Repentance and Holiness - Part II

We often hear how difficult it is to be a Christian today, largely due to the pervasive carnality of our modern culture. But a mere glance at the lives of the saints throughout history makes clear that those who would have God work through them have always struggled against a variety of worldly influences. I think our real challenge today is that we'd rather be normal rather than different (weird), let alone holy. Maybe it has always been so. Perhaps, by such a mindset, we give ourselves permission to accept the world's standard for our lives rather than God's, which we deem unattainable. We'd be right to think such a calling is beyond us, if it were up to us to achieve it. If we convince ourselves we cannot sing such a pure song, then it becomes comfortable to tolerate or even indulge in the counterfeit pleasures that the world offers.

In acknowledging that, by my sacramental life and (it should go without saying, for it is one and the same) by God's grace, I am different, I am holy, I hear God's call in my life in a way that helps me recognize where I've compromised. I begin to see the ways in which I've settled for less than God has dreamt for me, a song inferior to the one he would compose. As my life begins to sing notes that match God's melody rather than clash against it, I come to know that there is a joy greater than that to which I erroneously cling.

As is so often the case, there are two opposite errors in which we tune out the song of holiness.

Some people view salvation like this: when we're saved, God declares us to be holy even though we aren't, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ covering over our sin. While that might seem merciful, if it were so, God would be a liar. We forget that when God declares a thing, that thing IS! There is no denying it or arguing with it. If God "says" or "declares" that we are holy, then he MAKES us holy, by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why we paraphrase the centurion at each Eucharist: "Only say the word and I shall be healed." We know that what God speaks, is.

Understanding how we err in the other direction takes some development. The Church links the concepts of salvation (delivery from the penalty of sin) and sanctification (transformation in Christ), as they should be. We view them as a process in which we’re continually transformed by grace as we walk with Christ. Yet we often hinder ourselves from experiencing grace’s full manifestation in our lives. The error lies in this: twisting the concept of this process, we often still think of ourselves as slaves to sin as a result of being human, with scant hope of ever being saintly. Sometimes we go so far as to disdain holiness, for fear of hypocrisy or of failure. But it is this very slavery to sin from which Christ has purchased our freedom. We must avoid embracing the common attitude that holiness is a goal beyond us, for it is a denial that God's grace and power are without limit, a denial of Christ's victory. It can represent a failure to fully believe in Him, a reverse pride that declares that my shortcomings are too great for God to overcome! We must remember that while we may not fully experience our holiness in this life – indeed, the closer we grow to Christ the more aware we are likely to be of our unworthiness of him – it is no less real, and we are to grow in it each day. This happens not merely by virtue of our trying harder or being better, but because of God's grace transforming more of our lives.

This is what we celebrate in a special way each Lenten season. It isn't that we become holy by our efforts, though our willingness to participate in the process is necessary. It's more that, as we become more willing, allowing God to open us more to grace, He enables us to participate in and communicate with his grace more completely. It is the Holy Spirit who whispers to us, revealing those areas in which we remain closed off. If we don't heed the whisper, because of the holy grace God has already poured into our lives through our Baptism, it is the Holy Spirit who ultimately hits us alongside the head with whatever two-by-four it takes to get our attention. In either case, it is also the Holy Spirit who opens those locked doors when we finally yield to his ministrations to us, the Spirit whose voice soars through us, making our life a majestic song of God's glory.

The fear of the Lord

There is a fine-hearted older gentleman in our parish, who has had a passion for evangelization for the entire dozen years I've known him. He abhors the expression "the fear of the Lord." "Fear keeps people away from God," he says. "People must know they have nothing to fear from God, for God is love."

On the one hand he is right. On the other, as Saint Hilary observes, fear of the Lord is not, exactly, fear. In fact, I suspect that fear of the Lord has no more in common with worldly fear than God's love has in common with worldly love.

There are many things we fear, and those fears lead us to behave (or misbehave!) in a variety of ways. We fear being hurt, not experiencing all we want out of life, not being in control, being alone, being unlovable. We avoid what we fear, or get angry because of it. We cower, or lash out. Sometimes we act in ways that fulfill our fear. Ultimately, fight or flight are the only responses to worldly fear. In choosing one or the other, we often make choices that ultimately are not good for us, including decisions that hurt those around us. Fear may be at the root of every unhealthy decision every person has ever made. Abusers of substances, position, people, and power all must learn, in the process of recovery, what part fear has played in their unconscious motivations. Often they learn that fear has been their constant, unrecognized companion. I will never forget the evening, nearly a decade ago, when I learned that I had lived in fear for as long as I could remember, without being aware of it.

