 |
| The Temptation of St. Anthony (William Strang 1883) |
My wife gets annoyed with my somewhat stoic tendencies. I like to go camping not because I especially like camping, but because I appreciate things like a hot shower and a steak dinner even more after doing so. I hate exercise, but I love the feeling of being tired and having earned the right to a good nights sleep after having gone for a long run. Satisfaction is dependent on concordant deprivation.
Stoics, both the ancients and the modern-day, would hold virtue and mastery of the passions as an end in themselves to achieve "a happy life;" that is, a happy life in this world, as they were not interested in the after-life (Augustine accused them of a "stupid pride" in
City of God). Dr. Jordan Peterson has taken note of this "vacuum of virtue" in the culture among men, especially, and has gained popularity but putting forth his own "rules for life" based on cultivating universal goods like strength, courage, responsibility, and, to an extent, suffering.
But as Christians, we don't pursue virtue for it's own sake, or to achieve maximum pleasure in this life. Virtue in the Christian life is, according to St. Augustine, "a good habit consonant with our nature." It is from the Latin
virtus which means manliness or courage, and is defined as the excellence or perfection of a thing. By extension, virtue is consonant with right reason, and of course, Catholicism is a religion of both faith
and reason.
Augustine struggled with the 'short-circuiting' of reason that comes with the sexual act, especially as it pertains to orgasm, but also with the sin of lust--in his personal life, and also theologically--because of lust's disobedience to the will as a kind of moral "intruder."
If virtue is the excellence or perfection of a thing and denotes manliness or courage, vice--the counterpart of virtue--is the absence of perfection. A lack of virtue is a lack of manliness or courage. Vice fills the vacuum when virtue is absent.
The lack of virtue is probably nowhere more evident today than in the
rampant vice of effeminacy. St. Thomas includes effeminacy under the vices opposed to perseverance. It is from the Latin mollities, which literally means “softness.”
Mollities is the verb used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 which deals with the sexual sin of sodomy. It involves being inordinately passive or receptive. St Thomas in the Summa writes of perseverance and effeminacy as follows:
"Perseverance is deserving of praise because thereby a man does not forsake a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils: and it is directly opposed to this, seemingly, for a man to be ready to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure. This is what we understand by effeminacy, because a thing is said to be "soft" if it readily yields to the touch"
Now it is evident that fear of danger is more impelling than the desire of pleasure: wherefore Tully says under the heading "True magnanimity consists of two things: It is inconsistent for one who is not cast down by fear, to be defeated by lust, or who has proved himself unbeaten by toil, to yield to pleasure." Moreover, pleasure itself is a stronger motive of attraction than sorrow, for the lack of pleasure is a motive of withdrawal, since lack of pleasure is a pure privation. Wherefore, according to the Philosopher, properly speaking an effeminate man is one who withdraws from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion" (STh, II-II, Q. 138, Art. 1).
When we are led by the passions like a dumb ox--whether it be the attraction to fine food and drink, inordinate lust and sexual proclivities, or some habit that rules us--we make ourselves effeminate men. I didn't quit smoking because it was bad for my health or because it was expensive or made my breath smell. Those were all ancillary reasons, but the main thrust was because being led by something, sneaking around, being idolatrous and willing to sacrifice for something not worth sacrificing for, and having my will compromised introduced a kind of effeminacy into my life that disgusted me. If I didn't have my nicotine I was like a baby without his bottle. You can substitute whatever addiction you like. Maybe it's your cell phone, or your morning coffee, that you might be moved to tears were it to break or not be available. Chances or this is an inordinate attachment, and for men at least, bringing such passions and desires in line is an exercising in building up virtue as part of one's character.
See in Scripture what is written about the young man, who is led by the honey traps set out by the adulterous woman. It is a more or less straight path to Hell by way of the bedroom and promised pleasure, a pleasure that seems irresistible to the youth with no sense.
"For at the window of my house,
through my lattice I looked out
And I saw among the naive,
I observed among the young men,
a youth with no sense,
Crossing the street near the corner,
then walking toward her house,
In the twilight, at dusk of day,
in the very dark of night.
Then the woman comes to meet him,
dressed like a harlot, with secret designs.
She is raucous and unruly, her feet cannot stay at home;
Now she is in the streets, now in the open squares,
lurking in ambush at every corner.
Then she grabs him, kisses him,
and with an impudent look says to him:
“I owed peace offerings, and today I have fulfilled my vows;
So I came out to meet you,
to look for you, and I have found you!
With coverlets I have spread my couch,
with brocaded cloths of Egyptian linen;
I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh,
with aloes, and with cinnamon.
Come, let us drink our fill of love,
until morning, let us feast on love!
For my husband is not at home,
he has gone on a long journey;
A bag of money he took with him,
he will not return home till the full moon.”
She wins him over by repeated urging,
with her smooth lips she leads him astray.
He follows her impulsively, like an ox that goes to slaughter;
Like a stag that bounds toward the net,
till an arrow pierces its liver;
Like a bird that rushes into a snare,
unaware that his life is at stake.
So now, children, listen to me,
be attentive to the words of my mouth!
Do not let your heart turn to her ways,
do not go astray in her paths;
For many are those she has struck down dead,
numerous, those she has slain.
Her house is a highway to Sheol,
leading down into the chambers of death."
(Prov 7:6-27)
I was that young man. I was the fornicator, the masturbator, the viewer of pornography. I know what it's like to be a slave to pleasure and sinful passion, and I am not unique. There is no peace in this prison. But in Christ there is freedom from such slavery--he comes to ransom men by his blood, to unlock the door, but we have to take the steps to follow him out. He takes us by the hand and gives us the grace to resist this sexual and moral effeminacy if we will it.
St. Jacinta of Fatima was shown a vision of Hell by Our Lady and said that “the sins which cause most souls to go to hell are the sins of the flesh.” How many men have been brought down and led to their spiritual deaths by an effeminate pursuit of sexual pleasure--married men falling for the adulterous woman, single men fornicating and masturbating themselves to perdition, those attracted to women and those attracted to men, men in power and men without power, rich men and poor men, men from good families and men who were abused, young men and old men alike.
It is pervasive and pernicious, this vice of effeminacy that keeps men like dumb oxes being led to their graves. But the Lord gives us the grace to live the virtues counter to this softness of will and spirit, but we need to pray for this ultimate grace of final perseverance and the immediate grace to not yield to temptation and embrace the suffering that comes from resisting the devil. We also need to practice mortification by way of prayer and fasting as regular habit to counteract these soft tendencies in ourselves.
It's a funny thing though--the more you subject your body and train your will to bring it into alignment with virtue and right reason, trusting in the Lord to give you what you need for the fight, the more natural it becomes. Virtue is as much a habit as vice. Sin and the habit of sin darkens the intellect so we in fact do become like slaves and dumb oxes being led, and it becomes more comfortable to just stay in that prison of habit. It's easier to pluck out a weed when it first comes up then to try to uproot it when it is fully trenched in to the soil. Chastity of mind and heart precludes even thoughts and fantasies and situations of occasions of sin, so that it is not by sheer grit and self-determination that we keep sin from making a home in us, but by the grace of God to exercise the will even when it hurts and we suffer for it to keep it from making a home in us in the first place.
