Autonomy and Freedom, Part 3

It is said of St. Teresa of Avila that a young nun asked her how she knew what God said to her. Aren't the thoughts that we attribute to God only our imaginations? St. Teresa responded, "How else would God speak to us if not in our imaginations?"

Now St. Teresa is using an older, scholastic idea of the imagination as a faculty of the soul. I believe that our modern concept is much less extensive and therefore impoverished. For us, imaginary things aren't real in the end. By contrast, in the Christian psychological tradition and especially in the monastic tradition, the images in the imagination are quite real, and therefore require constant surveilance and attentiveness. The traditional teachings on discernment deal primarily with the thoughts that capture our imagination. Which ones will we allow to linger and 'solidify', so to speak, becoming incarnate in our behavior? And which ones will we purge so as not to allow them to see the light of day?

To pose the question in this way begins to answer it. Christ, the Word of God, became incarnate. This says a great deal about the heart and the imagination of His mother: she was so formed inwardly by God's Word, that He literally took on flesh. Each of us is called upon to imitate her example.

Thus the Word of God should be constantly in our hearts, insofar as this is possible.

But what about ambiguous thoughts? The monastic tradition locates three origins of thoughts and other stimuli: thoughts can come from God--these we hold on to and put into action. Thoughts can come from ourselves--we naturally feel hungry, respond to praise and insult, respond to beauty, and so on. These thoughts need to be measured by the virtues of prudence and temperance. We cannot let appreciation for beauty slide into lust, or hunger drive us to gluttony.

Third, and less popularly appreciated today, thoughts can come from demonic forces: the 'world' and the ruler of this world. These thoughts should be let go of or even driven out, if we can do so by the power of the Cross.

Sorting our thoughts into these categories might seem difficult at first, but like anything, we get better at it with practice, and we can learn from the advice of others. The first step is simply to be aware that we are thinking! This is more difficult than it sounds. We tend to identify our 'selves' with our thoughts when in fact, they are separate. We are not our thoughts. If I could urge one mantra for today's young people, that might be it. You are not your thoughts! Separate from your thoughts and examine them! Let God's Word and the teachings of the Church help you to reject thoughts that are not of God: fear and anxiety, anger, sadness, selfishness, party spirit--these sorts of lists are readily available in Paul's letters (see Galatians 6) and in the wisdom literature, as well as in the gospels.

A good inspiration that seems like it comes from God should be tested against the Church's power to discriminate. The devil does appear as an angel of light and never suggests things that are outright harmful to begin with (by the way, this means that most of our obvious inclinations to sin are from our fallen selves--sorry to say! We can't blame the devil for the vices that we have either chosen or slid into by sloth). There is a story of St. Francis staying up and praying all night and then the next day being grumpy and short with his friars. He reflected, "I gave the night to God, and then I gave the day to the Devil." And so he gave up his all-night vigil as being beyond what God was actually asking.

If we feel moved to begin a project for the Church, or to seek to live the religious life, we should check out these movements with our spiritual directors, with our pastors, with religious who have some experience with these things. I believe that Bob's follow-up comment to Connie's question contains some helpful 'caveats' about the good and bad motivations that we all have when we come to serve God. Since none of us hears God perfectly, He has given us the Church to help sort out what is and what is not of God.

Next time, I will conclude my long answer to this question with two observations: first, that we can become better listeners to God through humility and formation; second, that modern 'autonomy' makes the mistake of confusing the ego with thoughts. This is why we should keep repeating to ourselves, "We are not our thoughts!"

Know Thyself

It is a regular source of wonder to me that we are so quick to think we understand others when we are mysteries to ourselves.

This reflection is prompted mainly by a routine difficulty that haunts community life. It is not difficult to observe another person's habits. However, we usually do not stop there, with a simple observation, and then move on. We believe we know the 'why' of those habits as well. We dream up all kinds of remedies for others' bad habits, and justify exposing these habits to them, sometimes even publicly, on the slim grounds that such interest is actually charity.

In this regard, I heard a wonderful quote from an abbot of our Congregation yesterday. When a young, musically talented monk pointed out to him that an older monk was singing out of tune, and asked how he should correct this 'problem', the abbot replied:

"Love him for twenty years, then tell him he is out of tune."

It is a quote worthy of the Desert Fathers. "Love him twenty years." In that time of genuinely trying to understand another human being, we might come to recognize that out-of-tune singing is wholly irrelevant to the goal of the Kingdom of God. We might even find some brother's ill-humor irrelevant; others' lack of charity: irrelevant. What matters is whether I am seeking purity of heart.

