Benedicamus Domino!
I really should get quotations from different sources sent to me via Twitter, but until I do, here's another one from our good friend C. S. Lewis which set me pondering. He writes: "Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already." I think he's referring to things like charity, faith, hope, courage and other virtues, and this idea melded very nicely with some thoughts I've been having lately about the concept of dignity.
We often see in Christian thought a notion that God created us with a certain unique dignity among His creatures. We are described as having personhood and individuality, but we are also told that these can only be fully put to their proper uses by unity with God. Only then will our true dignity (which is really His dignity reflected in us) come through. So then, what is dignity?
Dignity is a very intangible quality, but it is one of those things that we know when we encounter it. It is very difficult to pretend to have dignity, or to lie while seeming to have dignity. It is usually composed of a certain gravity of manner, a bearing which is erect and careful, and a conduct which is, as far as possible, beyond reproach. It is about honour, respect, grace and a certin nobility of spirit, thought or action. It usually embodies a lot of other virtues like humility, patience, courage, really all the biggies, and the unique thing about dignity is that it cannot be maintained at the cost of another's dignity. We may think that it can, but the minute that you as a person of dignity tread on someone else, then your dignity is taken down.
At least, this is true in the world in which I would like to live. The real truth is that dignity can be used as a cloak for grievous injustice and also as a justification for said injustice. People often confuse true dignity (which is a gift conferred) with human rights, entitlement and reputation (which are all false flatterers of the worst kind!) Some of the most dignified people in the world have risked their public reputations to stand up for what they have believed in. Christ endured great indignities but still possessed His dignity, and this is true of those martyrs who came after Him. If true dignity were a matter of simple reputation, then we would never possess it, or we would always be losing it again and again.
So what about dignity as personal entitlement? Is it beneath our dignity to be denied what we feel should be our rights? Well, generally speaking, rights are taken away when we commit a crime or do something which is contrary to dignity's call, and yet there are other situations in which, when rights are taken away, dignity still remains. Many people have been denied freedom and what we call basic human rights and yet have shown themselves to be truly dignified and noble human beings, even to the point of forgiving those who have wronged them. So, it is clear that true dignity goes beyond the notion of mere human rights, and it is my belief that we should focus more on the concept of human dignity and less on that of human rights, because more can be gained by discussing human dignity.
Talking about human rights sounds lofty. We're trying to talk about equality for all, the basic rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech and worship, and other such wonderful things. This is all very well, but whenever push comes to shove, it is always these rights which get trodden down. The idea of "human rights" always gets reduced to "my rights" versus "your rights." This is not what organizations such as Amnesty International would wish, but it tends to be how things work in this world. What I've found regarding human rights is that rights need always to be demanded, to be taken, to be claimed. There is a very confrontational attitude when invoking our rights, and it often seems that "my rights" are gained at the expense of "your rights" more often than not.
What would it be like if we talked about human dignity instead? Well, dignity is an a priori state. It already exists. We cannot demand our dignity. We have to seek it within ourselves and show it. Dignity gives out, whereas rights take in. Dignity is quiet. Rights are loud. Dignity demands something of us. Rights are demanded by us. In short, human dignity puts responsibility back into the notion of human rights, and ensures that we look out for others on this earth who have also been given the dignity of humanity and personhood.
So, going back to Lewis's quotation, I wonder how it would be if everyone in the world began to behave as though they and those around them had been created in God's image? What would it be like if we all truly reverenced each other as blessed beings? I think that a lot of our disrespect of each other comes from the fact that we view ourselves as bodies with talking heads and not much more. We try to escape our lives because we don't see ourselves or others as worth very much in the grand scheme of things. But what if we viewed everyone and everything around us as somehow sacred? I don't mean that we have to make idols of each other or of nature, but acknowledging that we are more than just a bunch of walking meat with gooey grey computers inside of us would be a start. It might just be the key to a better world. What do you think?
Deo Gratias!
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Friday, September 21, 2012
Self-offering: The Only Way to Love
Benedicamus Domino!
In my last post, I spoke about praying with boldness and how it has to do with knowing ourselves to be weak but relying on God's strength to take that weakness and transfigure it, and I also touched on what it is to offer oneself to God, even leaving aside one's talents, time, labours and skills. As it happened, just after that post was published, a very apt quotation came across my Twitter feed, again from C. S. Lewis. He writes: "Christ says. 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time, money, and work. I want YOU.'"
