"Take Heed, Lest You Fall": A Response To Boniface

 

Re: How's Lent?

Hey bud, how's your Lent going?

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Hey man,

Thanks for reaching out, always good to hear from you, and I pray you are well. I'm sorry the timing isn't going to work out to get together this summer on my way out to Ohio for that 5-day silent retreat; bummed about that, but I'm sure if the Spirit is willing we will cross pass in the future. Your site continues to bear good fruit, as I can see.

I hope you don't mind me double dipping here and using your check-in as an opportunity to reflect on the question of how my Lent is going in the form of a blog post. It's something we should all do during this season to take a spiritual inventory. 

However, I'll say from the outset that Lent has always been for me both a synthesis of a pragmatic opportunity for growth on the outside with a dense custard of mysterious grace inside--a kind of spiritual fasnacht of the Boston creme variety. This year is no exception.

Septuagesima was a good break-in period to prepare, along with the corporal ekklesia, my mind, body and spirit. I was feeling good and ready...confident, almost. I set out with a modest but regimented 6 day a week fasting plan, readied our checkbook, and added some extra time to tack on to my twenty minutes of mental prayer a day, along with my adopted penance of a modified digital eschewing.

But the Devil, the master strategist, sits crouching in the bush with the trip line, waiting for the moment when we momentarily take our eyes off Christ. He knows our weaknesses even better than we do. He knows us very well indeed.

As I had alluded to in previous posts and as I had shared with you previously, I had finally gotten out from under my addiction to nicotine this summer. I had eight months of complete sobriety (feels weird to use that word in this context, but it still stands as it relates to the behavior of addiction). It was rough going at first (cold turkey), but eventually good habits of abstinence began to replace daily use and outpace the latter. I was taking cold showers every morning, which gave me a healthy zap of norepinephrine and bite each morning. I was exercising, fasting, devoted to prayer and the sacraments, etc. After eight months, I felt I was on pretty firm footing. 

Biking to Adoration last week, I saw a vape pen lying on the side of the road. A strong man would ride right by...but I am not a strong man. Something in that moment led me to stop, pocket it, and take it home to recharge it. As St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, "I do not understand what I do, but I do that which I hate" (Rom 7:15). A reader once shared with me that it takes a week or so for the nicotine receptors inthe brain to dry out, but only a few puffs of a cigarette or something similar to re-activate them. Sobering (no pun intended).

And so just like that, before I knew what happened, eight months of sobriety was erased in an instant. 

I was filled with shame and bewilderment, but trying hard to give myself grace. I resolved to go to Confession to seek the aid of grace--I know there are worse things in the life of faith, worse offenses, but to me I knew this was my chain, and one I had unwittingly walked right back into like an vole, a dog returning to its vomit. Whether or not this was a trap laid out for me in the desert by Old Scratch, I don't know, and it is besides the point. I had made my bed, and now I had to lie in it. But I resolved to get up, which I had always told other guys, is the true mark of a man.

In trying to reason back to where my chink-in-the-armor lay, I realized I had slowly been neglecting to pray my daily rosary without even realizing it. I hit most days, but a least a few days a week I just got wrapped up in life and didn't set time aside for it outside of my half hour of mental prayer. Even that was being neglected here and there. We had a friend over for dinner in the middle of the week, and I gave him a Miraculous Medal but because he didn't have a chain, I took mine off and gave it to him to wear. As we speak, both my MM and St. Benedict medal, worn away almost after years of rubbing against my body, sit by my bedside until a new chain that I ordered comes in the mail. 

The Devil will waste no opportunity to exploit these chinks and holes, and because he is so unoriginal, he did just that which he always does--swooped in and started sowing tares. Though I was hiding it from my wife at first, I did confess to her, and then in the Sacrament of Penance the next day, resolved to put it down as a temporary fall that was behind me. But then coming back home from Mass to pick up a pizza for the kids, I stopped in at a Wawa and bought a tin of dip and popped a pouch in my lower lip. Just like that. I swear as I was at a red light a few miles from home, I heard a cock crow.

The reason this addiction is so pernicious and--if it's not the wrong language to us--close to my heart, is because it operates like a proto-sin: we minimize it. We treat it not like the idol it has the potential to become, but as an imperfection or an excusable indulgence. That other people are way worse.

And the reason why I have always held such an affinity to St. Peter, is because I know personally his zeal, his love...and his shame. One moment I am vowing in sincere bravado to be made a martyr, and the next moment I am disavowing the One who drew me up from the pit because I have found new company. I know his shame, because it is my own. For I am a worm, and no man. (Ps 22:6)

If Lent were a movie directed by me, it would hit the box office under the title, "Chronicles of Weakness." I do not understand what I do. I do what I hate. 

But why now? Why during Lent, when I had been so fortified and stable until now? Well, maybe it is just that. Am I greater, stronger, more resolute than Cephas (the Rock) himself? Why did the Lord sear his heart with his denial not once, not twice, but three times? It is a great mystery for me. 

But nothing is wasted in the Gospel accounts, nothing is there if it is not for our edification as disciples. That passage is recounted not to reflect Peter's shame, but his humbling redemption, for we know from scripture he would truly be redeemed before he drew his last breath. Just as the Devil thought he had nailed down the victory on Good Friday, only to be upended on Easter Sunday--three days later. 

I know this is not where I want to stay, and I do intend to wipe away these tears of shame and get back on the horse without delay. But I imagine I am not alone in finding myself asking, "How could I have fallen after so much time on solid ground? How could I have stooped so low?" When in fact it is not that we should be surprised that we fall, but that we have spent any amount of time as good men given the strength of the riptide of concupiscence. 

I know that all things work for the good for those who love the Lord (Rom 8:28). And I love the Lord. My sin, failings, and imperfections do not negate that, though the Devil will double down with his boot on the neck to convince us otherwise: Look at you. You do not love God. You are weak. If we listen, if we do not plug our ears, we will fulfill the Devil's destiny for us.

I am rent in two, but I continue to struggle for it is in the struggle that we are refined. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me (2 Cor 12). Wretched man that I am! For who will save me from this body of death? It is Christ my Lord (Rom 7:24).

So, to answer your question in a less circumspect manner, my Lent is going okay. Just a few bumps in the road so far, as is to be expected. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities (Ephesians 6:12). The worst we can do is underestimate the Father of Lies, who never stops prowling around seeking to devour us. He may be wily, but he is, at least, completely unoriginal.

I hope your Lent is producing spiritual buds on the tree as well as we struggle together to be the men God made us to be, not the counterfeits that Satan conscripts us to. 

Pray for me, and I for you. 

Yours in Christ,

Paul