find their meaning only in the context of, as aspects of, the essential reality of conversion, as dimensions of the spiritual combat and faithful surrender involved in following in the footsteps of Jesus, both on our behalf and that of others. This reality is twofold, as expressed so well in the words of Saint Paul: 1) “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col 3:5), that is, recognize and repent of all the tendencies in you born of concupiscence and pride, and “go, and sin no more” (Jn 8:11); and 2) “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things,” that is, redirect all of your desires to authentic goodness by fostering what is beautiful and good so consistently that it totally captures and enraptures the heart, both in nature and in grace (Col 3:5; Phil 4:8). This is a matter both of resisting the disordered tendencies within us, of allowing to be liberated within us the truth that has been put in shackles by the world, the flesh, and the devil, the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:6), and thus also of unsealing and allowing to find authentic integrity our true inclinations toward truth, goodness, and beauty, toward God in all things and beyond all things. In this way we may, as was written of Saint Anthony: “come forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God...altogether equal to ourselves, governed by the Word and abiding in a natural state,”i this natural state which is in fact our complete divinization.
It is usually the spiritually immature (or proud) who focus a great deal on practices of external mortification, on severe fasting, on penance, or on rigid strictness of life (as external acts rather than internal—and existential--metanoia), and the spiritually mature and humble who have grown into a place of simplicity and balance, of moderation and wholeness. I can think of one story from my own life to illustrate this. On my second retreat with the Carthusians, I recall that the novice master said to me, “You appear too thin. Make sure that you are eating enough of the food that is given to you. If you do not eat, you will be too weak, and it will make it harder for you to live in solitude and resist the temptations that come.” He knew that the fasting as practiced by the Carthusian Order, for all of its strictness, was also perfectly balanced and humane, helping to guide the heart to the freedom born of poverty while also cherishing and sustaining the great value of bodily life that God has entrusted to us. The wisdom is: “Eat when you eat, fast when you fast. And do both with gratitude and joy, for in human life, everything has its appropriate place.” This same man is also the person who first gave me a book of Conrad Baars--Psychic Wholeness and Healing--about the importance of integrating all of our emotions and feelings in the spiritual life, and repressing nothing, however “unwelcome” we may think a particular part of our humanity may be. God desires everything, and nothing—absolutely nothing—can be merely “mortified,” for it needs, even more, the super-affirmation that yields it up to grace and lets it be permeated by the energies of the Spirit working to our divinization in the likeness of God. This was also a man of radiant sanctity, whose face shone with childlike joy and an almost unearthly light in the celebration of the divine liturgy. The words of the novice master were not a call to compromise or self-pity, to a preoccupation with myself and my own well-being; but they were a recognition of the unenlightened enthusiasm of a beginner, and an encouragement to a more holistic approach to the eremitic and Christian life. So what is the answer for us? It is truly simple: in all external practices of piety and asceticism, as in everything else, the keyword is discretion, which is marked by moderation, balance, humility, and order, even while giving expression to a love both ardent and boundless in its longing. It is this discretion which in the Conferences of John Cassian is called “the mother and guardian of all the virtues.” The Desert Fathers knew this, saying that this virtue alone could preserve a monk from falling into error, since it preserved him in the center between extremes: We ought then with all our might to strive for the virtue of discretion by the power of humility, as it will keep us uninjured by either extreme, for there is an old saying ἀκρότητες ἰσότητες, i.e., extremes meet. For excess of fasting and gluttony come to the same thing, and an unlimited continuance of vigils is equally injurious to a monk as the torpor of a deep sleep: for when a man is weakened by excessive abstinence he is sure to return to that condition in which a man is kept through carelessness and negligence, so that we have often seen those who could not be deceived by gluttony, destroyed by excessive fasting and by reason of weakness liable to that passion which they had before overcome. Unreasonable vigils and nightly watchings have also been the ruin of some whom sleep could not get the better of: wherefore as the apostle says with the arms of righteousness on the right hand and on the left (2 Corinthians 6:7) we pass on with due moderation, and walk between the two extremes, under the guidance of discretion, that we may not consent to be led away from the path of continence marked out for us, nor fall by undue carelessness into the pleasures of the palate and belly. ii We can of