faith

Perfectionism vs Perfection

Reflection for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_440perfectionismvsperfection.html

https://wherepeteris.com/perfectionism-vs-perfection/
Deacon Douglas McManaman

It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

This is an interesting line from the first reading: “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant…” Is it too small a thing that Israel should be “my servant”? Or is it too small a thing “to raise up the tribes of Jacob”? Perhaps both. I say this because our God intends to raise us up to be his equals, so to speak, and since friendship is based on a kind of equality, God intends to raise us up to the level of friendship. We read in the gospel of John: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15, 15).

What raises us up to that level of equality (friendship) is divine grace, which is a sharing in the divine life. It was St. Athanasius who said that “God became man in order that man might become God”. He became man so that divine grace may run through the veins of humanity, as it were, so that humanity may become the temple of the Holy Spirit, the dwelling place of the Lord. Grace is that which “makes holy”. But holiness, unfortunately, is often confused with sanctimony, and sanctimony tends to get mixed in with perfectionism, which in turn is usually a means of shaming others–children in particular. But holiness is not perfectionism. Holiness is love; holiness is charity. 

We read: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Is 49, 6). But how can we become a light to the nations? God is Light, not us. We can be a light only by reflecting light, as a mirror does. But a mirror must be clean in order to receive the divine light and reflect it. However, in order to see the dirt and grime to be cleaned, one needs light, because one can’t see anything in the dark. But the dirt and grime prevent the mirror from receiving the light that is to be reflected, and so only the light can clean the mirror. In other words, we cannot clean ourselves in order to make ourselves receptacles of the divine light. If we take it upon ourselves to clean the mirror of our souls, we only end up becoming perfectionists, and perfectionism is not holiness. 

It sometimes happens that a person who has a late conversion in life will go to religious extremes. I believe that in such cases, since they will have spent a good part of their lives not at all concerned with the will and worship of God, they will have acquired certain vices along the way, such as a disposition to anger, or envy, the need to be “one up” on others, or the need to control others, or the need to be approved by authority figures, etc. The problem is that bad habits are hard to break and virtues take time to acquire, so what can happen is that these late converts can bring those habits into their new “religious life”, and this can cause a person to look for ways to continue in these behaviors, but under a religious guise. This is where sanctimony becomes confused with holiness, and there is a danger of becoming finger wagging perfectionists who will often find ways to stand out from others. 

I was part of a discussion recently in which a number of us were wondering whether or not everything Christ did was done perfectly. We all agreed that Jesus did not sin, but one person insisted that when Jesus the carpenter was sawing wood, for example, he would have made mistakes, perhaps cut the wood too short, or perhaps the table he made was not perfect in every way. Others took issue with this, insisting that Jesus was God, so he would have done everything perfectly. But we have to ask ourselves: Wasn’t he like us in all things but sin (Heb 4, 15)? If Jesus were to play baseball, would he have hit a home run every time or struck out every batter? Or, if he were in the Olympics, would he have won a gold medal in every event? Consider when Mary found Jesus in the temple: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” Jesus was a 12-year-old boy, and like a typical adolescent male was almost exclusively focused on one thing. Our purview starts out very narrow but gradually widens as we grow in experience and we begin to consider things that we would not have considered in your youth. To deny Jesus that development is completely unwarranted. Life is a learning process, and to be part of that learning process is to experience normal human imperfection–not moral imperfection, not folly, but the need for growth. I believe we can make the case that he experienced the imperfection that belongs to material existence, and because he is the God-man, he sanctified human imperfection. Hence, there is indeed a kind of beauty in imperfection (Conrad Hall).

The only thing he cannot sanctify is sin. Imperfection, on the other hand, is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, there would be far less misery in this world if more people would come to accept their own limitations and imperfections and give up the need to achieve perfection.

Jesus did say “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. What he was referring to, according to St. Augustine, was perfect charity. We see this from the context: “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, for God makes his sun shine on the wicked and the good” etc. Holiness is love, and God’s love was made visible in the Person of Christ, who descended, who emptied himself and took the form of a slave, and entered into our death in order to inject it with his divine life. And so, we become like him by descending, not by ascending. The way to ascend to God is to descend with him and love what he loved, and he had table fellowship with social rejects. Christ was not a temple priest. He was out in the world, mixing it up with the sick, the suffering, the lost and forsaken.

The spiritual life is a gradual letting go of all that blocks the divine light; it is about allowing the divine light to burn within us all disordered love of self, which is what keeps us from genuinely loving others. God is a consuming fire (Heb 12, 29), a refiner’s fire (Mal 3, 2). A blacksmith puts the iron in the fire to soften it, to make it more malleable, and then he hammers it into the shape he envisions for it. Outside of that fire, the iron remains hard, rigid, and unbending, but when placed in the fire, it begins to radiate with the color of the flame.

We do have a tendency to regard suffering, trials, difficulties as anomalies, as signs that something is terribly wrong, that we are in some way being punished by God. This is a serious misconception. In this gospel, John says: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”. This is Christ’s fundamental identity, the Lamb of God who has come into the world to be sacrificed. The most significant moment in the New Testament took place in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Lord, let this cup pass me by; but not my will, but your will be done”. He felt the size and weight of this obstacle, but these words were his victory, and we get to share in that victory all throughout our lives each time we are confronted with difficult and fearful choices. Our task is to allow ourselves to be molded by his hands, to allow him to make us like himself. 

