A Tale Of Two Retreats

 

I'm getting ready to go on a five day silent Ignatian retreat in a couple weeks. Some traditional Benedictine monks are flying to Ohio from Tasmania (Australia) to offer it; in addition to daily Latin Mass, there is guided spiritual direction and Confession, as well as meditations on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Because it can be hard to find a solid retreat, I have to travel a bit for this one (20 hours total of driving). I feel fortunate I am able to attend, and I'd solicit your prayers for a fruitful experience.

Part of my desire to go on periodic retreats is to receive training, be pushed by those more advanced in the interior life, experience silence apart from my every day life, and grow closer to Christ in my spiritual practice. 

There was a time, years ago, when I was willing to travel anywhere in order to sit at the feet of a teacher under tutelage. At that time, my mind was my enemy--a rabid raccoon I couldn't trust. Who can teach me to train it? I wasn't plugged in to any kind of orthodox Catholicism at the time, and so I went East. In scripture, the Lord God says "As far as the East is from the West..." (Ps 103:12). Eastern thought is not that of the West, and religious syncretism is something I discovered later is not a boon, but a liability in the spiritual life of a Catholic (which I wrote about here). I don't recommend this for any sincere, practicing Catholic, but it was part of my journey at the time, and led me to reflect on it this morning.

In 2007 I traveled to Southern Thailand to make an eleven day vipassana ("to see things as they are") retreat at a monastery founded by the late Nguam Panitch (b 1906, d 1993). In 1926, Panitch left the wats (temples) of Bangkok and founded Suan Mokkhabalarama in the forest to practice what he believed to be a purer and less encumbered form of Buddhism. He adopted the name Buddhadassa Bhikkhu, which translates 'Slave of the Buddha' and lived out his life as a monk seeking liberation, and teaching others who sought the same.

There was no "signing up" or registering for this retreat; I just had to show up at the monastery gates and hope the monks let you in. It was over 700km from Bangkok to the province of Surat Thani in the far southern part of the country, where the monastery was located in the jungle. 

By combination of bus and tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled auto rickshaw) over the course of a day, I eventually arrived. The monks let me in.

The days began at 4am with meditation. We ate simple vegetarian meals, washed our clothes in a cistern and used a lantern to illuminate the path through the forest for talks. We did about six hours of meditation a day. I had a small cell with a concrete bed and bamboo mat, and a wooden block for a pillow. 

Two monks game the talks on the dharma each day, Tan Dhammaviddu and Tan Medhi. Tan Dhammaviddu was an English monk who had lived in a cave until recently; he was pale and never smiled, but was frank and serious and strived after enlightenment "the way a drowning man seeks air," as Bhuddhadassa Bhikku used to say; Tan Medhi was a pleasant native Thai monk who would smile and laugh. Sometimes the monks would go into the jungle to meditate for days where they knew the lions and other wild animals were present; being so close to potential death-by-mauling heightened their awareness, I was told. 

I didn't talk for eleven days, nor did any of the other participants, and I couldn't write. We were also forbidden to kill, as a precept, which meant enduring the mosquitos which in a state of meditation you would feel land on your skin and insert their stinger, drawing your blood.

About fifty men and fifty women from all over the world started the retreat, and a good number could not stand the intensity and left. One night I heard crying in the cell next to mine; it was a pimply kid from England who I imagined was homesick. We each had our own assigned meditation cushion; one morning the young man from Ireland who usually sat next to me didn't show up. I learned later, after the retreat, that he ran away in the middle of the night, climbing over the monastery gates, never to be heard of again. 

Thai Buddhism is largely based in the Theravada ("School of the Elders") tradition, which is old-school, strict Buddhism. In the Christian tradition, it would be akin to the "traditionalist" camps. There are different schools of Buddhism: Mayahana is a kind of reform school which places the enlightenment of all sentient beings as their primary end. Mayahana Buddhists refer to the Theravada school pejoratively as the "lesser vehicle," since Theravada Buddhists focus on liberation of the self. There is also Tibetan Buddhism, and Zen (Rinzai and Soto) Buddhism. The goal in Buddhism is to realize the non-duality of all things: there is no self, which is only a construct. Suffering arises from attachment to desire, which the Buddhist seeks to annihilate. Most Buddhists believe in karma and reincarnation--subsequent lives in which one continues to try to escape from the cycle of rebirth if you don't achieve it in your lifetime.