It is a temptation to clothe oneself in good works, to tithe to one's church and to give to the poor, and even to volunteer at the local soup kitchen, and thereby to feel that one is doing 'one's Christian duty.' Indeed, these are valid and helpful ways to spend our time, but are they 'our Christian duty?' I think that they should be some of the fruits of our true Christian duty, which is simply and solely a moment-by-moment offering of ourselves to God.
So, how do we accomplish this seemingly lofty goal? Isn't it only the saints who can truly offer themselves to God? How can God really want us if we are lazy or selfish or angry or sad or jealous? Shouldn't we be doing something to make ourselves fit to be loved by Him?
The answer to these questions is simple. The fact is that God sent His Son to help us to change, and He expects us to offer ourselves, including our egos which make life so difficult for us, to Him as we are, and it is this offering which allows Him to work in our lives to change us for the better and to prepare us for another, deeper life after this one. First, however, we must allow Him to let us make our lives deeper on this side of the grave. This is why the saints are saints. They have allowed themselves to be deepened and changed by God and have let their egos stand aside in favour of God's love working in them.
I have often asked myself what it means to love God. We are told to "love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength" in several places in Scripture. Still, what does this mean? It can't mean simply a feeling of affinity or friendship, because there's no way for us to feel akin to God in our current state of being. I mean, if we did have that feeling, we would descend into the depths of pride and lust for power and it would be difficult for us to turn back from that path. It wouldn't be impossible, but it would be difficult. So, while a lot of human love has to do with affinity and friendship, is that truly what it is to love?
One thing that Christ did when He came to us was to show us the meaning of love, and He did that in the garden after the last supper. First, he asked God to take the crucifiction away from Him, but then He offered Himself, saying: "Thy Will be done." In showing us this, He showed the conflict between the ego and the true self, the human and the divine wills, which are--in a sense--struggling for mastery in each of us. Love is about offering, about giving of the self, and loving God is about giving the self to Him and letting Him give Himself to us. This can only be done when we begin to know ourselves and to realize that we need to be changed by One greater than ourselves. He truly wants us, warts and all, and until we can accept this amazing kind of love, all the good works in the world will not truly accomplish the change which God wishes us to experience.
There is much more that could be said on this subject, but I think we'll leave it there for now. Till next time!
Deo Gratias!
In my last post, I spoke about praying with boldness and how it has to do with knowing ourselves to be weak but relying on God's strength to take that weakness and transfigure it, and I also touched on what it is to offer oneself to God, even leaving aside one's talents, time, labours and skills. As it happened, just after that post was published, a very apt quotation came across my Twitter feed, again from C. S. Lewis. He writes: "Christ says. 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time, money, and work. I want YOU.'"
It is a temptation to clothe oneself in good works, to tithe to one's church and to give to the poor, and even to volunteer at the local soup kitchen, and thereby to feel that one is doing 'one's Christian duty.' Indeed, these are valid and helpful ways to spend our time, but are they 'our Christian duty?' I think that they should be some of the fruits of our true Christian duty, which is simply and solely a moment-by-moment offering of ourselves to God.
So, how do we accomplish this seemingly lofty goal? Isn't it only the saints who can truly offer themselves to God? How can God really want us if we are lazy or selfish or angry or sad or jealous? Shouldn't we be doing something to make ourselves fit to be loved by Him?
The answer to these questions is simple. The fact is that God sent His Son to help us to change, and He expects us to offer ourselves, including our egos which make life so difficult for us, to Him as we are, and it is this offering which allows Him to work in our lives to change us for the better and to prepare us for another, deeper life after this one. First, however, we must allow Him to let us make our lives deeper on this side of the grave. This is why the saints are saints. They have allowed themselves to be deepened and changed by God and have let their egos stand aside in favour of God's love working in them.
I have often asked myself what it means to love God. We are told to "love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength" in several places in Scripture. Still, what does this mean? It can't mean simply a feeling of affinity or friendship, because there's no way for us to feel akin to God in our current state of being. I mean, if we did have that feeling, we would descend into the depths of pride and lust for power and it would be difficult for us to turn back from that path. It wouldn't be impossible, but it would be difficult. So, while a lot of human love has to do with affinity and friendship, is that truly what it is to love?
