Autonomy and Freedom, Part 4

I suggested yesterday that we can become better trained at listening to God and discerning the thoughts that come from Him and the thoughts that do not. Theologically, Christians are confident in this possibility because the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts. We have a divine 'spiritual director'. Blessed Columba Marmion used to tell people that he would assist as a spiritual director for a time, but that his function was to listen and help corroborate what the Holy Spirit was saying to the individual. But, like a crutch, a spiritual director should be discarded when the individual can walk on his own.

What are the signs of spiritual maturity that allow us to be docile to the Holy Spirit's direction, wise about the things of the spirit? Monastic tradition stresses humility: constant awareness of God's presence and anticipation of death and judgment. This practice will help focus us on the fact that we have thoughts, and that these thoughts need to be exposed to the divine light for discernment.

We can also aid this discernment by formation in the Holy Spirit. Let me use an example. A guitar string between two chairs will vibrate, but not make a whole lot of noise. If you string it on the hollow wooden body of a guitar, however, the sound of the vibrations will be greatly amplified and sweetened by the resonance of the wood and its hollow interior. God's voice is like that string: often still and small, easily overlooked. By the imitation of the saints and the practice of the virtues, we form ourselves into a perfectly resonant shape, quick to pick up divine inspiration. We also hollow ourselves out. A misshapen guitar will produce strange sounds, and a guitar packed with mud will stifle them. Well formed, we will also become aware of sounds that 'don't fit'.

So meditation on the teaching of Scripture and the practice of virtue: these will make discernment much easier.

Secondly, I promised to wrap up some conclusions about autonomy, freedom, thoughts and the ego. This will require a somewhat lengthy post, so I will save it for tomorrow.

Autonomy and Freedom, Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Autonomy and Freedom, Part 2

I've decided to answer questions and respond to comments on my previous post, which clearly touched a nerve. I hope to go on to speak about conversion soon, since I believe that there is a link between them.

First of all, Connie asks, "How does one discern Father? Especially a religious vocation? I know that I want to live my life for God, with God, and in God. It is very difficult for me to live in duality, i.e. a secular "life" with a job and its responsibilities and only time for God sandwiched in between. How do I know that my desire to live for, with and in God comes from God and not from me? Or would I even have these desires if they did not come from God?"

There are several questions there, and each of them could inspire a book (some of them have). In the context of my post, I was explaining the difference between a modern preference for autonomy (the ability to define one's own moral goodness and goals in life) and the Christian idea of freedom (in which we are set free to make morally good choices, given in the structure of God's creation and in His law, and to pursue the goals that God sets for us).

So discernment, in the Christian context, means first of all listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit. God speaks to us in many ways: through the moral law, through the sacraments, through our superiors in the Church (this can mean simply one's pastor or it could mean the pope). In any case, the voice comes from outside ourselves, and not infrequently poses a challenge to our sense of identity and comfort. I tell people that I never much thought about being a monk as I grew up, but the various signs that kept coming to me from the Church, from prayer, and from meditation on Scripture eventually led me to inquire into the possibility. When I did enter the monastery, I had no intention of becoming a priest, but in that case, the community asked it of me.

There is no possibility in the end of discerning a religious vocation without speaking to religious communities and letting them help you sort out which signs are from God and which are not. My general advice for anyone who has inclinations in this direction is simply to approach a religious community and begin praying with them, and if possible visiting with them. While the vocation director might be most helpful, it does not need to be someone official. Anyone with some experience of religious life can help interpret what God is saying to you.

What takes place once we open ourselves up to genuine dialogue with God and with others is that our own limited vision of reality and our subjective notion of the world undergo a challenge. The cultural forces that urge us toward autonomy will incline us to depart from dialogue if that dialogue suggests that our own opinions need revising. We might be inclined to say, "That's fine for you, but not for me!" Some of the prophets tried to do that with God, but He insisted that His idea was better. So we must commit ourselves to being disciples and students of the Church's wisdom. This being the case, we will want to entrust ourselves to teachers of good repute, but even poor teachers can mediate God's will if we take a real stance of faith.

