Browsing tag: Christian

  • Worthy Oratory

    An oratory is a physical structure constructed to demarcate a sacred space dedicated to prayer. There, members of a community can come and go freely to pray individually, without disturbing or being disturbed by the bustle of ordinary life.

    Without the interior compunction that recognizes the worth of the sacred, no physical structure can by itself make holy a location. But holiness exists wherever the hearts of human beings apprehend the worth of God. The sacred space is the place where the One who bestows all worth communes with the person who apprehends his worth.

    We apprehend the worth of God when we entrust to him our agonies and acknowledge his answers to our earlier entreaties.

    To apprehend the worth of God is to worship God.

    To apprehend the worth of anything is to distinguish its inherent value from any use it might afford to us.

    God, the creator and sustainer of all things is of all the most useless, because God cannot be used. No person or group owns God or controls him. No one can summon God, because he is always already everywhere present.

    God is not useful, but worthful. From him and by him all things receive their worth. And everything he has called into being is worthy to exist. Every person who apprehends the worth of God is free to worship him.

    Of all his creatures, only the human ones have this capacity to apprehend worth. Therefore of all creatures, human ones are the most worthy. Wherever a human being lives, there exists the holy presence of God willing to share worth with his creature.

    To acknowledge the worth of another human being is to apprehend the order of God’s creation, which is another act of worship. To circumscribe with compunction your own actions, for the sake of the worth of another person is again an act of worship. And this is how, when you allow another person to pray, you participate in marking out a sacred space for oratory.

    God knows individuals, so when we worship him, we do so each as a separate person. When we come together to agree in prayer, we become a community. Just as common prayer builds community, so individual prayer builds personal worth. So oratory includes both individual and communal prayer.

    Our deepest need is to know that we are worthwhile. Our deepest agony is to feel worthless. In a world where only usefulness is acknowledged, no one is worthy, and no life is inherently worthwhile. Without a sense of worth, not all the wealth in the world can save you from despair. But with worth, you can live well, and worthily, even through want and turmoil.

    So, everyone benefits when the worth of each is acknowledged. And the most elementary enactment of this apprehension in society is to protect prayer.

    Time spent in prayer may be useless, but it is worthwhile. Such time is not a waste but a sacrifice. Time is the only thing meted out, in equal measure, minute by minute, to all creation. The same minute is meted out to you as to anyone else, anywhere on earth. And a worthy sacrifice of it is a word to the One who endows you with the apprehension of Worth.

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  • Cultivate Silence

    My children, “…diligently cultivate silence…” (Be still and know that I am God.) Rule of St. Benedict 42

    The spiritual discipline of silence has an age-old history. In the spectrum of spiritual disciplines, it belongs to the category of fasting. Exercises such as fasting–from food or from mental stimulus–not only benefit our physical and mental health, but also develop us spiritually. Over time, they help us reap a greater peacefulness, and increased fortitude to face whatever we must face in life.

    Silence need not be absolute to be beneficial. Even an ordinary person can practice it, even in a domestic context. You benefit physically from disciplining your consumption of food, and mentally from disciplining what you expose your mind to. This principle holds true even for people who are not seeking any sort of communion with God. It’s a basic fact of human health. Just as the person who cannot stop eating is showing signs of something amiss, so too the person who remains in a perpetual state of distraction. The one who cannot bear to be silent even for a few minutes is exhibiting a mental state akin to insatiable appetite.

    You may not learn to value silence until you’ve had the experience of caring for a screaming baby. The constant clamoring of children teaches us that the ability to stay quiet is a sign of maturity, whereas constant agitation and demands are the starting point of beginners in life.

    Silence as a spiritual discipline is not about finding a quiet environment, although of course this helps. But spiritual quiet is an interior state that is independent of whatever noise may be all around you. The discipline of silence has to do with the mental stimulus that you are free to regulate, not with all the noises that you do not control.