One thing that Christ did when He came to us was to show us the meaning of love, and He did that in the garden after the last supper. First, he asked God to take the crucifiction away from Him, but then He offered Himself, saying: "Thy Will be done." In showing us this, He showed the conflict between the ego and the true self, the human and the divine wills, which are--in a sense--struggling for mastery in each of us. Love is about offering, about giving of the self, and loving God is about giving the self to Him and letting Him give Himself to us. This can only be done when we begin to know ourselves and to realize that we need to be changed by One greater than ourselves. He truly wants us, warts and all, and until we can accept this amazing kind of love, all the good works in the world will not truly accomplish the change which God wishes us to experience.
There is much more that could be said on this subject, but I think we'll leave it there for now. Till next time!
Deo Gratias!
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Praying with Boldness
Benedicamus Domino!
Today, I'd like to talk about an idea in Christian thought which has puzzled me for some time, but which, I think, I know a little more about now than I did before. This is the idea that we must pray with boldness. In much hymnody about the saints, they are described as having boldness before the Lord. The Mother of God is described as having boldness with Christ because He is her son, and mothers can get their sons to do things that other people might not be able to. We take the wedding at Cana as the first of these motherly intercessions, where Mary asks Jesus to provide wine miraculously and He does it.
But what has always puzzled me is how we, when we are supposed to be humble and meek and such, are also supposed to pray boldly. Should we pray boldly for the things we want? Should we be demanding mercy or commanding grace? Is this what is meant by boldness in prayer? There are some Christians who seem to view God as their personal vending-machine. "Lord," they say, "I need more money. Please take away the demon of poverty and give me money." I once heard a preacher say that "our God is a results-oriented God. He wants us to pray to Him so He can do miraculous things in our lives." He meant healings, success, the realization of goals, and this in itself is not incorrect, but the equasion he used was missing something. "Accept Christ as your personal God," he seemed to say, "and anything you want will be added unto you, because God wants us to have whatever we want. He wants to give it to us, if only we accept Christ."
So, I reject this form of praying with boldness, because it misses out on some key elements of what it is to become a follower of Christ. I have only come to what I think may be the truth, or some of the truth at any rate, of things very recently, and I only discovered it by experience. It's not something that can really be described, but being someone who enjoys challenges, I'm going to try to describe what real praying with boldness would seem to look like.
Let's begin with intercessory prayer. We ask the saints and also our fellow Christians to pray for us on our behalf. We also pray for them and for the dead, or we are taught to do this in Orthodox Christianity. We believe that intercessory prayer is effective, both for the person being prayed for and the person doing the praying, especially if we ask for mercy for someone whom we truly do not like, since it humbles us and makes us less judgmental--we hope. We further believe that praying for someone is a mystical experience, which allows us to offer via our prayers some aid. It is God who is aiding the person, but it is we who are asking His aid, and so are somehow participating in it. This is a Mystery.
Now, a key element to true prayer is the complete and utter certainty that we in ourselves are, in fact, nothing. Or should I say: we in our egos are, in fact, nothing? At any rate, we have to really know this, and I don't mean intellectually. I mean that we have to know it deeply, and this is given by grace, and it will usually have to be given again and again, because that ego, those passions are stubborn things! So alright. First, we have the complete and utter certainty that we are nothing in our current state. Then comes the complete and utter certainty that God loves us as we are right this second. He's there right at this moment and is desiring us to come to him in our filth and nakedness. (Yes, I'm intentionally using those strong words.) We have to see ourselves like the man who was robbed on the road to Jerico, and Christ as the Sammaritan who will bind our wounds. Again, this is given by grace, and grace comes when we are ready to receive it. We can push it away if we wish, but praying regularly and trying very hard to silence the mind is a good beginning.
After the realization that God does in fact love us as we are, there must be a desire to become better. There must be a wish and a will to be changed by God, and a sort of surrendering to that change. I like to think of it as allowing ourselves to be caught up into the Kingdom of Heaven. This sounds terribly mystical and esoteric, but I believe that this is what we need to try to allow in ourselves. We can't make it happen, but we can try to keep a peaceful heart and keep trying to regain it when it is lost, which it often will be due to the world and its vicisitudes. In this surrendering to God, there will come a moment when we are perfectly cognisant of our unworthiness while at the same time being cognisant of His abounding love and mercy to us, and it is at this point when true boldness in prayer can happen. Because we know how manifold are God's works and how infinitely much He can do for us as compared to what we can do for Him, we become empowered in a certain way. We realize that in our weakness His strength can be manifest, and we pray, not emotionally or anxiously, but peacefully and with a courage that we might not otherwise feel.
