Gossip is the Worst
CNS reporting the Holy Father's words:
It's so rotten, gossip. At the beginning, it seems to be something enjoyable and fun, like a piece of candy.
The Holy Father is right on. Gossip is the death of fraternal charity.
The Wrong Question
The words we use betray us. They betray what’s on our mind and what’s in our heart. Listen closely to the words a person uses, the phrases he employs, and you’ll learn more about the speaker than he intends. This listening skill is essential for those of us who participate in the ministry of the “care of souls”. It’s not just the words that matter. It’s what’s lurking behind the words that’s often far more important. The words people choose often hint at a more fundamental disposition. It sounds cliche but it’s almost always true.
This is simply a preamble to what I really want to talk about. I feel this preamble is necessary because what I want to say touches on a core issue of the human spirit. I want to talk about the perceived relationship that we, as individuals, have with God. I say “perceived” on purpose. Sometimes we can think our relationship with God is strong when the reality is actually the opposite. A friend of mine asked me a question one time that illustrates the problem. He said, “when I’m praying, sometimes I wonder if I am actually talking to God or just talking to myself.”
Now that’s one heckuva statement!
He wasn’t questioning the existence of God. No, he was questioning himself. He was questioning whether he, in fact, had the sort of relationship with God that he believed he had. Essentially, my friend was wondering if he was actually a spiritual narcissist. This is a great question to ask ourselves regularly. Just being able to ask this question is evidence of spiritual maturity. Becoming spiritually mature often requires this sort of a shake up. Essentially, my friend wasn’t satisfied with simply relying on his own judgment about the things he discerned in prayer. He wanted external confirmation. He needed something tangible, something objective. He needed something to keep him grounded in reality so he didn’t fall into the trap of creating God in his own image. And, man, is it an easy trap to fall into. Parenthetically, this is exactly why Christ established his Church. She is the guardian and storehouse of the Deposit of Faith. She is a sure guide for living a good and holy life. This is why Blessed Pope John XXIII named the Church both Mother and Teacher.1
This memory popped into my mind because something keeps popping up in my conversations. I hear it online and offline. It’s almost a catch phrase at this point. When I’m having a conversation with someone about some moral failing (no matter what that failing may be) at some point my conversation partner will say: “I know that God loves me just the way I am.” At this point you’re probably scratching your head wondering, “What's the problem, Br. Gabriel?” Well, let me tell you. I mean, it’s usually a wonderful thing for someone to realize that they’re embraced by the all-encompassing love of God. Not everyone realizes this. The problem is that it’s the right answer to the wrong question.
I’m always surprised when this phrase is used. I shouldn’t be, but I am. It shows just how far our culture has fallen away from a basic understanding of God. Whenever I hear it I have an urge to grab the person by the shoulders and shake some sense into him saying, “Look, yes, you’re right! But that’s not the question. Of course God loves you. That’s a given!” What, then, is the question? The question we ask ourselves needs to be, “Do I love God?” But, see, this is the harder question. This is the question that many people don’t want to ask. They don’t want to ask it because they don’t like the consequences that follow from the answer.
If the answer to this question is “no,” the consequences are pretty terrifying. But, if the answer to the question is “yes,” the consequences are still pretty terrifying. The former is terrifying for, hopefully, obvious reasons. The latter is terrifying because it requires change. And, change, serious change, is always scary.
The moment I profess love for God I’m beholden to the words of Christ in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” I call this Christ’s Eliza Doolittle moment. Christ is effectively saying, “if you love me, show me!” So we can’t just say, “God loves me” and then be satisfied with the manner of our life. On the contrary, once we know that God’s love is both intimate and personal we have an obligation to repent of the imperfections, faults, and sins in our life and believe in the transformative power of the Gospel.
This isn’t the “health and wellness” gospel. This is the true gospel message. This is the message that requires courage to follow. Christianity isn’t the easy path that some make it out to be. It’s a daily struggle to live up to the name ‘Christian.’
So, does your love for God make you want to be a better person? Does your love for God make you want to please him above everyone else? Does your love for God make you want to follow his commandments with diligence regardless of how you feel about those commands? I hope so. If not, it might be time to reflect on the nature of your relationship with God. Do you really and truly love God with your whole mind, your whole heart, and your whole soul? Or, are you holding something back?
