The Realm of "I Don't Know"

We experience mystery when we enter the realm of "I don't know."  I don't mean the realm of confusion but of "I can't know" or "it's beyond me."

In today's gospel Jesus saw James and Andrew "in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.  He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed them."  Mt. 4:21-22.

The commentary (Living With Christ) points out that in John's gospel "Andrew met Jesus first and introduced his brother Simon to Jesus.  But in the gospel today, there is no indication that Simon and Andrew had ever met Jesus.  Matthew brings out the mystery of the relationship with Jesus.  As Matthew presents it, Jesus walked by one day and suddenly the brothers dropped everything and left their entire life behind to follow Jesus."

The realm of "I don't know" can be explored any time we accept an invitation.  As the commentary states, "Everyone's life with the Lord is mysterious.  One yes leads to another and to another.  Doors open and we find ourselves in places we never expected.  It's a mysterious love."

My marriage vow is a venture into mystery.  We accept our partner "for better or worse," not knowing the future.  The vow would be unncessary if we knew.

The basic realities of life are also beyond our ken.  Dante in Purgatorio XVIII (55-60) observes that "no one knows" from whence we derive our desire for the highest goods (primi appetibili), "those things or actions which in themselves and prior to all particular, concrete objects are good in themselves." Dante Soundings, article by Christopher Ryan at p. 106.  They, like the "zeal of bees for making honey" lie innate and hidden in man's heart.  (Man's moral stature is achieved only by his gathering of the particular objects of love that come his way into this mysterious primal good. Ibid.)

The experience of mystery is also an experience of awe, of wonder.  Christ's invitation to "follow me" is an invitation into the mystery of his love.  If we follow Christ, get near to him, we "will be struck by a sense of wonder at the mystery of God and of man himself.  Christ enlightens men's minds and hearts;  his light is transformative provided we seek to live the truth he makes known to us.  Our lives transfigured by the light of Christ will bear witness to the love of God, and the eloquent language of a transfigured life will be capable of amazing the world." John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, sec.20, par. 2.  

To live in the mystery of Christ is His special invitation to each of us.  All it requires is that we drop our nets (surrender our lives) and venture into the realm of "I don't know."

"We are Traveling East"

To live sacramentally is to live at once in the worldly and in the other-worldly dimension of reality. The sacraments, especially Penance and the Eucharist, draw us into this mode of being.

I recently read a compelling example of this way of living.  Let me set it up by referencing the first canto of the Purgatorio (lines 19-21).  There the poet remarks:

The fair planet that emboldens love,
smiling, lit up the east,
veiling the Fishes in her train.

Hollander's commentary states:

The planet is Venus, whose astral influence "emboldens love."  The rest of the tercet makes clear what sort of love:  her brightness is veiling, as the dawn nears, the constellation Pisces (the fish was one of Christianity's most frequent symbols for Christ, who asked his disciples to become "fishers of men" [Matthew 4:19]).  Further, she is making the east seem to smile by her beauty, the east in which the sun is about to appear, a second reference to one of the constant images for Christ, the rising sun.

Facing the east, by reason of the dawning of the sun (son of God), is a long-standing image of Christian life.   Our churches have traditionally been designed so that the congregation faces east.

The example is from an article about Edith Stein in the current issue of Logos magazine. "Awaken, O Spirit: Vocation of Becoming in the Work of Edith Stein," by Donald L. Wallenfang.   He writes: "To awaken from vocational slumber is to heed the personal Divine summons to travel eastward toward the Son of glory."  (p. 58).  He then cites, in a footnote, the editorial comment made to Edith Stein's last letter in her Vol. 5 of her collected works (Self Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942), written just before she and her sister (a fellow nun) were placed on a transport that took them to their death at Auschwitz:

From the transport as it stopped in the Schifferstadt railway station, early on August 7 (1942), a women in "dark clothing" identified herself as Edith Stein (she acquaintances in that city) and left a message either orally or perhaps in writing: "We are travelling east."  This was one of the final recounted communications of stein before her execution in a gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 9, 1942.

In her remark Stein shows a profound understanding of her journey in this life, this nun who took the name "St. Teresa of the Cross."  It was to travel to the East, into the Sun, carrying her cross, to meet Jesus.

This, of course, is the essence of the sacraments, which enable us to live "in Christ" and walk toward him on our journey, that is, to live life sacramentally.