And seeking purity of heart, a stance from which we can truly learn to love, is a much more harrowing endeavor than the challenges of 'loving' others by constantly exposing their faults. When we begin the journey inward, we discover quickly that there is a great deal more awry with our inner lives and dispositions than we have any right to suspect of anyone else's inner life, which in any case we will never encounter.

Today we so often avoid the inner life not so much out of fear of what we might find there (though that is an obstacle to be sure), as we do out of a lack of awareness that we have inner lives. This is usually due to an over-reliance on sense impression and feelings in determining reality. When we were infants, even children, and someone hit us, we got angry; when someone made fun of us, we cried. But we didn't get angry and cry only when we were wronged. Often enough we got angry and sad because of typical childish self-centeredness. Much of that is socialized out of us by the time we are adults, but some questions still ought to trouble us from time to time: "Just because I feel angry, is this proof that I have been wronged? Is it proof that I must change something about someone else?" If I get angry because Brother Paphnutius is singing out of tune, is this objective proof that something is wrong in the world outside of me, or do I in fact need further 'socilization' not merely into our earthly society, but into the Kingdom of God, in which 'whoever is angry with a brother' is liable to judgment?

If our emotional movements are not simply determined by other's behoavior, then where do these emotions come from? Cassian and Evagrius (the latter moreso, in keeping with his greater interest in psychology) both point out that feelings often overwhelm the monk for no reason whatsoever. We used to speak of this phenomenon plainly as temptation, but today I fear that we are more likely to accept these irrational promptings as justifiable and craft a whole (self-serving) world view around them. It is possible, on the other hand, to start merely observing these emotions and not letting them guide us (other than temptations against purity, I don't recommend trying to ignore emotional waves, and I especially recommend against getting discouraged because we have feelings of anger or sadness!). As we loosen the immediate connection between emotion and action or conclusion, we can begin analyzing the source of such emotions. My experience is that they are often totally unrelated to the objective context of my life; I simply am tempted to interpret my life context un-objectively because of the strength of my emotion of the moment. I also find that emotions go away unexpectedly. I can be having a perfectly rotten day, and something catches my attention and I suddenly forget how awful everything supposedly is. In any case, this is part of what I mean by our own lives being mysterious to ourselves. If this is so in our own hearts, what justification do we have for judging others?

Thank you to patient readers who have not deserted me as I have had to concentrate on mundance matters of budgeting, etc over the past two weeks! God's blessings to you in Jesus Christ!

The Mitchell Report: Follow the Money

Bear with me on what might appear to be a tangent from my usual monastic concerns. I promise that I will get to the relevance as quickly as I can. Also bear in mind that I was a sports enthusiast as a young man, to the point where I managed to get a press pass by becoming a sports announcer on a Green Bay radio station.

Yesterday, the "Mitchell Report" on steroid use in baseball was released, naming over 80 players, some superstars. It is a sad story all around and probably will get worse.

In today's Chicago Tribune, most of the reporters responded with outrage, which I understand. However, I think that it is misplaced. I would like to suggest that we as a society are all implicated by this scandal, and here is why.

When faced with the prospect of making 5-25 million dollars a year playing a game versus getting a real job like being an auto mechanic or insurance salesman, is it any surprise that some men would choose to bend the rules in their favor? When a megastar like pitcher Roger Clemens loses a step and is fading into irrelevance, can we really be surprised and outraged when he allegedly decides to rescue and prolong his career by doing what countless other men around him are doing?

I will not comment on the motive of glory and fame for now, and focus simply on the money. Major League Baseball players are automatic millionaires these days. A guy barely good enough to make a roster is almost assured of seven figures. That is a whole lot of money, enough to set a clever investor for a long time. And they make it every year. Who of us wouldn't be enticed?

This raises the question: all this money for what? Where does this money come from? Most of us would bark out the answer, "Ticket prices inflated by those greedy owners," and this answer would be incorrect. The huge revenues actually come largely from television contracts.

But where does television money come from? Here is the link that is almost never talked about in our world. One would think that the omnipresence of television would spawn more intelligent commentary about the meaning of the phenomenon itself. Instead, what passes for intelligent analysis are stories about how many episodes of Gunsmoke are out on DVD and who will win Dancing With the Stars. The very important question, "Why watch television at all?" is almost never asked, except when people encounter monks who dont' have one.