    Of course, there are people who should not engage in food restriction, because their bodies are in a fragile state. And people who are in a fragile mental state should not be seeking silence, especially if they are depressed. Some people need more nutrition, or more stimulus than they’ve been getting.

    But, if you are fit, the voluntary silencing of distractions can strengthen you spiritually. When you are at leisure to listen to something or not–music, or whatever else you normally turn to–simply refraining from this input can become a gesture by which you express to God your willingness to hear him. Even if you have nothing else to offer God, you always have this: the gift of yourself, expressed as the willing sacrifice of your attention, should he wish to speak.

    This doesn’t mean that when you practice silence, you will hear a supernatural voice. On the contrary, just as when you fast you can expect to feel hungry, when you are silent you can expect to hear nothing but the ordinary noises of your environment that you don’t normally pay attention to. If you have made yourself available, and you know very well that you have heard nothing divine, congratulations: this is a sure sign of your sanity. And you are in good company. The testimony of the saints through the ages is that they endured many long years of the silence of God before ever perceiving the voice of God.

    But the silence of God does not mean that he is absent. The God who sustains the universe at the atomic level sees and understands the effort you have made. Perhaps he will reveal himself in a spectacular way, but these interventions are rare and, by most accounts are terrifying when they occur. He doesn’t want to terrify or destroy you but to call you into harmony with himself. God knows what you can bear, because he designed you. He gave you the freedom to turn toward him, and when you exercise that freedom, even in a tiny way, he will surely draw near to the one attempting to draw nearer to him.

    On the way to hearing from God, you will have to face yourself. And for many people, the perpetual search for distraction is exactly the attempt to escape from themselves. In silence the troublesome thoughts you have been suppressing come into the forefront of your mind. Sorrows, anxieties and nagging perplexities come bubbling to the surface of your awareness. Rather than fighting them, hand them over to God in prayer: Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

    Or perhaps you find yourself enduring a period of forced silence, not at all what you wished for. Since you cannot escape, you might as well offer God your willing attention. Who knows but he will open up a whole new path for you? All things work together for good for those who love God. He will communicate, probably not with signs and wonders to impress anyone else, but in ways meaningful to you. If you have gone wrong in some way, he will bring to your attention what you should correct.

    The God who made the universe is not a puppet on a string or a genie in a lamp. No one can summon him and make him perform. He speaks to whom he wishes and says what he means to say: when, where and how he chooses. But he also quietly draws near to humble hearts willing to set aside a moment of freedom in his honor. See if he does not repay you for your effort with some gracious gift of his own.

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  • Character Of The Chef

    Temperate Definition

    There should be chosen from the community someone who is wise, mature in conduct, temperate…. If any brother happens to make an unreasonable demand of him, he should not reject him with disdain and cause him distress, but reasonably and humbly deny the improper request….knowing for certain that he will be held accountable for all of them on the day of judgment. (Rule of St. Benedict 31.1-9)

    The cellarer is the person in charge of the food. It may come as a surprise that St. Benedict required this person to possess such a long list of interior traits. We’re accustomed to discerning the qualities of the food, not the qualities of the chef.

    So, is the person in charge of the food really carrying out a moral task? Does this job matter to God?

    St. B decisively affirms that the tasks associated with food are intimately tied to principles of charity and hospitality. So, the person in charge of the food is nurturer and host. A community rests on these pillars.

    But such lofty qualities seem far removed from the experience of raising children. They are constantly making unreasonable demands as to what they want–or don’t want–to eat. If you always give in to their demands, you train them to be selfish. On the other hand, if you enforce rules angrily and impatiently, you drive them away from the family table. How does a human being get from the howling chaos of infancy to the temperate maturity of happy adulthood?

    If you want your children to develop good habits, you’ve got to work on your own habits. This means that you make wise choices about what you eat yourself. Think of yourself as the mature version of what your children will become. Do you need to correct your own behavior, for their sakes? Temperance is the virtue of refraining from excess. Too much food, but also too many restrictions are intemperate.