This is simply a choice that we get to make. Love is, after all, a choice. So, if we choose to love God, then we need to live out that love with intensity and reckless abandon. Don’t be satisfied with simply knowing that God loves you. That’s lazy. Root out of your life those things that displease God. I know, it isn’t easy. We have a tendency to rut and wallow in our sins. We hold onto them like a miser griping his last coin. But, if we love someone we generally desire to please that person. And, we generally don’t get to decide the terms and conditions for pleasing that person. We have to please them on their own terms. God is no different. But, if we’re spiritual narcissists we’ll never discover how beautiful an authentic love relationship with God can actually be. We will always be dictating our terms to God like petulant children.
Don’t fool yourself.
Don’t be afraid to conform yourself to his will.
It’s hard work, but, there’s true happiness, joy, and peace waiting for those who truly love him.
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Everyone should read his Encyclical Mater et Magistra. ↩
Dust and Ashes
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Oddly, my yearly custom has become a Facebook complaint about Mass attendance. Normally people opine sparse Mass attendance. But, on Ash Wednesday, even more than Christmas and Easter, pews swell with souls seeking to be dusted with the remains of burned palms. This is what I opine. It's frustrating because it isn't a major celebration in the liturgical life of the Church. It has a special place in the liturgical cycle. However, it's importance is derived from its relationship to Easter. Ash Wednesday is a midway point. It's a time to look back to Adam and the fall. But it's also a time to look ahead toward Christ and the redemption. It's like gazing down from the top of a mountain dividing two radically different countries. But we are no idle sightseers. We are on a journey from the one land to the other. From sinnful Egypt to holy Jerusalem. The midpoint is important. But this is only due to its relationship to the beginning and to the end of that journey.
This journey of ours is rather odd. It's less like a forced march through rugged terrain and more like a guided tour through a national park. The land has already been tamed. Christ has tamed it. We are simply following after his footsteps. Our guide, the Church, is moving us along the trail he has already cut. Along the journey our guide points out for us significant markers along the roadside for our benefit. This is one way to see the liturgical cycle.
When the Church identifies for us the hierarchy of celebrations she is helping us discern what is important for us to see or know about on our journey. This is why days and seasons are ranked. This is why we have days of precept, days of obligation, and days that are neither. Some celebrations teach us more about the Christian life than others. The Church, as both Mother and Teacher guides us in our path toward greater personal conformity to Christ through establishing which ones are important for us to celebrate. This isn't something we get to choose. The student doesn't get to dictate the lesson plan of the teacher. But this is how so many people act. For one reason or another people choose the lessons they want to accept or not. The student/teacher relationship is broken.
America is a child of the enlightenment. Hyper individualism is a foundational disposition of the American ethos. All things get subordinated to the radical autonomy of the individual. Choice is held to be the most important human power in our modern culture. But this is an exaggeration in our society, in ourselves, that should be brought under control.
Unfortunately, I think that the constant reducing and transferring of obligatory liturgical celebrations has damaged our liturgical sensibilities. Ecclesiastical authority may have unwittingly capitulated to this central vice of American society. Not raising the bar and holding people accountable has contributed to the general religious confusion in our time. The establishment and maintaining of obligatory celebrations helps us set priorities in life. Establishing a precept about mandating Mass attendance communicates to people that this action, and this particular celebration is very important. It goes on the top of the list. But instead, I fear we have communicated the opposite.
This is one puzzle piece to a much larger problem. But, it's an easy place to start solving it. That Ash Wednesday has a greater attendance than, say, the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, is, to me, a sign that we have our loves seriously out of order.
Office Notes In Comic Sans
First off, tip o' the hat to Merlin Mann. My title is a reference to an episode of his productivity podcast "Back to Work," cohosted by Dan Benjamin over at the 5by5 Network. It's worth the listen. Well, nearly everything there is worth a listen.
I tend to get really angry when people leave notes in a common space. I'm not talking about posted instructions or reminders. I'm talking about those snarky little notes that say, often in all caps, "YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T LIVE HERE. CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF," and usually end with an advanced ""Thank You"" that acts as a veiled threat. First of all, don't talk about my mother that way! Second, it's one of the worst ways to motivate me, or anyone else, to virtue. On the contrary, it provokes me, or anyone else, to anger.
So, stop!
Exit Word, back away from the PC (because no self-respecting Mac user would write such a note ... or use Comic Sans), and walk away.
Why, you might be asking? "Aren't I being helpful?" you ask. Well, no, actually for starters it's cowardly. It's just one more way to avoid confrontation. It may change behavior a few times at best; but, it will eventually fail to be effective. It's like trying to win a war with land mines. Yeah, they are briefly effective. However, they aren't going to achieve victory. And, just like land mines, they can be left around, only to erupt during times of peace. Because, you see, the problem that caused you to write the note wasn't solved at the root. The resulting resentment will lead to gossip and grudge holding — two of the greatest barriers to a healthy community.
