Mary, Martha, and the Primacy of Contemplation

As much as I hate to admit it, there is a certain hierarchy in the spiritual life, as in the physical world. It is, perhaps, the most uncomfortable thing about the faith, that some things are true, others are not, and there is no getting around them when they are. The second most uncomfortable thing is the knowledge that I am fallible, and therefore I never truly know when I am right, and when I am wrong. So, in yesterday's discussion of Martha and Mary, I came to the conclusion that the "one thing needful" was love and the trust that must follow it. This takes different shapes, depending on the situation, but love is always the central thing.

However, this does not fully explain the fact that Jesus did say that Mary chose the "better part." In fact, throughout the history of the Church Mary and Martha have been considered archetypes of the two broad vocational categories, if you will, the contemplative and the active lives. Mary, of course, is the proto-contemplative and Martha is the proto-active. A good deal was made out of this distinction by the Church over the ages, in holding up the celibate, contemplative life as the beau-ideal of the Christian life.

Ah, but isn't that rather an old fashioned way of thinking about it? Don't we now know that everyone Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte", the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, by Pope Paul VI, and Chapter V of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.) Wasn't Vatican II all about increasing the role and responsibility of the laity in the Church?

Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa 1979

is called to be a saint, and lay-people are called to the same level (although not "style" for lack of a better word) of holiness as everyone else? (For reference to recent emphasis on the "Universal call to Holiness), see Article 30 of St. John Paul II's

Heck, go back to the beginning and didn't St. Paul say, "For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose" 1 Corinthians 12:14-18.

Yes, but this does not change the fact that St. Paul was also the author of 1 Corinthians 7:32-34. And Jesus definitely did say that Mary chose the better part. Is the active life really second best?

I think the key is to be found in the two great commandments. We all know them: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength and all your soul," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." These are clearly hierarchically arranged. Love of God comes first, love of neighbor comes second. However, they are not arranged according to worth but according to primacy. First things first, if you will. Love of God comes first, love of everyone else comes second. 

For some reason, and I suspect it is diabolical in origin, almost everyone Christian I know will read that and hear, "Love of God is more important, love of neighbor is less important." The implication is that there is a competition for limited resources (love) and God has first claim so when there is not enough love to go around, well, sorry family, but God gets His first. This understanding is widespread, pervasive, but is a straight up lie. Hence my suspicion that it is diabolical in origin.  

In reality, there is not and can never be any sort of competition between creature and Creator, except in the imagination of the creature. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being!" There is no possible way in which we could ever have something that God needs, and there is no possible way God could ever not provide for His creatures what they truly need, and in any event, Love is the one thing that only multiplies the more you give it away.  The Creator vs. creature dynamic is not a valid construct. 

Competition, when it occurs, occurs in the imagination of the creature. The creature imagines that something is good for it, which God has warned is not, in fact, good for it. Promiscuous sexual activity or gossip, to pick two fairly common examples, one respectable, one slightly less so. These give pleasure, they make the creature feel good for the moment, so the creature thinks they are good. God says they are not, the creature does them anyway and reaps the consequences later on down the line. This is what we call "sin" and "punishment."

This brings me to what Fr. Michael E. Gaitley, MIC, calls "The Primacy of Contemplation." This is a concept that reconciles the two halves of the false dichotomy, admittedly by the rather mundane process of non-reinvention of the wheel. Simply put, pray first (commune with God), then go and do what He tells you (love your neighbor.) In the order of the Church as the Body of Christ we have contemplatives who listen to and commune with God, and we have actives who put that relationship into practice. This is an important area of study, but not really my topic at the moment. Right now I am concerned with the contemplative and active element in my own life.  

The Primacy of Contemplation means that my work must flow from my prayer. My relationship with people must flow from my relationship with God. This is not because God is more important than people (He is, but He doesn't insist on His importance) but because people are so important that anything but the best is not good enough for them. Therefore our service must be the highest, noblest and most loving service, which means is must be united with Christ's service (from Bethlehem to the Cross). To do this we must be united with Christ. As Vatican II proclaimed in Perfectae Caritatis, "Apostolic activity must spring from intimate union with Him."

This means that prayer, spiritual reading and the sacraments, while not the focus of our lives (for laity in general) need to be the foundation of our lives. As busy as we may become (and I have become very busy at various times in my life) we must never be too busy for dedicated time for prayer. The world attacks prayer time. It always will by design. When you make the decision to set aside time (five or ten minutes or an hour, it doesn't much matter) every day for prayer, the devil will attack that time. He will make you unusually tired in the morning, try to get you to stay up late so you will say, "Just this once I really need those extra ten minutes of sleep, so I am going to hit the snooze button. I'll make up for it tomorrow." He will wake the kids up early and send them to interrupt. He will offer distractions, diversions and downright despair of ever praying worthily. (I don't know whether all of those interferences are directly as a result of the devil or just coincidence, but I have noticed that they tend to occur with surprising regularity. I know as a matter of history that when my alarm goes off I can count on having at least one good reason not to pray every single morning.) 