You see, the hymnody often trips us up. Or well, it trips me up. We say in our hymns that since a saint has "gained the victory" by their struggles, they now have boldness with God. This often sounds to me as though a saint has somehow triumphed by his or her own will, in the manner of the stoic philosophers. Indeed, I believe (and this is merely an opinion) that the stoics have had a great influence on the poetry which has come down to us about the martyrs and the desert monks especially. However, to the point again, while the will and the struggle has to be there, it's the surrendering to God's love and grace in full knowledge of both our weakness and His awesomeness where the true victory is gained. We must struggle, yes, but it is a struggle which is not conducted by ourselves alone. True freedom comes when we surrender, not in a fearful and abject way, but in a hopeful and grateful way, to God and His bounty.
And so, again, we come round to the notion of living eucharistically. We can offer a lot of things (from our point of view, that is) to God. We can offer our talents, our time, our prayers, our finances, the work of our hands; but all this is a mere beginning. All this is a preparation for when we are able to truly offer ourselves, body and soul, to God, and it is only through his offering Himself to us that this can be achieved. There will be more about this mutual offering in my next post.
Deo Gratias!
Today, I'd like to talk about an idea in Christian thought which has puzzled me for some time, but which, I think, I know a little more about now than I did before. This is the idea that we must pray with boldness. In much hymnody about the saints, they are described as having boldness before the Lord. The Mother of God is described as having boldness with Christ because He is her son, and mothers can get their sons to do things that other people might not be able to. We take the wedding at Cana as the first of these motherly intercessions, where Mary asks Jesus to provide wine miraculously and He does it.
But what has always puzzled me is how we, when we are supposed to be humble and meek and such, are also supposed to pray boldly. Should we pray boldly for the things we want? Should we be demanding mercy or commanding grace? Is this what is meant by boldness in prayer? There are some Christians who seem to view God as their personal vending-machine. "Lord," they say, "I need more money. Please take away the demon of poverty and give me money." I once heard a preacher say that "our God is a results-oriented God. He wants us to pray to Him so He can do miraculous things in our lives." He meant healings, success, the realization of goals, and this in itself is not incorrect, but the equasion he used was missing something. "Accept Christ as your personal God," he seemed to say, "and anything you want will be added unto you, because God wants us to have whatever we want. He wants to give it to us, if only we accept Christ."
So, I reject this form of praying with boldness, because it misses out on some key elements of what it is to become a follower of Christ. I have only come to what I think may be the truth, or some of the truth at any rate, of things very recently, and I only discovered it by experience. It's not something that can really be described, but being someone who enjoys challenges, I'm going to try to describe what real praying with boldness would seem to look like.
Let's begin with intercessory prayer. We ask the saints and also our fellow Christians to pray for us on our behalf. We also pray for them and for the dead, or we are taught to do this in Orthodox Christianity. We believe that intercessory prayer is effective, both for the person being prayed for and the person doing the praying, especially if we ask for mercy for someone whom we truly do not like, since it humbles us and makes us less judgmental--we hope. We further believe that praying for someone is a mystical experience, which allows us to offer via our prayers some aid. It is God who is aiding the person, but it is we who are asking His aid, and so are somehow participating in it. This is a Mystery.
Now, a key element to true prayer is the complete and utter certainty that we in ourselves are, in fact, nothing. Or should I say: we in our egos are, in fact, nothing? At any rate, we have to really know this, and I don't mean intellectually. I mean that we have to know it deeply, and this is given by grace, and it will usually have to be given again and again, because that ego, those passions are stubborn things! So alright. First, we have the complete and utter certainty that we are nothing in our current state. Then comes the complete and utter certainty that God loves us as we are right this second. He's there right at this moment and is desiring us to come to him in our filth and nakedness. (Yes, I'm intentionally using those strong words.) We have to see ourselves like the man who was robbed on the road to Jerico, and Christ as the Sammaritan who will bind our wounds. Again, this is given by grace, and grace comes when we are ready to receive it. We can push it away if we wish, but praying regularly and trying very hard to silence the mind is a good beginning.