Writing a note like this in Comic Sans just adds insult to injury. It's a feeble attempt to mask the underlying anger. It's the written equivalent of sarcasm. One of my Dominican brothers wisely noted that sarcasm is "anger with a smile." The results of both sarcasm and "helpful" Comic Sans notes are the same. And the vice at the root of the problem is the same, viz., cowardice.
I think sometimes the problem is that confrontation is often confused with being uncharitable. But, in reality, it's uncharitable to not confront bad behavior directly. The common term for this sort of uncharitable behavior is passive aggressiveness. Acting in a passive agressive way reveals a lack of mature emotional integration. In other words, put on your big kid pants and act like a mature adult.
The opposite of passive aggressive behavior is not aggressive behavior. The opposite behavior is fraternal correction. But, you can't just go around confronting people and call it fraternal correction. The practice of this virtue requires a number of things to be in place first. It isn't simply confronting someone in a nice way. It isn't simply confronting someone in a kind way. It's confronting someone in a charitable way.
In order to do this properly we must first be willing to bear the wrong that we've received patiently. It's natural to be angry when we experience a wrong. But, that anger should not control us. It should simply move us to correct the injustice we've experienced. Feelings of anger should quickly give way to pity. Pity should ignite in us a desire to be both merciful and helpful. Remember what Gandalf told Frodo about pity? In mercy we understand the words of St. Augustine, "But for the grace of God, there go I." Thus, the help offered should be born out of Charity. We should desire the good of the person who did harm more than our own relief from the injustice inflicted. We must truly desire the greatest good of the other for his own sake. It's also necessary to realize, and this is tough, that even if you do all of this perfectly your efforts may still fail. Fraternal correction can happen only after all of these have taken place.
Yep. It's hard; but, it's the right thing to do. It's called loving your enemies. It's one of the most difficult things in the Christian life.
Obedience
There are two ways to break a window. Either, you can shatter it with a single blow or, you can make a thousand tiny cracks in it. In the end the result is the same. Obedience is similar. Most often, however, we break obedience in those little ways. The large dramatic ones are more rare.
I recognize this all the time in myself and in others. Instead of conforming our will to the will of our superior, our spouse, our boss, or God we often try to duck under it or get around it. There are so many ways to do this that it would just be silly to list them. Plus, I think we all have plenty of personal experience with how we habitually break obedience. But, sometimes we break it without even realizing. An example is when we try to figure out how we can spin a command to align it to my own wants, desires, and needs. But, the virtue of obedience is not to conform the command to me. Rather, it is to conform myself to the command given.
St. Thomas Aquinas has the coolest understanding of obedience that I've come across. It comes from a deep understanding of human nature and a similarly deep understanding of human interactions. He tells us that it is not for the one commanded to pass judgment on the wisdom of the command given. Rather, the one commanded should strive to promptly fulfill the command. However, the one commanded is must determine the time and the place to fulfill the command. Of course, this assumes that the command given is not intrinsically evil.
There is a lot packed into this understanding of obedience. I won't bore you with a complete breakdown. Hopefully, you can see how he beautifully balances human freedom with obedience. What is not clear in this brief statement is the relationship of obedience to God's providence. This is a point that is often forgotten this days. Even in religious life there is a deficit in our understanding of who God's providence interacts with the will of the superior. In my own Order this unity of Divine Providence with the will of the superior was expressed in the formula for written commands. The command would say something like, "it is our will and the will of the Holy Spirit that you ..." Maybe this formula should be restored to help us remember how God fits into things when we receive a command that we don't particularly like. It may helps us remember that we are not to pass judgement on the wisdom of the command given.
There are essentially two reasons why we don't question the wisdom of the command given by the superior. First, we assume the good. Our constant principle for interpreting the actions and words of others must be the principle of charity. We must assume that the one giving the commands is doing his best for everyone concerned. The second reason is because the superior stands in the place of God when he is giving a command. He may not know it. You may not see it. But, God is the master of everything. We can trust that God will work for the good through the commands of someone he has placed over you. This is a scary thought. This means that God has chosen some slob to be the instrument of his will in your life. Well, yeah. But, to some degree we're all slobs. This is, again, why we obey through charity. We assume the good. It sounds naive but it's the right thing to do and its the right way to act. Trust God, trust your superiors, and trust yourself.