When I flew back to America, I did not come home enlightened, but I did undergo some serious discipline during that week and a half. Again, this is not something I would recommend to any Christian seeking Christ, as it is not necessary or good practice. I only share it because in my journey, God wrote with crooked lines. 

If you desire God, seek Christ and learn from a teacher in the school of charity. Pray to the God who loves you, don't meditate and seek answers from the Void. Rather than seek the annihilation of the self, subjugate it in order to become a slave of Christ, as the Apostle and all the disciples did.  The Gospel and the Dharma are not one and the same. Be willing to sell all you have for the Pearl of Great Price. Seek out discipline in the school of Tradition and orthodoxy, and learn from the Saints who have gone before you. Otherwise you will have a lot of 'un-learning' to do. If you are tempted towards religious syncretism, I would like to spare you from all that. 

Persisting Contra To God's Will

 I remember very distinctly when my idealized vision of my life in my twenties came in curt confrontation with the reality of my situation. Whereas most people during this time are getting started in their careers post-college and working their way up the ladder, meeting people to match up for a future together, and buying their first house, I was going in the opposite direction--quitting my job, giving away everything I owned, and buying not a house but a school bus to live in. 

For ten years--from the age of 19 to 29--I wanted more than anything to be a monk. Not just wanted to be a monk, but wanted to be called to be a monk. The pursuit of what I thought was a calling seemed like a noble one--not from a worldly perspective of course, but from a spiritual investment standpoint. Objectively, I had "chosen the better part." And so surely it must be God's will because it was what I wanted, what I thought I wanted. 

When I actually did apply to be a postulate at a contemplative Benedictine community after my observership was completed, and was turned down, I was crestfallen. As an alternative, I decided to go the "DIY monastic" route and bought a school bus to convert to an urban hermitage where I would eat, sleep, read, and pray in monastic fashion. I worked for weeks outside of my apartment as my lease expiration loomed. I removed the seats, built cabinets, bed, and desk, laid flooring, and had everything set (except a place to park it). When I actually got down to the quasi-monastic life, though, I realized something--I was not happy.

The analogy I have always used to describe this experience that seemed to describe it best was akin to finding the shirt you always wanted at the local thrift store, trying it on, and finding that it's one size smaller that what you typically wear. You can make it work if you walk out of the store with it. But then you begin to notice it chaffs under the arms, rides up an inch too much at the waist, and is just snug enough to be uncomfortable. It looks great--it just doesn't fit. Because it wasn't made for you. 

You could use the 'trying to fit a square peg in a round hole' analogy, but it doesn't quite work because no matter what you do in that situation, you can't ram it through. It would be almost easier if it was like this, because the fact that you have the wrong piece would be apparent from the start. You wouldn't spend ten years trying to make it so (that would almost be an apt description of a kind of insanity). 

You could use the 'puzzle piece' analogy, which is closer to the mark, but that isn't quite it either. You know, when you find a 'close but not cigar' piece in a puzzle, and it's almost the one you are looking for, but you'd have to slam your fist down on the table to force it, which would distort the edges and present an inaccurate picture. 

No, I think the shirt analogy works best in this circumstance. You want to look good. You found a good deal on a great brand. Surely, it should fit, despite the label saying 'S' rather than 'M.' The stitches aren't breaking, the buttons aren't popping off. You can tolerate the discomfort to an extent, but it's far from fitting like a glove. You always kind of feel it, even if you convince yourself otherwise. 

When we don't pay attention to these things, these little chaffings, we can sometimes miss the ways in which God is telling us "this isn't for you. I have something set aside for you. But you have to trust me." Because God rarely speaks to us audibly, we have to rely on these signs and signals to discern whether we are trying to conform our will to God's, or God's will to our life. 

St. Alphonsus speaks of this when he writes of the difference between conformity and uniformity with God's will.

"Conformity signifies that we join our wills to the will of God. Uniformity means more--it means that we make one will of God's will and ours, so that we will only what God wills; that God's will alone, is our will. This is the summit of perfection and to it we should always aspire; this should be the goal of all our works, desires, meditations and prayers."

Uniformity is the "more perfect way," the better part (between good and better) that our Lord relates to Martha and Mary. It is beholden to the attainment by saints and mystics, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be our aspiration as well. 