After the realization that God does in fact love us as we are, there must be a desire to become better. There must be a wish and a will to be changed by God, and a sort of surrendering to that change. I like to think of it as allowing ourselves to be caught up into the Kingdom of Heaven. This sounds terribly mystical and esoteric, but I believe that this is what we need to try to allow in ourselves. We can't make it happen, but we can try to keep a peaceful heart and keep trying to regain it when it is lost, which it often will be due to the world and its vicisitudes. In this surrendering to God, there will come a moment when we are perfectly cognisant of our unworthiness while at the same time being cognisant of His abounding love and mercy to us, and it is at this point when true boldness in prayer can happen. Because we know how manifold are God's works and how infinitely much He can do for us as compared to what we can do for Him, we become empowered in a certain way. We realize that in our weakness His strength can be manifest, and we pray, not emotionally or anxiously, but peacefully and with a courage that we might not otherwise feel.
You see, the hymnody often trips us up. Or well, it trips me up. We say in our hymns that since a saint has "gained the victory" by their struggles, they now have boldness with God. This often sounds to me as though a saint has somehow triumphed by his or her own will, in the manner of the stoic philosophers. Indeed, I believe (and this is merely an opinion) that the stoics have had a great influence on the poetry which has come down to us about the martyrs and the desert monks especially. However, to the point again, while the will and the struggle has to be there, it's the surrendering to God's love and grace in full knowledge of both our weakness and His awesomeness where the true victory is gained. We must struggle, yes, but it is a struggle which is not conducted by ourselves alone. True freedom comes when we surrender, not in a fearful and abject way, but in a hopeful and grateful way, to God and His bounty.
And so, again, we come round to the notion of living eucharistically. We can offer a lot of things (from our point of view, that is) to God. We can offer our talents, our time, our prayers, our finances, the work of our hands; but all this is a mere beginning. All this is a preparation for when we are able to truly offer ourselves, body and soul, to God, and it is only through his offering Himself to us that this can be achieved. There will be more about this mutual offering in my next post.
Deo Gratias!
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Joyful Penitence? Really?
Benedicamus Domino!
Throughout my time as a Christian, I have often heard that I should "repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." This particular phrase is most memorably spoken by John the Baptist as he is telling the multitudes at the river Jordan about the coming of Christ. As he gives his description of who Christ is, there is a fiery note to his words. In fact, he states that while he himself baptizes "with water, (Christ) will baptize with The Holy Ghost and with fire." He also describes Christ as one with a winnowing fan, who will separate the wheat from the chaff in his threshing floor and "will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (I take this from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 3.)
I have always loved and feared this passage. I have loved it for John's intensity and boldness, but I have feared it because repentance has seemed to me to be something which I must do to avoid wrath. For me, baptism with the Holy Ghost was what I called 'the good kind,' and baptism with fire was 'the bad kind,' the kind that happened when one didn't repent. I connected the unrepentant with the chaff and the repentant with the wheat. There is no doubt that this is some of the meaning, but if it is the whole meaning, then we are of all men most miserable, because it is very hard to truly repent.
Of course, it depends on what we mean by repentance. The meaning of the Greek word used in this passage is 'a changing of the heart' or 'a turning around.' There has, however, been a history of equating repentance with feeling guilty and being in a continual state of sorrow for our sins. God becomes this large and all-seeing eye to whom we must continually say 'sorry' in order that he will not smite us with some imaginable horror either in this life or in the next. If a person has grown up with this sort of idea being taught to them, then it's no wonder to me that they might not find anything beneficial in the Christianity that they have inherited. We have a responsibility to know our faith and to teach it as wholly as we can to those who come after.
However, I digress. While it is true that there must be remorse and contrition involved in repentance, I don't think that this is as important as the act of turning, the act of rejecting the old way in favour of the new. Remorse and contrition may not be the first things to come, but the knowledge that one needs to turn must be there. Yet what is it we're turning from? Those who have read this blog will know the answer by now: the ego! This is what has been called 'the old man' in Church thought. It is this puppet or idol which needs to be tamed and ultimately killed via repentance. Only then can the true self, 'the new man,' come through and rule over our lives and our souls.
So then, if we reject the ego, what then are we embracing? Are we turning to a fearful and dread judge? Are we being welcomed by our Father to whom we have been prodigal? Are we seeking to appease a thundering and terrible god whose caprices will one day strike us down if we're not careful? Well, God forbid the last should be true! Still, God is not like us. He is more than we are, and He does appear dreadful to us in our current egocentric state. Even His charity and mercy are awesome to think about!
And then there's Christ the winnower. Does He only winnow the repentant from among the unrepentant? Is His threshing floor only the world out there? No. Christ's threshing floor is every person's heart, and His fan is in His hand so that He can winnow the useless and unproductive chaff from the nourishing and neutricious wheat. So, the fire of His love is necessary. We must be tried as gold is tried, tempered as a good sword is tempered, to make the gold purer and the steel stronger, and there is a part of the human being that is joyful at this. It wants to be freed from the chains of the ego, and freedom is only found through allowing Christ to work in us.
