Saturday, March 16, 2024

The Passion in Light of the Annunciation

 There is a moving scene in The Passion of the Christ when Mary, the mother of Jesus is walking in the Praetorium while her son is chained in prison below ground. At a certain point she pauses, almost with a kind of mother's sixth sense, and drops to her knees while resting her ear on the cold stone floor. The camera pans down, and we see Jesus chained to a pillar, raising his eyes sensing his mother directly above. If children are tied to their mothers, who bore them and gave them life, in a natural sense, how much more so would the Mother of our Lord have a supernatural bond with her son even when separated by physical time or space?  


As we begin to round the corner out of Lent and enter into Holy Week, I would like to propose a concurrent meditation--that of Christ's terrible Passion on Holy Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane with his holy mother's Annunciation thirty-three years prior. For in both scenes, we see the fate of humanity hinging on two fiats--one human, one divine--but manifested uniquely in each historical setting.


Catholic tradition maintains that the Annunciation--the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear the Christ--took place in Nazareth in Mary's home (it is interesting to note that the Eastern Orthodox tradition places Mary at the town well in Nazareth for this event, but for the purpose of this meditation we will maintain the Catholic tradition). For women, the home is the heart and sanctuary of a mother. We can see in Proverbs 7 that the tempestuous woman goes out from the house, "not bearing to be quiet, not able to abide still at home; Now abroad, now in the streets, now lying in wait near the corners (v. 11-12). When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary in the sanctuary of her home in Luke's gospel, he startles her with the proclamation, "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you." And she was "greatly troubled" (Lk 1:29). The angel, in turn, assures her not to be afraid.


When women find out they are with child, there can be a mix of emotions--from overwhelming joy and hope to trepidation and fear. Now, we know Mary was conceived without Original Sin, but the general consensus among theologians is that as a human, she did not possess the Beatific Vision that her son had. The great and holy virtue of the Mother of God lies, I believe, in her unwavering faith and trust in God. But that faith and trust did not answer all of life's questions for her. In fact, after the angel makes the announcement and drops that bomb on her to which she offers up her fiat of faith and trust in that which she does not understand, he departs (Lk 1:38). 


In the garden of her home, and in the arena of her heart, I am inclined to believe that she wrestled with the implications of this divine assignment--what does this mean? What do I do now? How will this work? How is this even possible? She must have been cognizant of her low stature and standing, for in her canticle which follows her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, she proclaims in great faith her own lowliness (Lk 1:48), and that the mighty will be cast from their thrones and the likes of those lowly will be lifted on high (v. 52). Her trust in God, who reveals His plan to her not in advance but on account of her faith with only that which she needs to know at each moment, is the secret to her preservation from sin. God with us--Emmanuel--is her living reality, her nine month perpetual communion, in which the Messiah homes in the refuge of her womb until his appointed time. During that time, the Christ is nourished by her human body and Mary in turn feeds off the spiritual communion her son growing in her belly provides. There is not a moment in which she is separated from him--physically or spiritually--while pregnant.  For the alcoholic in recovery, he knows his only chance of sobriety can at times depend on seconds or minutes, not months or years. If he looks too much beyond those small steps, the temptation to wilt under the weight of the long road stretching before him becomes too much. I have to think that Mary, recognizing the great weight of her divine assignment while not fully understanding it, similarly takes these small steps in faith and trust the way a car on a dark road illuminated by headlights only sees the three feet at a time in front of it. It is in the present, not the future, that faith lives. Faith waits for instructions, faith assents, faith obeys and trusts. 


When we see the anxiety of Mary on the return to Jerusalem when Jesus is separated from the caravan. This is a natural, human emotion for a mother who has lost her son; but it would also lend credence to this idea that Mary is not a kind of omnipotent, all-knowing creature able to keep cool detachment in all circumstances. Just as she was "greatly troubled" at the annunciation and also experienced anxiety at losing her son, so too I think Mary wrestled in her home after the Annunciation against the natural factions of her mind--the "what ifs," the doubts, the questions, the not-knowing. She counters all of these 'demons' in a sense in the way her lowliness gains the highest stature in the divine economy: absolute, unwavering faith and trust in God. Her verbal fiat is her human "yes," though it was not as if the angel Gabriel led with a question "Do you assent to be the Mother of God?." Her ongoing fiat until she is taken up is that unwavering faith and trust in God that must re-assent each moment in the darkness--in the cloud of unknowing. 



Now let us turn our meditation to that of her son in the Garden of Gethsemane during his Passion on Holy Thursday. Jesus is confined in a semi-private space in the grove he enters into of his own accord "to pray" (Luke 22:41). Whereas his mother was greeted in her sanctuary with the words of Annunciation by an angel, and we can presume her monthly bleeding at that time stopped, Christ instead is subjected to the brutal test he tells his friends with him to pray to be spared from and his mental anguish is so intense that he sweats blood, a seemingly impossible scenario for a man. He is only comforted by an angel after the qualified fiat--"Not my will, but yours be done" is preceded by his heartbreaking admission of not wanting to go through what has been preordained for him before the beginning of time: to drink the chalice of redemptive torment. 


Whereas Mary has the comfort of kin in her cousin Elizabeth in their miraculous respective pregnancies, Christ's friends fail him at his hour of need. The women embrace and commune; the man Christ finds his company asleep from grief. He is alone with the Father who ordains the very weight that threatens to break his back: is the Father there? Does he provide the comfort Jesus seeks? For hours he seeps blood from his pores in a gripping fearfulness, an anxiety not of unknowing as when his mother sought him, but of KNOWING what awaits him. His Passion is not in the questioning of "what does this mean?" or "how can this be possible?" but of knowing EXACTLY what needs to be done to accomplish the divine will by nature of the beatific vision. 


We can almost imagine the hero Mashiach, in a moment of complete and gripping human fear, wanting to be back in the womb of his mother--with her and nourished by her and spared from such suffering. For he knows--by the Beatific Vision--his fate, which causes such agony. And so there is a kind of hypostatic union in his prayer to the Father: Take this cup from me; but Your will be done. For it is the great temptation of man--much different from the temptation of woman--to run from his destiny and seek refuge in the womb while armies go to war. The man goes out to meet death, while woman stays hidden to nurture life. 


In meditating on the Annunciation and the Agony in the Garden in this kind of parallel, we can then direct our thoughts to our own placement as human victims of sin and ransomed prisoners wholly dependent on grace. We are as helpless to save our selves as infants are dependent on their mothers. We do not have the benefit of an Immaculate Conception, and yet we are washed from the effects of Original Sin by baptism. Remember that Jesus' baptism in Matthew 3 was proceeded by his immediate 'going out' into the wilderness to be subjected to temptation. And we also do not have the benefit of the Beatific Vision, and so our spiritual sobriety rests on the faith and trust of Mary--moment by moment, step by step, nurtured by prayer without ceasing. When we fail to do so, or are distracted by sin and carelessness, we step off the path in the night without the lamp of grace and cry out in the dark for help. 