The great thing is simply to keep trying, and not to be discouraged by failure. When prayer time is interrupted by tiredness, offer that as a sacrifice. When it is interrupted by other people, offer that to God. When you are secretly very glad that so-and-so came along and interrupted and got you off the prayer hook for today, and ashamed of that feeling, offer the feeling, and the shame and the interruption to God. Try again tomorrow, or later in the afternoon. 

Set an alarm on your phone for 3 PM, and when it goes off simply say the Divine Mercy prayer or a short form of it, such as, "For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world." Pause, center your awareness on God (who has not ceased to be aware of you for all eternity) and look at Him with love. 

Talk to Him like Tevye. 

Talk to Him, listen to Him, then do what He tells you, and you will become an active contemplative, probably without even knowing it. 

You will also become a saint. Sweet deal!

Cannot

Not.

Not I.

Not, cannot,

I cannot be good.

Be nor do,

Cannot do good,

Nor try,

Try good.

Not try, nor want, nor even see to know.

I cannot love nor live,

Give nor bless I cannot.

I cannot pray

Nor say

Nor sing

Nor ring the rounding bell

Nor tell

Nor teach

Nor preach, prophesy or praise.

I cannot add one moment to my days

I cannot lift up my gaze, my eyes,

Nor know the skies,

Nor even the mud that makes my form

Nor warm my heart

Nor finish any good work, nor even start.

I cannot

For I all but am not.

Am nought, What?

I am not aught but… what?

At my center a gap, an emptiness.

An abyss, a nothingness

An utter lack, a longing, a space

A place, an empty womb or tomb wherein I miss.

Miss whom?

Miss Thee, as Thou hast created me to.

My emptiness fancies itself a thing,

Tries to give, to live, to be, anything

But I cannot

For I all but am not.

Am unfilled, longing

(With strong longing, Thine,

All Thine, not mine) to be filled

Full, fulfilled, filled full well

As Thou hast willed,

Emptied so as to be filled,

Spilled out so as to be overflowed

And spilled ad majorem

Dei gloriam, filled and spilled and filled for aye,

All, ever, saecula saeculorum! I

Give up, and offer Thee nothing.

Fillest and killest though my nought, with Thy I AM.

A Time for Questions

I haven't posted here in a bit. I was sent out for a while to do training, but the training was rather poorly planned, so there was an abundance of downtime. I finished four books and read a great deal of T. S. Eliot's and Francis Thomson's poetry.

I wasn't too far from a major city, and I might have enjoyed seeing something of the city, but it wouldn't have worked out. I would have had to go into town with the other guys and what they want to do and what I want to do are generally incompatible. I didn't even want to listen to the stories of their evenings out. I didn't want to listen to the jokes, or be a part of the general atmosphere. There was a certain irony in the fact that, because I was the last one to show up, my cot was right in the middle of the big open bay we were all living in. All around the bay were grown men, running around naked or flashing each other, telling stories about the strippers they hit on the night before, sharing home-made porn clips and x-rated music videos, and acting out some truly sick fantasies with a naked blow-up doll someone bought to put in the Captain's sleeping bag as a joke. Right in the very center of the whole mess, there I was, lying on my cot, reading the Divine Office and saying my rosary. And that was my comment on the whole affair.

I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't attack the vice more aggressively. I have come a long way from my early days in the Army, when I rather Quixotically took on every single challenge to the faith, my morals, and good manners with reckless abandon. I eventually learned not to be drawn out by every windmill that crossed my path, and consequently got along better with the other guys. I limited my protests to simply walking away from any conversation that turned vile, and answering any questions I was asked. Earning respect as a soldier also helped. I am stronger, smarter and faster than most of my peers, I shoot among the best, and I look like I know what I'm talking about, so they are more likely to tolerate my morals.

But what would I do if I really cared about them? I would be exhausting every effort to warn them of the eternal damage they are doing to their souls. It isn't so much a question of "Am I going to hell for this?" (I get asked this question pretty often.) The fact is, they are busily constructing hell in their own hearts. I know, I've done it. One way or another, every sin shapes my heart a little more into a hell that I carry around with me wherever I go, until God comes in and restores me.

_____________________________________________________________________________

I have been in a questioning mood for some time now, a month, month and a half, something like that. Everyone goes through periods in their life when they question everything. Right now I am questioning every choice I have made, every habit I have formed, every idea I have shaped, all my writing and thinking. There is much that I find to be good. There is much that I find to be wrong-headed, or lazy, or cowardly.

The biggest question I cannot seem to get a handle on is: what do I want to do with my life? At 27 you would think I should have this more or less figured out by now, but I really don't. I recently read an article in which Peter Kreeft writes about discernment with his characteristic penetrating insight and common sense, and it squares with an idea I am slowly formulating.

It's a bit comical how Catholics (and in fact, it cuts across all Christian denominations) seem to have made such careers out of "discernment." It is odd. The concept of "vocation" and "discernment" do not seem to have occupied much of the thought of generations before us. From ages in which young people more or less simply did whatever they had the heart, wits and wherewithal to do, to our present age in which what seems like most of the young people I know spend five to ten years of their late teens and early twenties dithering about between vocational discernment retreats and incessant soul-searching for "God's will."