Simple guilt is a form of pride. It says that we are sorry for something, but it is paralyzing. We begin to hold onto it and to wear it like a badge of honour, when all we're really doing is acting the part of Judas. He was frightened and guilty at what he had done by betraying Christ. He even gave the blood money back to the priests, but he forgot the joy. He forgot, or never knew, the joy and the love of Christ. If he had known it, he could have repented as Peter did for denying Christ three times. Peter knew Christ for who He was, and for him, faith, hope and love were stronger than guilt, and he was able to turn guilt into true contrition. He wept bitterly, it is true, but only joy could have caused him to run to the sepulchre when the news was told to him that Christ was risen from the dead.
This is why I believe that true penitence is not simply mourning for our sins, but it is a mourning that is tinged with joy, because we know to Whom we are confessing and turning when we repent. We have faith that Christ is merciful and is also willing and able to do the difficult work of changing our hearts, and it is this for which we should be joyful. Walking around with sad faces and eyes continually cast down may seem to be what we are asked to do sometimes, but always after the night comes the morning, and we know that joy comes in the morning. We must have the night and the morning in us at once, both Lent and Easter, death and resurrection. We must know what we turn from and where we are heading. A friend of mine once told me that I should "keep my eye on eternity," and these words have guided me in some very dark times. Knowing that there is an Eternity to which we will be called is something which is both sobering and shiningly-joyful beyond telling; at least it is for me. May we all feel Christ's joy in us, and may that joy be full!
Deo gratias!
Throughout my time as a Christian, I have often heard that I should "repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." This particular phrase is most memorably spoken by John the Baptist as he is telling the multitudes at the river Jordan about the coming of Christ. As he gives his description of who Christ is, there is a fiery note to his words. In fact, he states that while he himself baptizes "with water, (Christ) will baptize with The Holy Ghost and with fire." He also describes Christ as one with a winnowing fan, who will separate the wheat from the chaff in his threshing floor and "will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (I take this from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 3.)
I have always loved and feared this passage. I have loved it for John's intensity and boldness, but I have feared it because repentance has seemed to me to be something which I must do to avoid wrath. For me, baptism with the Holy Ghost was what I called 'the good kind,' and baptism with fire was 'the bad kind,' the kind that happened when one didn't repent. I connected the unrepentant with the chaff and the repentant with the wheat. There is no doubt that this is some of the meaning, but if it is the whole meaning, then we are of all men most miserable, because it is very hard to truly repent.
Of course, it depends on what we mean by repentance. The meaning of the Greek word used in this passage is 'a changing of the heart' or 'a turning around.' There has, however, been a history of equating repentance with feeling guilty and being in a continual state of sorrow for our sins. God becomes this large and all-seeing eye to whom we must continually say 'sorry' in order that he will not smite us with some imaginable horror either in this life or in the next. If a person has grown up with this sort of idea being taught to them, then it's no wonder to me that they might not find anything beneficial in the Christianity that they have inherited. We have a responsibility to know our faith and to teach it as wholly as we can to those who come after.
However, I digress. While it is true that there must be remorse and contrition involved in repentance, I don't think that this is as important as the act of turning, the act of rejecting the old way in favour of the new. Remorse and contrition may not be the first things to come, but the knowledge that one needs to turn must be there. Yet what is it we're turning from? Those who have read this blog will know the answer by now: the ego! This is what has been called 'the old man' in Church thought. It is this puppet or idol which needs to be tamed and ultimately killed via repentance. Only then can the true self, 'the new man,' come through and rule over our lives and our souls.
So then, if we reject the ego, what then are we embracing? Are we turning to a fearful and dread judge? Are we being welcomed by our Father to whom we have been prodigal? Are we seeking to appease a thundering and terrible god whose caprices will one day strike us down if we're not careful? Well, God forbid the last should be true! Still, God is not like us. He is more than we are, and He does appear dreadful to us in our current egocentric state. Even His charity and mercy are awesome to think about!