Men of faith cannot avoid going to war--against the world, the flesh, and the devil--and cannot avoid suffering in resisting the concupiscence which blinds us. Meanwhile St. Paul writes that "women, however, will be saved by childbearing" (1 Tim 2:15). What does the Apostle mean by this? In imitating our Holy Mother, whose fiat or "yes" saved us from darkness and death, so too does humanity depend on women not going out to the desert to wage war with the self as men do, but in bringing forth life from the sanctuary of the home like the Theotokos. 


While we may not have the beatific vision to know exactly how we are being used by God in the divine economy, that is by God's plan to keep us hidden. Faith is born in darkness and refined by fire and only after it has been tested can it bring forth light to others. This Holy Week, do not shy from that suffering in the dark, and resist the temptation to crawl back in the womb when you start to bleed. Cry out to your Mother from your personal cross that she might strengthen you with faith and trust to endure what you need to endure and not fail the test. If you are wracked by the "Why me?" of doubt or the seemingly merciless effects of tragedy in your personal passion, look to your Mother who rests her ear to the ground just above your prison cell, whose own heart was pierced by a sword and who knows more pain than you can ever imagine. Jesus, I trust in you. 


*This article was published on March 7, 2024 at Catholic Spiritual Direction (spiritualdirection.com)



Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Read and Weep: What Contemporary Christians "Think" About Divorce and Remarriage

 For all the charges leveled against the Catholic Church about being Pharisaical and obsessed with rules, it can't hold a candle to the absolute chaos of sola scriptura "bible-based" Christianity. 

Exhibit A: My wife came across a post by the well-known Christian radio program Focus on the Family in her feed recently, which posed the question to their audience: 


Do you think it's okay to get remarried after a divorce? 
Let us know what you think! #marriage #remarried



 She told me the comments were driving her absolutely crazy, and that I had to see for myself. So I took a look and sure enough, she was right. I took a little sampling of screen shots to show you what I mean, which I think serves as a decent litmus for the Christian culture at large. 

Now granted, I don't think cultural Catholics are much better if the question had been posed to them. So this isn't necessarily to indict Evangelicals specifically, since the majority of Catholics can be just as theologically ignorant of both the Bible and exegesis in general. But I will say that in this particular dim sum sampling of responses the glaring deficiency of "scripture alone" private interpretation can easily be used to justify sin in direct contradiction to the literal words of Jesus in Scripture. I will provide some commentary for each of these randomly selected screenshot comments on the post to try to back up my point. 

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I have to give this first commenter credit: just a straight up, "Yes" to the question "is it ok to divorce and remarry?" 

Now, for those who may not be familiar with the scriptures or who may have glossed over the particular passage in which this very question is posed to our Lord in Matthew 19:9: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Adultery is a serious sin worthy of damnation. And because it will appear in the comments again and again, the "exception clause" that Protestants will typically ascribe to the translation of "sexual immortality" means "in cases of adultery." But this is not accurate, as Jimmy Akin points out here


Another interesting trend I noticed was the "insertion" of extra-biblical justifications for remarriage after divorce, such as above in cases of adultery "or abandonment." Mm, kay? For "Where Is That In The Bible?" Christians, I find that curious as "abandonment" appears nowhere in scripture as grounds for remarriage. 


I find the above line of thinking pretty permissive as well: "Yes, according to God's will" and the subsequent convoluted reasoning of "seeking guidance from God for permission to marry or remarry" which sounds pious but is really only self-serving and deluded, since it justifies sin. Of course, it is followed up by "only between one man and one woman" as a kind of orthodoxy chaser after the shot.


This comment above refers to justifying remarriage if "Christ wasn't at the center" of the first marriage. This could be a case of "being yoked to an unbeliever," but nowhere is that grounds for remarriage after divorce (adultery). 


The line of thinking above that "I don't believe God called us to be alone if divorced" is a common one, and that "God will not punish anyone that gets remarried?" How do you know that? "I don't believe" that God would do such and such is not a solid source when you are wagering your eternal salvation. And where is the cross in all this? Yes, being alone can be a burden. So can being celibate and "posessing your vessel" in integrity, as Paul exhorts one to do in 1 Thes 4. That does not give us a license to sin. I can't even. 

Here's someone who thinks the question is obviously a stupid one because OF COURSE IT IS!


This individual claims that "all sins are forgiven," presumably as a "get out of jail free" card using Christ's death on the cross as license. Maybe they forgot Paul's words in Romans 6:2, "shall I continue in sin so that grace may abound? Certainly not!" "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus" is trotted out a lot when these situations make one uncomfortable with their lifestyle choices, and I think that is what is happening here as well. 


Here's someone above who states that "it depends on the circumstances." Again, there is no justification for divorce, and yet time and time again people will try to get out from under their vows doing exactly that.


This person states that "it's between the couple and God," which is line with the private interpretation/personal relationship ethos of Protestant Christianity. This very much neglects the fact that marriage is a public good and is witnessed to publicly as well. The "it's about consent between the two parties only" is what paved the way for gay marriage and further warped people's understanding of the proper means and ends of marriage. 


Again with the 'abandonment' reasoning, with an extra does of "abuse" as grounds for divorce and remarriage--neither of which are in the bible. 


It sucks that people get divorced. It sucks that people end up alone. It sucks that people get sick, become disabled, die. "People should have 2nd chances at love" doesn't want to accept the cross. Because we shouldn't have to suffer. 


Abuse. Adultery. Again, these are used as 'outs' in lieu of any authoritative teaching body (Magisterium) that is absent in Protestant Christianity. Anything goes when the interpretation of what God wills is up to you.


Again, sorry...abuse is not a biblically sanctioned event for remarriage after a divorce. 


----------

 
Is it any wonder that Satan--the great Deceiver--would wage his final battle on the field of marriage and family, as St. Lucia of Fatima predicted? Is it any wonder that Satan blinds people so they cannot see clearly and repeats his temptation in the Garden "Did God REALLY say?..." Again, I'm not signaling out Evangelicals specifically here, (as Catholics are just as guilty) only that they are just another canary in the cage for Christendom in the West and this particular thing online was cannon fodder. The justification of sin here baffles me, as our Lord's words could not be more clear. It is no wonder our Lord said the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Mt 7:13-14).

Marriage may be hard, but it's not terribly complicated: One man. One woman. Open to Life. Freely consented to. Until death do you part. Anything else is not of the Spirit...and the Spirit does not deceive.  