I am beginning to wonder if it is not a tactic of the enemy, in the current phase of the war. I would be interested to see where the concept of "discerning a vocation" came from and how it has evolved over the last 50 years. I suspect it grew out of the need for priests and religious that plagued the Church in the 70's, 80's and on through the present day. Certainly the idea of asking God to make His will known and to give us wisdom and courage to follow His will is a worthy goal, but, as Peter Kreeft points out, it can be taken to a ridiculous extreme.

What could be more ironic than hundreds of thousands of Christian young people, so afraid of missing "God's Will" that they spend the strongest and most energetic years of their lives doing nothing worthwhile except stressing out about their "vocation."

That is probably what the devil would like to see happen, but fortunately a lot of young adults are more sensible than that. They go out and do things, working in the missions, or in ministries or go to college, and so accomplish good things, but there is a sense of transition to the whole business. I notice a sense of "in the meantime," or "This will do to be going on with until I find my real vocation." I am pretty sure I reject the "in the meantime" approach. It has always seemed to me that there is never a moment that doesn't have its good that can be accomplished, and accomplishing it is my vocation. I used to think the larger decisions flowed out of the smaller decisions, but now I am not so sure.

It is impossible to say precisely what I mean. I don't have an answer for the riddle I am proposing myself. I rather think that vocation is a cooperation between the individual and God. God gives us the gifts and talents that He has given us and says, "Abide in me and bear fruit that will last." The precise method He leaves up to us, apart from the occasional special, extraordinary call. Mother Teresa, for instance, had a definite calling. Who knows, perhaps she was able to hear it simply because she had opened herself enough to hear it, and everyone would hear their own call just as clearly if we would only make ourselves as available as she did. Or more likely not, I think. It would seem more in keeping with God's "style" to leave most people in a little bit of uncertainty. "Abide in me and bear fruit that will last," seems to be all most people are given. Since we are given everything we need, I am forced to conclude that most people don't need any more than that.

In the end the only thing I am sure of is that I want to be a Saint. I want to be completely turned over to God, completely abandoned to Him. I think that is the goal of everyone's life, whether they know it or not. The exact shape that it takes is less important.

Little Brother

Dear Matthew,

You are going to Basic Training next week. You already read the book. In fact you read the book before it was the book. But these are some specific things I wish someone had told me before I went to basic training. They are in a very particular order, i.e. the order I happened to think of them in. If I had known then what I know now, I would never have had the courage to do what I did. But if I had not done what I did, I would not know now what I didn’t know then:

·         The Army is a toxic environment. It is toxic to faith, it is toxic to morals, it is toxic to good manners, it is toxic to free-thinking, it is toxic to humanity. However, this does not mean that people in the Army are the enemy. They are people, beloved of God. He died for them. Each one has his own story, his own history of wounds and health, brokenness and wholeness, happiness and sadness, wisdom and stupidity that made him what he is. Know the story, know the person, see him as he sees himself, and see him (as closely as you can) as God sees him. It will change the way you treat everyone in your life.

·         Some people have nothing to say worth saying. But no one is not worth listening to.

·         Push yourself to do your best at everything they put in front of you. Go the extra mile. But do not define yourself by how well you do.

·         Compete with your peers, because it will make you faster, stronger and better. But do not define success by how you measure up to them. You will be faster, stronger or smarter than many of them, but that does not make God love you one iota more than He loves them. Someone will always be faster, stronger or smarter than you, but that does not mean God loves them more.

·         The most valuable things cannot be earned. They are given for free, and the best you can do is try to be worthy of them.

·         Make friends with your peers. Do not do what I did and be a loner, and take pride in that loner attitude. You are more outgoing than I am so that should come naturally. But be prepared to part company without hesitation or possibility of appeal the first time someone says, “Hey, let’s go to the strip club.”

·         Friendliness is not the same as trust. Trust is earned and it is neither implicit nor all-encompassing in most cases. There are more men in the army than I can count that I would trust with my life, but less than a dozen I would trust not to try to lead me into sin on a night out on the town. And there have only been two friends in my entire career that I would trust with anything really important to me. Go out with the guys, but keep your own counsel on what really matters. Una Certa Sprezzatura.

·         Draw your lines, make them known, and never cross them. Don’t be afraid to alienate people who don’t like your faith and morals. If they are fair you will earn enough respect to get on with by being good at your job. If they are not fair, who cares what they think anyway? Unless they are your boss. In which case, well, some days are like that. Morals are more important than promotion.

·         Know your alcohol limit. Figure it out on your own, around people you trust. Take that number of drinks down by about 25-50%. That is your “going out with the guys limit.” Set that number in your head and NEVER allow them to talk you into going over it. Make the decision before you go out. Once the first drink crosses your lips, do not change that plan.

·         When your peer hangs a pinup girl on your wall locker, borrow his lighter and burn it in front of him, and say, “I will not be a part of treating women like objects.” If he does it again, punch him in the nuts.