But what is he like? We just have to look at a crucifix. That’s what he is like. It is rather easy to live a kind of religious life that amounts to a continuous evasion of the cross. We see this, for example, in those who, while they love liturgy, vestments, incense and candles, processions and liturgical drama, will demean others, look down upon them, make their authority felt and use religion to oppress others, especially women. The Church is a strange mixture of the divine and the human, holiness and sin, a mystery that can only really be understood from the inside. We see the results of this tragic mixture all throughout the history of the Church, alongside those who are genuinely saintly, like Don Bosco who devoted his life to poor youth on the streets during the time of the Industrial Revolution, or Vincent de Paul, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Benedict Joseph Labre, Padre Pio, John Neumann who dedicated his life to the immigrants of Philadelphia, learning 8 languages in order to hear their confessions and who died on the street at 48 years of age while running some errands. And when I look back at my own life, I have encountered both those who have been a negative influence, who have done harm and have driven people away from the Church by their misogyny, legalism, and abuse of authority and who made their priesthood principally about them, alongside great men and women who had a tremendous influence on me, such as a very humble Salesian priest, an unpretentious and joyful diocesan priest from Washington D.C., who was violently murdered during a robbery, and countless women who were hidden vessels of divine patience, carriers of the divine light and love.

O Mavros Christos (The Black Christ)

Deacon Doug McManaman

I was inspired to write this Icon (O Mavros Christos/The Black Christ) while reading James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree. It was Rev. David McClearly who, soon after we met at Southlake hospital in Newmarket, ON, suggested I read this book. At the same time I recommended that he read G. Studdert Kennedy, Episcopalian chaplain to the British Army during WWI—specifically his book The Hardest Part. One of Studdert Kennedy’s great poems is entitled Indifference:

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,”
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

This poem prepared me for the impact that James Cone’s book was going to have on me. It was one of the most deeply moving books in theology that I had read up to this point in my life. It left me speechless on a number of occasions. He writes:  

The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America’s crucifixion of black people. It is the window that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman state and of white supremacy in America willed it. Yet, God took the evil of the cross and the lynching tree and transformed them both into the triumphant beauty of the divine. If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation, there is hope “beyond tragedy”. 

I’ve studied iconography for many years now, and I knew that I wanted to “write” an icon of a black Christ–after all, Jesus was not white. But most importantly, the fundamental reason I have for this idea is that the moral and spiritual life of a believer is about becoming the unique Christ, which Christ can be in you individually, in me individually. When you are the person Christ intends you to be, when it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you (Gal 2, 20), then Christ appears in this world uniquely, through you. No one can be that unique Christ except you. And when you are that, you have a beauty that no one else can possess. There is a beauty that only you can bring the world. And so there is a “black Christ”, an Asian Christ, an Indigenous Christ, a Caucasian Christ, etc. I also knew I wanted a Christ with dreads. The symbolism of dreadlocks is rich and broad. It symbolizes connection to the divine, resistance against oppression; it is a symbol of African heritage and identity, and it became an emblem of resistance against colonial oppression. Of course, dreadlocks are an ancient symbol of wisdom and spiritual insight. Also, I wanted to make sure to include a “lynching tree” in the background. I cannot explain this better than Cone himself who writes:

As I see it, the lynching tree frees the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians. When we see the crucifixion as a first-century lynching, we are confronted by the reenactment of Christ’s suffering in the blood-soaked history of African Americans. Thus, the lynching tree reveals the true religious meaning of the cross for American Christians today. The cross needs the lynching tree to remind Americans of the reality of suffering–to keep the cross from becoming a symbol of abstract, sentimental piety. …Yet the lynching tree also needs the cross, without which it becomes simply an abomination. It is the cross that points in the direction of hope, the confidence that there is a dimension to life beyond the reach of the oppressor. “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more (Lk 12, 4). 

I would like to emphasize, however, that the tragedy of Good Friday was transformed into the beauty of the divine light, and thus the same is true of the lynching tree. Cone writes: 

Though the pain of Jesus’ cross was real, there was also joy and beauty in his cross. This is the great theological paradox that makes the cross impossible to embrace unless one is standing in solidarity with those who are powerless. God’s loving solidarity can transform ugliness–whether Jesus on the cross or a lynched black victim–into beauty, into God’s liberating presence. Through the powerful imagination of faith, we can discover the “terrible beauty” of the cross and the “tragic beauty” of the lynching tree. 

The following are pictures of the stages of development that this icon went through. The first stage of the writing of an icon is the preparation of the sketch and transferring it onto the gessoed surface of a poplar wood board. The gold leaf is then applied to the clay surface. 

The first layer in the painting process is roskrysh, which is followed by first lines, and then the first highlight. After the first highlight, one applies the first float, which dampens the brightness of the highlight. After the first float, we apply a second highlight, followed by a second float, a third highlight followed by a third float, and finally the second lines. The icon then sits for two weeks to dry before olipha (applying linseed oil). 

Notes for the icon Lynching treeDownload

A Reflection on Beauty in Time

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Ever since I retired, I’ve had more time to reflect upon my years as a teacher, and my years of friendship with some of my colleagues, and my good friends. Sometimes I have to drive to a nearby town for an eye appointment, and I’ll have to drive right past the school at which I taught for the past 20 years, and when I do so, I experience a certain euphoria, all as a result of an influx of various memories. 