Fear is not a completely negative thing. Certainly it is an important element of our instincts for self-preservation. Yet even when we deal with our fear in a healthy way, when we face its sources head on, we are fighting against it in some way.

The point is that the things we fear always motivate us to act, in one way or another. This is about all that ordinary fear has in common with the fear of the Lord. When our love and desire for God become greater than the other fears that we may experience in life, then we begin to know the fear of the Lord. It is what directs our hearts rightly when the influences around us would guide us wrongly. It is the outpouring of divine Wisdom, which quietly tells us that we can trust in God to care for us, even when the evidence would scream that the only way out is clearly contrary to his revealed desire.

It reminds us that, when wrong seems the only answer, indeed, when it seems the undeniable longing of our heart, choosing right will invariably serve us better, in ways we may not foresee.

It allows us to survive the darkest places on our path, where we can see neither our own feet nor the road beneath them, because we know there is an unfailing Light that will keep us from stumbling as long as we follow him.

Wasted evening

Matthew Kelly says that our fundamental purpose is to become the best version of ourselves.

This evening's tv viewing didn't help with that. But it's my first lost evening in some time, certainly nothing to beat myself up over. I do want to make sure it doesn't become a pattern, though.

A healthy perspective is important. If every little imperfection feels like a big deal, then it is hard to respond to the legitimately bigger issues appropriately.

Receiving blessings

Funny how things work out. I had a wonderful evening Sunday night, taking part in evening prayer as part of a Lenten mission at one of the area churches. The priest was the draw, for me. I'd seen Fr. J-Glenn Murray teach on video, and I was not about to pass up a chance to hear him in person. It's a three-day event, and if the rest of it builds on night one, those folks are in for a treat.

I was hoping to go back Monday, with my wife, but that didn't work out as planned. I was disappointed, but then, spending the evening with her was more important to me. Then that didn't exactly work out as planned, either. Oh well. Better to treasure the blessings we receive than to lament the ones we might long for.

Still, I struggle to put that into practice. Marriage can feel frustrating and challenging when one partner seems disinterested in or unmotivated by things the other feels they must pursue. Sure, we're not always going to want the same things, and that's okay. But I was so excited, and so wanted to share, and ended up being a bit angry Monday night. At least (I think) I let myself feel that without lashing out, without losing sight of the blessings and the love that have become the overall hallmarks of our relationship.

Transfiguration

We had a great men's fellowship meeting this weekend, discussing the Sunday Mass readings. I find my mind coming back to these readings:

We tend to live as if life is about reaching the mountain top. When we're told, as children, that we can do whatever we really set our minds upon (and let's not debate the degree to which that is completely true), we generally perceive some level of achievement that we can feel we've accomplished. Hard work and single-minded dedication will lead us to the mountain top, from which we will be able to survey the marvelous view and enjoy the fruits of our labor, whatever they might be. The mountain top is presented as our destination and goal, and we plan to reap the reward for getting there.

The Transfiguration of Christ paints a different tale. Jesus takes three apostles with him, and they are filled with awe - and fear - with what they see there. But Mount Tabor is not where they're ultimately headed. Rather, its purpose is more limited: to provide strength, vision, and means for the road that lies ahead. The Gospels don't tell us what transpires between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. We figure that this revelation had a purpose for these three closest disciples, to provide a reinforcement of the good news for which they were subsequently to be responsible. But I wonder if their was a purpose to this Godhead moment for Jesus, too, perhaps to sustain him, in his humanity, to persevere along the dark road which lay ahead of him.

God gives us mountaintop experiences, and everyone who studies this story understands the fundamental point that, for most of us, our mission is not on the mountain. Yet we still struggle to avoid making the mountain our goal. We must be on guard, too, not to mistake the touch of God's grace, as it illuminates our life in some dazzling way, for something that we have earned or accomplished. There is a vast gulf between "Look what God has shown me" and "Look what I've figured out!"

In today's first reading, Abraham and Isaac were on their way to a mountain, too. Abraham demonstrated that he trusted God more than his greatest desire, painfully obeying this distressing commandment. It seems to me that the idea of a child sacrifice might not have been completely alien to people of his day, and so God's sparing of Isaac - and the prosperity the family experienced after not sacrificing their son - might have been as radically new a concept among Abraham's contemporaries as Jesus' death and resurrection would later be. In each case, God provided a sacrifice in place of the death specified. Now, the Son of God takes the place of the sinful sons and daughters who will be gained by God through Christ receiving the punishment which would otherwise be theirs. St. Paul makes clear what good news this is for those of us who would have been left vulnerable to accusation and condemnation. Instead, because of what Jesus has done for us, his transfiguration prefigures our own, as his glory will eventually shine through us with equal clarity.