·         When someone tries to get you to look at porn, ask them if they would kindly shoot you in the face instead. Trust me, you are better off dead. Nothing will kill your ability to love more effectively than porn. You were raised on love. Losing your ability to love will twist you up inside worse than you can possibly imagine and you will feel it. You are better off taking a bullet to the brain than getting hooked on that poison.

·         Do not go it alone. The first chance you get, you find a parish. Give yourself a few weeks to try out the different churches in your area, and then make your decision and stick with it. Register at that parish, get envelopes, volunteer to be a reader, an usher, sing in the choir (I’ll warn you right now, the choir probably sucks, bless their hearts), anything. Be involved. Commit to that parish.

·         Seek out Catholic young adults. If you can’t find a group, make one. Your peers in the army will be a toxic influence. You need a wholesome influence to counter it.

·         Don’t expect your Catholic friends to be perfect. Peoples is Peoples.

·         Don’t expect your Army peers to be demons. Peoples is Peoples.

·         God loves your Army peers as much as He loves your Catholic friends. But your Army peers might need you to translate that love more than your Catholic friends do

·         But then again, I’ve known some pretty wounded Catholics. You are related to more than a few.

·         If a person never knows the love of the brother he can see, how will he ever believe in the love of the God he cannot see?

·         Give your job your best, but do not give it your heart. To the Army you are not Matthew Kraeger. You are not a son, a brother, a friend, a boyfriend, a cousin or a nephew. You are not a person at all. You are an 11B10. Your identity and place are entirely representable as a sequence of numbers and letters, detailing your age, height, weight, physical fitness, rank, job, how well you shoot, etc. Your entire military existence boils down to a sheet of paper called an Enlisted Records Brief. You are fully interchangeable with all other 11B10’s. Give the job your best because it is what you swore to do, but do not give it your all because it is not who you are. My biggest regret is that I spent so much of myself for so long on a worthless job, instead of on relationships with people who could actually care about me. In a lot of ways I made a bad trade, but I never totally lost myself into it, and many people have been more patient with me than I deserved, so I came off all right in the end.

·         Being a soldier is a job. Being a warrior is a vocation. There is a difference. Never confuse the two.

·         Learn everything you can. Everyone has some wisdom no matter how stupid or irritable they might be. Listen to them with a completely open mind, take in everything they say, whether teaching you how to shoot, or how to bandage a wound, or how to march. Listen as if they were teaching the only possible way of doing things. Then, when you have wrung every last drop of knowledge out of them and sifted out the garbage (that takes a while, sometimes it is hard to tell what is garbage and what isn’t) file it away in your mind and remind yourself, “That is one way of doing things.”

·         You have the bad luck to be of significantly higher than average intelligence. This means that at least half of your leaders will not be as smart as you are. Do not for an instant think that this means that you know more than they do, or that you do not owe them respect and obedience.

·         The dumbest person in the Army knows more than you do about something.

·         Always question everything. Including me.

·         Expect an answer. Don’t just question to be smart.

·         Some people will not be able to answer you and they will mock you and tell you to shut up. This does not mean there is no answer, only that you need to find it for yourself because you have gone beyond your teacher’s depth. Remember that when you are the teacher and one of your students goes beyond your depth.

·         You are a human being, not a rock. You are going out with a faith much stronger, more mature and better informed than I had when I went out. You are older than I was. You have the benefit of more experience from your older brothers. But I promise you, you are not invulnerable. If you think there is any sin or folly out there that it is beyond you to commit, think again. Of course, vice will not seriously challenge you, not at first. Once you make your standards known pride itself will ensure that you never back down from them. What will kill you is complacency. Better men than you have become alcoholics, murderers, rapists, drug addicts or just plain lazy bastards and it can happen to you. They did not fail because they were weak. They failed because they were strong, and they trusted in that strength. Only God’s mercy stands between you and becoming everything you justly hate. Remember, because you start out with great gifts, your fall will be more terrible if you fail. If you stop growing in your faith, you will fail. It may take ten years to undo your natural gifts and habits of home. It may take fifty. If you stop growing, you will die.

·         If you keep growing in your faith, it doesn’t much matter what else you do. God will bring you through.

·         By “Faith” I mean relationship, not book knowledge or observance of rubrics. Those will kill you deader than anything else if you trust in them in the absence of a vital relationship with God.

·         But don’t skip the study or the rubrics either.

·         Maintain your prayer life. Without it you will fail.

·         Go to daily mass when you can. I don’t care whether you feel like it or not. It will save your soul.

·         Develop a No Less Than prayer life. It might be no more than a morning offering when you wake up and Hail Mary, Our Father and Gloria as you fall asleep. This is what you fall back on when you simply have no time for your regular prayers. Train yourself to wake up with a morning offering on your lips. It will serve you in good stead when your drill sergeant throws a trash can down the hall at 0400, and the next chance you get to think is 2200 lights out.

·         Guard time = rosary time.

·         Mopping the latrines = rosary time.

·         Standing in line at the chow hall = rosary time.