course go even further, and speak about not only seeking discretion in the implementation of spiritual and ascetical discipline, but in all of life. And above all, we can situate all these words and insights in the context of that profound and central reality that magnetizes all things toward itself and in this magnetism unifies and harmonizes them all in radiant simplicity and holy unselfconsciousness. I am speaking, of course, of the mystery of love in its rich twofold dynamism: belovedness and loving, belonging and longing, being found and seeking, the security of home and the wonder of discovery. More on this later. The key point at this moment is simply this: in all of our striving and seeking, God wishes for us to be held in the serenity of having already been found by him and held by him, of being utterly beloved and cherished. This allows all of our responsiveness, all of our actions, and every moment of our life, to spring peacefully from the wellspring of the love we have already received, which alone can truly carry us forward surely and securely to the love for which we long, to the consummation of intimacy with the Lover who touches us and who magnetizes our hearts to himself. ************* i. From Athanasius’ Life of Anthony, quoted here: https://coramfratribus.com/archive/desert-fathers-3/ ii. Conferences of John Cassian, 2.16. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350802.htm The practices of penance and mortification, of fasting and austerity—really the whole realm of asceticism—is something that I have written of rather little in my previous books. This is not because I do not believe asceticism an important dimension of our response to the call of Christ and our fidelity to his Gospel. It certainly is, even though it is of paramount importance to understand it authentically, not as a “thing” that we undertake, a kind of spiritual project, but simply as part of the fabric of a life of love and fidelity, of response to the invitation of Christ to follow in his footsteps. It is not a project; it is poverty. Further, I feel that what has been entrusted to me until now by God is simply to speak directly and exclusively of the central, foundational realities, and thus also to allow these secondary things to be seen in the right light, and thus to be lived in the right way: that is, lightly, with a spirit of poverty and of play. For without the center nothing else makes sense; without the heart, secondary things cannot but become unbalanced and even harmful, idolized and excessive, spiritual “riches” rather than manifestations of spiritual poverty—which is what in truth they are: but the incarnate word of a heart following in the footsteps of Christ into the poverty of love. So let us now spend some time also with these other things, to avoid the temptation to a kind of spiritual “dualism” in which only the dispositions of the heart or the desires of the will matter, and not the incarnate living that enfolds all of life and makes of it a gift to God and to others. This too, following upon the principle of the incarnation, by which the word must always become flesh, is essential.
The practices of self-discipline and asceticism are not self-enclosed actions, but simply dimensions of our growth in virtue and human maturity, or expressions of our choice for freedom and for love—aspects of our growth toward becoming what ancient thinkers called castus (chaste), which is profoundly related to another term, integer (integrated/whole). It is therefore simply a matter of coming to inhabit, not the countless things onto which we tend to project our desires to hide from our innate poverty, need, and openness to God, but the inner truth of our own hearts as they stand before God’s ceaseless gaze of love, and respond to his invitation. By this journey of growth, a man or woman becomes gradually integrated, harmonized, and unified from their innate fragmentation into a simplicity of being and purpose, into unity and freedom in the truth. And this occurs not by the repression or rejection of any of the aspects of our humanity or our desires—however disordered they may at first present themselves to be—but by their gradual healing, liberation, and ordering according to the light of God’s truth and the grace of his love. And in the end, all “asceticism” dissolves from consciousness as everything is subsumed into the simplicity and holy unselfconsciousness of love. This is of paramount importance. In this light we can see more clearly how these external practices (fasting, penance, mortification) have at times been understood out of context or in a too-immature way. In fact, I suspect that their falling into “disuse” in the West except in fringe movements or those of traditionalist mindset comes precisely from a prior misunderstanding of their true beauty and meaning, a “legalization” like that which we witnessed affecting much of Christian life from the 16th to early 20th centuries. For example “mortification” (itself a rather unfortunate term) has been understood as repressing and resisting the natural inclinations of our humanity, in fact as seeking to eradicate them, rather than as a humble and mature listening and discernment, which, while resisting the temptation to express disordered and harmful choice, also guides and sets free. True asceticism is thus always founded upon the acceptance, healing, and guiding of these inclinations to their