    So, Mom does not open a bottle of wine every afternoon just before the kids come home from school. Likewise, she does not eat excessively. She is not irritable or doctrinaire, not impatient or tyrannical. She is not lazy or wasteful, but views her stewardship of the food budget and meal planning as work done before God. In other words, she is a saint.

    In order even to want to aim for this standard, you must actually believe that there is a moral quality to the food habits of your household. It’s not that food has any moral value in itself. But food habits form the foundation early in life for all other forms of consumption.

    In short, the goal is for the children to internalize good principles so that they willingly make healthy choices and eventually become responsible adults. To get there, they have to learn to make temperate decisions. This is a project that takes years of effort and perseverance. If you can do this, you can do anything.

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  • Comfort The Wayward

    The abbot must exercise the utmost care and concern for wayward brothers . . . .  Therefore, he ought to use every skill of a wise physician and send in . . . mature and wise brothers who . . . may support the wavering brother, urge him to be humble as a way of making satisfaction, and console him lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Rather, as the Apostle also says: Let love for him be reaffirmed [2 Corinthians 2:7-8], and let all pray for him. (Rule of St. Benedict 27)

    Human beings are not born hard-hearted. They become hard-hearted when parents teach them a sense of impunity. We have to correct our children so that they will learn to distinguish right from wrong. When the child seems ungovernable, the parents need to pray for wisdom.

    But parents should not leave a child to figure out the next step alone. A parent should take care to intervene and to discuss the situation. You have to explain the punishment and point the way forward. A contrary child needs to hear explicitly what behavior the parent wants to see.

    If an older sibling steps up to take on the job of remonstrating with and comforting the wayward child, the parents should let the brother or sister handle the situation. Children can sometimes come up with wacky but effective solutions to domestic problems. Adolescents can at times be more insightful about the dynamics of a conflict than their parents are. It’s a good exercise for an older child to attempt to mediate. It also benefits the younger one to interact with a sibling who is taking on the role of intercessor and adviser.

    Ultimate responsibility of course rests with the parents. We must take care that no bitterness takes root to estrange siblings from each other or to alienate a child from father or mother.

     

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  • From St. Thomas Aquinas

    Each new human creature receives existence directly from Being and is therefore radically new.

    Each human being is determined by antecedents as regards matter and form. But each is radically undetermined by matter and form as regards existence.

    At every moment, radical newness is not only possible but actual. New persons come into existence, summoned by Being himself.

    Therefore we are free not from matter and form, but within matter and form.

    Newness comes from creation by Being.

    The individual human creature has freedom to act as a creative mover within matter and form.

    The creative mover does not destroy what came before but works within what came before. Thus the creative mover is able to act in a new way and do new things within received matter and form.

    Working within all of the constraints of matter and form, genuine newness arises from the fact that each human person as a being is genuinely new. This newness is not self-generated but depends on the sustaining Creator.

    Therefore new beginnings are possible in this world.

    Cosmological reasoning is a facet of classical arguments for the existence of God. The thesis of Thomistic Existentialism is that Thomas Aquinas can answer many of the classic objections brought against cosmological reasoning. Topics include: the principle of sufficient reason; existence as a predicate; use of ontological reasoning; reliance on sense realism; the problem of evil; susceptibility to the critique of “ontotheology” as famously put forward by Heidegger. All of these objections receive a reply. 

  • Hold Your Peace

    The ninth step of humility is that a monk controls his tongue and remains silent. . . . for Scripture warns, In a flood of words you will not avoid sinning (Proverbs 10:19). [Rule of St. Benedict 7.56-58]

    When you get to the point of being able to hold your tongue, you know that the Holy Spirit really has been at work within you.

    First of all, you interact differently in a group of people, when everyone is venting grievances. You know from long experience that if you don’t chime in with a complaint of your own, you can’t participate in the conversation. But are you really so bad off today? The Spirit prompts you to remember what you can enjoy and be thankful for. You don’t really want to be one of these people for whom the only pleasure in life is the complaining.