Here in the world, in the day to day, our seemingly noble and holy actions of attempted abandonment can sometimes be held up so that we present them to the Lord expecting Him to bless them, when in fact, He wants something else of us entirely. Like saying, "I will prepare the altar for you Lord," when He really needs the monastery toilets scrubbed. Or whatever. 

Think of the testing of Abraham. The Lord tests his faith by demanding his most precious property--his son Isaac. At the moment of sacrifice, when there was no doubt Abraham had the butt of the knife ready to bury within the flesh of his son, an angel comes to tell him to back it off. Would Abraham had responded, "no, begone demon who appears as an angel of light! For it is God's will that I slaughter, though I do not understand it, and I will do God's will as He has asked." 

But that's not what happens. Abraham pivots, and is awash in relief. Not only that, He has pleased the Lord by His obedience and abandonment to the Divine will as it was given to him. If the news media were there to throw shade, they may take a snapshot out of context and print, "God told you to sacrifice your son Issac with the knife, and that didn't happen, so obviously you did not follow through and accomplish His holy will." 

Did God's will change? Well, yes and no. God was seeking faith and obedience, and that Abraham supplied in full measure. And yet the action to accomplish and live out that faith and obedience did change. Were Abraham to plow through with what he thought to be God's will after the angel holds back his arm by decree, he would have lost the blessing of such obedience, and the subsequent inheritance for generations to come. 

This is what can be so deceptively difficult in following God's will, compounded in proportion to the extent that we are not praying and paying attention. We may charge ahead with our ideas--"I will become a monk and be holy!" "I will marry John because he is such a good Catholic man!" "I will become a missionary in Africa and save God's orphans!" But maybe God wants you to be a father; maybe he wants you to marry Maurice, the air conditioner repairman; maybe he wants you to get your rear end back to work at your computer programming job. Who knows. But you get the idea. 

"The shirt that never was" can be a painful experience, because it scrambles our holy expectations of our life the way we envision it. When we think we are doing God's will, and God says, "no, not this way," we can feel the pain of the virtuous plate of doing God's will being pulled off the table. And so what are we left with? Often something unexpected, or more waiting (which causes suffering), or something not in accordance with our own will. When we pray for x and get y instead, it can be hard to reconcile. This is why it takes an attuning of the heart to be assured that doing something contra to God's will, even something holy and virtuous, will not ultimately give us the peace we seek, but will chaff ever so slightly. 

Remember, Abraham pivoted in faith. He was not "rigid" (again with the rigid!) so as to keep God's command in this instance immovable and sealed in amber. Amber-ensconced artifacts belong in museums. God's Word and command is not a dead historic letter, but a living, speaking language that is alive and speaks to us differently in different circumstances of our life. God's will for you yesterday may not always be His will for you tomorrow. If we persist in our will contra to God's, we will not have the peace we seek, we will only have a pious veneer. But if we conform and unite our will with God's, and are willing to pivot and carry it out even when it bear no resemblance to what we think it was supposed to look like, we may in time know the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding. 

The Underrated Virtue of Moderation

 A priest I went to college with was on Pints With Aquinas recently. He became a Benedictine after college, and I knew him to be a truly humble, holy, and sensible guy. He spoke of the history of Benedictine monasticism and how St. Benedict had "an appreciation of the limits of our humanity."

Before I converted to Catholicism, the "Middle Way" of applied philosophical Buddhism held an attraction. Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) had experienced both worldly excess as a prince and rigorous spiritualism as an ascetic, and found that neither of these two extremes brought him the peace he sought. Ultimately, the vehicle of salvation ("enlightenment") rests with the individual through their own effort, which I realized was incompatible with our true need for a savior to save us from what we could not save ourselves from--sin, death, and concupiscence. Christ was the answer and the Way--though in all things, Christ was also a kind of "middle way" between the legalism of the Pharisees and the rigor-ism of the Essenes. He fasted and ate. He drank, but never to excess. In all things, his consciousness was perfected because his focus was always to do the will of the Father, and so it was always and everywhere aligned with the Source of everything.

Although I explored various religious orders in my twenties (the CFRs, the Trappists, even the Carthusians), it was the balance and rhythm of the Benedictine Ora et Labora spirituality that kept bringing me back to them. I read the Rule of St. Benedict a few times over the years, and found it to be a good guide even for lay people of "how to live" and incorporate this under rated virtue of Moderation into their spiritual lives.