So much has been forgotten, so many students that have passed through my classroom, the details of so many days, etc., and although I do remember many things, I do think I’ve forgotten more than I remember. But there is a joy there that I experience when I am brought back to that place, among other places.

My good friend is a retired priest, but I often think of my last 30 years with him, visiting him when he was stationed at this or that parish, and then after I was ordained in 2008 I could give him a break from preaching. A teaching colleague started to join me on these weekend visits; he’d cook, I’d preach, and our friend would smoke cigarettes and relax. Those were great memories. And they’re gone.  

I am acutely aware that there was something beautiful in those moments, something I miss, and something I long to recover, to experience again. And I believe this is the root of tradition, which is an attempt to make the past present once again. We believe that doing something the same way, repeating an action, making it ritual, like singing happy birthday and blowing out candles, or opening presents on Christmas morning and having turkey in the evening, allows us to experience once again what we experienced in the past, which now, in the present, we long for. We long to connect to that past, to the people who perhaps are no longer with us. 

But it begins with seeing something in the past that we didn’t quite see back then, or were not explicitly aware of at the time. It seems that time strips away some of the dross of our experiences and leaves us with a memory that is purified, and something now radiates. 

I became more and more aware of this the older I got. I began to realize that this beauty that I saw when looking back, was there at the time, when it was not past, but present, but something prevented me from seeing it at the time, or appreciating it. It was buried underneath a host of baggage–perhaps stress, anxiety, preoccupation with what needs to be done at the moment, marking tests or creating exams, etc. What this means is that today, in the present moment, that element, that nugget of beauty that I will appreciate and see clearly 10 or so years from now (looking back and recalling this present moment), is here now, at this moment. 

So, the question is: Is there a way for me to become aware of it now, so that I can delight in it now, rather than 20 years from now? And so a few years ago I began to really look for it in the present, to look for this element, this beauty, that I know I will see in retrospect.

So I know that one day I’m going to look back and remember teaching Confirmation to these kids, in the church basement either at St Lawrence the Martyr, or Blessed Trinity, or Sacred Heart in Uxbridge, taking their questions, questioning them, and I’m going to miss those moments, so, now, when I am teaching these classes, I am becoming more aware of that hidden element in the here and now. Same with preaching. One day I won’t be preaching anymore, but I’ll recall those times when I was preaching at this Church or that Church, and I’ll see something, something very memorable. I visit the hospitals often, at least once a week. Someday I might be a patient at Southlake hospital, and I’ll recall the years when I’d walk the halls and visit the patients, and I know I will long for those moments again, and I am aware of that now when I am in the hospital visiting patients, walking the halls and stairwells, making my way to their rooms. It’s hard to be attuned to this when we are young, because the young mind is just not focused on the present moment, but on the future. 

And yet, the moments keep on drifting into the past. I am aware that when I discern that element in the present moment, I will often try to grasp on to it and keep it, but I can’t do it. It still drifts into the past. And it is always sad to see it drift away like that. 

And yet, for God, nothing is past. God is the eternal present. So, does that mean when we die and enter into his rest, that all those moments will be recovered in some way? That we will experience the accumulated joy of each one of those moments, in the eternal present? 

I think so. I am quite convinced that this is part of the joy of heaven. We are not to experience the fullness of that joy here, it will always escape our attempts to capture it, but it will be returned to us one hundredfold later on, in eternity. 

Existence in time is a constant dying, drifting into the non-existent past. But Christ conquered death; he rose from the dead, so existence in time is a constant dying, each moment of which will rise again, in glory. Tradition seeks to recover the past, to make it present again, like the Mass, which actually does make present the sacrifice of Calvary. But in heaven, what tradition aims to achieve will be achieved. The joy of heaven will include the joys of each present moment of our existence, and so the deaths of each moment are not permanent; we can look at each moment and instead of saying “good-bye”, we can say: “see you again soon”. 

Now, the gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, was the Transfiguration. You know it well, so I’m not going to read it, but I have always been struck by what Peter says there: 

Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

And every time I read that, I think of Father Frank Kelly, a homily that he gave way back in the early 90s, and I think it was when we came home from a retreat in New Jersey, we took a bunch of students, and we had Mass on our return. And the translation at that time was: “It is wonderful for us to be here”. That’s a better translation than what we have now.

The Greek word here is not “good” as in “It is good to be here”. The Greek word is kalon. It is kalon for us to be here. 

Aristotle used that word kalon in his Nicomachean Ethics. The word kalon is derived from kaleo, which means attractive, and it is a word used in the context of aesthetics, the study of art and the beautiful. The kalon in Aristotle is best translated as the morally beautiful. 

The gospel really should read: “It is beautiful for us to be here”, or “morally beautiful to be here”. The beauty is the moral atmosphere. This is an experience of beauty, the divine beauty. And it is an aesthetic experience that Peter, James, and John want to perpetuate. They want to keep it from drifting into the past.

Moses and Elijah, they are from the past, but they are present, in the present moment of the Transfiguration, contributing to its beauty; they represent salvation history before Christ. What is past is made present, in the here and now, through Christ. 