·         You are a human being, not a rock. You will be contaminated. You will wake up one morning and look at yourself and see a habit that you have picked up that you could have done without. It might be something silly. It might be something vulgar. It might even be something sinful. Do not freak out. Did you expect to be perfect? Set about cheerfully and hopefully undoing it. Cheerfully because God is already working at it. The very fact that you see it means that He showed it to you, which means it is time to start working. Hopefully because He wants to perfect you far more fervently and effectively than you ever could.

·         In the end, you will never save your soul. The best any of us ever learn to do is cooperate with God as He saves us. But the results can be quite spectacular. Read a biography of Mother Teresa if you need an example. Actually, read her biography whether you need an example or not.

·         4 years, 10 years, 20 years, a lifetime. The Army is temporary. Like anything else it is worse than useless as an end. But as a means it can be a road to the service of God in His people, and a path to Heaven. Just keep in mind what is truly important.

·         Remember who you are (easier said than done, as you’re still figuring that out.) You were a Catholic gentleman before you joined the Army, and God willing you will be a Catholic gentleman when you are out of the army.

·         Remember that you are loved. The Army can never love you, but there are plenty of people who do. They loved you before you were a soldier, and they will love you when you are a soldier no longer.

I will be praying for you. I love you, and I am proud of you.

Your Older Brother, who made 93.4% of the mistakes he has just warned you against, and saw the rest of them first hand…

Ryan

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Matthew 10:16

Reply

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog about male/female relationships in our modern culture. I posted it here and on Ignitumtoday.com, and it generated more than a little controversy on IT. One of the most widespread criticisms was on my view of vocations, so I would like to quote the clearest and most cogent question I received about it, and answer it here.

I am a bit confused when you say “A true GCM will not belong entirely to his wife, he will have another life outside, this will be his life’s work.” If you mean that a man or woman should have as his or her primary vocation, loving God above all things (even his or her spouse) with his or her whole heart, mind, body, and soul…then okay I wholeheartedly agree. But how I understand your statement is that you think in the case of a man he will have other priorities that come before his role as a husband and father that will have a greater claim on his attention, and which he will not share with his little wife at home…this is where I do not agree. ..... If a man or woman is living the vocation of spouse & parent, then I think that vocation would be the primary focus, and would require the greatest claim on their time, and attention. This would of course necessitate them being a true man or woman in their own right. Which would be living fully as God created them to be, however in living as husband and wife, they would look to share everything they could to compliment the other, not seek to keep separate from their family qualities and gifts they are given.


Sorry it took so long to reply, I had to give it some thought and I have been busy. First of all you have to understand that that remark is colored by my experience in the military. I have seen too many women marry military men because they were attracted to their courage and dedication. Then within a few years they came to hate the military for the amount of time and energy it demanded from their men. Or worse, they came to hate their husbands for those very same qualities that they originally were attracted to. This goes back to Genesis when God said to the woman, "Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you." When women fall in love they do so with a completeness that is beautiful but frightening. There is (it seems to me) always a temptation for her to want her man to belong to her as totally as she belongs to him, but that cannot always be. Some men work at their jobs for only one purpose, to support their wife and family. Other men, in my view the happiest and most fulfilled men, work at their jobs because they love them, or because they feel called to that particular mission. That mission will necessarily take time that a woman might want him to spend with her. In the case of some dangerous mission, like military, police, firefighters, deep sea fishers, miners, lumberjacks, farmers, etc. there is the added pressure of the knowledge that this job (this passion if it is a passion) could take her man away from her forever.

In such cases there is always a temptation to want the man to take the easy way out, let go of that mission, and just get a job as a plumber or a mailman, something that will get him home, unshot, at regular hours. A woman who enters into a relationship with a man on a mission, especially a dangerous one, is fooling herself if she does not take that into account.

However you should not take from that statement the notion that this mission is more important than his wife and children. It  is not. If a man gets married that becomes his number one responsibility, period. My point was that it will not be his only responsibility, and ultimately the choice of how to balance the various responsibilities in his life is his (just like the woman's choice of priorities, ultimately, is hers and no other's.)

Somehow or other she will have to deal with the fact that he has other priorities, which are not more important than her, but are not unimportant either. When I say she must "deal with it" I don't want you to think that I mean she must just get used to it and learn to go on living when her man isn't around. I mean that literally she must deal with it. It is a factor that she must take into account and find a way of working with. Some women I have met do this by cutting their men down in public, doscouraging them from their jobs, breaking down their self-esteem, all in an effort to bring them to heel where they will be safe. Wiser women simply accept that this is something their man needs and let him do what he needs to do, knowing that when he is done he will come back to her, because he needs her even more deeply. However there is another way still. It is rare, dangerous and very, very difficult, but it is beautiful and noble. She might embrace his mission, make it her own, and make his sacrifice her sacrifice (which includes many sacrifices he will never be able to make.) However, since I have already written about that, I will not make this reply any longer. You can read about my view of that way here.

The Holiness Misconception

Recently I received a comment on one of my blog posts from an anonymous fellow Catholic, asking me when I was going to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders (for non-Catholics, that is the sacrament whereby a man becomes a priest in the Catholic Church.) It's not the first time I've heard that sort of question from a Catholic, but the first time I had heard it from a total stranger.