    Or it’s time for opinions. Some people cannot NOT have a say. Their thoughts clack on compulsively without intermission.  They always know best, no matter the topic, and if they really don’t understand, they’re not interested. In a serious discussion, they tell everyone that they themselves don’t know what they mean–and yet they keep talking.

    Because social status is at stake, or success in a classroom or at a job, survival seems to depend on asserting your voice. Existence itself hangs on beating out the competition. To remain silent–unheard, unseen, unacknowledged–can feel actually dangerous, like standing still in a stampede. What will happen to you if you don’t jump in and jostle a place?  We know where the unimportant people end up: at the bottom, invisible, irrelevant, trampled.

    And yet, beneath and behind, present everywhere, seeing everything, we find God himself, sustaining all, yet so often unheeded.

    Remaining silent, listening to others is a way to imitate the character of God himself, and in imitating him, to know his peace. It is a fitting stance for a human being to remain quiet yet present, without asserting self-importance, because God himself is willing to remain present yet silent everywhere, all the time, when if he wished he could overwhelm and silence all voices.

    When you practice this act of humility, you find after a while that the insipid remarks of silly people do not irk you as they used too. That burning urge to have your say has dissipated. You are able to hold your peace.

    But just as proud people everywhere despise God for his silence and mistake his generosity for weakness, so you too may find that someone with whom you have always been gracious turns against you. You offer a listening ear, loyalty and unconditional acceptance. In return you may get–slander. The chill slither of malice through your soul leaves a hole that will not soon heal.

    Be still. Don’t play into the backstabber’s game. God hears your silence and sees your humility. He himself will enter within to comfort and sustain you. When the time comes for you to speak, the Word himself will be with you. Commit your way to him and hold your peace.

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  • Choose Your Destination

    Choose your destination before you set out on a path.

    Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy.  Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden (Rule of St. Benedict, 1.8-9)

    So . . . if you’re thinking that this is a description of our culture today, actually it’s not.  This is St Benedict describing corrupt monks in the 6th century.  The mental outlook that surrounds us now was already an option then.  It has always been appealing to think that you can do whatever you want now and be fine in the end.  But a closer look at real experience shows that choices have consequences.  You’ve got to choose your destination in order to figure out the right path to get there.

    The monks that St Benedict approves of are the coenobitarum, which is Latin for koinos bios, which is Greek for common life, which is English for what I aim to discuss here. Life in community is the focus of St Benedict’s Rule.  He invites you to choose as your destination community with God and your fellow human beings.

    St. Benedict also refers to the eremitarum, which is the Latin transliteration of the Greek eremitēs, which means “one who lives in the desert” and gives us the English word hermit.  He himself lived as a hermit for three years.  He describes the hermit as ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind (Rule of St. Benedict 1.5).

    When I first started to think of the housewife-mother as a domestic hermit, it was because of the experience of being overwhelmed by the demands of life in a family with children.  And yet I also felt isolated, grappling with all sorts of interior struggles.  I don’t think my experience is unusual.  I think that many people flee the domestic life exactly because of this combination of exterior harassment and interior aridity.

    My goal here is to provide some support for Christian families.  I’m going to write from the perspective of someone who finds goodness difficult and not always attractive.  If you’re very good already, I won’t be at your level.  If you’re hanging on by your fingernails and thinking of letting go, I have a few tips for how to claw your way to survival.

    Most people dislike philosophy, so I’ll just note that I would situate myself in the Existential Thomist line.  If you’re interested in pursuing this topic, I would suggest that you NOT try reading St. Thomas Aquinas on your own.  I would suggest that you read Jacques Maritain instead.  Start with his Christianity and Democracy. The difference between reading Maritain and reading Aquinas is like the difference between drinking a gin-and-tonic and chewing the bark of the cinchona tree to extract the quinine.  In the case of Aquinas, you really do want someone else to distill it for you.

