A Merciful Tutelage

A movie I can't recommend (please promise me you won't watch it), but which made a big impression on me in my twenties, was Kill Bill. A Quentin Tarantino film, it is an artsy and violent wild west-kung fu fusion in which Uma Thurman as "The Bride" plays the most deadly assassin in the world who is out for revenge against her enemies and those who betrayed her. I could do without a lot of the violence, but for me the most memorable 10 minutes of the film was when The Bride receives her training under the cruel tutelage of the Master Pai Mei. She ascends the steep stone steps to the monastery  looking like a college freshman moving into the dorms, pig tails and all. She is already semi-proficient in the sword and martial arts, but you do not become the most deadly assassin in the world without teaching and severe training.

First she has to prove that she is in fact worthy of such teaching. The master berates her for her lousy Mandarin, befuddles her with riddles, and threatens to break her arm when she missteps in hand to hand combat, just to teach her her ultimate helplessness. When she proves her muster, he drops her to the ground, stating that "your training begins tomorrow." It is rigorous. Day and night she learns mental fortitude and physical endurance. Pai Mei hits her with a stick early on, but soon respects her tenacity. One evening, Master and disciple are eating. Because her hand is all but broken from training, she has trouble with the chopsticks and succumbs to a moment of weakness eating the rice with her fingers. Pai Mei throws her bowl to the ground and gives her his own, refusing to accept her weakness as indicative of what she is capable of. He pushes her because he desires to see her succeed her, as any good master would, and he refuses to let her fail. 

This scene made a big impression on me. I was looking to be trained in the art of spiritual combat, but had no teacher. The East seemed to hold the key to such training, so I bought a plane ticket and made the journey to a remote jungle monastery in Thailand to be under tutelage. 11 days of silence, limited diet, 6 hours a day of meditation, sleeping on a concrete slab with a wooden block for a pillow. The fact that it was Theravada Buddhist rather than Christian seemed a minor point then, though as I wrote here, while it provided me training in discipline and custody of the mind, it did not bring me closer to Christ--which should be the ultimate goal of the Christian disciple. If what you're doing doesn't have that as it's end, you might want to rethink your strategy. Thankfully the Lord straightened out my crooked path in search of ascetic discipline.

Of course I read the Desert Fathers too. Young men in the first centuries A.D. seeking wisdom would make their way to the desert to seek an elder to "give them a word." Books like the Philokalia and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers are full of wise sayings, but without a teacher the spirituality can be dangerous for the scrupulous, those given to extremes, and those not grounded in a degree of pragmatism. It can also lend itself to an eclectic "make your own spirituality," making one into the most detestable of quasi-monastics. From the first chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict:

"Third, there are the sarabaites, the most detestable kind of monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as gold is tried in a furnace (Prov 27:21), have a character as soft as lead.  Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their tonsure.  Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not the Lord’s. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy.  Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden."

And yet, this was where I found myself ten years ago, and, to a degree, still find myself today--a student without a teacher. Thankfully, I do have a wise spiritual director who helps guide me. Books such as The Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli are a good "Art of War" manual for the disciple (I read the commentary on Scupoli's work, Spiritual Combat Revisited by Jonathan Robinson years ago). As Christians, the fight is primarily not among one another or against flesh and blood, "but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph 6:12). It also starts with the fight among our own flesh, to subdue it in subordination to Christ and to the spirit. While we may not have a teacher under whose tutelege we may serve (since Christ is our ultimate master, and many of us as lay people in the world are not under vows), there are things we can do to train, like Paul says, "I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified" (1 Cor 9:27).

The first is simply the struggle against sin and ordinary temptation. When I am tempted, my first line of defense is the recitation of a psalm. The way I imagine it is I have a few by heart that I keep in a quiver close at hand. When the Devil rears his head, I draw an arrow and notch my bow, let it fly, and run, then drop to my knees. It is good to have have one on hand so there is no hesitation, no time to consider the temptation. My go to is Psalm 69:2:

"O God, come to my assistance; O Lord make haste to help me."

The second thing is prayer and the reading of scripture. Whether ejaculatory prayer, silent prayer, meditative prayer, mental prayer, or prayer of adoration and thanksgiving, prayer is indispensable since, as St. Alphonsus says, "If you pray, you will be certainly saved; if you do not pray, you will be certainly damned." You cannot have any kind of spiritual or ascetical life as a Christian if you do not pray. So pray, and read the Word of God.

The third thing is fasting. I am at the tail end of the first day of a three day water fast in reparation, and I tell you it is not easy. If it were easy, well, I don't know, I guess maybe you're doing it better than I am. Humility should be the horse that guides such a cart, though, and it needs to be pursued for the right reasons (in charity, reparation, penance). Sometimes Catholics are accused of trying to "earn" their way to heaven by works, and sometimes fasting can get lumped into this. But we know that in spiritual warfare fasting is an indispensable tool that, when accompanied by prayer, is often necessitated to drive out demons which otherwise would not be able to be driven out by prayer alone (Mk 9:29).

The fourth thing is charity. Even St. Simeon Stylites, who lived atop a fifty foot pillar to get some peace and quiet away from the crowds and cultivate silence, had a ladder for guests who wished to visit the hermit. We should not be so closed off in asceticism that we are not charitable to our neighbor, in good cheer, and willing to offer our own bed to him while we take our place on the floor. 

Fifth, when be wary of someone who preaches asceticism but does not live it out himself, for "none shall be crowned who has not fought well” (2 Timothy 2:5). And as John Henry Newman said “The very notion of being religious implies self-denial, because by nature we do not love religion.” So you'll know a tree by its fruits, and the one who does not fertilize will not have any to show (Lk 13:8).

Lest we think ourselves incapable of such penances and mortifications, we would do good to remember not to trust in our own strength or merit, to adopt the posture of the publican rather than the Pharisee who wished to justify himself (Lk 18:13). St. Therese the Little Flower is our model here, as she says when it comes to combat:

"On each fresh occasion of combat, when the enemy desires to challenge me, I conduct myself valiantly: knowing that to fight a duel is an unworthy act, I turn my back upon the adversary without ever looking him in the face; then I run to my Jesus and tell Him I am ready to shed every drop of blood in testimony of my belief that there is a Heaven, I tell Him I am glad to be unable to contemplate, while on earth, with the eyes of the soul, the beautiful Heaven that awaits me so He will deign to open it for eternity to poor unbelievers."

I am getting ready to turn into my "cell" for the night--the side room where our family chapel is, with a futon mattress, a chair, and a bathroom. Since I couldn't go to a retreat due to obligations, I decided to bring the retreat home and carve it out as best as I could. We all have to live according to our state in life, and live it the best we can, whether we have a bonafide teacher or not. When we don't, stick to the basics--prayer, fasting, examination of conscience, charity, love of neighbor, almsgiving. It doesn't have to be complicated. The Lord sees and honors even the smallest act of sacrifice for love of Him. Without love, all our efforts mean nothing. But since love and suffering go hand in hand, not being able to have one without the other, learn to suffer well for the Name by way of mortification--training, preparing, fighting, falling, and rising--because by it you may learn to love well.

A love that is scarred.