God the Son joined a human nature to himself. The eternal, who is Beauty Itself, has entered into time and joined himself to the matter of the universe. Now, Pope John Paul II said often, in joining a human nature, God the Son joined himself as it were to every human being. He is present to every human person. Those who have the theological virtue of faith, those who have allowed Christ the king to reign in their lives, are given the light of grace, the light of faith. They have become aware of that deep and hidden presence, the presence of God the Son within the interior of the soul. That’s the kalon that exists at every moment, within every moment, in the lives of the faithful. That element of beauty that we see when looking back at things that have past is the kalon of the divine presence, stripped of the dross that acted as a distraction at the time. Our life is transfigured in Christ, right now, but there is so much that eclipses the radiance that the present moment contains. Later on, our memories of these events unveil the kalon so that we have a minor transfiguration experience.

To find that experience in the present, underneath the current dross that clouds it, we need to learn to be present. To be present is to be in the present. And to be present is a skill. It is interesting how the two words are akin: present and presence. To be present to another is to be in the presence of another, to be aware of their presence–not just their position in space. To be in the here and now, focused on the person before us. It is easy to be focused on a great person, but being present to the lowest of the low, that’s a skill. It requires an ability to see something in that person that is well disguised. Mother Teresa always spoke of the poor as Jesus’ disguise. 

Now, the Greeks distinguish two kinds of time: chronos time and kairos time. Kairos is used over 80 times in the New Testament, and it refers to a season, such as harvest time. Chronos time is measured time, quantified into an hour, or a minute. Chronos time moves outside of us. The clock is ticking. The present moment, the now, is here instantaneously and then quickly drifts into the past, always escaping us. 

However, we can be “within time”, that is, in time. We can move in it. If we move in it, then it is always now. As an analogy: think of a spacecraft. If we are outside the spacecraft, it zooms by us. If we are inside the spacecraft, we move along with it. Kairos time is time that we are in, and so it is always present. 

But, chronos time is real, and it makes demands on us. We have an appointment and so we have to move on. Peter, James, and John got a taste of the kairos time that is in heaven, but chronos time made demands on them. The experience of the transfiguration came to an end and they had to come down from the mountain. 

Chronos time and kairos time are simultaneous. Chronos time says I have an appointment at 10 o’clock, so I have to take leave of my friends and make my way there. But when I get to the doctor’s office, I have to be present to the doctor, pay attention to him, be a presence to him and allow him to be a presence to me. But, even the trip to the doctors, the drive, or the bus ride, is not meant to be pure chronos. I must be present to the beauty of the present moment. The view outside the window, or to the people on the subway, the walk to the doctor’s office, or whatever. 

God is outside of time, not subject to the passing of time, but time exists, and God is intimately present within all that exists, as the First Cause of all that exists. God, who is Beauty Itself, is present in each moment of time.

And my students feel it. The first assignment that I give to my Niagara University students in January is to have them write out a short essay on how it is they got to where they are now, that is, how they got to teachers college. Reading their personal stories of how they got to this point is really an exhilarating experience. Their stories are so unique and so rich in content, and there is often some hero in their lives, either their parents, who came to Canada under adverse circumstances but struggled and overcame these obstacles through faith, trust in God, and hard work, or a great and unknown teacher in their lives who had a profound influence on the student as a result of the way that teacher related to her students, with great patience and perseverance, or some priest in their lives. etc. Many of them have very positive memories of their school years. Each story from each student is so different, but each one is usually so uplifting and exhilarating. And it is so easy to see the hand of divine providence in their lives, leading them to where they are now. 

Now, it is amazing how many of these prospective teachers drifted from the faith, but returned, and it was the result of memories that were gradually uncovered, a feeling like something was lost, a world, and they rediscovered it. 

The transfiguration was really a gift given to Peter, James, and John, to strengthen them for the impending trauma of Christ’s passion, and the memories we create for our students, for young people in the parish, are ordered to the same end, to strengthen them for the impending sufferings and difficulties and traumas that await them.  

It is a ministry ordered to the creation of memories. I was going over these ideas with a patient of mine at the hospital, a young lady who suffers from clinical depression. I’ve been visiting her for many years now. Certain months of the year are very difficult for her. But I was telling her about the themes of this retreat.

I did ask her if she has any memories that bring her a sense of peace, and she said she had very few if any. And of course, she suffers from depression. When I spoke of this, she was reminded of Erik Erickson, the final stage of psychosocial development, the stage of integrity vs despair. Now, it is not quite the same in her case, because the stage of despair results from the fact that one sees the choices that one has made, and the despair is the result of those bad choices. Clinical depression is not something that results from bad moral choices. It is a brain disease. But I did give her something to think about. This is what I said:

We believe that God the Son joined a human nature and entered into human suffering. In joining himself to every man, he is especially present in the depths of our suffering and darkness. We don’t suffer alone, although it may often feel that we do. But we don’t. And this lady has a special cross to bear, as do all those who suffer from clinical depression. 