true ends. Acts of penance, on the other hand, have sometimes been understood as having some mysterious, supernatural efficacy, as if causing pain to oneself somehow equalizes the “balance sheet” of guilt and punishment in the world. I recall once reading some words of Louis Bouyer in which he lamented this unfortunate “legalizing” of penance, which in effect made it an end in itself rather than a simple means to the purification of the heart and conversion of life. This is part of what has led us to the whole “offer it up” mentality, which can be understood in such an unhealthy manner, leading some hearts to resentment that God “needs” their suffering to save the world, and other hearts to “accumulating sacrifices,” as many as possible, in order to save souls. This is not the nature of reality, nor the kind of God we have. As we will see in coming fragments, all that God sees or cares about is love and openness, and this space can be carved out in both joy and in suffering, and indeed it must. And suffering, in order to be truly redemptive in the Christian manner, must first be redeemed; in other words, it must not be understood in a mechanistic way, but rather as a journey of redemption, both for the individual heart and for all those to whom it is inseparably united in the Body of Christ. There is, therefore, a profound truth to the mystery of reparation, by which prayer and union with the Sacrifice of Christ serves—in the mysterious reality that unites us all—to carve out space for grace to flow and to spread the grace of redemption throughout the universe; yet we must not understand this as a “do ut des” (“I give so that you give”), but in a manner wholly born of love and personal communion, of the journey of healing and salvation, and deriving its meaning solely from such love and communion, from such healing and salvation. God does not therefore “need” particular practices of penance in order to pour out grace into the world; what he seeks, rather, is the loving openness and receptive poverty of hearts that surrender to him, that walk the journey of healing and salvation, and that therefore mystically allow grace to flow more freely also in the world. This remains a mystery to us, but let us not for this reason fall into the temptation to mistake the true nature of Christian life and to focus too much on secondary things, which will necessarily obscure in mind and heart our unreserved focus on what is truly central and essential, and which seeks to enrapture us in every moment. This context also helps us understand appropriately the more narrow conception of “asceticism,” which we usually equate with external practices of self-discipline or self-denial. This use of the term is too narrow, as these practices are only a part, and a secondary part, of the actual “ascetic life,” of the gradual pursuit of salvation, which is our lifetime journey of appropriating the grace of Redemption offered to us in Christ and allowing it to make us whole and holy, and thus capable of sharing in the everlasting life of God.
We should not therefore interpret traditional spiritual practices in a materialistic, overly horizontal way, nor in narrow, constricting way—either “psychologically” or “ascetically.” For example, we should not interpret fasting merely as a technique for gaining self-discipline (rather than as a form of evangelical poverty and bodily prayer), or as a way of regulating brain chemistry or equalizing our “gut,” or any other things. No, fasting is first of all a spiritual, theological reality, an expression of conversion and surrender to God inseparable from prayer and almsgiving (just as they are inseparable from it), which not only has an effect on the person fasting, but also has an effect in the world, through the mysterious interconnectedness in which we all live. It is not a matter of accumulating “spiritual riches” before God, or even for that matter of training ourselves, but of learning to live within and from our innate poverty and need before God and before others. All ascetic practice, as indeed all of life, should make us more poor, not less, more dependent, not less, my attuned to our brokenness and limitations, so that we can inhabit our weakness, certain that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9), and that grace precisely in weakness is glorified. Jesus spoke of the “space” that this inhabiting of poverty opens up in ourselves and in the world whenever his disciples came to him and complained that they could not cast out a certain demon. He said to them simply, “This kind comes out only through prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21). This is not a matter of “earning” God’s intervention through offering up sacrifices (how much we need to get beyond this idea!), not even only about the reality of spiritual warfare—as true and important as this is—but above all about letting space be made for God to make himself present and to expand his presence. In and beyond the normal affairs of life, for example psychological and human balance and the faithful fulfillment of our duties, therefore also exists a spiritual struggle, the mysterious drama of prayer and intercession, of compassion and identification, of fasting and sacrifice. As Saint Seraphim of Sarov said: “However [important] prayer, fasting, vigil and all the other Christian practices may be, they do not constitute the aim of our Christian life. Although