And then there's Christ the winnower. Does He only winnow the repentant from among the unrepentant? Is His threshing floor only the world out there? No. Christ's threshing floor is every person's heart, and His fan is in His hand so that He can winnow the useless and unproductive chaff from the nourishing and neutricious wheat. So, the fire of His love is necessary. We must be tried as gold is tried, tempered as a good sword is tempered, to make the gold purer and the steel stronger, and there is a part of the human being that is joyful at this. It wants to be freed from the chains of the ego, and freedom is only found through allowing Christ to work in us.
Simple guilt is a form of pride. It says that we are sorry for something, but it is paralyzing. We begin to hold onto it and to wear it like a badge of honour, when all we're really doing is acting the part of Judas. He was frightened and guilty at what he had done by betraying Christ. He even gave the blood money back to the priests, but he forgot the joy. He forgot, or never knew, the joy and the love of Christ. If he had known it, he could have repented as Peter did for denying Christ three times. Peter knew Christ for who He was, and for him, faith, hope and love were stronger than guilt, and he was able to turn guilt into true contrition. He wept bitterly, it is true, but only joy could have caused him to run to the sepulchre when the news was told to him that Christ was risen from the dead.
This is why I believe that true penitence is not simply mourning for our sins, but it is a mourning that is tinged with joy, because we know to Whom we are confessing and turning when we repent. We have faith that Christ is merciful and is also willing and able to do the difficult work of changing our hearts, and it is this for which we should be joyful. Walking around with sad faces and eyes continually cast down may seem to be what we are asked to do sometimes, but always after the night comes the morning, and we know that joy comes in the morning. We must have the night and the morning in us at once, both Lent and Easter, death and resurrection. We must know what we turn from and where we are heading. A friend of mine once told me that I should "keep my eye on eternity," and these words have guided me in some very dark times. Knowing that there is an Eternity to which we will be called is something which is both sobering and shiningly-joyful beyond telling; at least it is for me. May we all feel Christ's joy in us, and may that joy be full!
Deo gratias!
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Is the Kingdom of Heaven like Nervana?
Benedicamus Domino!
I realize that in my last entry, I may have posited an idea of the Kingdom of Heaven which was akin to Nervana in Buddhist thought. Nervana is what is attained when enlightenment is reached and the awakening of a Buddhist has been fully realized. It is a state of bliss, with no desire and no need for attachment, and where the wheel of suffering no longer holds sway over the soul. I'm really oversimplifying and generalizing this, by the way. Is this bliss then the 'joy' of which I am speaking in this blog?
Well, monastics, especially perhaps the eastern monastics of the desert, talk about reaching a state of dispassion. They talk about living as angels on earth if we can beat down our inordinate and egoistic desires to make room for God's will and God's grace in our lives. Is this then the Kingdom of Heaven? I actually believe that to reach a state of dispassion is to prepare the way for the Kingdom of Heaven in each individual. There are many stories about monks who reached a high degree of dispassion but who became hard-hearted toward their fellow-men and fell from that height because of it. (I use height here metaphorically.)
But do we have to reach total dispassion in our lives before the Kingdom of Heaven can dwell in us, before we can find a state of true joy? If this were the case, then no one would ever get there, or very few. Christ is our dispassion. Christ is our doorway. His path and His presence are what can help us along the way, and every day, we may find "Kingdom moments" sprinkled throughout. We often talk about working and labouring for the Kingdom, but this can take many forms, perhaps the greatest of which is contemplation. I don't mean a fixed set of contemplations necessarily, but something which allows us to be still a while and to focus all our attention on being grateful to God, or on asking Him for His mercy for ourselves or for others. In short, we can realize the Kingdom of Heaven in ourselves a little bit every day, so long as we are open to receiving what God has to teach us. No amount of wishing for it will bring it nearer, because it is already as near as it can get. No amount of bargaining for it will help either. It is a matter of letting go of "I" and learning to co-suffer with all of humanity, and then there is the grace of God. He will leaven our three measures of meal (which I will call faith, hope and charity) if we are patient and allow them to rise.
So, is the Kingdom of Heaven like Nervana? I don't think it is. I think that Nervana is achieved byutation and by the emptying of the mind, while the Kingdom is a fullness. Dispassion is near the Kingdom, but if faith, hope and charity have not been kindled to replace the passions, then only coldness will remain, and the last state will be worse than the first. I firmly believe that the Kingdom is nearer to many people than it is to me, and I fully expect that others whom I might consider to be far away from it will find it before I will. God is God, and He knows all of us better than we know ourselves.