Now granted, there are some wonky modernist Benedictine sisters and monks out there. But I think the essence of St. Benedict's Rule is to carve this "middle way" between hardcore Jansenism and "detestable" laxity in religious observance. 

One interesting thing about the Benedictines is they take a vow of stability (in addition to vows of fidelity to the monastic way of life, and obedience). Stability, like moderation, is an un-sexy and under rated thing to aspire to. It means staying put, and honoring one's commitment to one's monastic community for life. Though lay people do not take vows, obviously, there may be something to this. St. Benedict makes it clear from the first chapter of the Rule that "the most detestable kinds of monks" are those who stand opposed to such obedience and stability--sarabites (a kind of roque, untethered monk who lives by his own 'rule') and gyrovagues (monks who wander from monastery to monastery, never settling down). 

What does that mean for a lay person? We can get into this post-modern mindset sometimes of doing everything possible to suit our tastes and preferences. If a priest at a particular parish isn't traditional enough or one doesn't like the homilies--well, go somewhere else. We have been faced with this temptation at times at our current parish, but I keep coming back to this idea of stability as a way for us to (not to be kitschy) "bloom where we are planted" and cultivate community that can often take years. It's harder to achieve this when you're jumping ship at the first encounter of something that doesn't suit you.

Though St. Benedict was an exacting master of himself and rigorous in his observance, he has a sensible realization and accommodation for human weakness in things that are not sin--moderate drinking, the allowance for rest and leisure, etc. Moderation has a seasoned way of wisely tempering zeal, and obedience a way of stretching us to do the things of God which go counter to the way we might decide to do things by way of our own preferences.

I recall an encounter St. Alyosius had with his spiritual director. When he entered the Jesuits at the age of 17, Alyosius was appointed a spiritual director, St. Robert Bellarmine. Level headed and patient, Bellarmine listened to Aloysius describe his extreme schedule of individual religious practice, then ordered him to cease it. He was assigned instead to work at a local hospital tending to the sick and infirmed. Squeamish, he was repulsed by the work, and he disliked people, which is probably why he was initially inclined to his private devotions and mortifications. When the plague hit Rome in January 1591, the sick and dying were everywhere, overwhelming the hospitals, and Alyosius had to dig deep and draw on that Italian stubbornness and bulldog like willpower to stomach the work. 

Like common sense today, moderation, stability, and obedience are, I think, under rated virtues. As opposed to day-trading in stocks, with the high-risk/high-reward rollercoaster of hyper-transactualism, these virtues are the un-sexy and like passive investing in boring, low-cost index funds, achieve their yields with discipline and self-restraint in the long-game over time. We can all practice them, maybe not in vows as lay people, but through stability to our parish communities, reasoned obedience to our ecclesial authorities, and fidelity to our individual prayer lives.

No Country For Married Men

 If you've never had the chance to witness the film Into Great Silence, you should; it's a slow, thoughtful, intimate meditation on the everyday lives of the Carthusian monks of Grande Chartreuse monastery located in the French Alps. The filmmaker, Philip Groning, proposed the idea to the monks in 1984 and they said they wanted time to think about it. Sixteen years later, they said he could come and film. Groning spent almost three years editing; there are no commentaries, no dialog, no sound--just the everyday rhythm of the eremetic life lived in community.

Thomas Merton wrote in The Silent Life (1957) about the 'charism' (if you might call it that) of the Carthusians and the guarding of solitude above all else: 

"It is a spirit of solitude, silence, simplicity, austerity, aloneness with God. The intransigeance of the Carthusian's flight from the world and from the rest of mankind is meant to purify his heart from all the passions and distractions which necessarily afflict those who are involved in the affairs of the world-or even in the busy, relatively complicated life of a cenobitic monastery. All the legislation which surrounds the Carthusian, and has surrounded him for centuries like an impenetrable wall, is designed to protect his solitude against even those laudable and apparently reasonable enterprises which so often tend to corrupt the purity of the monastic life."

I actually wrote to the Carthusians (Charterhouse of the Transfiguration, the only Carthusian monastery in the United States, located in Vermont) thirteen years ago in a horribly brash and self-assured petition to discern a vocation with them. I don't know if they every responded (I recall they did, but I don't have a record of the correspondence to confirm). If they didn't, it was probably for good reason.