The fact is that millions of people take television for granted. And if the stakes are high for baseball, how much higher are they for television in general. I forget exactly how much money a Super Bowl ad costs these days, but it's not the $18 my old radio station used to charge for a thirty-second spot (and we were FM!).

Advertisers are willing to fork out this money because...advertising works. I must admit that this is one of the single biggest mysteries for me in the modern world. Why we should be swayed by self-interested promoters of products baffles me. The documented effectiveness of advertising suggests that the larger part of Americans are perfectly willing to turn off their God-given faculties of critical judgment, even when their own money is at stake. How many people buy more expensive brand name things simply because they are brand name? I will admit that Pepsi and Coke taste different, but why should the sales of one or the other change because of advertising? Are people's taste preferences really altered by, say, images of women on the beach?

Well, yes, apparently. And here we arrive at the crux of my long-winded argument. Advertising works, it seems to me, because television really does disable our rational ability to discern the movements of our passions (there is the monastic connection). Advertising stokes the fires of our passions (lust, gluttony and vainglory are probably the most typical) in order to override our reason. The subjection of reason to the passions is one of the effects of sin. It is not reasonable to spend our money on products simply because advertisers appeal to our vanity and we feel that we will be 'cool' or 'the first on our block' to own a pet rock. But we do this. If we didn't, then advertisers would not seek out television. Television would have less money to give to baseball owners, and baseball owners less money to dangle in front of players tempted by steroids.

It is possible that revenues might be just as high if sporting events were all pay-per-view. In this case, it would be our worship of sports figures that would be to blame, and indeed this is not absent as a problem in the previous scenario. What all of this suggests to me is that sports fans in some measure and television viewers in some smaller measure, have colluded with major league sports to contribute to the steroids scandal.and that we turn a blind eye to the connections because we like having our passions stoked. If this is the case, then there is a much larger sickness to this whole story, and it implicates a whole culture. Outrage is out of place when it is coming from individuals and aimed at the men who have been tempted beyond their strength--by our money.

Home Again

It is wonderful to be back in my own monastery, finished with what turned out to be a very enjoyable and productive Provincial Chapter (about which I will have a good deal more to say in future posts). Of course, it was also wonderful to spend a week in the paradaisical setting of En Calcat, in the picturesque south of France, with the Pyrenees looming nearby. I heard no yelling, no traffic and no sirens for a whole week. The only sounds in my cell were the birds outside, the movements of the abbots above me and next door and the bells of the abbey church.

We have long had the custom of monthly escapes from the city to 'reload' on silence and stillness, which is easy to lose in the midst of the bouleversements of urban life. However, our goal obviously cannot be to 'teach' the city how to be more silent or contemplative. This would be arrogant. We can witness to these things, but if we ourselves degenerate into complaint because the city robs us of precious contemplation, well then, the game is up.

We have had other monks and religious visit from time to time and declaim that contemplation is not possible in the city. Probably for most people in most circumstances there is truth in this, but the Church has called our community here, unremarkable folk as we are, and so we make an act of faith that God will give us the grace needed to carry out the task He's assigned. In this return to Chicago, I have noticed that I am more aware of the noise, not in the sense that it bothers me more, but in the sense that I am perhaps a bit more present to it.

How to be a contemplative in the city? This is a question that I hope for the brothers to discuss together in community over the coming months. However, it occurred to me as I took a siesta today (my body still being seven hours out of whack), that when we are faced with external noise, there is a direct analogy with the internal noise of our brains that churn out thoughts incessantly. From this, I returned to a thought that I had in my pious days as a novice, which I perhaps understand with a bit more perspective now. The idea is this: what if, instead of trying to combat the noise, one just accepts it as it is, without passing judgments, but with the additional observation that God-is-with-us? So often we try to mask the noise or fight it; after we become hardened a bit to it, we might allow ourselves to become noisy, aggressive, or nervous; at some point, we might just give up and become bitter, wondering why God has chosen this lot for us. What if we simply listened to it all a bit, observed a bit, didn't jump to conclusions, but blessed God in the midst of it all?