    You don’t need to be a philosopher to notice how challenging it is for Jesus to say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” John 14:6.  His way of life is a narrow path uphill, and that’s not where the crowd is heading.  Meanwhile, you have myriads of alternatives immediately available.  A lot of nice people are rushing off in other directions, and who can tell yet where they will end up?  But Jesus insists that only his path leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).

    He didn’t say you have to climb quickly.  There’s no quota of miles you must get through in a day.  You can sit down every ten feet and rest, if you need to.  And you don’t have to get to the end to experience the life.  You just have to be on the path–or in the vicinity of the path, retrieving someone from the landscape.  You can backtrack and retrace your steps, again, because that’s just what you have to do to keep everyone together. And you may find that your children have more energy than you do for the challenge.  They hate to walk, but they love to run.  If you point them in the right direction, soon they’ll get far beyond you, and you’ll be calling to them to wait up.

    Choose your destination: are you aiming for eternal community with those you love and with your Creator?

     

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  • Forbear

    In truth, those who are patient amid hardships and unjust treatment are fulfilling the Lord’s command: When struck on one cheek, they turn the other; when deprived of their coat, they offer their cloak also; when pressed into service for one mile, they go two [Matthew 5: 39-41].  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.42)

    If you had to pick the craziest-sounding command of Jesus, “turn the other cheek” might win the prize.  Second and third place go to offering extra goods to a thief and volunteering help to a bully.

    But each of these scenarios involves a strictly limited sacrifice.  You can walk two miles out of your way and still get home.  You can give up two items of clothing and still make a living.  A slap in the face is painful and insulting, but you can survive and go on.  In no way do these instructions imply that we should stick around forever to be defrauded, enslaved or murdered.

    No one has more than two cheeks, and the gospels don’t tell us what to do if, after getting a second chance, the attacker keeps on hitting.

    Still, there’s a concept here.  Like so many Christian concepts, a word exists for it in English but has fallen out of use.  The command is: forbear.

    Inherent in this word is the sense that the practice of its principle is hard.  The Old English prefix “for” intensifies the verb “to bear.”  It means to endure–specifically to suffer insult and injury while refraining from revenge.

    Who can do it?

    In fact some people in this world today are already enduring far more than Jesus asked.  They cannot bear up because they have been crushed.  Others are straining so hard against oppression that they expend all their strength just to keep their footing.

    It’s the rest of us who have choices to make.

    Sometimes you choose to walk away from friends who have sold out to trending evil.

    If you have the power to stop an injustice, to stand idle is not forbearance but collusion.  If you are responsible for other people, you must act in their best interest.  Forbearance ends where duty begins.  Sometimes duty requires that you act to oppose bad behavior.

    Nor can you forbear on behalf of someone else.  You bear up under your own suffering.  You don’t glibly offer up another person to endure something that you yourself don’t have to worry about.

    Forbearance is the restraint of strength, not the passive submission of weakness.  In order to forbear, you must first realize that you could hit back.  So think of a way to do it.

    Then, instead, attempt to negotiate a solution.  You hope that your example of restraint will give pause to the other person.  After all, people can behave badly without being bad people.  Perhaps they will reconsider and make an effort to do better.  Instead of escalating the conflict, you give them another chance.  You appeal to the good in them rather than fueling the bad.

    Or you may hold back out of concern for someone else who is innocent and who would suffer as a result of your action.  For the sake of the good person, you refrain from punishing the bad one.  This is the forbearance that God extends to the whole world every day, as he continues to sustain the existence of those who do wrong, for the sake of those who do right.

    There’s no privileged class of people who can bypass the righteousness of God.  He will hold each person accountable individually.  We can refrain from vengeance because he promises that he will establish justice in the end.

    So it’s not only for this world’s life that we struggle.  Yet we do struggle for life in this world.  We refrain from vengeance, but we also work for justice.  We manage to turn the other cheek, because we look over the shoulders of wicked people and see a new day dawning in which they have become irrelevant.