In working primarily from home for the past year of Covid, I've gotten a small taste of the 'monastic cell' in a strictly worldly setting. There's an old adage from the desert fathers: "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." 

What have I learned in the "cell" of my office (which is usually alone at the kitchen table, or a small desk in the bedroom when I need to hide from the kids), working the secular equivalent of Evagrius weaving baskets and then setting them all on fire at the end of the year to learn detachment?

I have an incredibly long way to go, and am very far from my true home. 

Pride, acedia, laziness, vanity, lack of discipline, and, most especially, a lack of inner peace are all my time alone at home have revealed to me. 

Solitude, silence--these things are sweet to a someone at peace. It is a marinade for a soul called to it, that longs for it, relishes in it. For the person not at peace with themselves, silence is unsettling, and solitude disconcerting. But in and of itself, it is only acting as a mirror to the soul, neutral and reflective.

Merton continues in describing the antidote to literal insanity that comes with such solitude for the soul not well disposed to it: 

"The Carthusians have been preserved not only by their rigid exterior discipline, but by the inner flexibility which has accompanied it. They have been saved not merely by human will clinging firmly to a Law, but above all by the humility of hearts that abandoned themselves to the Spirit Who dictated the Law. Looking at the Carthusians from the outside, one might be tempted to imagine them proud. But when one knows a little more about them and their life, one understands that only a very humble man could stand Carthusian solitude without going crazy. For the solitude of the Charterhouse will always have a devastating effect on pride that seeks to be alone with itself. Such pride will crumble into schizophrenia in the uninterrupted silence of the cell. It is in any case true that the great temptation of all solitaries is something much worse than pride-it is the madness that lies beyond pride, and the solitary must know how to keep his balance and his sense of humor. Only humility can give him that peace. Strong with the strength of Christ's humility, which is at the same time Christ's truth, the monk can face his solitude without supporting himself by unconsciously magical or illuministic habits of mind. In other words, he can bear the purification of solitude which slowly and inexorably separates faith from illusion. He can sustain the dreadful searching of soul that strips him of his vanities and self deceptions, and he can peacefully accept the fact that when his false ideas of himself are gone he has practically nothing else left. But then he is ready for the encounter with reality: the Truth and the Holiness of God, which he must learn to confront in the depths of his own nothingness."

My vocation is marriage, as it has been for the past ten years. Such relationships are less hidden than a monk in his cell twenty three hours a day, but that one place where married couples enter into that place is in the bedroom. In some ways, the intimacy of the bedroom is where one enters into the "great silence" of marital love where bodies speak to one another without the need for words; perhaps one of the few times in our day in which we can communicate in such a way. 

But as any married couple knows, the fruit and vitality of the martial embrace is not isolated to the act itself as in a vacuum, but draws its health from the days and weeks preceding it in the everyday communions and interactions throughout the day. Sexual intimacy serves as the barometer for the health of a marriage. One can't ignore or neglect or fail to love one's wife all morning and then expect sublime communion in the bedroom in the evening. 

It is not realistic to expect a married man to behave as a monk, or work out his salvation in the same way a Carthusian would, though it may have appeal at times. St. Paul made it clear that the married man would be concerned with other things--how to please his wife, the affairs of the world. That it is better not to marry. But it is the vocation I was called to. After ten years of discerning monastic life, it became clear that was not my path. If it was, maybe I would relish the solitude, have opportunities to serve in other ways and enter more deeply into silence and all it affords. 

Instead, I find myself snapping at rowdy kids and trying to work an honest day in front of a laptop so I can pay our bills and keep a roof over our heads. When I do have time alone, I squander it watching Youtube videos or frittering around in the kitchen eating whatever I see. I have no abbot, no rule, no guide, just my conscience, which has been chaffing me lately at the sins bubbling to the surface from my time alone in my secular cell within my domestic monastery at how far I am from that divine home, and how far I have to go and how far I have fallen, and how muddied the waters of my mind and soul are versus the crystal clear lakes of pristine wilderness. Silence and solitude is a great teacher, but it's only a mirror. 