And they must feel like they’ve been ripped off terribly. Others have their health, both mental and physical, they are privileged, brought up in a family that is well off, they travel and they’ve gone to university, they’re working. Life is tremendous. And here she is, this girl, in and out of mental health wards all her life. Life seems very unfair. But of course, our God is a God of justice. He balances the scales, and the divine justice has been revealed as the divine mercy. I told her that when you stand before God at the end of your life, and you see and grasp the meaning of your entire life from God’s point of view, that is, when you see your life in the light of Christ and the paschal mystery, and you reflect on the prospect of doing it all again, you will not want to change anything. She reacted to that and said she just cannot imagine that and doubts very much that she would not want anything changed. Nevertheless, that is the case, because she will see that Christ was present all along in the depths of that suffering, that her depression was a special sharing in the mental anguish of Christ that he endured throughout his life, especially on Holy Thursday night. She will see how her suffering has imprinted on her the image of the suffering Christ, and friendships are based on common qualities, and she’ll see how much her life has in common with Christ’s life, unlike the life of prosperity and privilege. She can’t see that now, but she will in eternity. But, she can begin to look now, to reflect upon her life in that light and perhaps begin to see it, begin to discover the suffering Christ in the midst of that darkness.

But the suffering involved in clinical depression is deep, but the Lord is there nonetheless. The specific cross given to such a person may involve being unable to detect the peace of his presence at any level, but he is there nevertheless, and one day this person will see it and delight in it, and see what it has done for her, how that suffering has configured her to the beautiful image of Christ crucified. And so the scales will be balanced in her favor.

A Season of Irony

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Years ago I was struck by something Gregory of Nyssa wrote in a Sermon on the Beatitudes: 

What more humble for the King of creation than to share in our poor nature? The Ruler of rulers, the Lord of lords puts on voluntarily the garb of servitude. The Judge of all things becomes a subject of governors; the Lord of creation dwells in a cave; He who holds the universe in His hands finds no place in the inn, but is cast aside into the manger of irrational beasts. The perfectly Pure accepts the filth of human nature, and after going through all our poverty passes on to the experience of death. …Life tastes death; the Judge is brought to judgement; the Lord of the life of all creatures is sentenced by the judge; the King of all heavenly powers does not push aside the hands of the executioners (Sermon 1, The Beatitudes).

Notice the irony in this. Christmas, the birth of Christ, is a season of irony. For this reason, it is a season of humour; for it is irony that makes us laugh. That’s what makes good comedians, namely, an ability to see and make explicit the irony in everyday situations. Consider the nick names kids give one another; they are often very funny because they are ironic: the tall kid is called ‘shorty’, the short one is called stretch, the weak and skinny kid is ‘hercules’, and they called me “slim”.   

If we stand back and think about the irony in the mystery of the Incarnation, it is rather funny. God, who is all powerful, immaterial, and indestructible, becomes flesh; God, who is eternal, is born in time; God, who is all powerful and independent, becomes a weak and vulnerable baby dependent upon a mother and father; God who is the judge of all is judged by a mere human being; God who is Life Itself dies on a cross. This is irony, and there is joyful humour in this. It is as if God is playing a joke on us, one serious to be sure, but a joke nonetheless–and it is serious because love is serious. 

The word ‘humor’ comes from the Latin humous, which means soil or dirt. The word ‘human’ is also derived from the same root, because we came from dust and to dust we shall return. And the word ‘humility’ has the same origin, for the humble know they are dust and ashes and they have their feet planted firmly on the ground–they do not walk high and mighty; they realize they are just flesh and blood and are everywhere prone to error. These three words (human, humility, humour) are clearly related. The more humble you are, the more human you are, and the more you are able to laugh, especially at yourself.  

This is a problem with our notion of holiness. In movies, saints are almost always depicted as overly serious, heavy, not disposed to laughter, as if laughter is offensive to God. But a truly holy person sees the irony in life in light of the divine irony, which is why truly holy people laugh a lot. Above all, they can laugh at themselves, because they take themselves lightly. I always emphasize to couples taking Marriage Prep that being able to laugh at yourself and taking yourself lightly is the key to conflict resolution–those who cannot laugh at themselves, who take themselves too seriously, will indeed have marital difficulties. 

God is joy itself, and you and I are called to enter into that joy, to enter into the divine humour. Grace gives us the eyes to see life’s irony so that we can begin to laugh with God. We cannot laugh, however, if we are afraid, and there is a great deal of fear in people’s lives. Inordinate fear can cause us to do things that only make a mess out of our lives and bring chaos to the lives of others. Human beings are limited by matter, by flesh and blood. Our abilities and our knowledge in particular are terribly limited. When we experience those limits, we typically begin to fear, because we realize there is very little that is in our control, and then we are tempted to make choices that are contrary to the limits that the moral law imposes upon us. In other words, we are tempted to sin, to take matters into our own hands. But this is where we have to trust; for the spiritual life is about learning to trust and to fear less and less. Christians have a unique advantage here, because we have the example of divine irony: God is so powerful that he can defeat the one enemy that man could not hope to defeat, namely sin and death, and he does so not through power, but weakness: the weakness of a child, the weakness of poverty, the weakness of a bad reputation (as a result of sharing table fellowship with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes), and the weakness of death on a cross. He rose from the dead. And he gives us his very self under the appearance of ordinary bread–more irony; God, who is extraordinary, allows himself to be consumed under the appearance of ordinary bread, in order to strengthen us, in order to dwell within us. God, who cannot be contained, allows us to contain him. So why are we afraid? “If God is for us, who can be against us (Rm 8, 31). 