it is true that they serve as the indispensable means of reaching this end, the true aim of our Christian life consists of the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God.”i Everything finds its meaning only in this and for the sake of this: that we may become a space, in poverty and receptivity, in which the Spirit of God can dwell, and spread out to others. By the mystery of prayer, joined as it is to fasting and almsgiving, we not only enter into deeper cooperation with the profound, hidden activity of grace in our own hearts and lives, but can also reach out to others and join them, and be of service to them, where words and actions can no longer reach. As a community of believers we can benefit from a deeper rediscovery of the invisible, spiritual fruitfulness of love and prayer, of poverty and need, of inhabiting our places of fragility not only for our own healing but for the healing of the world. And grace does not operate apart from nature, but rather instills itself into the very heart of nature and gradually heals, renews, and transforms it from within. The invisible, hidden work of prayer, of grace operative within a trusting heart, is not only analogous to the visible actions we take in this world, but in fact more profound far-reaching than any merely external action, even while being the true wellspring and support of such external actions. Does not the Church truly understand this and promote it so beautifully, for example in her insistence that her true heart is contemplative in nature, that is it the gratuitous communion with God from which all the blood of grace flows and to which it returns? ************* i. Quoted from: https://anothercity.org/saint-seraphim-of-sarov-on-the-acquisition-of-the-holy-spirit-a-conversation-with-motovilov/ Penance and asceticism are not fundamentally a collection of exterior acts, but a reality of metanoia, of continual conversion of heart to God each day and in all circumstances, a ready responsiveness to respond to the call of the One who says, “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away,” that he may transform us in his love and unite us to himself in the glorious mystery of his own life, welcoming us into the heart of the shared love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in which is abundance of life and overflowing freedom. Indeed, unless there is a special call, it is unhelpful for a person to engage in extraordinary practices of penance, for the path of the Spirit is rather that of littleness, humility, and simplicity, that our humanity may resonate under his touch in freedom and unselfconsciousness. After all, God looks not at the external difficulty or supposed greatness of an action or a life, but at the love within it; and indeed all that he desires is the reintegration and restoration of our humanity, that we may find health and wholeness once again, yielded up to his love and thus healed in both nature and grace, divinized by his love and made happy in the way that he intended for us in the beginning.
Our primary “penitential” or “ascetical” journey consists therefore in docility to the Spirit who calls us, even as it embraces a healthy, balanced, and yet generous fidelity to the responsibilities and commitments of our circumstances and our way of life. And in all things, it is the ever-ready responsiveness to the unique word of grace that comes in each new moment, singular in its meaning and beauty, in which we hear anew as if for the first time, “Come to me.” We are invited, like the apostle Peter, to step out of the boat of our own securities anew and to walk on the water of faith toward Jesus who invites us, and whose very gaze of tenderness and love becomes both a bridge upholding us and a magnetism of attraction and support sustaining and protecting us. Only in the context of this relationship of love, of this inviting gaze of Jesus and our reciprocal gaze of longing and hope, does anything else find its meaning and purpose. And in this gaze of Jesus I realize both my irreplaceable beauty as a child of God and also the depths of my sinfulness, and in both awarenesses my heart is ever pierced anew by his love and set free from its fears and self-preoccupations, even to the point of tears, tears that purify and heal, making rivers flow deep within to give life and joy. And such a journey is not of benefit to myself alone, but in fact bears fruit for all, not only cleansing and transforming my own heart, making it humble, sympathetic, and compassionate, but also becoming a “bearing” of others, that what is theirs becomes my own such that I hold it before God without comparisons or internal distance, just as I simultaneously see in every person a mystery to be admired and to stir my heart to greater fidelity to God. And practically speaking, in the “nitty gritty” of daily choices and actions, the work of asceticism, interior and exterior, seeks to establish not an unbending control over the natural inclinations of the heart or even the needs of the flesh, but rather a harmony between the diverse facets of my humanity, such that—in the prudence that guides the virtues, and above all in the love that is the seal of perfection—I may taste in myself the authentic liberty of the children of God, in the spontaneous, joyous, and connatural living of the beautifully good truth. Everything is gauged by this responsiveness of love, just as from the love