Finally, we know that we have a vocation to religious life if the Church allows us to profess vows. Before that, there is always a certain amount of questioning going on, but it is not an existential sort of questioning only (of the sort, "Should I do this? Is it right for me? Am I selling out?"). These are only part of the questions that we should allow ourselves to encounter. The primary question is, "Is this what God wants?" and each religious order has its own criteria for determining whether a candidate is being called by God. In our Benedictine tradition, we look for zeal for the divine office, for obedience and humiliations. If a person does not show signs of having this zeal or a willingness to cultivate it, well, monastic life will probably be too difficult. If a person has all these things but is married, well, that is another sign from God that there is not a monastic vocation but a vocation to married life. And so on. Trust the Church's guidance and submit yourself to it! That would be my principal advice.

The last question is an excellent one: we all have thoughts and desires, too many to count. Which ones are of God and which ones are simply echoes of our own psychology? Are some even off demonic origin. It is a question right up our monastic alley, so to speak, and I will post on this next.

Miscellaney

I've returned safely from Colorado, where I had what I hope was a fruitful visit with the community of St. Walburga's.

As is my habit on the road, I brought along books I normally wouldn't get to read at home. The two in particular were Karol Berger's Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow, an exhilarating read (though musically very technical), and a collection of essays by Alasdair MacIntyre called The Tasks of Philosophy. Both books have stimulated a lot of thought, as did the Visitation of the abbey itself. Rather than attempt a systematic presentation of these thoughts at this point, I will simply lay down some observations over the next few days.

1) Berger, between sections on Bach and Mozart, locates the beginning of modernity in the break that Rousseau and others made with the Augustinian synthesis of Christendom. Now this was of particular interest to me, as I often make the point that these two thinkers represent fundamental opposites in terms of the understanding of evil. For Augustine, original sin infects even infants, who fight over milk when there is plenty to go around. The cure is socialization, into one of the two cities: the city of the world, in which force and domination keep unruly passions somewhat at bay, or into the City of God, in which grace allows us to be refashioned in God's image and freed from slavery to sin.

By contrast, Rousseau begins with an original goodness in children that is destroyed by socialization (this is very oversimplified, but it will do, I hope)! Socialization keeps us from being our good, natural selves.

Berger's view is consistent with mine (and I doubt very much that my observation is original). His focus, however, is on the addition of 'autonomy' to Christian freedom as a defining mark of Rousseau's innovation (along with that of the whole Enlightenment). In other words, Christians, who are 'set free for freedom', understand the universe to be a moral place, and this implies the freedom to choose either good or evil. Moderns also understand this, but with the addition of 'autonomy', which Berger defines as the ability to define the good for oneself, by applying reason according to one's own lights. Then one is free to choose to follow one's own good or not.

This is consistent with my observation above that Rousseau thinks that persons are naturally good and not afflicted by original sin. If this were the case, then of course we would not be liable to misuse autonomy to define a course of life for ourselves that will have a bad end. We would naturally choose good moral standards. Again, in R's opinion, the pressure of society and the pressure to conform or at least be thought well of (which generates the bad kind of self-love, amour-propre), causes us to negate our autonomy and to live inauthentically, which in his view is evil.

These issues are very much alive today. Who among us does not feel that certain areas of Church teaching, for example, force us to be inauthentic? The problem affects discernment especially. Very few people today find it easy to consider discernment as a process of finding out what God wants of me and choosing that, especially when what God wants is not what I want. We are rather more inclined to assume that our desires are all good, at least until they get us into deep trouble.

People frequently ask me, for example, if I find being a priest, monk or religious superior fulfilling. I am hesitant to say yes to the question phrased that way. I suppose that being a priest and superior, if anything, is the opposite of fulfilling; it is rather emptying. I have to get rid of all kinds of plans and little freedoms that I might otherwise want to keep. I have to do all kinds of things that I am not inclined to do. Now I write not so as to play the martyr, simply to say that I have come to believe that this is about obedience to a God Who knows better than I what is for my benefit and others' benefit. I had it my way for many years before I entered the monastery, and it was fun, I guess, but I also know that for me, autonomy, that is, choosing for myself what my life was going to entail, was a recipe for selfishness and generally lax moral behavior. So my life today, as a struggle to live discipleship faithfully, requires me to un-learn all kinds of behaviors over and over again, and at times it feels like the 'me' that I had kinda liked outside the monastery, is in danger of disappearing. But is this not the death that each of us must die in Christ so as to allow God to be all in all in us?