Oddly enough, it is a question I have also gotten more than a few times from protestants, agnostics, and even atheists in the Army. Sometimes it comes with the tone of, "Hey, instead of getting out, have you ever thought of becoming a chaplain?" (Little knowing what is entailed in becoming a chaplain on the Catholic side of the house.) More often it comes as simple curiosity, "So if you're all into religion, why don't you just become a priest or a preacher or something?" Sometimes (not very often) it has been with a slightly sarcastic tone, "Why don't you just go be a chaplain?"

Let's start out by saying that this is not a blog about discernment. That is my own business. Instead, this is a blog about the misconception that both sets of questioners have in common. Actually, there are two misconceptions. The first has to do with what holiness is. The second has to do with what that misconception of holiness means.

The first misconception is, simply speaking, an error in judgment. People judge others as holy or not holy, good or bad, moral or immoral, on purely exterior factors, whether or not they go to Church, whether or not they swear, or have tattoos, or drink alcohol, or a whole host of other factors. None of these are holiness. So a person who fits the picture of what they think holiness looks like is labeled as "religious" or "a straight arrow" or even "good" or "holy." (It may not even be a complimentary picture, by the way. For instance, how many people consider a lack of humor to be a quintessential part of holiness?)

But all of these exteriors are misleading. Holiness, however, is something interior. It comes from the same root as "whole," "holistic," "wholesome." The connotation of that root has to do with the healing of something fractured, repairing something that was damaged. It has to do with putting something into right relation with itself and everything else. The quality of holiness, then, is something that is always becoming for most people on this earth. In that sense total "wholeness" cannot be certainly claimed of any human being in this life. Even Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa were still becoming throughout their lives.

With this concept of holiness, the second misconception becomes clear. In both camps there is an unspoken assumption that holiness is something that only a few people are supposed to attain. There are a few priests and nuns who are maybe just a little strange, but they are the ones who are pursuing holiness, so good for them. We'll be respectful of them as kind of an insurance policy while we go on living our lives much the same as we ever did. This misconception takes different shapes depending on the atmosphere. In Catholic circles it can take the form of friends, family and religious ed teachers gently (or not so gently) nudging that nice boy who looks so pious on the altar, and that good girl who is such a little angel in choir, towards the priesthood or religious life. In the largely pagan world of the Army there is a general assumption that religion makes you slightly suspect as a soldier. It's all right to have religion on sundays, but it isn't supposed to be something that you drag into the mission or off duty hours. It doesn't belong in the barracks or the team room. I remember a soldier I knew, upon finding out that I was going to Daily Mass on lunch hour, exclaiming in disbelief, "No! I can't believe it. I can't believe you're one of those wimpy Christians." (A bold statement coming from him, since he and I both knew that I would utterly crush him at any test of strength or skill he could name (except maybe bench press.))

The truth is that this is a lie. There is no priveleged minority called to be holy, while everyone else is can scrape by with mediocre. Remember, the pursuit of holiness is not a step by step thing. Life is not paint by numbers. Holiness has nothing to do with checking a list of arbitrary rules to follow, and there is no cosmic schoolmaster who runs the scantron of our lives and deems us holy or unholy based on the percentage of correctly filled bubbles. We really are fragmented, broken, damaged creatures, and we really do have the opportunity to become whole, healthy, wholesome creatures. This is the universal vocation of all human beings, to bring themselves into right relation with the God who created them, because then, and only then, will they be in right relation with themselves and each other.

The particular ways in which we acheive this are as various as we are. Everyone, regardless of their state in life, married, single, consecrated religious, ordained priest or bishop; soldier, sailor, tinker, farmer, lawyer; father, mother, child, sibling; rich or poor; homeless or secure; drug-dealers, tweakers, pimps, prostitutes, alcoholics, addicts of all stripes; murderers, adulterers, rapists and child molesters. ALL are called to be holy, to be made whole.

So I don't think of myself as being out of the ordinary. I am just another human being trying to do waht all human beings throughout history should try to do. I just happen to be doing it this particular way, following the gifts and inclinations and leadings God has given to me. You should be doing the same thing, but in the way the God has for you. Whatever love I have for my God and my Faith (how much or little is not really your concern) has nothing to do with my particular vocation. It is just where I happen to be at this moment, and regardless of what work I am doing or how God is using me, I must grow in holiness or end up fading away into spiritual death. Those are really the only two alternatives.