Friday, March 8, 2024

"Woman is the Glory of Man": A (Critical) Film Review of 'Cabrini'


Once while visiting downtown Detroit to do some street evangelization I prayed to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini because I heard she was the patron saint for finding parking. In an unfamiliar city with a rough reputation, I figured it was a long shot to employ her for this little favor (which seemed big at the time). Low and behold, as soon as I got downtown near our set-up corners, a car pulled out from a spot right in front of me and I was able to slide in. Grazie, Madre! Truth be told, though, I didn't know much about St. Cabrini's life beyond that little tidbit of info, and that little mini-miracle she worked for me.

So I decided on a whim this afternoon to go to a matinee screening of Cabrini, because I like to give things a fair shake, not to mention think and make determinations for myself rather than second-hand. I say that because it seems people who have seen the film (or those who have not yet feel moved to comment on it anyway) seem to be of two minds about it. I have made it known in over fifteen reviews on this blog (see here) that I am a film snob, and try to go beyond the "I loved it!" or "I didn't care for it" reactions to get to the objective reasons why I either loved a film or didn't. I was also surprised to see the theater about three quarters full, which was kind of cool.

I'll say from the outset Cabrini did nothing for me, either as a Catholic or as a movie-goer in general and I found myself checking my watch during the duration of the movie on numerous occasions. The acting is acceptable, the lighting and cinematography check all the right boxes, but I was absolutely not invested in these characters. It's not that they were two-dimensional or anything--they just did not give me a reason to care about them; and that includes Mother Cabrini herself. 

I also couldn't help feeling a bit force-fed, as well. Those who were critical of the downplaying or absence of faith and prayer in a story about a Catholic saint, and the upsell of strong-willed empowerment messaging were, I think, right to be. It kind of felt like a modern Marvel movie in that sense masquerading as a religious film. The humanist innuendo didn't hit you over the head, but it was definitely there, glorifying the human dimensions of what should have been reserved for the Divine. What seemed like a massive disappointment was the missed opportunity to underscore that the massive wagers and scope of work that Mother Cabrini undertook simply would not have been possible were it not for Divine Providence. It's as if the currency of the spiritual held no value in this particular producer's economy. 

Now, I know Catholics are our own worst enemy, but honestly why do producers keep missing the mark, again and again, when trying to appeal to mass audiences on matters of faith? This seemed to be the case with the new Padre Pio movie as well. However, there have also been some very well done films (A Hidden Life, about the life of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, and Man of God about the life of the Orthodox Saint Nektarios of Aegina as two examples) in the past few years showing what is possible. 

Cabrini is neither a beautiful film nor a convincing one. I did not care about any of the characters, and it felt like a mild lecture one had to endure rather than something that draws you in of your own volition. All of Mother Cabrini's sisters seemed to be akin to NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in a video game, though the relationship Mother has with the former prostitute who has entered into their community seems to have some slight inter-personal development. 

The battles and obstacles in the film were all external, outside the person--this seemed like a huge lost opportunity to delve beneath the skin of a formidable character to the spiritual dimension. It almost seemed like a foreign script to the producers that they scrapped in favor of the tangible and easily explainable, as if the biblical scholars of the Jesus Seminar of the 1980's got together to try their hand at film and focused on the historical Jesus devoid of his miracles. Sorry, the feeding of the five thousand wasn't because "sharing is caring." Hard pass.

I don't quite know what the agenda of Cabrini was, if there was one. Was it to inspire? And if so, inspire to what? Curiosity? Piety? Humanitarianism? Deeper faith? Female empowerment? Was there a reason it was touted as premiering on "International Women's Day?" Or the emphasis on immigration during a border crisis and election year? I don't know, and I don't really care to speculate. Because nothing about Cabrini made me care at all, because...well, why should I care about something I wasn't invested in. And that is where it fails as a film. I don't owe Angel Studios anything. If anything, my $11.50 put to rest my suspicion of the critics of this film, because I can say they were right to hold the film itself in suspicion.

Phillip Campbell has a much more thorough (and favorable) review over at Unam Sanctam Catholicam. We both saw Cabrini on the same day and were texting back and forth about it and decided to publish our reviews simultaneously.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Who Are "The Poor" Anyway?



Our Lenten observance during this penitential season rests on three pillars--prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. They often seem to come in that order for us, with focus and pride of place being devoted to the first two while the third--almsgiving--tends to trail a little. 

I don't believe this is because we willfully wish to neglect this most pious and ancient practice, but because we don't actually know how to go about it properly. We learn the secrets of mental prayer from the Fathers and the saints and the concrete laws of the fast from the Church, but with regards to almsgiving we are sometimes left to our own devices to figure out how to subjectively put it into practice, or rely on the cardboard CRS "ricebowl" to stuff our weekly dollar bills in fulfillment of this precept.

For conservative Catholics, there can perhaps also be an unconscious fear of aligning ourselves too much with a "redistribution of wealth" mindset with those who did not work or earn it, or with the mindset of so-called Social Justice Warriors who prioritize corporal works over the spiritual. Or we may simply struggle with the idea of a "deserving versus undeserving" poor, and fear feeding addictions or bad habits with our alms. Lastly, we can sometimes feel the pressure of manipulation to give as we are approached on the street with oftentimes fabricated stories of someone needing bus money to get to where they are going, or panhandlers who are sometimes known to strategically exploit those with tender hearts, and so our alms are not always freely given in these cases, but extorted in a sense.

It would be helpful to lead off with the teaching that almsgiving is first and foremost of act of mercy, as St. Thomas notes “the motive for giving alms is to relieve one who is in need” (S.T. II-II q32 a1). We can see the terror of the debtor who is being threatened with being sold with his family into slavery in Matthew 18:23-25 when he cannot pay back what he owes. When the man begs for mercy, the master takes pity and cancels the debt in full; however, the man forgiven does not apply the same mercy to one who owes him a much smaller sum, and when the master hears about he punishes him severely. Our Lord relates this physical act of mercy to forgiveness of grievances, but it is clear from the parable that relieving the burden of need from our brothers as an act of charity is tied closely with the exercise of mercy. 

We can also see the eternal consequences of neglecting charity with regards to the rich man and Lazarus--the poor man who is intentionally ignored in his need. When they both meet their ends, the rich man goes to Hell specifically on account of his callous neglect. When we meditate on Hell, we often confine our thoughts and guilt to our sins of commission, rarely ascribing ourselves to the place of the rich man and sitting in his seat feasting. St. James makes a similar point with regards to the "work" of charity,


"Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?" (James 2:15-16)


Just as God cannot be outdone in mercy and by our penance, we attempt (but never can fully accomplish) the act of repaying all the Lord has done for us in ransoming us from sin and death (Ps 116:12). And so we know there are also spiritual benefits to exercising mercy in imitation of our Lord who forgives seventy times seven:


'Give alms out of thy substance, and turn not away thy face from any poor person: for so it shall come to pass that the face of the Lord shall not be turned from thee.

