Between Here And There

 

A few years ago I wrote a piece for One Peter Five titled, "Halfway Through The Tunnel: Catholic Manhood In Middle Age" when I was struggling in that tough "middle-spot" approaching my mid-forties: short on time, heavy on responsibilities, and feeling like an island among men. While the piece was focused more on the worldly particulars of this state in life as married men and fathers, it left out some of the spiritual elements and struggles men my age may experience as they try to grow in virtue and live authentic Catholic lives, which is what I'd like to touch on in this post.

My wife and I were talking on the couch late last night after I had arrived home from attending a lecture on the philosophy of end-of-life at a local institute of Catholic culture. As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife is my best friend, and I feel blessed to have a loving family replete with kids and a supportive spouse to raise them with. My faith in the Lord is also steady, and He is always there for me. My work is going fine, and I have been with my employer a decade now. All the boxes are checked, and this should be all I need in my life to be fulfilled.

But my wife knows me and my particulars, and she knows I struggle with little pockets of void in which there feels like there is something missing. We started talking about the plight of men, how many like myself feel they don't have that deep abiding friendship with another man--we are like islands, our orbits revolving around "things" and activities in which we interact but in which there is a reticence to be vulnerable and reach out when they are struggling. 

As I relayed in a response to Dr. Peter Kwasniewski during one of our correspondences, the program-based men's groups and conferences have a place in the Church, but do not address this issue of this kind of elusive deep friendship and accountability I seek in another man akin to Augustine having his friend Alypius sitting with him in the garden on the precipice of his conversion during his hour of need. Or the way Christ sought his friends Peter, James and John to "stay awake with him" in the garden of his passion. These conferences are wide and shallow, as opposed to narrow and deep.  

When my wife and I were talking, though, it occurred to me that this goes beyond friendship, but to the heart of the stage I find myself in in my spiritual life. For I have tasted the sweetness of the Lord (Ps 33:9), and so the things of the world--career, notoriety, money, activities--hold no lasting appeal for me. In spiritual ignorance, men in the world can delight in and aspire to these things, even though they bring no lasting peace or joy. Because they know no alternative. The poem "Virtue" by George Herbert encapsulates this for me,

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky;

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,

For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie;

My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber, never gives;

But though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

The sweetness of virtue comes by way of acquired taste; the more virtuous we become, the more we love virtue for God's sake. The problem is, though I have acquired some virtue and some crumbs of wisdom, my lower faculties and appetites are mingled like gall with them. Augustine describes this torturous middle so accurately in Book VIII of Confessions,

"For the Church I saw to be full, and one went this way, and another that. But it was displeasing to me that I led a secular life; yea, now that my passions had ceased to excite me as of old with hopes of honour and wealth, a very grievous burden it was to undergo so great a servitude. For, compared with Your sweetness, and the beauty of Your house, which I loved, those things delighted me no longer. But still very tenaciously was I held by the love of women; nor did the apostle forbid me to marry, although he exhorted me to something better, especially wishing that all men were as he himself was. 1 Corinthians 7:7 But I, being weak, made choice of the more agreeable place, and because of this alone was tossed up and down in all beside, faint and languishing with withering cares, because in other matters I was compelled, though unwilling, to agree to a married life, to which I was given up and enthralled. I had heard from the mouth of truth that there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake; but, says He, he that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Matthew 19:12 Vain, assuredly, are all men in whom the knowledge of God is not, and who could not, out of the good things which are seen, find out Him who is good. Wisdom 13:1 But I was no longer in that vanity; I had surmounted it, and by the united testimony of Your whole creation had found You, our Creator, and Your Word, God with You, and together with You and the Holy Ghost one God, by whom You created all things. There is yet another kind of impious men, who when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful. Romans 1:21 Into this also had I fallen; but Your right hand held me up, and bore me away, and You placed me where I might recover. For You have said to man, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; Job 28:28 and desire not to seem wise, Proverbs 3:7 because, Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. Romans 1:22 But I had now found the goodly pearl, which, selling all that I had, Matthew 13:46 I ought to have bought; and I hesitated."

In the talk I attended last night, the lecturer mentioned that God created us to need one another; He could have made us self-sufficient, or only dependent on Him, but the Body of Christ--the Church and our fellow man--factors in somehow in a mysterious way, the way St. Paul writes, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Col 1:24). At no point is that yearning, that need so acute as at the hour of death; for it is there that there is no time for platitudes or shallow salutations. It is a sacred space, but also an uncomfortable one. Because the reality of death strips away the husk and chaff of superficiality, and much like at the foot of the Cross, there are few standing there in one's hour of need. If you are standing there, remember that it is a great privilege.

Maybe this is why I think about my death a lot in the spirit of memento mori--it's the ultimate unavoidable reality, the ultimate truth, the ultimate proving ground for what matters, what endures. We can long for death because of what lies on the other side, and when we are in this proverbial "limbo" between two worlds, it can be excruciating.

What I landed on was something I wrote in "If You Want To Get, You Have To Give." When God affords us wealth, time, talent or virtue, it languishes and rots when we seek to keep it to ourselves much like the manna in the wilderness. And so I have a little virtue, a little wisdom, some time and talent and I'm finding that I'm in a place where I have more to give rather than just an insatiable appetite to receive. I've been trying to seek out and pour into guys younger than myself, guys in their mid-twenties. I'm speaking at a retreat next week for young college-aged men, and have been spending time with more guys younger than myself; part of it is motivated by that void I find in my own life, "who fills my cup?" because rather than sit and lament it, I can work with what I have to give back what little I have to guys who may be just as hungry and in need as I was twenty years ago. 

And there is joy and satisfaction in that giving, because as scripture says it is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). It tempers the loneliness not as a panacea or the way two aspirin would mask a headache, but makes use of that loneliness and dull ache of a missing element in a constructive way and exacts the change you wish to see. That's why the best remedy by clinicians for depression is to get out of yourself and do something, anything: force yourself to take a shower, go for a run, call a friend. It's akin to jump starting a dead battery in a car; you don't throw away the battery, but ask someone to give you a jump.

As I heard in a homily once, "no one is a saint in this life," for even the would-be saints struggle through this chasm of tension between living in the world and longing for eternity. The fruit of sanctity is charity, and a mark of a true man of virtue is that he pours himself out for others even sometimes at his own expense. That is why prayer is indispensable to become a saint, because it is in prayer that our cups are filled. Prayer is a mini-death: it erodes our ego, exposes the vanity of created things that rust and moth-eaten; places us at the foot of the cross and in the garden with few companions so we are alone with Christ. It makes us realize our neediness and weakness, and strips us of the superfluous. It makes us grow to know and embrace the dark, and seek out the flicker of the candlelight of hope.

And so, I think the loneliness I feel and struggle with is not a problem to be solved, but a state to sit in. We lose the grace when we seek to resolve the tension we feel in our souls as if it were an engineering defect, and our virtue rots on the vine when we try to horde it as a pet-project of mortification. God has made us for Himself, and as Augustine famously wrote, "our hearts are restless until they rest in Him."