  

Staving The Slow Slide

 Incrementalism, as the term is used in the realm of government, is the method of achieving massive changes in public policy by implementing slow changes over time. We often wonder how such obviously outlandish things as allowing biological men to compete in women's sports or use women's locker rooms make their way into law, as anyone with common sense would recognize this an absurd and dangerous proposition. But the trojan horses were brought into courtyard much prior to this, and often by way of this kind of incrementalism (as one example).

There is a parallel term in the field of moral theology, that of gradualism (or gradualness, as used by Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio) as it relates to the pursuit of positive moral virtue. Both terms are really two sides of the same coin in different spheres--not necessarily ill-conceived and holding a degree of neutrality, but the general concept remains in the adage: "if you want to boil a frog, turn up the water slowly." 

While the acquisition of virtue is usually a lifetime endeavor and typically comes slowly over time, the decisions we make sometimes do require the 'stepping over a line' in the temporal life to move from one stage to another--the way one jumps into a pool, being no longer dry on land, but wet while submerged. 

A few days ago the Church celebrated the feast of St. Anthony the Abbot. One of my favorite stories of this great father of monasticism was upon hearing the words of Matthew read in the church, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me" (Mt 19:21), he immediately walked out of the church and sold the three hundred acres of land he had inherited from his parents. Not long after (upon hearing the words of our Lord in Mt. 6:34), he set off for the desert to begin his eremitic life. 

I heard a vocation director (I believe) once say that the first thing he asks about with men thinking of leaving the priesthood or formation is, "what is the state of your prayer life?" Putting aside legitimate instances of thoughtful discernment in this direction, in many of the cases of men wanting to leave they had gradually, and over time, stopped praying.

But people don't just stop praying or lose faith overnight typically. In keeping with the theme above, it's usually a gradual introduction of acts of the will contra to the pursuit of virtue (that is, the hard work of virtue) that take it's place, be it worldly and sinful, or simply, absent of positive value. 

Take a practical example: I went to the Y yesterday on my day off to swim. In stepping on the scale in the locker room, I was slightly unnerved to see that I'm coming close to 190 pounds (and I assure you, it is not 'all muscle'). At my fittest, I hover around 175. Have I been fasting? No. Have I been exercising regularly? No. Have I been eating truffles after dinner most every night since my wife brought home a large bag of them? Yes. We don't go from 175 to 190 (or whatever) in a day. 

We recognize this work in the moral law with regards to to the "sins which are not unto death" as recounted in 1 Jn 5:17; that is, venial sin, which weakens the state of the soul and increases the danger of falling into mortal sin. This is why it is good habit to confess venial sins regularly, so that the soul is cleansed of the thin layer of soot that darkens the intellect and makes us more susceptible to sinning more gravely. 

The devil is a master of introducing into the mind and will the gradualness of sin. Remember his ultimate motive: to lead a soul away from God by any means necessary. A missed prayer, a snuck piece of meat or candy during a fast, a laxity in spiritual reading in favor of something more pleasing to the senses, a harboring of a grudge or impure thought. He doesn't want us to wake up and realize how far we have drifted from home like a piece of wood at sea from shore, lest we set off like a prodigal son back to the Father's house. The more gradual, the better. 

The way I have always described concupiscence--our propensity to sin--is by way of natural example: drop a leaf in a flowing creek and it follows the path of the water. To go the other direction in, say, a canoe, you have to paddle, and disproportionate to the force needed were you not working against the current. In other words, it's hard to be good--not because we were made for the Good, or that we were created in God's own image and called "very good," but because of the Fall. We live with those inherited consequences and spend most our lives countering spiritual entropy. This is why the Way is narrow, not wide, and why few find it (Mt 7:14).

Mother Teresa--as it was revealed later in her life--dealt with the darkness of loss of faith for years, but persisted in the exercise of the will to charity despite her loss of consolation, and was made a great saint in her persistence and fidelity to what failed to provide spiritual or material comfort. She did what she was called to do, whether she felt like it or not, and was painfully sanctified as a result. She 'trusted the process,' so to speak.