According to thy ability be merciful. If thou have much, give abundantly; if thou have little, take care even so to bestow willingly a little.

But do not hesitate to give alms; for thus thou storest up to thyself a good reward for the day of necessity.

For alms deliver from all sin, and from death, and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness.

Alms shall be a great confidence before the most high God, to all them that give it.'

(Tobias 4:7-12)


Charity does not bind anyone to employ extraordinary means in order to safeguard his own life (St. Alphonsus, op. cit., III, no. 31). As a guide, St. Alphonsus offers a tangible outlay corresponding to "two per cent of temporalities superfluous to social prestige suffices to satisfy the obligation." This may be helpful to us when we are tempted to either give too much imprudently or too little in letting ourselves off the hook of our obligation to the needy, and assuage scrupulous consciences. Furthermore, St. Thomas states that we cannot help all, but only those close to us as “we are not bound to relieve all who are in need, but only those who could not be succored if we not did not succor them” (II-II q32 a5). 

Likewise, well-meaning Christians can sometimes struggle with exercising the prudence required of being a steward of wealth, in making concrete determinations of where and to whom to give. They should keep in mind the teachings of the Apostolic Constitutions that discretion is required in such circumstances and that "alms must not be given to the malicious, the intemperate, or the lazy; lest a premium should be set on vice" (Const. Apost., ii, 1-63; iii, 4-6).

As Christians, we can sometimes elevate "the poor" to a kind of ethereal status, in the same way we might speak of "the Communists" as a specter of threat--out there, but not knowing where they really live or who qualifies as "poor." Because our brains often rely on stereotypes to reduce complexity and avoid cognitive overload (known as heuristics), we construct what a poor person is based on physical or environmental circumstances--the disheveled man on the street, or the migrant with children living in a shelter, or the elderly person subsisting on cat food and tap water. 

But what about the head of household who makes a six figure salary and who through poor choices finds himself leveraged by debt with no emergency savings and a negative net worth? Is he and his family "poor," despite their ample means? What about the family with a median household income, who nevertheless live in an extreme high cost of living area in which they cannot afford adequate housing? The poor are not always the indigent, and sometimes they are hidden in plain sight but in non-stereotypical circumstances. Nevertheless, these can be difficult, subjective situation to discern.

So what does almsgiving look like, practically speaking--both for the giver and the recipient? Before answering that question it may be helpful to look to scripture of the disposition of the rich young ruler who approaches Jesus asking what he must do to gain eternal life in Mark 10:17-27. The man prides himself on his "doing"--that is, on fulfilling the Commandments. When our Lord takes it a step farther with another action item--to sell all that he has and to give it to the poor, and follow him--the young man cannot bring himself to take that step. If he could fulfill all the commandments of the Law, why could he not also fulfill this command? What was stopping him from doing so? Was the man going away damned like the rich man with Lazarus at his feet? Or was he simply forfeiting a higher calling to be "perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect," (Mt 5:48) prioritizing his locus of control over the more volatile future of complete dependance on Divine Providence and as a result "settling for less?" As St. John of the Cross wrote, "It makes little difference whether a bird is tied by a thin thread or by a cord. Even if it is tied by a thread, the bird will be held bound… it will be impeded from flying as long as it does not break the thread.” Christ has called us to freedom, and while we hate to admit it, sometimes wealth (even modest wealth) and security can be that very thin string that binds us to this world.

For married men like myself, we know sainthood is possible, that is, made possible by Christ's redemption and our free will. But we are also reminded of St. Paul's words that "it is better not to marry" (1 Cor7:8), and that in accepting our state of life and necessarily being "of the world" we make a hard thing harder--impossible with men, but still possible with God. If we were forced to categorize ourselves as middle-class Americans as either "rich" or "poor", comparatively to the world, we would undoubtedly be considered the former. And that means as rich people, comparatively speaking, it is harder for us to enter Heaven than it is for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle (Mt 19:24). Again, impossible for men, but possible with God. To whom much has been given, much will be required (Lk 12:48). Almsgiving is as much for our spiritual benefit and fire protection as it is for its beneficiaries. 

As "wealthy" people we are stewards, and as such we have the freedom of discretion in how much and in what ways we give alms. The Church herself does not exact a strict 10% tithe on Catholics, but rather uses this a suggested guide (5% to the poor, 5% to the Church). Likewise, we have freedom for how we as Catholics are privileged to exercise mercy through giving--some may prefer established charities, either close to home or abroad, others through direct service of time and treasure. Fr. Thomas Dubay in his book Happy Are You Poor presses in on this challenge to remind us that “Having wealth is damaging to the pursuit of the kingdom because the very having does something to one's inner life, one's very ability to love God for his own goodness and others in and for him.” Almsgiving is our Lord and the Church's proscription for our spiritual malaise. 

For our family, we have gone the route of mainly prioritizing supporting individuals and families over established charities. In this economy, there is no shortage of those who are quietly struggling but may make too much to qualify for public assistance. We have PayPal-ed funds to indigents abroad (who were vetted by a trusted friend), as well as written checks to cover mortgage and utility payments for large families in which the husband has lost his job or suffered health issues. Other times, it was simply someone in need who came into our path who was an answer to prayer, and we were able to alleviate some of their financial burden. In all these circumstances, I try to write a check with my right hand while the left hand is kept in the dark. We are not saviors, for there is only one Savior--we are merely stewards, and given the privilege of exercising the spiritual mercy shown to us by the Lord to others in corporal need. Rather, we recognize that while we cannot do everything to relieve the burdens of others, we can most certainly do something

"The poor" are not caricatures, though for those who like to flex virtue it would be more convenient if they were. For the poor can surprise us by their demureness, their hiddenness. They may be our neighbor in Christ, our neighbor of another faith, or our literal neighbor languishing behind closed doors next to us. And since the poor we will have with us always, there will be never not be an opportunity to exercise the muscle of charity during Lent and beyond it. The harder work, when we regard ourselves like the rich young ruler, is settling for less, shortchanging ourselves by prioritizing the pleasures of trifles and temporal distractions over the gift of charity, and keeping our hearts from becoming calloused. We would be wise to recall the words of St. Ambrose as a reality check when considering those in need: "You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, and not only to the rich."

Sunday, March 3, 2024

The Slow Lane


 It rained all night and all day. The front yard was like a kitchen sponge that just couldn't take in any more water as little lakes formed in the low areas. I could have taken the car to First Saturday Mass. But what's a little rain?