"Autonomy" might be a new term, but the idea of it I think is captured in the Tradition by the term "self will." What has changed is that whereas 'self-will' has a narcissistic and anti-social ring to it, who can find fault with autonomy?

So if we are to make sense of the monastic and otherwise Christian teaching that requires us to subjugate our will and autonomy to God's will and His creation, we need conversion. So I will pick up there with MacIntyre tomorrow, God willing.

Peace to you!

"Do You Love Me?"

[text of a homily given on the Friday before Pentecost, on John 21: 15-19]

Right before the most recent papal conclave, a news reporter asked then-Cardinal Ratzinger if he believed that the electors would select the man that the Holy Spirit wanted to be the next pope. He responded (and I must loosely paraphrase): "There are too many example in history of popes whom the Holy Spirit would surely not have chosen. Rather, the promise we have from Christ is that whatever choice we make, we can't mess things up too badly."

A few weeks ago, we had a week of readings from the tenth chapter of John's gospel. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will not leave the flock untended. What He didn't tell us at that point was that He was going to ask Simon Peter to help with the feeding and tending. This 'human touch' is frankly, on the face of it, a less comfortable arrangement than having Christ govern us directly. If it's true that we aren't able to mess things up too badly, we and those before us would seem to have tried our hardest, popes or not.

On the other hand, the choice of Peter should be a consolation for us mere humans. In the poignant encounter we hear this morning, Jesus puts Peter on the spot. But He does not ask, "How could you have denied me? What were you thinking?" Nor does this interview of sorts focus on Peter's administrative competency for tending sheep. Rather, Jesus asks, rather personally and bluntly, "Do you love me?" As Peter acknowledges, the Lord already knows the answer to this. After all, let's be fair to Peter: he would not have been in position to deny Jesus had he not cared enough to follow Him after His arrest. This gesture of love, feeble as it seems in retrospect, is at the foundation of the Church.

Surely there are days when we might wish that following Jesus Christ did not involve the ambiguities of a loving relationship. There is always a temptation to turn discipleship into a set of rules to be followed, whether they be found in the Catechism, the Rule of St. Benedict, Canon Law, or simply in our own personal set of rules, based on what has worked before. The successful fulfillment of precepts offers us an objective, measurable indication of our progress in our spiritual lives, or perhaps an opportunity to compare our progress with others' lack of progress. When this system fails in somes way: when we backslide, or stop making progress, or when someone less worthy than ourselves receives preferential treatment in the Church, we might be tempted to throw up our hand in frustration and ask God, "What do You want me to do?"

We are again in this position because, like Peter, we love the Lord. Perhaps, however, we are being invited to a deeper level of love and trust, one that will lead us out of our comfort zone, to "where we do not wish to go." We should recall at these times that we are very much in the presence of the Good Shepherd, who does not scold, but simply says to us, with that incomparable love, "Follow Me."

Homily on John 17: 1-10

[text of a homily preached on Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter at St. Walburga's Abbey]

This morning the liturgy presents us with the beginning of the great priestly prayer of Jesus Christ to the Father. these glimpses we have of the Son speaking with the Father are quite astonishing in the sense that we are privy to the mysterious inner dialogue of the Holy Trinity. Out of the dialogue, I would like to reflect on two points.

First, the Father gives to the Son all that He is and has. The Father gives us to the the Son. The Father also gives "words" (lower case 'w') to the Son, who in turn shares these "words" with us. We see here in the Holy Trinity the foundation of koinonia or community, into which we are invited. Our own monastic communities must therefore be an image of God's original communion, particularly by our spiritual bonds of love and our material practice of common property. Thus the images of the early Church [Acts 2: 44-46, 4: 32-35] being "of one mind and one heart" and "holding all things in common" is founded on the prior unanimity and sharing that is the essence of God Who is Love. Our efforts at unity with one another and with the whole Church, our efforts to love the community, are directly related to our love of God and our mysterioius sharing in the divine life.