After all, we do similar things with our own thoughts. If we become aware of them and they are threatening somehow--we peek at ourselves and discover to our horroe that we hate someone, or we are driven by sensuality, we are proud or jealous--we go into fight-or-flight mode. We pretend the thought isn't there by masking it with pious thoughts (in the external city analogy, this would be like smarmy brotherliness or righteous activism in the face of rudeness and callousness on the part of our neighbors): "I'm not really that bad because I also have these good thoughts!" But of course, we have long ago passed judgement on ourselves and are only pretending that we haven't. How much better not to judge ourselves in the first place: to observe merely that we have such thoughts, look them in the face, share them with God and be at peace with the situation, trusting God's help and not our own to battle our thoughts!

We monks are always amazed when people visit and talk about the silence that we have. In some superficial way, of course, we can say that we cultivate silence. We don't talk at meals or in the halls of the cloister. We don't talk over night. We try to avoid banging things around. We try to be men of peace. But mysteriously, I suspect that we do more for silence simply by acknowledging that noise exists and not trying to fight it or worry anxiously about what it is doing to us, but to invite God into the midst of it. This, of course, monks find ways to do almost automatically, but finally, for us to become holy and fulfill the mission of 'Silence in the City', we need to invite God personally into our inner and outer turmoil, not become agressive against it or pretend it is not there, either of which solution tends to put more stock in our own efforts than in God's sovreignty.

Peace to you all!

Centering Prayer

People seeking advice on prayer frequently ask about Centering Prayer, and others frequently refer to it (or variations of it) without being aware of it. So it might be worth putting my opinion on line, as the whole question seems topical.

The general idea of Centering Prayer is becoming aware of God as the center of one's being, the principle of life in us. For the baptized, seeking God is not exclusively to be done outside oneself, after all. The awareness of God's sustaining life comes about from detachment from all thoughts. Generally speaking, one chooses a quiet time of day and sits for twenty minutes. As one becomes aware of thoughts or other stimuli, the pray-er notes them, but then allows the thoughts to pass on, uninspected, usually by use of a 'sacred word', itself not to be 'meditated' upon, but simply to help loose our attention from the thoughts that inevitably enter the mind.

First of all, we should be clear that Centering Prayer as taught especially by the Cistercians Thomas Keating and the late Basil Pennington, is fairly nuanced. When I wrote above of people referring to Centering Prayer without being aware of it, often they speak of trying to empty their minds of all thoughts. Strictly speaking, this is more Buddhist than Christian (in fact, it probably more closely related to the state of Nirvana than any normally acknowledged states of mind in most forms of Buddhism). Centering Prayer is perfectly comfortable with thoughts being present. It is normal for our brains to generate thoughts. The question is what we do with them. Monastic practice in Christianity has always had an acute interest in thoughts, and to examine one's thoughts first requires one to become aware of them. In this regard, I find Centering Prayer as potentially very helpful. But we should be clear that those who speak of emptying the mind are giving a distorted view of Centering Prayer.

A second thing that CP is not is a means of attaining high states of consciousness. Again, the sacred word is not meant to induce a trance or some kind of transport. CP is not even aimed at any particular affective result, which puts it in good company in terms of Christian prayer in general. We pray because we are human and need to pray, not because it feels good every day. God is not a drug, but it the Almighty and Infinite Creator. The Desert Fathers considered prayer to be a battle (as does the Catechism--see para. 2275). "War against us is proof that we are making war," taught St. John Climacus. By this he means that most of the time, when we start praying, demonic forces immediately attack us to get us to stop, normally by means of distractions. Centering Prayer assists us so that the one praying pays no particular attention to any thoughts, good or bad. This trains our minds to let go of thoughts when we need to and helps us in the battle against distractions.

So I've mentioned some good points about Centering Prayer. With those as a background, let me now say that I don't normally recommend CP except for those who are fairly advanced in the life of prayer. Why not? In my opinion, the principal missing factor in the writing of Fr Keating and Fr Pennington is asceticism. I don't fault them for the omission, but we as monks should perhaps be attentive to the fact that we tend to live a fairly ascetic life by default and take for granted such helpful givens as community recitaiton of Psalms, lectio divina, spiritual reading at table and elsewhere, fasting, customary works of charity (serving at table, doing dishes) and humility (sitting in statio), obedience, silence, and so on. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once wrote, there is no authentic contemplative prayer without asceticism. The Catechism says this:

"There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle [2015]."
"If we do not want to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ, neither can we pray habitually in his name. The 'spiritual battle' of the Christian's new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer [2725]."

Centering Prayer, it seems to me, risks losing sight of these realities. By contrast, in lectio divina, one is constantly confronted with challenges to reform one's life and live according to the gospel, often in disconcertingly direct ways. Fr Michael Casey writes, “We who pray ‘forgive us as we forgive’ cannot afford to live in a state of conflict with others.”