of God revealed in the countenance of Jesus it is born and sustained. Therefore the “training” of asceticism is aimed not only at the concupiscible appetites—those ordered toward the good, pleasurable and desirable things of this world—but also at the irascible appetites—the energetic striving for self-perfection that gives birth to rigidity and inflexibility, and the fear that seeks security through control, and in the process creates division and disharmony in the heart, refusing to integrate the whole of one’s humanity in the ascent to God and to love, and to an affirming openness to all that God has made. The best remedy here is an abiding spirit of relaxed, wonder-filled, and playful responsiveness to the sacramental gift of every moment, in its unique beauty and meaning, from the Father in Christ and the Spirit, which awakens my reciprocal gift. This is not contrary to healthy discipline of life, nor vice versa; rather, such discipline is but a school of transformation in the footsteps of Jesus, where a life of humility and simplicity, of steadfast fidelity and “always beginning anew,” is the cradle in which childhood blossoms in the likeness of Jesus’ filial intimacy with his loving Father. This is one of the central paradoxes of Christian life: that the flower of our humanity blossoms most deeply and freely not in the soil of mere earthly comfort and security, nor in false freedom according to the flesh, but in the soil of faith and surrender, under which living water flows, in perseverance in love allowing young wine, inconstant and superficial, to mature into old wine, in the mystery of the Cross which is the harbinger of Resurrection, in the lived reality of the Beatitudes, which alone make one truly blessed. But so too, all the externals of life are empty and dry, a lifeless performance, unless they are born of the spirit of childhood and sustained by the gratuity of the love that has first been received, and are thus ordained toward nothing but the fullness of reciprocal love that allows intimacy to blossom, and the fruitfulness that springs from it. If the process of conversion is ongoing, this does not thereby mean that it is dehumanizing. True Christian penitence is not a matter of stripping off the flesh in order to go to God as a pure spirit, nor does it entail suppressing the true desires and capacities placed within us by God, nor living a life of austerity or strictness for its own sake, nor any of the thousand possible aberrations. Rather, the authentic transformation at which conversion is aimed is the renewal and resurrection of our entire humanity in the Risen Christ, such that in some manner we are granted to anticipate already in this world the mystery of the new creation, in which all created things are consummated in God himself. Thus, everything in our existence, every act of conversion to God and every discipline we undertake, is ordered solely toward the sanctification of all flesh and of every moment of life, even the most mundane, worldly, or apparently secular—and this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. Everything is beautiful for God, and not only can it be sanctified, but he desires to sanctify it, making all into a sacrament radiant with his glory. Thus the conversion asked of us is not a program of ascetical achievement, but above all a matter of bringing into the light of God’s gaze every aspect of our humanity that it may be transformed in him, in the likeness of Christ. This includes our sinful tendencies and disorders, laid before him in prayer and sacramental life, but it also includes any suppressed or unintegrated desires, any capacities or longings we have not accepted as our own and made friends with, any capacities not yet fully evangelized by truth, love, and grace, and all that he himself has given in creating us in his image destined for his likeness. By this process of bringing everything to Jesus and the Father, to be bathed in the Spirit in their light of their loving, inviting, and healing gaze, little by little our humanity is permeated by the energies of grace and become thereby, not more purely spiritual or separated from the world in its positive sense, but more authentically human and more sensitive to all that God has made, in both affection and in act, and this, because it is totally God’s, joined with his own way of seeing and loving. For the life of each one of us, at the very heart of its deepest poverty, can witness to the profound truth at the center of every human existence: that in God alone can our world find its true redemption, its authentic meaning, freedom, and fulfillment. For in our own heart, our own existence, all things can be lifted up into proximity to the healing and affirming embrace of God and thus made capable of the resurrection of the body, in which all things shall be consummated in the ecstatic joy and perfect intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the end of time. Allow me to return for a moment to the beautiful call to harmonize nature and grace in our life of faith, to accept and live to the full the natural, “psychological” substratum of our longing and need for human flourishing, and the spiritual, supernatural call to divinization in Christ. In the last analysis, after all, aren’t they one, or at least two aspects of a single mystery? After all, as Saint Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” There we have it.