This is a daunting task, as anyone with a small amount of experience in community life recognizes. Lest we be discouraged by the limitations we find in ourselves that make this mutual love difficult, we should listen carefully to our Lords' next words, "I pray for them." The mysterious inner dialogue of the Holy Trinity, the eternal God, includes each of us, by name, as individuals and as community. Each of us is known by name to the Father, who gives us to the Son, and by the Son, Who prays for us unceasingly to the Father. What a marvelous consolation this should be for us! What need is there for fear our discouragement?

How often when we pray do we worry that God does not hear, that we risk offending Him by our fumbling with inadequate words and feelings, that even if God is listening, He is eager to be off to more important tasks? We need not be anxious at all. God's Son has already prayed for us and is praying for us. We need simply believe this and begin anew each day with our best efforts to live in this infinite and everlasting love. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, will illumine our hearts to know this love of God and to be witnesses of this love by our love of our sisters and brothers.

Fun at the airport

My experience at Midway Saturday morning reminded me of a conversation I had recently during a walk I took around the Bridgeport neighborhood (in habit). A group of young people were hanging around in front of a building as I passed, and one of them hollered out, "Whoa, man! What's that [thing] you're wearing?!" I stopped and replied in a friendly manner, "It is called a religious habit. This is a tunic and this is what is called a scapular."

"So are you one of those guys who blows people up?"

Now recall that Bridgeport is traditionally and still nominally overwhelmingly Catholic. I do get the regular, "Hey, Father!" on my perambulations. But this was the most astounding question I have gotten yet. My response: "No. I serve the Prince of Peace. I am a Christian!"

I normally travel in clericals for the sake of simplicity at security, but since I am travelling with Mother Mary Clare who has no choice but to wear her habit, I opted for Benedictine solidarity and wore mine. This was the cause of consternation for the fellow who had to frisk me at security. "This is a baggy outfit!" My inconvenience was shared, of course, by Mother Mary Clare. Two baggy outfits! Worn by the worst sort, religious zealots! Who obviously blow people up!

That a teenager in Chicago could assume that anyone in traditional religious garb is to be linked with fanatical violence shows just how well the Enlightenment (or as Fr. Roach, SJ, used to say, the Endarkenment) has succeeded in controlloing public discourse. All religion is automatically superstitious unreason, linked to oppression and the restriction of freedom. No religious display can be tolerated in public. Only people in immodest and revealing (secular) clothing can pass easily through airport check-points; persons who insist on the mysterious power of the body and its proper veiling are suspect.

You can find, in a matter of seconds, stories on the internet about journalists in everyday clothes sneaking all kinds of dangerous objects onto airplanes right now. The alleged 9/11 highjackers 'disguised' themselves as regular Americans, forsaking baggy outfits (a la Bin Laden) and turbans. But religious display gets singled out for special opprobrium. People who believe in God are assumed to be more dangerous than those who do not. Have we forgotten the Soviet threat so thoroughly?

Greetings from Virginia Dale

I will be blogging this week from the Abbey of St. Walburga, Virginia Dale, Colorado, where I will be conducting a canonical visitation for the sisters. We officially began last night before Compline with a very simple ceremony, and over the next few days, I will meet with each of the sisters and at the end write up a report on the community's life. I have always felt very much at home here: the sisters are very warm and have a beautiful, prayerful liturgy. It is a privilege to have this responsibility delegated to me by Archbishop Chaput of Denver.

Joining me is Mother Mary Clare Vincent, OSB, retired Prioress of St. Scholastica's in Petersham, Massachusetts, another wonderful community, 'twinned' to our 'brother' Subiaco house of St. Mary's. It may or may not come as a surprise that women co-visitors have historically been rare. By historically, I mean until about twenty years ago. The new Code of Canon Law (1983) helped make the oversight of women's communities more flexible. It seems to me a no-brainer that I would have asked for a female co-visitor, but I am a child of the 1970's, and while I respect the developments and cultural situations that led to the pre-Vatican situation, our current situation calls for different approaches. More evidence of the inspiration behind the Council.