I opened up the garage door and stepped out of the rain into my little space; when we moved into this house nine years ago I had laid vinyl flooring, painted the walls a pale yellow, hung free-cycled cabinets on the studs. It was a nice little room that served no purpose; no one was going to be living in the garage but I did it anyway. Just like the shed two years ago, with the caving in roof and oil stained plywood floor and the world ending and everything. Bought jelly rolls of fiberglass insulation and stacks of 4x8 birch paneling and gave it a Trading Spaces worthy makeover. Installed solar panels, a sink, composting toilet in the framed out back room, counters and futon. My wife refuses to go back there--"The rat bird," she says, that lives in between the walls. I built this for you. Didn't I? For me? I don't know. It doesn't matter. All is vanity. 

My thirties were so...busy. The kids were pop-pop-popping and spaces felt outgrown. I was always pimping out my time. Craigslist runs to Jersey. Lunch-hour writing side hustles. Building this or that thing. Trying to make everything work. Trying to be a good provider. We had good memories--walks with the stroller after dinner in our old 'hood. Drives to the beach when the babies never stopped crying. Thai food at the gun shop. Skin to skin.

I still have a lot of bikes, too many for one person. I can't help myself I suppose. Everybody has a thing. The trendy grey-wood vinyl laminate is curling up now at the edge of the garage where it gets wet underneath, cracking and tearing in some areas. Not as pliable as it used to be. The cabinets and wall paintings are gone. The only thing that remains is an oval portrait of my great grandmother because well why not--she deserves to be remembered, somewhere somehow. It's something, a home among the bikes. 

I was doom-scrolling at the office yesterday and Jordan Peterson was ranting about the 'war on cars' in Toronto: "the bloody bike lanes everywhere and what are you going to do when it's negative twenty degrees out and you're a seventy year old lady with her groceries--its utterly preposterous. The only people who bike from November to March are deluded twenty four year old men who think they've saving the planet with their goddamned bicycles..." And I'm nodding "yaas, yas" he's right, and he is. I didn't buy a car until a year before I got married; once when I was a twenty-four year old man I biked down Kelly Drive to pick up a drafting table at a Staples in Center City and hoisted it on my back, and biked the ten miles back up to Manayunk carrying it while riding one handed on a single-speed up an 8% incline. Normal people don't do such things. I didn't care about saving the planet so much as I liked riding my bike. But I don't want my seventy-six year old mother having to.

And I still do, strangely. I've got a whole cadre of bitties living here in my garage to choose from--a couple of e-bikes, which are great and practical; a sleek drop bar racing bike, a single speed track bike, a mountain bike, and my simple seven-speed cruiser replete with fenders and mustache bars which is my ride of choice this morning. 

It would be easier to drive to Mass, but I need a reason to live during these dark days of winter and so I get my raingear together--a lightweight jacket with a form-fitting hood I sewed years ago, rainpants, mitts, waterpoof shoes (all my shoes are waterproof). Seems like a lot of hassle but it's really just like dressing up your morning oatmeal with salt and dates and butter. And we've dodged a lot of snow the past few years so I'm able to ride almost all year round it feels like. 

When I biked two hundred miles to the hermitage in New York state this past Fall to go on retreat, it was more advantageous to extend the range on my battery to slow it down. Upright bikes are not especially aerodynamic, and racing bikes only marginally more so, so above fifteen miles per hour you expend a disproportionate amount of energy just to overcome wind resistance. So, on an e-bike, it's a matter of economy: you can cover fifty miles on a full charge, with pedaling, at 15 miles per hour, or half of that distance at 20 miles per hour. But since you're body is an engine too, it "pays" to go slower on a regular pedal bike like I was doing this morning. 

And I like how I can work on them, fix anything that goes wrong, myself. It's cheap to maintain--a couple hundred bucks a year, tops. It's something to have that kind of empowerment. There's theoretically nothing to keep me from going from here to there except myself.  

Part of why I wanted to bike in the pissing rain is the same reason I take cold showers. My wife took one before her night-shift this evening to shock herself out of sleep, and said "I don't know how you do this every morning." The truth is, I don't know either. But everything is a choice really. I can choose to go back to bed, or turn the showerhandle to H. But I don't. Some days I drive to where I need to be, but today I wanted to kill myself a little so I made a different choice. 

When I rolled out my cruiser with the mustache bars out the driveway in the pelting rain, I gave myself plenty of time to cover the ten miles to church. On an ebike it's easier to dress because you're not working your body as hard--the battery and motor does it for you. Less work=no sweat. But I wanted to work this morning to give me something to live for, and that means with rain gear the danger of getting sweaty. A good way to do that is to slow down and just take your time. And that's a nice thing about the bike over the car anyway--slowing down. It's crazy when I look at a map seeing some of the routes I've traveled over the years on two wheels, crazy distances. But it's just mile by mile, stroke by stroke. They fall by the wayside like the years, like the cherry petals that will soon fall along Kelly Drive.

I'll be forty-four next week. I've spent a lot of time on the living room couch the past couple months by the big bay window. I don't read. I don't do much of anything; Not 'optimizing'. Anti-hustle. Naps and staring at the ceiling. When I slip into the confessional this morning I confess to sloth, laziness, acedia. But is it? What if I'm just slowing down, riding in the slow lane and realizing all is vanity and chasing after wind? I've heard it said that King Solomon wrote Song of Songs in his youth, Proverbs in his middle years, and Ecclesiastes near the end of his life. This makes sense. Song of Songs is passionate, poetic, erotic, full of youth and vigor. Proverbs is a solid compilation of practical wisdom concerned with the nuts and bolts of living. And Ecclesiastes is the legacy capstone of the wisest man who ever lived and has experienced everything life has to offer and realizes in the end that it is all completely meaningless.

I'm not trying to save the planet by riding by bike. This world is going to burn whether I ride a bike or drive a car or lie on the couch or make an extra grand or play with my kids or spend time in the garage monkeying around with my mistresses. Nobody's saving anything. We're spending our time and years in the fast lane fooling ourselves we're doing something noble, burning the engine fighting the wind. It's a slow burn at twilight. 

The funny thing about the ride to church--once I was wet, I couldn't get much wetter. So you just kind of lean into and accept it. Like stepping into the shower stall when you want to die and turning the handle to straight "C" and then stepping out a man awake, alive. Because I had fenders and some fitting clothing, I wasn't miserable, and because I was taking my time, I wasn't sweating. It was, dare I say, pleasant. No one else was out on a bike, of course--because it's an utterly preposterous thing to do. And yet there I was. Stroke by stroke, mile by slow mile.     