The Power of the Powerless

I remember reading a story about a rather wealthy Indian lady who volunteered to work for Mother Teresa for a day, back in the years before Mother Teresa was an international celebrity. This Indian lady arrived at the clinic, which was a house for the dying, and was instantly overwhelmed by what she saw, heard and smelled. I know how she felt, too. Walking into a place like that is an instant sensory barrage of horror and evil. The evil, ugliness and pain are all very sensory phenomena, with their accompanying groans and screams, odors and wounds. The peace and love that the patients experience for the first time in their lives is much harder to see. The sight of raw flesh of a beggar who got run over by a truck is easier to notice than the fact that his wounds have been painstakingly cleaned of dirt, maggots and infection;  emaciated arms and ribs of a man who should weigh 70 kgs but instead weighs barely 30kgs hide the fact that he has just received the first good meal of his life, spoonfed by a woman who has dedicated her life to loving him; the smell of a human being in total kidney failure when his uric wastes are oozing through his pores on his skin disguises the fact that he has just been bathed today for the first time in his life. All of these things are a shock to the system. Even a trained and experienced medical practitioner can be overwhelmed walking into such a scene. Where do you start? What do you do? But this rich lady was a lay person, just an upper caste woman who had a kind urge and decided to volunteer for a day. I can only imagine what she must have been feeling as she stood there, surrounded by the obvious horror of human suffering. She must have been terrified, bewildered, filled with sorrow and helplessness. She must have wanted to turn around, run right back out the door, and never come back.

Fortunately there was something else at work, subtly, quietly, faithfully hidden under the obvious horror. Mother Teresa took this lady by the hand and led her to the most heartbreaking patient of all. A newborn infant was lying on a cushion, alone. Perhaps his parents had abandoned him, or perhaps they were dead. This was not a healthy baby. He was lethargic and emaciated. He did not cry or flail his tiny arms around. He did not startle the way a normal baby should, or grasp with his hands, or even suckle when a nipple or finger was put to his lips. He just lay there with his arms and legs spread out limply around him, breathing with the halting, abrupt, shallow gasps of a baby for whom simply breathing takes too much energy to be worthwhile.

Mother Teresa led the rich lady to this baby and told her simply to pick the baby up and hold him and love him for the few minutes or hours he had left to live. The rich lady protested that she couldn't possibly do that. It would surely break her heart. Mother Teresa only repeated her invitation, and went about her work. Left there in front of the dying infant the rich lady made a choice. She reached down and took that baby in her arms and held him. For the rest of the day she did nothing but love that baby as hard as she could until finally he died in her arms. And her heart broke, but not with anguish as she had expected. It broke with love.

I read this as I was in the first half of the SF medic training course, and it forever changed my view of medicine and healing. As healthcare providers we are trained to save lives. Our thought and energy are bent on staving off death for as long as we can, prolonging life, reducing pain, preventing or mitigating disabilities. All true healers have this goal, but all of us inevitably face the truth that our patients are going to die. Put it off as long as we can, prescribe what we will, in the end death will win. We can only delay it. Sometimes we can delay it for years. Sometimes only for minutes. Sometimes the patient is already dead, but their body just hasn't figured that out yet.

Faced with this truth, each health care provider, from the lowest EMTB to the Surgeon General (who generally does very little surgery from what I hear) has to find his own way of dealing with it. Some choose to ignore it. Some simply shrug their shoulder and move on. Some stop caring eventually. But in Mother Teresa's radical and almost unforgiveable request I believe I have seen the only true way forward. We must look deeply into the horror of death and see past it to the subtle, patient, silent work of love which is operating underneath the horror and pain, stronger and older and wiser than them. In the truly authentic Catholic approach to healthcare there is the acknowledgment that the patient will die, and the deeper knowledge that love is stronger than death. Even if the patient will only live for a few seconds, those few seconds can be lived with dignity. They can be filled with life and love and peace, if someone is brave enough to let God use them to be that gift. Such moments are never wasted.

All of this went through my mind when I saw this video by Tammy Ruiz a Registered Nurse who specializes in Perinatal Bereavement and Perinatal Hospice. I am not at all ashamed to admit that I couldn't watch the full video without tears in my eyes. The work she does is beautiful, heroic and necessary, and alas, all too rare.

Please watch the video and pass it on particularly to any medical proffessionals who are involved in birth and perinatal care. Pray for Mrs. Ruiz and the continuation of her vocation, which is truly a call within a call. Take the time to celebrate life in whatever way you can. This is a solid, concrete answer to the culture of death and a joyful affirmation of the infinite value of every single human person, no matter how small.

Go here to read Mrs. Ruiz's own words on her work.


(The Title of this post is taken from the title of the amazing book by Christopher De Vinck.)

Ask Thugfang: Vocational Uncertainty

His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness, Master Thugfang, is a demon of great infamy among academic circles. He is a frequent columnist for “Tempter’s Times”, an assistant editor for “Wickedness Weekly” and current chair of Tempter’s Training College’s Department of Defense Against the White Arts, after the sudden disappearance of the most recent head under mysterious circumstances. Now, His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness takes your questions. Having problems with a particularly troublesome patient? Meddlesome enemy agents stymieing you at every turn? Don’t wait, write immediately to “Ask Thugfang” C/O “Underworld Magazine.”

“Dear Master Thugfang, my patient is currently discerning a vocation to the priesthood, and I fear he is tipping the wrong way. What do I do? Sincerely, Fearful in Seattle.”