Secondly, I believe that one needs to have a very strong personal relationship with God before one can jump to the level of awareness of God as the Ground of Being. God is one who has love affairs with His people, who knows us intimately before we are even conceived in the womb. There is an infinite amount to know about God. Again, I find prayer centered on Scripture and Liturgy brings us closer to God as a Three-Personed divinity, not merely as The Divine Source.

This brings me to the last point about Centering Prayer, that it seems not to take the Trinity into account, particularly the Person of Jesus Christ. "There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ [CCC 2664]." While I don't believe that it is the intention of Fr Keating and Fr Pennington to omit Christ, the technique involved does not sufficiently acknowledge His central place, that we pray in His name.

If there are these problems, do I ever recommend Centering Prayer? I do, in fact, and I even practice it from time to time myself. The reason for this relates to the aim of detachment mentioned above, as well as awareness of thoughts. Often times our minds are so busy that we simply are unaware of the fact that we are thinking. Thoughts go directly to being imperatives without our reflecting on it. As Mother Maria-Thomas Beil once taught me, monks should aim to 'put a deliberate distance between themselves and their thoughts'. We slow down so as to intercept thoughts before we act upon them. CP helps a great deal in this effort.

Secondly, detachment even from good thoughts is part of the Evagrian method of prayer, validated by Cassian. I mentioned above that we do not pray in order to receive spiritual favors from God. Noting our attraction to such favors can help dispose us toward detachment in this realm, prepaing us for potential dryness and even dark nights (though I personally think that genuine Dark Nights are much rarer than many think; usually periods of dryness are just that: the normal valleys that affect any long-term relationship, even a relationship with God, with dullness).

Finally, I only would recommend Centering Prayer as an element within a total discipline that includes more standard types of prayer. Often times, vocal prayer and meditation bring us to a place that seems to be a dead end. CP can help illuminate the way forward. On the other hand, the practice of detachment, assisted by CP, prepares us to re-enter traditional styles of prayer with a larger tool chest, more deeply grounded in the range of possibilities in prayer, more ready to respond to difficult challenges that God has prepared for us.

Discernment, Part 2

We noted in our first post in this series the importance of a regular conscious exercise of our wills. If we are in the habit of acting deliberately in our lives, then the occasion of major decisions is less frightening. First of all, we are accustomed to using our wills and so the prospect of having to decide is itself less unfamiliar. Secondly, these day-to-day decisions produce in us a 'character': we 'co-create' ourselves, as it were. God gave us the body, mind and soul that we have, but by our own decisions, we have crafted this raw material into a more or less coherent person. The more we work to make rational decisions, the more our lives will be coherent and tend to be pointed toward goals. The less we consciously decide our actions, the more we will be driven by external forces to choose actions that are at odds with one another, and our lives will lack coherence. Lacking coherence in our lives, we will find the future unpredictable and perhaps frightening as well.

This points to the need to manage our thoughts and feelings rationally to the extent we are able. So often, when I speak with persons who are thinking about religious life, I hear the following sorts of reasons given for decisions: "I just feel at home here." "I think I need more activity." "I really enjoy the academic world and think I should do that instead." "I feel God's presence here."

These reasons/feelings make up raw data for decisions, to be sure, and we do need to pay attention to them. But then we need to ask: why do I feel the way I do? Why do I feel at home here and not there, and is this really an objective sign that God's want me to stay? Our feelings are often the product of many hidden sources, and (I hate to say it!) they are often not very sensible when we stop and think about it. The reason we don't feel at ease might be as trifling as the fact that Br. So-and-so happens to look like my father, with whom I don't get along. Is this a reason to leave a community and discern elsewhere, or an invitation to mature in love of strangers who have done us no wrong? Will we even have the chance to identify this dynamic if we simply do what our feelings tell us and never examine them?

In the case of rationalizations for action like "I just feel like I need more activity," we should be similarly critical. Do I really need this, or am I just afraid that my self-esteem will suffer if I can't be proud of some project? (This is a special problem for American men, in my opinion.) In so many of these cases, we are not the most qualified judges of our own motives. For this reason, we need outside input. Generally, I recommend this from two sources: prayer and the Church. I will end this post with a word about prayer, and pick up with the Church next time.