As we approach the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, it is apparent to me how much my personal discipline has drifted--not into 'red-alert' territory, but enough that I need my own personal "Great Reset." The Church in Her wisdom gives us the season of Lent to get back on track, to renew the external disciplines we need to make the work of virtue in cooperation with grace possible. These are tangible, concrete, act and will-driven exercises to stave the slow slide that concupiscence lubricates within ourselves. It makes things harder for us, not easier, because it is not by ease and leisure that we find our ultimate happiness (if in doubt, ask any movie star or celebrity), but in God, whom we grow gradually forgetful of when we replace the pursuit of virtue with the things of the world, which is of enmity with God (Ja 4:4). 

We know the disciplines are working toward their intended purpose when we begin to love virtue for its own sake, rather than hate it for what it demands, just as a runner no longer loathes putting on his shoes and hitting the pavement but becomes accustomed to it and does it as matter of course. As I find time and time again, it's easier to keep disciplines up when we don't fall off by way of the 'little things'--the excuses, the concessions, the rationalizations. I guess this is just human nature. This is why Lent is forty days, not four or fourteen. It can take a little time to hit a stride and correct waywardness of habit, and the season as taskmaster ensures we see it through to the end. It always seems to come at just the right time, too--when it's needed, and as an antidote, to counter the spiritual entropy we find ourselves mired in because our own self-appointed disciplines have become too easy to ignore. Lent is the spiritual medicine prescribed by Holy Mother Church from the outside to stave the slow slide and bring us closer to home, which is where we really, in our heart of hearts, ultimately want to be. 

Give Me A Word

Every now and then I will arrive a few minutes late to daily Mass. It is customary in these situations when the Word of God is being read, to stand quietly in the back until the readings are finished, then to take your seat. Why? Because when the words of scripture are being proclaimed, God is truly present, living and active. "When the Scriptures are read in the Church, God Himself is speaking to His people and Christ, present in His own word, is proclaiming the Gospel." (GIRM, n.29) Do you really want to draw attention to yourself while the King of Kings and Lord of Lord is present in your midst? Rude!

The Word incarnate, the Divine Logos (λόγος), is so fundamental to a Christian anthropology, that is it sets the stage for everything that follows in John's gospel. God speaks life into existence in the very first chapter of Genesis, and so to in John's account of the pre-existent Christ: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (Jn 1:1). To ascribe finite language with the Unknowable, Unnamable, infinite Creator of the Universe may seem strange to general Deists, ignostics, and even Jews. But the Christian god--God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, who comes crashing through space and time to ransom His captive people, "the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us (Jn 1:14).

The Scripture, the Word of God, is not dead letters on a page as in a history book, but alive and with power. Like a spore or a tiny seed carried through the air, it has the power to take root in a man's heart and turn his life inside out when he is disposed to it. As St. James writes, "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does." (James 1:22-25)

I have two icons on the wall on either side of the crucifix at my prayer station. On one side is Our Lady of Guadalupe, and on the other is St. Anthony of Egypt--ascetic, battler of demons, and the father of Western monasticism. But it all started with a word. From St. Athanasius:

"Not six months after his parents’ death, as he [Anthony] was on his way to church for his usual visit, he began to think of how the apostles had left everything and followed the Savior, and also of those mentioned in the book of Acts who had sold their possessions and brought the apostles the money for distribution to the needy. He reflected too on the great hope stored up in heaven for such as these. This was all in his mind when, entering the church just as the Gospel was being read, he heard the Lord’s words to the rich man: If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor – you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me.

It seemed to Antony that it was God who had brought the saints to his mind and that the words of the Gospel had been spoken directly to him. Immediately he left the church and gave away to the villagers all the property he had inherited, about 200 acres of very beautiful and fertile land, so that it would cause no distraction to his sister and himself. He sold all his other possessions as well, giving to the poor the considerable sum of money he collected. However, to care for his sister he retained a few things.

 The next time he went to church he heard the Lord say in the Gospel: Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Without a moment’s hesitation he went out and gave the poor all that he had left. He placed his sister in the care of some well-known and trustworthy virgins and arranged for her to be brought up in the convent. Then he gave himself up to the ascetic life, not far from his own home."

The Word took root in this fertile soil. Anthony would go on to be a great saint and, as mentioned previously, the father of Western monasticism and catalyst for a "flight to the desert." Why a flight? Constantine's Edict of Milan issued in 313AD essentially put an end to state-sanctioned persecution and the opportunity for martyrdom. The "radical" discipleship of Anthony was only radical in contrast to the comfortableness of status-quo Christians or CINOs (Catholics in Name Only) who enjoyed the benefits of the protection of the Emperor. Anthony sparked a unintentional movement of solitary (and eventually, communal) living apart from the world and devoted to the practice of prayer and asceticism.