Finally, the angel says to Joseph in a dream: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”. Why in a dream? The reason is that when we are sleeping, we are no longer in control. And if we are not in control, we cannot screw things up. We are most disposed to listen when we are not in control. And that’s why God often does speak to us in dreams. But the message in this is that we must learn to relinquish control, more and more, when we are not sleeping, but awake. The more we relinquish control and allow God to be God, the more we will see miracles. We see so few miracles because we insist on managing things ourselves, managing other people, and driving them away in the process. But the more we learn to trust him and listen in silence, the more we will hear him speak to us, and like Joseph, we will know what to do, where to go, and how to get there.

Thoughts on God as Pure Act of Being and Atheism

Deacon D. McManaman

God is pure act of existence. But what does this mean?  I can look at you and form a concept, an idea of what you are. In other words, I grasp something of your nature, i.e., you are a human kind of being, you have size and affective qualities, you have certain abilities and potentialities very similar and different from other kinds of beings. But I also apprehend that you exist, which is a different apprehension than the first (the apprehension of the kind of being you are). Your existence is intelligible, but I cannot form a concept of it–as I can form a concept of your nature, the kind of person you are. You are a certain kind of being that “has an act of existence”, but existence does not belong to your nature. Existence is an “act” that you have, while “human”, for example, is “what” you are (not what you have). The key point here is that your existence is not a concept; it is, nonetheless, intelligible. 

God is not a composite of essence and existence (as are you), rather, his essence is to exist. He does not “have” existence; rather, he is his own act of existing. And so God is intelligible, but we cannot form a concept or idea of God. And because God is pure act of existence, he is pure goodness and beauty, because goodness and beauty are properties of being. 

And so we need to be careful with confusing the worship of God with the worship of a conceptual framework. As pure act of being, God is intimately present to whatever has existence; God is more intimately present to you than you are to you. Being is the most interior aspect of a thing, and so God, who is the first existential and preservative cause of your being, is, of all that is within you, the most interior. How you relate to God, who is goodness itself and beauty itself, is not always clear to you, certainly not immediately clear. It becomes increasingly manifest in your dealings with other goods, such as human goods or human persons. 

The atheist typically rejects a conceptual framework, as opposed to God himself. Even the use of “himself” is dangerous because it brings God into a conceptual circle. This is not to say that it is false, but it can be misleading. God is in many ways “himself” and “herself” and infinitely more, while at the same time God is absolutely simple, for there is nothing simpler than “being itself”. 

And so when someone says he or she is an “atheist”, we have to ask what that means precisely. It very often does not mean that God is rejected–especially if the atheist has a degree of wisdom. It is usually a conceptual framework that is rejected, for a variety of reasons. The good news is that God is not a concept. God is intelligible, infinitely knowable, and incomprehensible. We believe he revealed himself in history, and this is where the construction of an elaborate conceptual framework begins, but this religious conceptual frame of mind, although not necessarily false, is always subject to reform and constant editing. God, however, is always infinitely larger than this religious conceptual framework. That is why openness to and dialogue with other religions and denominations is of the utmost importance. 

Fear and Primitive Reasoning

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God (Is 35, 4)

So much of what goes wrong in the world has its roots in fear. And there is so much about this world today that gives rise to fear; but this life is really about learning to depend upon God, that is, learning to fear less (fearless), and the way to do that is first to become increasingly aware that independence is relative and ultimately an illusion, and that we depend on God ultimately, and second to actually begin to rely on God. We certainly depend on one another, but ultimately everyone depends on God. And the more we surrender our lives to God, the more we learn through our own experience that God really is intimately involved in everything that happens to us and that nothing happens outside of his providential control. However, although human beings really do make a mess out of their lives when they take matters into their own hands instead of relying on God, they are still wrapped up and surrounded by God’s providence.  

My spiritual director would always say to me: “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust”. And fear is useless, at least fear without trust, because we all experience our radical limitations, but without trust we are tempted to cross those limits, that is, moral limits, and then we do things that we know to be wrong, like lying under oath, or stealing, or undermining the reputation of another, plotting to bring others down, etc. We make every effort to create an environment that is safe for ourselves, and this soon becomes a machination process in which we are willing to sideline those who get in our way. That injustice generates resentment in others, and such wounds can stay with a person all throughout his or her life. And soon everybody is carrying around a soul riddled with bullet holes, and the result is that we only think of ourselves, sort of like having a toothache–you can’t think of anything other than your own pain. 

But God does allow suffering into our lives. He does not impose it on us, but He does allow it; for suffering is the opportunity God gives us to depend on Him, to trust Him more fully, to place ourselves in His hands. When we do, we can be assured that he will act, but God does tend to “take his time”, not our time. And so, we have to be patient. That’s the problem with living in a fast-paced society–we are disposed to want things done quickly, and that just does not happen with God. The reason is that love is patient, and God is love, and he calls us to be patient: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains” (Jm 5, 7).  Suffering and moments of darkness are symbolized here by the image of early and late rains–there is no “precious fruit of the earth” without that suffering. 

In my experience, most people, even religious people, believe that suffering, hardship, and struggles are anomalies. Religious people in particular often assume that if we have a relationship with God, all will be smooth and relatively easy, so that if suffering enters our life, that must mean that our relationship with God has somehow been broken by something we did, some sin that we committed. This is how Israel interpreted her own suffering and hardship on a national level; on an individual level, it was assumed that those who were poor, lame, deaf or blind, etc., were forsaken by God by virtue of some ancestral or personal sin. This is a primitive way of trying to make sense out of suffering. Jesus, however, challenged this in the gospel of John: “As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him’” (Jn 9, 1-3).