Thus we can affirm that the right path forward lies neither in a rejection of the insights of natural thought and therapeutic experience, nor in a radical reinterpretation of the classic spiritual life “from the bottom up,” which would supposedly rule out or belittle the deeper, spiritual, supernatural drama of human life. For example, we cannot reduce sin to maladaptive behavior, as if it were not a free choice of the human person born of the disorder and concupiscence within us, which trace themselves back, not only to wounded human experiences (though this is true) but to the inheritance of original sin. And thus the remedies cannot be merely psychological either, merely techniques aimed at training and correcting behavior. But neither should be spiritualize everything and think that explicitly theological, ascetical disciplines can solve every problem or heal every wound. Sometimes what the heart needs is not fasting and prayer and vigils, but, to paraphrase Thomas Aquinas, “a glass of wine or a warm bath or a good nap.” What is needed therefore is an integration of the two dimensions: the therapeutic method and the ascetic method. Or, to express it better from the center, it is both the affirmation of what is truly human and the purification of its aberrations. As Conrad Baars explained, it is not enough just to discipline and correct our “humane” emotions, our love, desire, and joy, but it is important also to correct our “irascible” emotions, our energetic striving or fear, which, if given free reign, will crush and destroy our very ability to delight in the beauty of reality and to cherish the gratuity of life, rather arranging everything on the basis of strict control that has no space for spontaneity and freedom, for relaxation and enjoyment, for childlike forgetfulness of self. This is a great danger for all of us: that we will forget the hierarchy of values, that we will forget that our fear and energy exist only in the service of our love, desire, and joy; they are servants of what is humane in us, what seeks abundant life and happiness, communion with reality and with others, and the ecstasy of fulfillment found only in God. As the Fathers of the Church understood deeply, the struggle against sin is not just about self-mastery but about healing a deep wound (more on this later); it is not about merely correcting or disciplining ourselves—that is so petty in comparison with the real grandeur of our calling!—but about being set free for the fullness of life, about being healed and restored in the very wellsprings of our emotions and affectivity, our thinking and willing, so God may breathe freely within us and we may live the very life of God through participatory grace. This alone truly brings our nature to its fulfillment. Thus the ascetic method when understood authentically is therefore supremely therapeutic. We see this in the Desert Fathers with vivid clarity and also with a paradoxical and beautiful lightness and humor—in that these men whose lives were so apparently “inhuman,” that is, who chose such an austere mode of living, were so radiantly humane, and so ordinary! And they did so with such an acceptance of their quirkiness, their radical poverty, and their foolishness that often we cannot help but smile—for we see ourselves in them, even as in the same moment their apothegmata are truly that, a “word” to us inviting us to convert anew and to embark upon our own “ascetical” (or better, “restorative”) path to God, to yield ourselves totally to his healing mercy and transforming grace. We can learn from them not in falsely focusing on accidentals and externals, but by looking at the core humanity that we all share. We can affirm, therefore, that attaining human wholeness is not just about addressing psychological wounds or traumas or “changing our way of thinking” but about being purified of the selfishness and pride and all the other sinful tendencies that live within us. But neither is it merely about conquering sin, but also about rediscovering the beauty and the wonder that set the heart free from its pettiness and self-preoccupation, and enrich it with the fullness of life that make sin and self-medication, coping and covering-over, not only undesirable but inconceivable. In fact, if read with an adequate degree of maturity and humanity, the saints are the best and deepest psychologists—for they are the true doctors of the soul. It is important for us, in our contemporary age, to rediscover the ascetic ideal, the beauty and richness of the ascetic life. In other words, to rediscover the importance of striving for holiness, which alone is full wholeness, and to do so in response to the call of Christ who says, “Follow me.” And for this to bear authentic fruit, it must be done “humanely,” that is, not as a form of muscularity, as proving that we can conquer ourselves through discipline and practice, but rather as a humble cooperation with prevenient grace. By this grace the Spirit of Christ convicts us of “sin, righteousness, and judgment” (Jn 16:8), and marks out the path to the healing of our disordered tendencies and the gradual re-unification of the energies of our heart, mind, and body that have been dispersed both by fear and by desire gone astray. And here both approaches should meet, the psychological and the ascetical: in the process of coming to see. In coming to see the truth I am set free, or rather my eyes are opened to the path to authentic freedom and, little by little, by God’s grace (manifest in a thousand ways every day) and my own cooperation, I gradually become a person who can live the truth in love. That is freedom. And that is sanctity. And that is also psychological wholeness, not in the individualistic manner that we tend to think about it in our world today, but in its deepest theological sense: the salvation of the soul (and the body) by the restoration of ruptured communion with God and with the cosmos itself. In fact, the ancient usage of the term salvation indicates precisely this unity. Salvation for the ancient believers was not, and in fact for the authentic living tradition of the Church is not, a matter merely of “making it to heaven,” or even merely of being forgiven sin. It means rather both deliverance-from and participating-in, and it means both the removal of debt and the healing of wounds. Salvation is a global phenomenon that includes liberation from the estrangement of sin and its effects, the purification and healing of the heart, the setting right in us of what has been wounded and distorted, and the rehabilitation of the integral image of God that we were created to be. And finally it is our participation, as image of God, in his full likeness—that is, our living experience, in love and truth, of the very innermost life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which through grace has become our own, and yet which we were also created to experience from the very beginning. |
Joshua ElznerI am a humble disciple of Jesus Christ who seeks to live in prayerful intimacy with the Trinity and in loving service to all through a life devoted to prayer, compassion, and creativity. On this blog I will share the little fruits of my contemplation in the hopes of being of service to you on your own journey of faith. I hope that something I have written draws your heart closer to the One who loves you! Archives
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