It was common for those coming to the desert seeking the way to Life to beg one of the Fathers to "give a word," the way Lazarus longed even for the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich man (Lk 16:21). And so we see this theme again, of the word emanating and giving life, being alive and pregnant with the kernel of Truth itself. While the holy men and women in the desert lived on crumbs of bread, those who have not been mortified seeking a new way of life lived on the utterances of sparse words, the utterances of wisdom from those who had merit.

The early Desert Fathers and Mothers were the first "self-selecting" believers. Until the Edict of Milan was issued, Christians were minorities subject to persecution, who believed the Parousia was imminent. When Christianity gained protected legal status, it had a 'relaxing' effect--believers could breath a sigh of relief, but also seek status and remain in a comfortable state. The early monastic communities were essentially an alternative Christian society for quote-unquote "serious" Christians who sought also an alternative martyrdom through asceticism, a "death to the flesh."

What was their motivation? Some interesting notes from New Advent:

"Besides a desire of observing the evangelical counsels, and a horror of the vice and disorder that prevailed in a pagan age, two contributory causes in particular are often indicated as leading to a renunciation of the world among the early Christians. The first of these was the expectation of an immediate Second Advent of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; 1 Peter 4:7, etc.) That this belief was widespread is admitted on all hands, and obviously it would afford a strong motive for renunciation since a man who expects this present order of things to end at any moment, will lose keen interest in many matters commonly held to be important. This belief however had ceased to be of any great influence by the fourth century, so that it cannot be regarded as a determining factor in the origin of monasticism which then took visible shape.

A second cause more operative in leading men to renounce the world was the vividness of their belief in evil spirits. The first Christians saw the kingdom of Satan actually realized in the political and social life of heathendom around them. In their eyes the gods whose temples shone in every city were simply devils, and to participate in their rites was to join in devil worship. When Christianity first came in touch with the Gentiles the Council of Jerusalem by its decree about meat offered to idols (Acts 15:20) made clear the line to be followed. Consequently certain professions were practically closed to believers since a soldier, schoolmaster, or state official of any kind might be called upon at a moment's notice to participate in some act of state religion. But the difficulty existed for private individuals also. There were gods who presided over every moment of a man's life, gods of house and garden, of food and drink, of health and sickness. To honour these was idolatry, to ignore them would attract inquiry, and possibly persecution. And so when, to men placed in this dilemma, St. John wrote, "Keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21) he said in effect "Keep yourselves from public life, from society, from politics, from intercourse of any kind with the heathen", in short, "renounce the world"."

We are entering a 4th century situation, but in reverse. Those Christians who "self-select," who may be accused of being overzealous or "too-serious" Catholics share the same horror of vice and pagan disorder, as well as a vivid belief in evil spirits, "the kingdom of Satan realized in the political and social life of heathendom around them." It is not necessarily solitude we seek out in the desert and secluded places, but each other--those hidden believers to whom we can confide our "seriousness," to whom living as if the parousia was scheduled for tomorrow is not weird or extreme, but in line with how a Christian should be living all along. Just as Anthony sought out Abba Paul, who sought out the cold comfort of the harsh desert life, so too do the Christians of the new age of martyrdom seek to separate themselves from the persecution of a pagan culture and be strengthened and fortified by those who "get it." We "seek a word," and wisdom is always appreciated; but it could be a word of encouragement to keep going when our own family or friends have turned against us (as our Lord tells us to expect), to NOT feel so alone, where many of us are forced--either by necessity or circumstance--to be in the world.

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Tim 3:1-17).

The Word--the living Word--sustains us. As our Lord says, "man does not live by bread alone" (Mt 4:4). And yet bread alone is what the world offers. And not only the world, but fellow "semi-believers" and quasi-Catholics as well, who have the husk without the grain, the veneer without the engine, the Faith without belief. Yes, we are called to be a light of the world (Mt 5:14), but we also must be fortified and strengthened for what lies ahead, and this may very well not happen among non-believers and CINOs. It is this kind of new monasticism that is interdependent rather than independent, in the world rather than separated from it, clandestine rather than flying out in the open. It's only because we know what is coming.