Unfortunately, many people still tend to think this way, because they want to make sense out of suffering, and if I can convince myself that a person is suffering because of something sinful he has done, well then I don’t feel so bad–on some level I convince myself that he deserves it. If we carefully read the book of Job, we see that Job’s friends were reasoning precisely along these lines, which is why in the end God rebuked them for this (See Jb 42, 7-9).  

We have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning, which is still rather prevalent. Some people take many sections of the Old Testament literally and believe that God does in fact destroy otherwise innocent people (i.e., Amalekite children, David’s infant son, etc.) as a punishment for the sins committed by others. We have to keep in mind that Israel, in her infancy, thought as a child does, namely, egocentrically: if something bad is happening to a child, for example, if the child is being abused by a parent, or the child’s parents are going through a separation and divorce, that child believes this is all happening because “I am bad”. It takes years for a person to escape from this mythology–and he or she may need help (a trained therapist) to overcome such harmful and subconscious beliefs, otherwise they may carry that conviction into their adult lives, feeling and believing on some level that they are deeply flawed, and without knowing why. Such people typically carry around a great deal of anger. We see precisely this kind of thinking on a national level in the Hebrew Scriptures, but Israel is a nation in history, a nation that through time grew in her understanding of God as a result of that historical relationship. The way Israel thinks about herself and God later in her history is very different from the way she thought earlier.

However, God reveals his true face in the Incarnation of the Son, that is, in the Person of Christ. God’s response to human sin was pure grace. He does not impose suffering but enters into human suffering, for he joined a human nature to himself and entered into our darkness, so that when we suffer, we may find him in the midst of that suffering. He came to sanctify our suffering and death, to inject it with his life. That is why the Old Testament must always be read in the light of the New, that is, in the light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. 

Finally, John the Baptist, the greatest of those born of women, is suffering in the darkness of a prison cell, awaiting his execution. He does not suffer by virtue of some sin; rather, he is suffering because of his heroic virtue, that is, his decision to speak out against Herod, who after visiting his brother in Rome, seduced his wife and married her after dismissing his own wife. John rebuked Herod for this, and Herod responded by throwing him into the dungeons of the fortress of Machaerus, near the Dead Sea. In that darkness, John was tempted to doubt. Initially, he pointed out rather definitively that Jesus was the lamb of God, but in this dark and final period in prison, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the One who is to come, or, must we go on expecting another?” Jesus sent John’s disciples back with the evidence: the blind are given their sight, the lame are walking, lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, and the dead are being raised and the poor are receiving the good news. What Isaiah prophesied in the first reading is being fulfilled in the Person of Christ himself. And if the lame, the poor, the sick, the deaf, etc., were thought to be forsaken, abandoned, and rejected by God, then what is happening here can only be interpreted as a vindication of the poor, that the kingdom of God has come upon them in the Person of Christ. He overthrows the kingdom of darkness, and the true face of God is being revealed not a God who punishes retributively,[1] but a God who forgives and loves, who loves us so much that he will take on our sufferings, join us in our deepest darkness so that we may not suffer alone. He enters into the worst possible darkness that a person can experience: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. He tastes the furthest extremity of God forsakenness, the depths of hell, in order to fill it with his light and love. That is the good news of our salvation. 

1. When the New Testament speaks of divine punishment, the Greek word employed is kolasis, which is best translated as “chastisement”. Timoria is the Greek word for retribution or retributive punishment, but we do not find this word in the New Testament associated with divine punishment. Kolasis, on the contrary, is a horticultural term that refers to pruning, as in pruning a plant. One prunes a plant for the good of the plant. In other words, divine punishment is ordered to the good of the “chastised” and is consistent with the divine love.

    Perfect Victory

    Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent
    https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_437perfectvictory.html
    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    Anyone who uses social media and follows American politics is acutely aware of how divided we have become as a nation. This division is also evident in a number of Catholic journals, especially those that allow comments. YouTube videos often bear the legend “so and so gets humiliated”, or “____________ gets schooled by __________”, or crushed, demolished, destroyed, and so on. Such videos are not about listening to the finer points of an issue in order to inch our way closer to the truth; rather, the attitude is so often “demolish the enemy”, and the enemy, needless to say, are those who disagree with us. In the end, victory leaves us with one apparent winner and one loser; the winner gloats, and the loser is humiliated and goes off with his proverbial tail between his legs. Moreover, there is a tremendous lack of civility today on social media, especially when it comes to politics. 

    However, the first reading for the 2nd Sunday of Advent provides a very different vision of what a genuine victory is. I’m referring specifically to the last section of the first reading from Isaiah (11, 6-8):  

    The wolf shall live with the lamb,
    the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat,
    the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
    The cow and the bear shall graze,
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
    The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the den of the venomous snake.

    In short, no harm shall come from those who were at one time the enemy to be feared. This reading from Isaiah is a vision of the eschatological harmony that we can look forward to. And it is an entirely different vision of victory than what we typically understand by that word. There will not be one winner standing over the defeated enemy; rather, the enemies have been changed, that is, completely transformed. In short, there will be no more enemies; for they will have ceased to be such. That’s precisely what Christ’s victory is, which is the greatest possible victory. 