Friday, February 23, 2024

The NIMBY Priesthood

 Steve Skojec, for all his faults and character flaws, is if nothing else an honest man. I did appreciate his recent Substack, "When Religion Comes First," on the topic of those who put their God before their family. Steve explained that the essay was an extrapolation of a spicy Facebook post in which he wrote,


"If you love your religion more than you love your own kids, don’t be surprised when they grow up to reject the thing you always cared about more than them."


I've always felt sympathy for Steve and his "deconstruction" (to use Protestant nomenclature) since losing faith and leaving the Church. I reached out a couple times over the years, and was either met with non-response or a kind of exacerbated callousness (which is okay). The thing is, I think Steve makes some good points from this vantage point of now being outside the Church that are lost on a lot of the pious crowd still in (and attempting to raise their kids in it as well). He notes:


"I have become increasingly convinced that much of Catholicism is, essentially, a kind idolatry of religion. Since God is perceptually absent/distant/nonexistent, the Church and all her countless rules and rubrics and rituals swell to fill the space left by his absence.

We begin to worship the means of worship because the object of worship is inscrutable and inaccessible.

Worship becomes indistinguishable from the rituals that comprise it. Which is why (according to my theory) those rituals take on more and more significance in the minds of those who feel that they must always go deeper and seek more reverence so that they can try to commune with God."


Now, obviously I do not agree with Steve on Catholicism being a kind of idolatry, but I do think I know where he is coming from, and this seems more common with people to whom God was always elusive, far-off, "Other." It is a little hard for me to relate in some ways because this was the opposite experience for me: I encountered God personally first as a loving and saving Father, and then religion became the chalice to house the pearl. So, God was always worshipped first and foremost, and the external structure of religious practice giving that heart a body and a skeleton. I could shrug at the rituals and just assume they were the particular expressions of religious practice but were not little G gods in some way. But then again, I was kind of a blank slate coming into the whole thing, without much baggage, preconceptions, or religious trauma

I mean, I've alluded to this in posts like The Church Will Hurt You and Preventing the Scars of Religious Trauma in Your Children, that although my wife and I have always had the order of God first, Spouse second, Children third, there is a part of me that is reticent to be too strict or "religious" with force-feeding my children the faith, because there is also a part of me that recognizes the Church is rife with abuse and corruption, and what father in good conscience would put that before his own family? 

But I have not been burned beyond peripheral singes, because I have largely kept my distance from episcopal and diocesan machinations. I have been constantly spared from being employed by the Church, despite my best early and naïve efforts to work for Her. Years ago I wrote the vocation office about wanting to serve the Church as a deacon, and never even received a response, so dodged a bullet there. I have wanted nothing to do with parish councils, and though I have close relationships with a couple priests friends, I have kept a healthy distance and distrust of "just because he's a priest" thinking. In other words, "I can trust him because he's a priest," which is just another manifestation of clericalism. As a father of boys in a Church rife with mollittes clergy and homocentric seminaries, I don't think this is being imprudent. 

Now, I have often said priests are like farmers: No farm, no food. No priests, no Church. We're not Protestants. We are grateful for men who sacrifice and take on the cloth for the flock. There are bad priests out there, and many lukewarm company men. But there are also good men, imperfect but striving men, servants who want to carry out their calling for the glory of God and the tending of the sheep. And there are many bad and lukewarm status quo administrator bishops out there. But there are one or two good ones as well, who love as a father loves and not as a COO of DIOCESE Corp.

And yet, knowing all I know about our particular wasteland of a diocese and many others like it, I want priests for the Church but would never sacrifice my son to the diocesan grinder to become one. 


That sounds harsh, and I hate admitting it myself. When a man is called by God, he will only find peace when he embraces that calling. And so I would hope that if one of my sons was truly called by God to take up either religious or priestly life, that God would preserve him in that calling and make a way. But as a father, I would never push it or even encourage it. Kind of the way we know we need chemical plants and prisons in society, but we certainly don't want them in our neighborhood enclaves (NIMBY--not in my backyard). 

To lose faith is a terrible feeling. Which is why I feel for Steve. In many ways, I have kept my distance from "the Church" in order to maintain my faith. Awful, isn't it? And yet I benefit from Her sacraments, Her teaching, Her witness, Her priests and religious. But I am not willing to offer my son to the roll-call. I feel like I know too much insider info, and am too familiar with the dysfunction. Wed yourself to Christ, yes...but not the Church. 

We know some folks who have "assigned" their young children as religious and priests already--"oh, well so-and-so (age 4 or whatever) is going to be a priest, so..." I think this is terrible parenting and religiously manipulative, not to mention just unrealistic. Although we know this was how the Church was fed for years with nobles and large families "offering" one of their sons to the priesthood, whether or not they felt called to it. I think vocation offices have gone to the other extreme these days, though--not encouraging men to think about it enough (maybe because they know all too well the problems and burnout inherent in the role of priest), or the seminaries being effeminate and inconducive to healthy masculinity. And bishops not being true spiritual fathers, but many who are cold administrators who will throw you under the bus to preserve the Force at all costs. 

I want my sons (and daughter, of course) to remain Catholic. I don't care if they are "religious" or not, but I want them to have life, and have it abundantly (Jn 10:10). I want them to attend Mass of their own volition when they grow up, have a family if it be God's will for them. It's a fine line to walk between forcing your children to be "holy" and letting them simply be who they are and loving them for it. I can only be the example. I want him to be able to come to me with anything, know he can rely on me to never spurn him, to take him in when he needs a place to come home to. 

Will the Church do that for my son also? Can I trust the Church to preserve his innocence? Not feed him to the wolves? Or is it a corporation (albeit a religious one) just like any other, where the bottom line is the preservation of the company at all costs? 

No faith, no salvation. No priests, no Church. Lord, raise up good men able to endure the suffering that comes their way when they live out their vocation with nobility and integrity. We need true shepherds, not simply effective administrators and ecclesial ladder climbers and company men. We need a Church we can trust, and that trust must be earned. Until then, I'm not sure I'm willing to sacrifice my sons for Her.  May God judge me.


Thursday, February 22, 2024

Majoring In The Minors

 I'm preparing to give a talk this evening at our monthly men's prayer fraternity on the virtue of chastity, and in doing so was making various back-of-napkin notes. Every virtue has an opposing vice, and related to the virtue of chastity I wanted to discuss the vice opposed to the virtue of perseverance, which is mollities, or "softness." St. Paul uses this verb in 1 Corinthians 6:9 as it relates to the sin of sodomy. I think it really needs to be discussed in the context of the virtue of chastity because while sexual immorality is the one temptation we are instructed to "flee" from, there is still a good bit of fighting against the flesh that goes on. We run, yes, but we also must fight the temptation to indulge the flesh. For the man used to a pattern of self-abuse, putting a stop to it involves ardor, and to the degree that he shirks from that mortification and suffering betrays a kind of mollities spirit, whether he is heterosexual or homosexual. 