If we really pray as we ought, we will encounter, perhaps obliquely, perhaps directly, the Living God whom we all seek as whose will we seek to do. Unfortunately for us, as St. Paul says, "We do not know how to pray as we ought." Thankfully, we have the guidance of the Holy Spirit to assist us, and so we must learn to test the spirits and know how to follow the Holy Spirit and not some other spirit.

What this means is that we need to have some reliable formation in prayer. In other words, we need to learn to pray from the Tradition (anticipating here something about the necessity of the Church). In particular, the Word of God in Scripture and the parameters given us in Church teaching help to form us in prayer. Scripture is especially important, and this is why monks spend hours a day chanting Psalms and Canticles and doing lectio divina.

I strongly recommend praying with Scripture in our time because we no longer can take for granted a cultural formation in the basics of Christian history and doctrine. In fact, we are de-formed by cultural pressures antithetical to Christianity. We get funny ideas from the world about God, about Jesus Christ, about the Church, about human happiness, and these ideas need to be weeded out of our subconscious set of assumptions about the world and replaced with the good solid truths in tradition. Once this has happened, then we will have a clearer sense of when God is speaking to us and when not. We will know something more about the character of God and have a kind of sixth sense for what are things of God and what are not. We should end with a clear example.

Let's say that I have a sense of being called to the priesthood, but because of past sins, I feel unworthy of it or that God could not possibly call me. One morning, I open the Bible and happen upon the passage of the Prodigal Son. At once, I am moved by the compassion shown by the Father to the wayward son, and I sense that this is the answer to my dilemma: I really should begin the process of looking at the priesthood. After a brief moment of euphoria and joy, a tiny doubt creeps in: but I've never really been sorry (in my own estimation!) for my sins. I am afraid that I would be a disgrace to the priesthood. I've never really fit in. I turn to God and apologize again and decide I will just do more penance or try to find some worthwhile charity to help out instead of becoming a priest.

Notice that the second set of thoughts had nothing whatsoever to do with the objective information coming through Scripture. Almost everything I describe in the second portion is based on feelings and not on reason or on God's love and fidelity. The sorts of thoughts and feelings I am relating here are usually habitual: we grow accustomed to them and even dependent for the stability of our lives on them. God is trying to reach us and call us out of our unexamined feelings and suspicions, to grow in trust of him and in freedom of heart in following Jesus Christ. We have to be willing to hear God's Word as a challenge at times. In fact, when we really read the Bible (and as Christians, we should always relate what we read to the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament), we should be shocked regularly. The Good News that Christ brings is truly radical! If what we read ends up fitting too snugly with what we always thought to be the case, one wonders if we are hearing God or hearing ourselves.

This is another reason why I am fond of recommending lectio divina. Some of the more modern forms of meditation and devotion, while beautiful and salutary in many circumstances, can sometimes lead the less experienced of us into a place where we simply hear ourselves. This happens more subtly when, say, we have a good experience at devotional prayer, but when we hear it broadened in some way, we resond coldly or even with hostility. I have seen this happen, for example: a zealous young person has a profound experience of God's presence during Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. He even has a kind of inward vision of Christ's Body sacrificed for us. The following Sunday, this same person hears a perfectly good homily on the Church as the Body of Christ. The person gets angry and dismisses Fr. X as a liberal and as suspicious of the Real Presence. Father of course said no such thing (he was even working on starting a Forty Hours devotion!). The person getting upset is not following reason or Church teaching; he is instead resisting following the voice of Christ into a deeper understanding of His presence under other forms because to do so might jeopardize the good feelings and mystical signs he has come to expect in Adoration. Reading St. Paul would clear this up in a hurry!

So enough for today. Next, we will return to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church.
Peace to you!

Von Balthasar Controversy

At the Easter Vigil, I preached a homily that made reference to the current controversy over Hans Urs von Balthasar's radical ideas on Jesus' 'kenotic' death. It turned out to be one of the most remarked-upon homilies I have ever delivered, with everyone who commented coming out in favor of VB. Unfortunately, a techno-glitch has kept the homily from being podcasted, though I have posted the text here.

The response of our monastery friends contrasted somewhat with the correspondence that has come in to First Things, at least the correspondence they printed, which reveals far more skeptics of VB. Perhaps this has to do with a more conservative readership that includes Evangelical Christians.