Finishing With Confidence

The end of the church year affords opportunity to reflect on the end times, death and the giving up of life.  In today's first reading the "angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth's vintage.  He threw it into the great wine press of God's fury." Rv. 14:19.  In Luke's Gospel for today Jesus says, "do not be terrified" when you hear of wars and insurrections.  Lk. 21:8.  Elsewhere Jesus promises, "do not be afraid, I am with you until the end of the age."

Our Christian challenge is to let go of our grasp on life and all of its trappings and accept God's promise of eternal life after death to those who believe in Him and live accordingly.  Letting go is very hard for we experience viscerally what we have, and its threatened loss, but not so powerfully what we don't have yet, even though promised.  It's the dilemma that keeps the fat man from exercising: Short term pain stops him from exercising and from realizing exercise's long term gain.

Our faith is in the promised long term gain.  The short term pain is life and its aching loss. Let us ask for faith in the promise so we can face the future con fides, with confidence.

Freedom, Sempiternam, in Love

Is freedom getting what you want (desire) or letting go of desire?  It would seem the former since to do what one wants appears to define freedom.  But not wanting also seems to be freeing.  Can we make sense of the paradox?

Love underlies all desire.  But it's easy to appreciate that not all desire (love) frees.  Passions often enslave while seeming at first to be freeing, so much what we want.  All addictions turn out this way:  Not getting enough of what you really don't want. 

What I truly want is what I truly need, and that is found in a direction different from what most passions promise.  Faith and reason teach that true happiness is found in falling in love with Divine Love.  But to do that I have to break my attachments to lesser goods that are forbidden or do not satisfy.

And so I have to give up my desire for what I think I want to get what I truly want.  Sublimation of desire isn't easy.  What motivates it?  Reason's knowledge of the true good (Jesus Christ, God), and the will to turn (in repentance) to it.  The experience of conversion is one of grief and suffering, but in the grief of losing what I thought I couldn't do without I find flecks, then rays, of God's true Love and the joy and peace that Love brings.  In the experience of turning, grief is transformed to joy and peace.  Loss to gain!  And our lesser loves are raised up, purified, given a new identity, in the Divine Love that makes all love as it can and should be! Loving others in God's Love is what I truly want, and so is true freedom.

To work this out in words is one thing.  To live this paradox . . . that's the suffering, the joy, the peace, and the everlasting freedom of life!

Dogma and Doctrine

Recent preparations for the RCIA have led to an attempt to articulate the meaning of and the distinction between dogma and doctrine. Hence a series of blog posts on the topic.

 

This from the online Catholic Encyclopedia:

The dogmas of the Church, such as the existence of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of Christ, the sacraments, a future judgment, etc. have an objective reality and are facts as really and truly as it a fact that Augustus was Emperor of the Romans, and that George Washington was first President of the United States.

As a dogma is a revealed truth, the intellectual character and objective reality of dogma depend on the intellectual character and objective truth of Divine revelation. ... Are dogmas considered merely as truths revealed by God, real objective truths addressed to the human mind? Are we bound to believe them with the mind? Should we admit the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental dogmas?

Abstracting from the Church's definition, we are bound to render to God the homage of our assent to revealed truth once we are satisfied that He has spoken.
 

Hence it is not permissible to distinguish revealed truths as fundamental and non-fundamental in the sense that some truths, though known to have been revealed by God, may be lawfully denied. But while we should believe, at least implicitly, every truth attested by the word of God, we are free to admit that some are in themselves more important than others, more necessary than others, and that an explicit knowledge of some is necessary while an implicit faith in others is sufficient.

The lines in bold are my emphasis and they express a concept that has been fuzzily harbored in my mind but until now unarticulated. Having been read, however, I'm not quite sure of their exact meaning. Asking questions leads to answers, also, more questions. Stay posted for more of both.

Thanks Giving

In giving thanks we see reality.  Love sees how things really are.  The impulse to thank is recognition of the gift of creation that we live -- we are gifts in it!  And to see a gift is to see the love that lies behind it, that motivates it.

Thanks giving is particular, for gifts are as manifold and abundant as a cornucopia.  But it is also universal, general, in seeing a transcendental reason in love that brings each gift into being.

Let us give thanks abundantly to God for the manifold gifts we have received!  I want to tell each of YOU in my life that I give thanks to God for YOU!

My Pledge . . .

Earlier this week Amity Shlaes in an opinion article in the Tribune explained the Petraeus affair as prompted by Petraeus' "narcissism" (=excessive self-love).  Today Meghan Daum described his lover as "a young, worshipful woman."