But there is something else I want to cover in this discussion on chastity, and I use it as a segway into what I want to discuss here, and that is that the external trappings of chastity (modesty of dress, fasting of the eyes, temperance, continence) are all servants of love/charity, the good and end of this virtue. 

I think St. Paul sums this up for me famously in 1 Cor 13:1-3: 

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing." 

We've heard this passage so many times it tends to become white noise. But isn't it really the essence of Christianity, of our faith? Isn't it primary, served by all the secondary ends? Doesn't it deserve primacy of place in our spiritual lives, our praxis, and yes, our Lenten observance?

We can call into the same problem with fasting during this season--doing the exact thing our Lord warns us not to do: adopting a gloomy continence, or becoming preoccupied with the nuances of our fast or either self-congratulatory or self-condemning while neglecting the weightier things of the law--that is, the law of love. Our Lord admonishes the Pharisees for this "majoring in the minors" in Matthew's gospel, "For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others" (Mt 23:23).

I see this all the time in the online Catholic world. Whether it's a particular outrage du jour, or a pet project of picking apart some TV show as if our eternal salvation depended on such critiques, or even the insider baseball in-fighting over liturgical nuances, these things wouldn't be as much of a hollow gong if they did, in fact, communicate the love with which they supposed to be concerned with. Often what I see as an observer is the antithesis of charity--I see the Saul, the righteous Pharisee defender of religious orthodoxy, and not the Paul who becomes weak, "all things to all men," and boasts only in his weakness. Again, we hear it like white noise, but how much meditation have we lent to the continuation of Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Cor 13:4-8)

Lent often degenerates for many people like myself because we neglect an elusive charity in our hearts in exchange for the tangible ticks and notches our forty days affords us--signs that we are progressing in the spirit, mortifying our flesh more, becoming more disciplined and hard-packed. But to what end? If we are not growing in charity, we are gongs. We forget our purpose, our Lenten raison d'etre. Like the chaste man who is cold in his heart, who has choked out love and openness and self-deference because he sees it as a threat to his tenuous virtue. Who is so consumed with tamping down the weeds of lust and avoiding occasions of sin that he forgets how to love. Because his heart has not been born again, but only patched on the outside. Chastity is really a matter of the heart, not the groin.



I had a therapy appointment yesterday, because I have really not been feeling myself since undertaking some of these disciplines--having gone cold-turkey off of nicotine a month ago, and coffee (switching to tea) a week ago, in addition to fasting every day and more severely on Wednesdays and Fridays...all potentially "good" things. But I'm sleeping 12 hours a day now, and feel a little...hollow. Not myself. It may just take some time to adjust, but my faithful Catholic therapist suggested it was too much taken on all at once, and encouraged me to "just have a freaking cup of coffee" if I need it. I was actually relieved to hear that, and I didn't take it as a free-pass but simply perhaps a bleed valve in case my charity grows too cold. If you're fasting and a jerk to your wife and family, you're not doing it right. I haven't taken that liberty of the cup of joe yet, but it's good to know that it's a minor thing in the shadow of the majors, which is namely, charity.

Increasing in charity is really a slow grow--you can't force it anymore you can get that orchid to bloom in time for your birthday. But you can practice in order to make it more....common for you. The way a bad habit needs to be replaced by a good habit, and aided by grace. Pray for an increase in charity, and then endure the hard work of self-deference of blessing someone when you'd rather curse them, praying for your enemies, giving alms when it hurts to do so and even when people are undeserving, making time for someone in need of a pep talk or tea at the kitchen table. Charity is the master, and these things its servant.

If you are deep in prayer and your neighbor in need knocks on your door in need, you are majoring in the minors if you piously refuse to rise and answer--not only the external door, but the door of your heart. For even the Lord healed on the Sabbath. He knew how to tell the meat from the bone, the major things from the minor ones, the purpose of the Law in addition to it's letter. He was so critical of the Pharisees because they were experts at "majoring in the minors." They converted no one, but set themselves up as judges and executioners of righteousness. Don't be like them, our Lord says. 

The Tertullians of our day are out there, observing and noting how we as Christians conduct ourselves. To the degree we give them pause and they note, "see how they love one another!" we are doing things right. To the degree we are focused on the minor barnacles of our faith when they do not serve the larger purpose of that love, we are missing the mark, gongs resounding from a shallow and hollow core.  

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Acedia and Ennui: The Cousins of Mid-Life Manhood

 A few years ago I ran across a light-hearted little meme with a solidly truthful and existential nougat core. It’s a smiling little cartoon guy in a series of pictographic scenarios: Shop for a new tie. Make macaroni. Do Cardio.


[Don’t Let The Existential Dread Set In]


DON’T LET IT SET IN.


Vacuum the rug.


I still chuckle at it (uncomfortably) today. We live out our lives as Christians trying to synthesize the meaning of our life in Christ with the reality of suffering, the seeming futility of making meaningful change in the world, and the fact that we are going to die at some point. I’m not a fatalist nor a pessimist, but those moments of questioning what it is all for and what one’s life has amounted to will hit from time to time. I’d like to think I’m not the only one.


Perhaps this is coincidental with the post-Christmas season and turning forty-four in a few months. In reflecting on the life of our Savior, I think it gets overlooked for a lot of people that Christ began his public ministry at the age of thirty, and died at the age of thirty-three. He was, for all intents and purposes, in the prime of his life—peak manhood. And since there are no accidents in the spiritual economy, perhaps this is why the Father chose that period for his son, who was to be a choice offering, an unblemished lamb—a worthy sacrifice. It meant something because it cost everything.


The solution in the modern economy is to sidestep malaise, or hop over it. If one is anxious and looking for a way to address the root causes of their anxiety, they are often advised instead to pop a Xanax twice a day as if that was a solution. If we are uneasy with periods of boredom, there’s no shortage of food, phones, or content to distract us and get us out of that moment temporarily. 


Mid-life for men is a kind of predictable malaise that can’t be sidestepped or hopped over, however; you have to go through it on your way to old age, disease and death. It could have something to do with lowering testosterone levels. It could start in your late thirties or not hit until your early fifties. It’s not quite depression, though there can be some symptomatic overlap. It’s not quite doubt at the things we’ve committed ourselves to: marriage, family, faith, work. Mid-life seems to be its own unique thing, even when we’re not conscious we are experiencing it. 