It is important to note that the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is not a club. It is not some exclusive restaurant. I don't believe that every single person will find it, but I don't believe that it is only the province of people who identify themselves as Christians. In the parable of the wedding garment, Christ talks about a man who comes to a wedding but does not have on a wedding garment, and the host gives orders for the man to be bound and to be cast into outer darkness. Some people gloss this garment as the purity of Baptism, but others have glossed it as love. In the end, we really don't know what Christ means by His use of the wedding garment, but I must say that the idea of love or charity appeals to me more than simply that of baptism. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not downplaying the importance of baptism in the Christian faith, but it is really a beginning of things. It symbolizes dying to the self, but the process of that dying goes on all our lives.
As I stated before, I believe that if anyone is shut out of the Kingdom, he or she does it to him or herself, and only God knows our hearts, so I could never say what would truly keep a person from finding this joyful state of being called the Kingdom of Heaven. I only know that in every parable about the Kingdom, it is the ego that stands in the way, and it is humility and a eucharistic offering of thanks which opens the door.
Deo Gratias!
I realize that in my last entry, I may have posited an idea of the Kingdom of Heaven which was akin to Nervana in Buddhist thought. Nervana is what is attained when enlightenment is reached and the awakening of a Buddhist has been fully realized. It is a state of bliss, with no desire and no need for attachment, and where the wheel of suffering no longer holds sway over the soul. I'm really oversimplifying and generalizing this, by the way. Is this bliss then the 'joy' of which I am speaking in this blog?
Well, monastics, especially perhaps the eastern monastics of the desert, talk about reaching a state of dispassion. They talk about living as angels on earth if we can beat down our inordinate and egoistic desires to make room for God's will and God's grace in our lives. Is this then the Kingdom of Heaven? I actually believe that to reach a state of dispassion is to prepare the way for the Kingdom of Heaven in each individual. There are many stories about monks who reached a high degree of dispassion but who became hard-hearted toward their fellow-men and fell from that height because of it. (I use height here metaphorically.)
But do we have to reach total dispassion in our lives before the Kingdom of Heaven can dwell in us, before we can find a state of true joy? If this were the case, then no one would ever get there, or very few. Christ is our dispassion. Christ is our doorway. His path and His presence are what can help us along the way, and every day, we may find "Kingdom moments" sprinkled throughout. We often talk about working and labouring for the Kingdom, but this can take many forms, perhaps the greatest of which is contemplation. I don't mean a fixed set of contemplations necessarily, but something which allows us to be still a while and to focus all our attention on being grateful to God, or on asking Him for His mercy for ourselves or for others. In short, we can realize the Kingdom of Heaven in ourselves a little bit every day, so long as we are open to receiving what God has to teach us. No amount of wishing for it will bring it nearer, because it is already as near as it can get. No amount of bargaining for it will help either. It is a matter of letting go of "I" and learning to co-suffer with all of humanity, and then there is the grace of God. He will leaven our three measures of meal (which I will call faith, hope and charity) if we are patient and allow them to rise.
So, is the Kingdom of Heaven like Nervana? I don't think it is. I think that Nervana is achieved byutation and by the emptying of the mind, while the Kingdom is a fullness. Dispassion is near the Kingdom, but if faith, hope and charity have not been kindled to replace the passions, then only coldness will remain, and the last state will be worse than the first. I firmly believe that the Kingdom is nearer to many people than it is to me, and I fully expect that others whom I might consider to be far away from it will find it before I will. God is God, and He knows all of us better than we know ourselves.
It is important to note that the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is not a club. It is not some exclusive restaurant. I don't believe that every single person will find it, but I don't believe that it is only the province of people who identify themselves as Christians. In the parable of the wedding garment, Christ talks about a man who comes to a wedding but does not have on a wedding garment, and the host gives orders for the man to be bound and to be cast into outer darkness. Some people gloss this garment as the purity of Baptism, but others have glossed it as love. In the end, we really don't know what Christ means by His use of the wedding garment, but I must say that the idea of love or charity appeals to me more than simply that of baptism. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not downplaying the importance of baptism in the Christian faith, but it is really a beginning of things. It symbolizes dying to the self, but the process of that dying goes on all our lives.
As I stated before, I believe that if anyone is shut out of the Kingdom, he or she does it to him or herself, and only God knows our hearts, so I could never say what would truly keep a person from finding this joyful state of being called the Kingdom of Heaven. I only know that in every parable about the Kingdom, it is the ego that stands in the way, and it is humility and a eucharistic offering of thanks which opens the door.
Deo Gratias!
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