My Dear Fearful,

No need for pseudonyms here, I have enough friends in the offices of the Lowerarchy to find out your number if I want to. That you are a miserable blunderer, in very great danger of the usual punishments for incompetence and carelessness, I already know. Even the fact that you use the phrase “discerning a vocation” shows you have gathered most of your information about this from your patient. I suppose you never took my lectures on Vocational Uncertainty? Or perhaps you were one of those disgusting, arrogant insects who always simpered and smirked in the back, thinking you knew better than I. Now where are you? In imminent danger of letting a soul slip into a very dangerous and poisonous position, and of course, of being appropriately re-educated.

Never fear, though, all is not lost. The very tone of your question tells me that what you really need is a new point of view on the matter of “vocations” (so called). You need the principle of “vocational uncertainty,” a humble contribution of yours truly to the vast science on the subject. Put simply, it states that we do not know whether or not any particular human has or does not have a vocation, or if he does what it might be. We know there have been cases of Him calling individual humans. The singularly unfortunate and otherwise inexplicable case of our dear old boy Saul is one such example. But by and large we simply have no evidence to suggest that The Enemy “calls” the average human. If you take what He says at face value then it follows that He does, but we know better than to listen to anything He says, don’t we? Another important point is that the humans don’t know either. The patient doesn’t know. If he did he wouldn’t be “discerning” he would be struggling to accept or running away. The patient’s priest doesn’t know, his parents don’t know, no matter what kind of “advice” they give him.

On the whole it doesn’t matter to us at all. Of course if we could find out for certain what The Enemy’s game was, we would certainly try to discourage that vocation, but we can’t so it makes no sense worrying about it. Maybe your patient is being called, maybe he isn’t. You will be the last to know.

Now that I have shown that you really know nothing, it’s obvious from your question that you regard his becoming a priest as the most undesirable outcome. Such a shallow view of things is sure to get you re-educated sooner or later. Never let the facts dominate your view of reality. Let what you want be the way you see things and with practice you can get others to see it that way also.

In reality, neither outcome is good or bad for us. Let me impress upon you the spiritual maxim you should have learned as a lowly parasite: humans are raw material. Their thoughts, their feelings, their choices, their very bodies and souls, all of these are nothing more than raw material. We can get a priest to damn himself just as easily as anyone else, and they are tastier when they get here. Really, the disturbing thing is not that he is leaning towards becoming a priest, but that he is leaning in any direction at all. Do we want him to be a priest? Do we want him to be a lay person? To us, it truly doesn’t matter. We want him to be nothing. If I could I would make sure that every one of those obscene half-breed vermin lived their entire lives as nothing, doing nothing, desiring nothing, choosing nothing. I would see all of them waste every talent, opportunity and dream fleeing endless fears, living a bland, soulless existence and finding out when all is said and done, that nothing meaningful was said, nothing worthwhile was done, and all their choices were made by us, as we shall continue to make their choices for all eternity. I would like to see all of them torn with vocational scruples, bouncing back and forth in endless, self-defeating uncertainty between what they truly want, and what their dear Aunt Tilly has so helpfully half-convinced them The Enemy wants them to do.

If he could be made to engage in a spectacular act of willful defiance that would be one thing, but since we don’t know what we are making him defy, and since the more spectacular it is, the riskier it is to us, we just want to delay. Never let him see that no choice is really a choice, but we are the ones making it. Dawdle. Muddle. Confuse. Obfuscate. Guilt, fear, hope, desire, all of these are in our favor so long as none of them lead to what we fear most; i.e. a free, whole hearted, open commitment. The Enemy wants the patient to do one of two things: either to embrace every natural desire of his heart, all those deep longings for “goodness” and “truth” and “beauty” (pardon my French, but this is no job for the squeamish!) that The Enemy has placed there. If he does this, following those images with thankfulness and the knowledge that they are images, he is really choosing The Enemy behind those images, and that suits The Enemy just fine. Or, on the other hand, he could reject all of those images and choose to search for The Enemy Himself, face to face as it were (I know, the idea fills us with disgust, but some of these humans have tried it and they are unbelievably damaging to us.) I say again, the Enemy wants the human to do one of these two things. Which one, we don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We want him to do neither. Whether he is a priest or a publican is of no concern to us, so long as he is not happy or holy as either. Whether it matters to The Enemy, we can’t say for sure, but I suspect it is not His ultimate concern.

In summary, the road he takes in the end is of less interest to us than the choice, or rather the lack of choice. Keep him stalling as long as possible. When he does make it, see that he does not make it fully or freely, if you can. A choice made through fear is far better for us in the long run than a choice made from honest desire. And finally, once he does make his choice, (or drifts into it, if you do your job right,) you can use it to maintain that same spiritual stranglehold on him. Keep nagging at him with guilt, regrets, what-ifs and doubts. Encourage him to hang around with pious friends (our kind of pious, not real piety) who will say things like, “You know, I always thought you should have been a priest.” Or “Hey, at least you never have to deal with a nagging wife or whiny kids.” The ignorance of that statement is a veritable feast.

This should be enough to get you started. If you can’t manage to make it work even with this excellent advice, well, we shall just replace you with someone who can.

Cheers,

Thugfang