They come close to the Judeo-Christian truth of the matter: Idolatry (=worship of false gods).  The first great commandment requires us to love God with our whole mind and heart and soul, and the second, to love our neighbor "as ourself."  That is, we are to love God above all, and each other as creatures "under God," not as gods.  Worshipping myself or another person in an ecstasy of self-love is NOT permitted.

Today's first reading brings home this sobering point.  John in his second letter, mentions the commandment [of love] that "we have had from the beginning," and says, "[f]or this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. . . "

So the two great love commands are to be read in light of the other commandments, including the commandments not to commit adultery and not to covet a neighbor's spouse.  The "great" commands of love "work with" all of God's commandments, given to us for our fruitfulness and joy, not for death.  For, as John says in his first letter (ch.3:14), all who do not love (in this way) constitute the "living dead."

Gen. Petraeus and his paramour must be "living death" now under the shame and opprobrium occasioned by the effect of their actions on their families (and on all of us at risk because of security breaches)..

What can I do about this?  I can (and do) pledge: In all my behaviors in love (which should include all of my behaviors) I will be on my best behavior, honoring and following all of God's commandments.

Setting Things Right

These gifts (referenced in the last post) of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control," (Gal. 5:22) are not come by easily, but are the fruit of hard work, askesis.  Here is how Philip Rieff (Charisma, p. 83) describes this most important way:

[The law] was a preparation for the more intense practice of faith, as free men -- free to "take the shape of Christ" (Galations 4:19).  In the charisms men are far more intensely guided to avoid "the kind of behavior that belongs to the lower nature: fornication, impunity and indecency; idolatry and sorcery; quarrels, a contentious temper, envy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissentions, party intrigues, and jealousies; drinking bouts, orgies, and the like" (Galations 5:20-21).  If this practice is maintained, without external compulsion or fear of legal offense, then the result of such enactment of charismatic authority is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control  There is no law [that can deal] with such things as these" (Galations 5:22-23).

But to make this ideal character takes relentless practice, through the charisms, and moreover, through each examining "his own conduct for himself."  Paul is perfectly straightforward about the moral discipline available in the charismatic organization.  In addition to constant self-examination, by which each "can measure his achievement by comparing himself [i.e., his ideal self] with himself and not with anyone else," all "brothers" in the cultic organization "endowed with the Spirit must set him [who is caught doing something wrong] right again very gently."  Paul says, "Everyone has his own proper burden to bear (Galations 6:1-5), but it is clear that everyone in the cultic organization must bear everyone else as an example of his self-burden -- gently.  How it grates on the modern ear, at least of those who believe they should be free to do anything, to hear the Pauline call to the energies of guilt: "So let us never tire of doing good." (Galations 6:7-8).  But the alternative is very clear to Paul: we may tire doing evil.  There is nothing indifferent.  "God is not to be fooled" (Galations 6:7-8).  If we are not enacting the interdictory form, in some particular, then we will transgress those forms.  In this sense, the law is better than nothing.  Where there is no faith, let there be fear of punishment.  In fact, Paul commands both.

Such is the cost of freedom, and the blessings it brings.

Fruits of Love

Building life on a foundation of love requires humility, self-sacrifice, and bearing-with.  But the fruit of such efforts brings a delicious taste to life.

Today's readings offer several images of a life built on love.  1 Cor. 3:9c-11, 16-17: "You are God's building."  "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"  Fed by the stream flowing from the Temple, "along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow.  Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine." Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12.

A temple, a river of grace, perennial fruit trees.  That's a program I want to sign on to!

Paul insists that "each one must be careful how he builds upon [the foundation], for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely, Jesus Christ."

How is the foundation laid? Here are some biblical quotes:

"Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Rom 13.10.

"If your brother is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.  Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died." Rom. 14.15.

"Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things;" Cor.13.4-7.

"For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.  But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.  But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.  Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.  I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;  against such there is no law.  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." Gal. 5.13-25.

Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Eight fruits of a life built on the foundation of love in Jesus Christ through humility, self-sacrifice, bearing-with.  Our own kenosis allows Jesus' love to stream to our roots, nourishing us as fruitful trees, whose fruit ministers to and heals us and the souls around us.

Discipleship?

The Entrance Antiphon in today's readings (Nov. 8, 2012) is from Psalm 70: "O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me! You are my rescuer, my help; O Lord, do not delay."