The basic problem is that VB saw Christ experiencing to a divine degree what sinners experience when they die: a total separation from God that in Jesus' case was infinitely more painful than what we experience because Christ's divinity is infinitely more intimate with God the Father than our souls are. Jesus Christ entered into an abyss of despair deeper than any human being had experienced, and was raised up by His Father in such a way as to make the reconciliation of even the worst sinner possible (but not necessary: VB is an Origenist, but departs from his problematic mentor here, where the Fifth Ecumenical Council also departed from Origen). When we affirm that Jesus descended into hell, VB means the full existential hell of the damned.

Alyssa Lyra Pitstick objects that Church tradition, perhaps best visualized in the apocryphal accounts such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, show Christ entering hell, not in existential despair, but in a show of power and triumph. She wonders if VB is emptying the Cross of its meaning by locating the height of Jesus' suffering after the Cross in hell.

Because I was preaching a homily and not making a theological argument, I summarized both sides briefly and was more peremptory sounding toward Alyssa Lyra Pitstick's arguments than I am in fact. Her objections seem proper to me in their gist, though I question the actual weight of evidence she adduces. But I have not read her book, and so I hesitate to dismiss her ideas based on the FT articles, though I strongly question her apparent partitioning of hell and insistence on a kind of 'timeline' of Jesus' entry there.

I wanted here to add a couple of my own (monastic!) thoughts to the debate. If anyone thinks they are of interest, maybe I'll send them to Fr. Oakes up at Mundelein or the Fr. Neuhaus at FT. So here goes.

I do believe that VB's teaching is novel. The question is whether it is a development of Tradition or a departure. I also believe that some development on this question is necessary, inasmuch as persons in the modern West face an existential dilemma that has not existed before. Radical atheism is an option that most human persons in history have not had, but one that is not only common today, but is so widespread as to infect Christian belief itself. Many Christians separate their spirituality into a private sphere in such a way as to live as 'practical atheists'. In fact, the tired cliche of young persons desiring to be 'spiritual' and not 'religious' is a symptom of this. We want a private spirituality that has no particular impact on practice. "Practice-wise", that is, practically, our faith then is meaningless; we are atheists in all but name, for we do not believe in God who is objectively knowable through observation of creation, historical events, etc, and who calls us to conversion of life. We instead believe in a false god of isolated interiority.

St. Therese of Lisieux (a monastic!) is an important missing link in this argument for me. She took it upon herself to pray for radical atheists, and God promptly allowed her to fall into a devastating Dark Night of the Soul. VB (and I) believed that this was expiatory suffering (contrary to popular iconography, Therese was a tough young Norman!). If Christ would allow Therese to sink into these depths, surely something like this is to be seen in the Crucifixion and Christ's descent.

On the other hand, the monk in me is uncomfortable with something that Pitstick includes in her version of the Harrowing of Hell that VB oddly seems to leave out (I write that based on having read Mysterium Paschale and bits and pieces of his Theo-Drama on this theme). As an Origenist, one would have imagined VB to be more alive to the reality of the demonic. The presence of personal evil in Pitstick's presentation, while unfortunately somewhat naive in appearance, is in accord with Scripture more than is the idea of existential suffering, real as that might be. That is to say, in a strange way, VB psychologizes where he should be theologizing.

It is interesting to note that VB tends to rely heavily on the gospel of John, somewhat to the diminishment of the Synoptics. There are no clear exorcisms in John, whereas they are (pardon the pun) legion in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

The importance of this for me, again as a monk, is that psychology only tells part of the story. For example, depression is a psychological illness that comes uncomfortably close for us moderns to Evagrius' depiction of the attack of the demons of sadness and acedia. We are not likely to suggest to someone who is depressed that he or she is capitulating to a sinful temptation. We are more likely to medicate, to offer diversions, and so on, that is to treat it as requiring medical and not moral intervention. My experience, and the witness of the keenest of the Monastic Fathers on this point (for me, Evagrius and John Climacus of the Holy Ladder), suggests that trying to fight against sadness and acedia by hunting around for psychological or medical causes only strengthens the demonic attack. What is needed is a frontal assault on the demon himself, with the aid of the Name of Jesus Christ. Sadness is based on a lie, that God doesn't care. Our minds are slower than demonic suggestion, as Climacus says over and over again, and so trying to think our way out of sadness falls right into the demonic trap.