That recalibration “halfway through the tunnel” can often play out in stereotypical ways: the Corvette, the affair, the career switch or the moving to a homestead in the country. But like the Xanax, these are the pills we pop to try to make the problem “go away.” Many men do not seem to even have the capacity for introspection, but instead (again, stereotypically) relegate this nebulous malaise to externals; to mansplain it, it is a matter of externals, a “problem to be solved.”


The Devil, to his credit, will not let any good crisis go to waste. And so he flanks our defenses from all exposed angles. He may plant the tares of doubt about our marriage vows, for one: Is your marriage really valid? Were you really in the right state of mind to make such a commitment? Does God really expect you to live the next forty years with the same woman? What if you just…left? Or he could capitalize on our boredom and general comfortability. You get the idea. 


In secular nomenclature, ennui is a kind of feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement. It seems to go hand in hand with mid-life for men and can be hard to put a finger on. In the spiritual life, acedia is a close spiritual relative—a kind of mental sloth or apathy which, ironically, strikes the solider of God often at the mid-life of the day (which is why it is sometimes referred to as the “Noonday Demon”). St. John Cassian, in his treatise from the Philokalia (“On The Eight Vices”) lays out both the diagnosis and the remedy for this form of spiritual attack,


"Our sixth struggle is against the demon of listlessness, who works hand in hand with the demon of dejection. This is a harsh, terrible demon, always attacking the monk, falling upon him at the sixth hour (mid-day), making him slack and fall of fear, inspiring him with hatred for his monastery, his fellow monks, for work of any kind, and even for the reading of Holy Scripture. He suggests to the monk that he should go elsewhere and that, if he does not, all his effort and time will be wasted. In addition to all this, tie produces in him at around the sixth hour a hunger such as he would not normally have after fasting for three days, or after a long journey or the heaviest labor. Then he makes him think that he will not be able to rid himself of this grievous sickness, except by sallying forth frequently to visit his brethren, ostensibly to help them and to tend them if they are unwell. When he cannot lead him astray in this manner, he puts him into the deepest sleep. In short, his attacks become stronger and more violent, and he cannot be beaten off except through prayer, through avoiding useless speech, through the study.”


For a monastic under a superior and a rule, the solution is simple: stay in your cell and fight your wayward nature by staying put and not abandoning your post. Not easy, but simple at least. Stay and fight.


Perhaps my mid-life malaise at the age of forty-four does have a spiritual taproot: Ennui driving the ‘Vette, with its spiritual cousin Acedia in the passenger seat coming along for the ride. St. John Cassian gives sound counsel for dealing with the latter, but the former in my opinion can be a tougher nut to crack; a kind of tension that needs to be uncomfortably sat with and stared down, or wrestled with the way Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord. To pay attention to that heart and meaning-shaped hole rather than going out to shop for a new tie or pumping some reps, while not staring so deep into the abyss that we are overtaken by it and fall in. Navel-gazing is a weak currency, but prayer for the Christian exacts change—even when it feels futile and even when it feels like those prayers eviscerate into the ether. 


Because we were hit with a storm recently, I had a small downed tree to deal with. I had no desire in this state of ennui-inspired apathy to do so, but forced myself to grab and axe and saw and get to work; it wasn’t going to move itself, and laying there in the yard seemed like a taunt. It seemed pointless and tiring to even think about, like everything else in my mind. Chopping a tree seemed as futile a distraction as cooking macaroni, or vacuuming the rug. 


After an hour or so of sweating and straining, though, I came in the house to find that Abba Moses, quoted in Cassian’s treatise, had it right: patience, prayer, and manual labor worked to dispel the noonday demon, at least for today. That doesn’t mean he won’t return, either tomorrow or next year when I’m forty-five. But at least for today, this patristic trifecta of armory was enough to help me find meaning enough to get up, get serious, and get to work.




Saturday, February 17, 2024

By The Work Worked

 I had been in bed for two days. I was simultaneously gripped with a pernicious anxiousness of undisclosed character while having no will to will anything. Acedia had swaddled me in its thick winter duvet and assured me he would never let me go. COVID had stuck a stick in the wheel of my five years of First Fridays and First Saturdays a couple weeks ago and reset my merit book back to zero. I hadn't confessed in two months. I felt the weight of everything stacked on my back, all the phantom fears, and the flight of joy from its perch. 

The snowfall from last night was melting a little as it hovered just above freezing and the sun was getting ready for bed. I shook myself awake and wheeled my bike out of the garage to bike the seven miles to St. H; I needed an exorcism to shake the ravens that had made a nest in me; I needed Confession.  

I arrived at the church--which looked abandoned from the busy boulevard--parked my bike and walked inside with fifteen minutes to spare. Everything was empty--the parking lot, the church, my soul. I slipped into a pew and said a quick prayer to remember my many sins and lay them bare. A single light illuminated from the confessional in the back. I entered into the confessional and closed the door behind me.

The priest had been waiting for me and for everyone. He must have been close to one hundred years old. I collapsed on the kneeler, blessed myself and sighed. He began with his script--how many times, how many years and decades, has he repeated the same words to penitents like a sacramental arcade game? I thought I was weary, how much more so this ancient priest?  It was the driest, most scripted exchange from his part, and a steady bleeding out of sinfulness from mine. 

But the funny thing? The very rote-ness of his interaction in the sacrament stirred me to tears. When I had confessed, he didn't give me counsel or talk to me. This was not animated Fr. Mike Schmitz or reaming Fr. Isaac Reyes here. This was a tired old human priest. He gave me my penance, absolved me, and asked me to pray for him as he had asked thousand of other penitents to do. Nothing different, nothing unique. He could have just as easily been praying to be let go from this life. I burst into tears. 

The power of the grace depended not on this good priest's character--whether wearied by age or buoyed by enthusiasm to save souls--and THAT was what moved me. The grace leveled me. Ex opere operato: "by the work worked."  I had encountered Christ then and there, had laid down my burdens at his feet and taken his light yoke up; I blubbered through my act of contrition because there was no illusion that this minister, this man acted in persona Christi by virtue of his apostolic office. That is the great grace of the sacrament, of all the sacraments of the Church, that do not depend on the merits of the minister. The Donatist heretics in the fourth to sixth centuries thought otherwise--that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the moral state of the minister.  

I simultaneously trusted that I was truly forgiven of my wickedness, wiped clean even though I did not feel different; just as the priest of a hundred years did not tailor his words to my psychology or change anything to suite me. He had no personality to speak of, no originality in his words, no piercing psychological insight. He didn't speak to my heart but dispensed simply the raw, undiluted forgiveness of Jesus Christ that has been entrusted to him in his apostolic priesthood. He just did what he had been doing year after scripted year, decade after scripted decade--forgiving sins in persona Christi by the book. By the work worked.