    Your own dwelling is the greenhouse of the seedlings of hope.  It’s at home that we learn to forbear.  When a boy has had his juice spilled by his little sister–the juice he was going to take to school, and now there’s none left–and (after the initial howl of dismay) he tells you not to be mad at her, it was just an accident, and even, “I’ll clean it up”–then rejoice and be glad, because heaven has conquered in that moment.

    Or perhaps a younger child destroys the possession of an older sibling.  This is where the older one learns what grace is.  Because restitution may be impossible.  The child must let go the attachment to the destroyed object and extend mercy to the incompetent other, who not only cannot compensate for the loss but is not even reliably going to refrain from doing the same thing again.  This is forbearance.  It is brotherly love.  A child who can forgive a brother or sister has come very far in the Christian life already.

    When children begin to intercede on behalf of their siblings, so that you won’t be angry at the brother or sister, then you know that you’re in the presence of saints.  They don’t think of themselves as saints.  But their behavior is no less holy.

    Forbearance is that moment when justice halts for the sake of peace.  Truth holds its tongue for the sake of love.  On a small scale, everyone regularly experiences something that feels unfair.  When everyone learns to forbear, you will have a happy home.

    Not wealthy homes but loving ones produce good people.

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  • Persevere

    For Scripture has it: Anyone who perseveres to the end will be saved, [Matthew 10:22]and again, Be brave of heart and rely on the Lord. [Psalm 27:14].  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.36-37)

    Discipline for a goal always was, and still is worth it.

    People with ordinary faces get up every day and keep going: for the sake of their children; for the sake of what is right and true and good; for love.

    Any goal worth reaching will point you uphill.  Hell is the other way.  There’s a broad, paved road with a gentle slope downhill, and all the cool people are on it, crowds of them.  If you were drifting with them but decide to turn around, you’ll have to fight your way through them, and they shove hard.  You will impede their fun.

    The question that pulses and pants and gets a headache is: what am I doing this for?

    Heaven beckons like a five-star vacation.  The Church promises that it’s already booked and paid for.

    But you’ve got to do the walking.  It’s a long hike through tough terrain.  Hardship doesn’t mean you’re guilty.  Hardship means you’re human, and still trying.

    God is always at work everywhere for good: within you too.  He will sustain you.  Bet your life on it.

    Sure, take a break and see if you can prove something.  But the choice always comes down to going on or giving up.  Therefore, people who are sweating uphill are probably honest when they offer help. Try being grateful, and accept it.  Hoist yourself to your feet.  It’s called perseverance. In other words, it means sending weight to bear on your forward foot when your toes pinch and your heel blisters.

    There’s a clear enough path when you start out. But then it wears thin and blends into the rock you’re balancing on.  Next thing you know, you’re craning your neck up a cliff face.  Walking was the easy part. You tell yourself it’s time to turn around and find that highway you were too good for.

    Others have been this way before: learn from them.  For instance, wear the harness.  Use the ropes.  You will surely slip and fall, but humility will save your life every time.  Free solo climbers will not pray or obey.

    Muscles clench that you didn’t know were in you.  The hissing sound is your own breath.  Fingertips are all the grip you’ve got.

    Someone slips and showers you with dirt and fragments.  The echo of that scream does not fade away.

    Or was that a jumper?  Jumpers are never alone.  They always drag a few others who were strapped to them.

    Certainly there are prayers that God seems in no hurry to answer. But when you pray for strength to do the right thing, he comes through, especially when there’s someone else roped to you and your fingers have gone numb.

    Sometimes he answers so fast that by the end of the day you’re kicking back on a plateau, enjoying the view.  When everyone you care about is getting along and helping each other, you might as well be in heaven.  You’ve already got what it’s all about.

    Pace yourself.  The tough parts push you beyond your limits.  That’s what getting stronger feels like.

    For a long time it’s awful, but the day comes when you flex your fingertips and don’t cramp.  You’re hanging off the next cliff, but it’s your cliff.  You own it.

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