I feel this is my prayer as I stumble along in life, full of grief and sorrow.  I ask, is this following Jesus?

It must be, for the Alleluia says "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest, says the Lord." (Mt. 11:28)

Work it out

"Work saves from three great evils, boredom, vice, and want."

"Let's work without philosophizing.  That's the only way to make life bearable."

From Candide by Voltaire.

Bear With One Another

My friend reminded me, this day after the election, of a passage of a book we read together 40-odd years ago, The Age of Ideas, by George Havens.  It was a history of the French enlightenment before the French Revolution of 1789.  Counseling against the polarization and hatred that welled up to cause that cataclysm, Voltaire wrote, in 1763, a Treatise on Tolerance.  "If you wish to be like Jesus Christ, be martyrs, not executioners." He concluded the Treatise with a Prayer to God.  My friend quoted it in full:

"Thou has not given us a heart to hate or hands to slay each other.  Grant that we may aid one another to bear the burden of a painful and transitory life, that the slight differences between the garments which cover our feeble bodies, between our inadequate languages, our ridiculous customs, our imperfect laws, our senseless opinions, between our stations, so different in our own eyes, so equal before Thee, that all these little differences which distinguish the atoms called men shall not be signals for hate and persecution, that those who light candles to worship Thee at midday may bear with those who are content with the light of Thy sun, that those who cover their robes with white linen to testify their love for Thee shall not scorn those who say the same thing from beneath a cloak of black wool, that it make no difference whether we adore Thee in a jargon formed from an ancient language, or in one which is more recent, that those whose garb is dyed red or violet, who dominate a tiny bit of the little heap of mud of this world and who possess a few round pieces of a certain metal, enjoy without pride what they call grandeur and riches, and that others look upon without envy, for Thou knowest that in these vanities there is cause neither for envy nor pride.

"May all men remember that they are brothers!  May they look with horror on tyranny exercised over souls just as they execrate the brigandage which steals by force the fruits of work and peaceful industry.  If the scourge of war is inevitable, let us not hate one another, not tear one another to pieces in the midst of peace, and let us use the moment of our existence to bless, in our thousand different languages from Siam to California, Thy goodness which has granted us this moment."

May we enter the post-election period with this prayer in mind!

The Ladder

The week's readings have a theme: How to fall in love with God and with His son Jesus Christ.  Today's reading is a lesson in "tough love."  "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:25-33)

The commentary I read (Living With Christ) notes that the reading asks, what we are willing to put in front of our love for God?  Whatever it is, we must hoist it on our cross and carry it, for it blocks our love for God. "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple."

Our homilist (Fr. Dan) pointed out that the gospel highlights the hierarchy of love.  At the pinnacle (cf last Sunday's reading about the first commandment to love God with our whole heart and mind) is our love of God.  Every other love is secondary (or flows from it).  Secondary loves can block our relationship with God, and so we must move beyond them.

But to place and carry them on the cross is most difficult.

Paul advises (Phillipians 2:12-18) to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Salvation must be taken most seriously.  But we must also know that "God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work."  So we pray that God's desire will work itself out in our desires.  And we pray that our secondary loves, like Beatrice's love, will point us in the direction of the beatific vision that is the source of the highest love that transforms us. (Paradiso I, II).

As the Psalm says (Ps.27): "One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek: To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, That I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple."

And so I pray to "Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord." Ibid.

Imagine That!

How does one become oneself?  One can think of it as a process of "assimilation" and "differentiation."  Assimilation is imitation, a conformance of oneself with one's environmental influences.  "In the very early years of life it occurs in a massive way in regard to fundamental issues:  eating, laughing and crying, smiling, becoming angry, undergoing loss and recovery, movement, babbling and initial speech, and the like."  Robert Sokolowski, "Making Distinctions," at 78 from Pictures, Quotations and Distinctions, Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology.  Of course, "distinctions have to be made in this associative matrix, and they are the early adjustments we make as we come to know, 'I am not you' and 'We are not that' and 'Mine is not thine.'" Ibid.

"As we grow older, all the identities the self achieves through the stages of life are simply the other side of differentiations it accomplishes within assimilations it has been undergoing." Ibid.  Sokolowski quotes T. S. Eliot: "there is a close analogy between the sort of experience which develops a man and the sort of experience which develops a writer."  Eliot "describes the identification that can occur between a writer and an author from the past.  In this experience, a young writer 'may be changed, metamorphosed almost, within a few weeks even, from a bundle of second-hand sentiments into a person.'" (quoting Eliot's "Reflections on Contemporary Poetry). Ibid at p. 300.