Our destination lies far beyond any mountain top.

Repentance and Holiness – Part I

Welcome to Lent, season of repentance. We all certainly need that from time to time, and our leaders gave us a great gift when they extended the annual period of preparation for the catechumenate to the entire Church. But repentance is of greatest benefit to us in its proper context, and I can't help feeling that we sometimes get it a bit out of kilter. We tend to emphasize our sinfulness too much, and not focus enough on our saintliness. I believe that tendency comes from a combination of factors: we generally tend to place too much attention on ourselves and not enough on God, and we misunderstand what humility and holiness really are.

When look at ourselves, we are going to see failings rather than saintliness. "God alone is holy," and we have plenty of evidence that we are not. So we often forget that any holiness which we witness in others, or any to which we might aspire, is not of ourselves. Then, when we stumble, we think it lies fully upon us to do better next time. Our image of a saint is of someone who has lived a certain standard, one to which we know we could never measure up. Hoping to do so seems preposterous and presumptuous.

If sainthood is a reward for passing some sort of test – as many of us still tend to believe – I know I've failed it miserably. From that viewpoint, saying that I am a saint would be the height of pride and hypocrisy. But from God’s perspective I don't believe it is either proud or hypocritical, as long as we do it in the right spirit. Further, it may be impossible for us to live the holy life to which each one of us is called without the proper understanding of our saintliness.

Because we're so used to being the center of our own consciousness, our attitude toward holiness is that it's all about us. We see that saintly people do good and avoid sin, we attribute those things to their personal holiness, and we conclude that their individual goodness is what makes them saints.

That isn't the case at all! It isn't about us, and the thing that makes every saint holy is that they know this. Their attention is not on themselves. Rather, living a saintly life is about grace – by its very definition something we can never deserve. It is about the Holy Spirit focusing our attention on our infinite, loving, perfect God rather than our small, self-centered, imperfect lives. The Spirit makes a transformation in us with which we must participate despite knowing we can never make it in ourselves. This is a far more sublime, wonderful, and complete thing than doing good works or achieving victory over a sin with which we've struggled – or perhaps not struggled – for too long. Don't get me wrong, we are certainly called to do good and to overcome our sins. Still, those actions are not what make us holy, but rather are the manifestation of God’s holiness in us. We do these things because our Savior is alive, interceding for us, and his Spirit is living in us. And as we allow God to do such things through us, they become a cycle by which God’s love more deeply saturates our lives, making the holiness already planted in us more visible to those around us. As St. John of the Cross put it, the Spirit is making us more transparent, allowing Christ to shine more brightly through us.

The Spirit wants nothing less than our loving Father's perfect will for us, which is always far greater than whatever we dare to dream for ourselves. In the largest sense, God's desire – and the Spirit's role – is to transform us fully, to perfect our transparency, so the very image and likeness of Jesus Christ comes through without distortion. This is something that I could not even dream to do myself, so if I aspire to holiness, to sainthood (despite my failings, which have been massive) I am in fact giving humble testimony to the truth that there are no limits on the wonders God has done, desires to do, and is doing.

An amazing love

My wife's love is an incredible thing.

I don't know how many partners get - or take - the opportunity to recognize what a wonderful gift it is to be loved. I think our recognition of the wonder of it gets obscured by the fundamental opinion that "I'm a basically lovable person." The psychologists would probably tell us that this sort of self-esteem is important for our emotional health, and there may well be something to that view.

But my life didn't really begin to be transformed until I came face to face with a far different truth, one that many of us hold unconsciously and prove to ourselves in a wide array of self-fulfilling ways. Perhaps there are well adjusted folks who never deal with this, but many people I know struggle with the question, "Why do I do that??" For me, the answer finally became apparent: "Because I have always believed, way down where I couldn't even really hear it whispered, but just quietly knew, that I am not lovable." My life proved it again and again because I repeatedly chose behaviors that would reinforce this silent certainty, even while striving with my entire consciousness to build an artifice which demonstrated what I wanted to be true rather than what I knew to be.

Of course, to become healthy and whole, I had to learn that my silent, core belief was false. And that cognitive harmony, ladies and germs, I could never have achieved without the unconditional love that my wife has shared with me. When I knew, because I had proved it beyond questioning, that I was unlovable, she saw just the opposite. And her vision has finally become my reality.

The love that she chose - and continues to choose - still amazes and transforms me. Once I thought her unable to receive my love, projecting my unrecognized shortcomings onto her. Now, I have come to love her with my whole heart.

If you're reading this, my darling, know how I love you. I hope you take pride in knowing that your love has made all the difference to me.