Let me bring this back to VB again. It is worth noting that VB is oddly antipathetic toward Evagrius, the man who most innovatively developed Origen's demonology with the help of the Egyptian monks and nuns. Looking at Jesus Christ on the Cross, could we not see him assaulted by demons in such force that his human psychological state is one in which hope is reduced to a bare minimum or even nothingness by a cacophony of despairing thoughts of demonic origin, without thereby holding that somehow the Holy Trinity itself is stretched to the point of allowing sin into the Divine Life (where it is consumed, acc. to VB)? I obviously have not worked this out in any great detail, and I am not a professional 'theologian' (though I do pray--let the reader of Evagrius understand). However the absence of any spiritual combat outside of the existential struggle within Himself does strike me as problematic in Balthasar, even if his basic insight, that a renewed sense of the depths of Christ's sufferings is needed to cope with modern barbarity, is of acute importance.

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Ash Wednesday

Somewhere St. Augustine speaks of Lent as being an analogy to the whole of our life and Easter being an analogy to the next life. Certainly Lent is a good time to pull away a bit from the allure of this world and to focus again on our interior life. In the year before I entered the monastery, I discovered that this can be quite painful if we aren't used to it. I was discerning a religious vocation and making efforts to fast and pray. In the meantime, my best friend and roommate was dating the woman whom he eventually married (and with whom he has three beautiful daughters). The two of them were out one evening and I was home by myself. I prayed the Divine Office and looked to sit and pray silently. One after another, voices began to come into focus in my head:

"Why don't you call Beth (an old friend living in D.C.)?"

I decided no, I would sit and read and pray and just be silent for awhile. Soon another voice came:

"Wouldn't it be great to go to the Medici (local hip restaurant/coffee shop), get a piece of cheesecake and sit and read poetry, see who's there...?"

I decided not to do that either. An astounding cascade continued in my head:

"Get out your guitar and play and sing some moody songs!"
"Go to Starbucks and get some coffee and a sweet roll, come back and do some composing!"
"There's probably something on TV..."
"Play something at the piano by Beethoven--that always cheers you up!"
"You haven't called home in awhile"
"Put on some Jethro Tull really loud and sing along!"
"Why don't you take a long walk and brood over something?"

At some point I remember simply laying down and waiting for all these activities simply to fade away, not unlike the apocryphal quote attributed to R.M. Hutchens: "When the urge to exercise strikes, I lie down until it goes away." As I lay there, I felt as if my skin was being lifted away from me, as if I was be divided from myself. It was an actual physical sensation and not a terribly pleasant one. However, I was willing to undergo it because I was tired of being at the mercy of my own impulses, good as some of them were or seemed to be.

This renunciation of thoughts (as Cassian or Sr. Meg Funk would call it) is something that I still need to do, and Lent is the perfect time. Fasting is one of the best exercises in this effort because food is so central to our survival and something we think about directly or indirectly more than we realize. What I mean by 'indirectly' is that we take for granted that we will be warm and energetic a lot of the time, and people probably expect it of us. But being hungry means being slow, a bit chilly and not a party animal. It is a good reminder of our creatureliness and our dependency on the earth, on those who till and harvest the earth and on the work by which we support ourselves. It is a good reminder of our privileges in 21st Century America when most of our fellow human beings are cold and hungry somewhere else. Most of all, it is a discipline that helps us to slow down and actually identify thoughts and impulses as they come. Most of us are not aware most of the time of the impulse to eat and to feel good eating and drinking (I also cut out coffee during Lent). If we rely on caffeine, on sugar or on alcohol to be happy, even at a small level, then we are not relying on God who is our happiness.

Let us joyfully return wholeheartedly to our Lord and God this holy season of Lent, and let us pray for one another that we as a Church may repent of our reluctance to be the Body of Christ and so be transformed again into the Presence of Christ in the world.

Words to live by

from John Cassian:

"Therefore God, the Creator of all things, knowing better than anyone else how to right his handiwork and that the roots and causes of our offenses lie not in others but in ourselves, commanded that the company of the brothers should not be forsaken and that those persons should not be avoided who have been hurt by us or by whom we think that we have been offended. Instead he orders that they be won over, for he knows that perfection of heart is attained not by separation from human beings but by the virtue of patience. When this is firmly possessed it can keep us at peace even with those who hate peace. By the same token, if it has not been acquired, we find ourselves constantly at odds even with those who are perfect and better than us."

Institute IX
Translated by Boniface Ramsey, O.P.

This is no more than an explication of the teachings of Our Lord, but particularly well-put.

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On a separate note, click here to read what one brother called, "the strangest All Saints homily preached last week."