Sokolowski notes that imagination plays a central role in helping us to bring about the self-differentiations through which we make ourselves who we are.  Sokolowski says, "the imagination is not a power of examining internal images; it is a possibility of displacement, of Versetzung, which helps actualize the self.  In imagination we become distinguished into an imagined self and an imagining self . . . we appreciate ourself (as imagined) at some distance to ourselves (as imagining), and 'the self' is that which is the same in both dimensions, the imagining and the imagined."

"The same structural displacement occurs in memory, except that repetition instead of projection dominates.  We continually mix memory and desire, of course, as recollection blends with imagination, but the same displacement remains through both.  This displacement of the self is itself a distinction and an achievement. . . ."

"Because of its projective character, imagination is especially significant for differentiating the self from patterns it has imitatively assimilated.  While we are in one condition and while we carry on one behavior, we can imagine ourselves in another.   This occurs in simple daydreams, but it also occurs when we are trying to determine 'a way out,' a way of being and acting that resolves something painful and confusion.  Such confusions occur only in the concrete, and only the imagination of a concrete possibility can resolve them: and such an imagination is precisely what we have called the urgence of a distinction."

"If for example we are in the vicious double bind in which fondness is enjoined but made impossible, and if we are accused -- or accuse ourselves -- of cruelty or of indifference, the only resolution is to have the power to imagine a behavior, always in the concrete, which we could call something like kindness or concern, something distinguished from cruelty and from indifference, without yet being fondness, and to perform this behavior.  We might be able to formulate the distinction in words, 'Kindness is not fondness,' or 'Concern is not fondness,' but the formulation is not very important; what is important is the imaginative urgence that breaks the bind and releases the difference;  without the concrete imagination the verbal distinction is hollow."

"Because the concrete circumstances and the concrete possibilities of action are so complex, we might be able to imagine and execute an action which fits under no standard category: not fondness, but something between kindness and concern with perhaps a touch of a reprimand -- but certainly not cruelty and not indifference.  We need to be insightful, prudent, and virtuous to be able to imagine what we can and ought to do in the complexities of actual situations that call for action, and if we succeed it will be obvious to anyone who appreciates what is going on that what we did was the right thing to do, whether or not the right term can be found to name what we did."

So, it is through using our imagination that we can "try out" a new habitude, a new way of behaving, a new way of living.  Then we can move into that habitude and be changed, be someone "distinguished," someone "of distinction."

Opening

If the gate is narrow it seems counterintuitive to suggest, as some do, that one reaches it through inner opening.  But isn't "opening" is just that going beyond, that endeavoring to pass through the gate to experience the presence beyond?  Here is how one pastor describes the implications of openness to presence:

'Compassion' is the final operative word to define what the way of presence really means.  it sums up the listening, responsive, agonizing receptivity of the prophet and the poet.  For it is impossible to be open and sensitive in one direction without being open to all.  If a man would open his heart towards his fellow he must keep it open to all other comers -- to the stranger, to the dead, to the enchanting and awful presences of nature, to powers of beauty and terror, to the pain and anxiety of men, to the menace and catastrophe of our time, and to the overwhelming presence of God . . . . To present oneself to God means to expose oneself, in an intense and vulnerable awareness, not only to him but to all that is.  And this is what, apart from Christ, we dare not do.  Presence is too much for us to face.

From The Primal Vision, John Taylor, p. 191, quoted in Edward Robinson, The Language of Mystery, Edward Robinson, p. 100.

So I suggest that that 'narrow way' is the way few choose for fear of the consequences of opening up, a reality that is overwhelming, grief-laden, too much . . . except in the company of Christ, whose love is the only power that can embrace and lift up (to life) the grief and sorrow and suffering we find there.  Yet the narrow way is the only way because it is only there that Christ is found, waiting for us.

Christ is there because he preceded us there, eternally.  His identity (flowing from His Trinitarian nature) was solely to do the will of His Father.  His will opened Him totally and at the same time emptied Him of his own disparate will.  Total openness narrowed him such that "all despised him as a no-account" even to ignominious death on a cross.

Remembering Christ, let us us imitate His openness and move toward the narrow gate, and pass through it to find ourselves in the arms of Christ who awaits us in love.