    I debated a lot when I was younger, and at times those debates got very heated. Back then, I was quite convinced that I won those debates, but my opponents were equally certain they did. In formal debates, it is the audience that decides the winner. If you came to the debate favoring a particular side, but the other side changed your mind, you indicate that at the end and the one who turned more people around to their side is the winner–and there is only one winner and one loser. 

    But is it possible to have two winners? Most people would say no, but it is possible. I know that in my case, on a number of occasions in my late 50s and especially in recent years, after reflecting upon certain issues for decades, I have said to myself more than once: “Gosh, so and so was right 35 years ago when I argued with him on this issue”, and “I think that person was right 20 years ago when we debated that issue”. This has happened many times in recent years, only because I still study. And it’s a marvelous experience to be sure, not unpleasant in any way, but there’s no way of getting in contact with these people to tell them: “Hey, remember the debate we had 35 years ago. You were right all along. It just took me 35 years to see it.” 

    In this case, we have two winners. And why did it take so long? Because human knowing is very limited; human intelligence is sluggish, and we depend so much on experience (empirical data), which takes time. Certain epistemic conditions were not in place at a specific point in our personal history, but after three decades, if and when those conditions are established, we see what we could not see earlier. That’s a true victory, when two opposing parties finally see eye to eye. And again, that’s why synodal listening is so important. Pope Francis understood something of the fundamentals of a sound theory of knowledge, and Pope Leo XIV continues to emphasize this essential aspect of the Church as “listening Church”. If Christ is victorious, it can only be a perfect victory, one that in the end leaves no enemies, a victory in which the enemy is entirely transformed: “Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2, 9-11).

    The book of Revelation also envisions the same thing. The kings of the earth are depicted as opponents of God, for they side with the beast and wage war against Christ at Armageddon (Rev 16, 16), but in chapter 21, verse 24, we read: “The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.” Christ’s victory involves the transformation of the kings of the earth, from enemies to worshippers who adore the Lamb–a perfect victory.

    And we have a role to play in this eschatological state of affairs. Christ does not usher in the kingdom of God without us. We have to do our part and work for peace. We can move this world forward or we can hold things back. It all depends on the attitude we adopt. And it begins in the ordinary ways we relate to people who do not think like we do, whether they are on the right or the left, inside the Church or on the outside. How we talk and how we listen is important. People throw around the word “truth” rather loosely, but knowledge is very hard to achieve, and “truth” is for the most part truth as we currently see it, which implies that “truth” is, for the most part, tentative. The ones who  seem to appreciate this fact are scientists who must always test their hypotheses. Outside of that circle, people tend to speak with a rhetoric of certainty. 

    In my last 20 years of teaching, close to 40% of my students were Muslim. Around 2013, I started to show the film Dancing in Jaffa–it was a Muslim girl who urged me to purchase the film and show it. The film is about a world champion ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulaine, who returns to Jaffa, Israel, where he grew up 30 years earlier, and his goal was to teach ballroom dancing to Jewish and Palestinian kids, and then to have them dance together, boy with girl, but one must be Jewish and the other Palestinian. He thought this was going to be a cakewalk, but it proved to be much more challenging than he realized–he was ready to quit on a number of occasions; many kids simply refused to dance with a Jew, or dance with a Palestinian. They just would not have it; the prejudice was deep and ingrained. But some were willing to try it, and the film has a beautiful ending, with the 11 year old Jewish and Palestinian dance couples in a competition between schools. It’s a very moving and hopeful film. 

    But it does give us a glimpse of how difficult it is to overcome deep-seated prejudice, in particular prejudice that has been picked up from parents and religious communities. And that prejudice is not only there in the Middle East, it is here too in North America. The way some Catholics still talk about Protestants and the way some Protestants still talk about Catholics, or Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, and of course the way Liberals talk about Conservatives and Conservatives talk about Liberals strongly suggests that we really have a long way to go and that we are probably many centuries away from true and lasting peace. But that is our task, and we especially are responsible for taking the lead since we claim to worship the Prince of Peace, who was victorious over sin and death not through any kind of aggression, military or otherwise, but through the divine weakness, Christ’s birth in poverty and his death on the cross.    

    A Brief Note on Marriage and Celibacy

    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    In some circles, celibacy continues to be described as “undivided love for Christ and His Church”[1]. And given peoples’ tendency to inference rather quickly, without a great deal of care, it is natural for most people to conclude that those who are not celibate can at best only hope to achieve a divided love for Christ and His Church. After all, St. Paul seems to imply as much in the seventh chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians: “Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction” (32-35).

    Such an inference, however, is seriously problematic given the sixth beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart; they shall see God”. A pure heart (katharoi te kardia) is an unmixed heart, that is, a heart that loves undividedly, and of course this beatitude has a much larger and wider scope than would: “Blessed are the celibate”; for purity of heart is a fundamental characteristic of every genuine Christian, while celibacy is not. 

    Consider a genuinely dedicated priest or bishop, or even a sister of a congregation. The priest or bishop is often busy with administrative duties (paying bills, building churches, repairs, etc.)—not to mention various other pastoral duties–, and a Missionary of Charity, for example, is often busy with serving the needs of the poorest of the poor, i.e. making baby formula, feeding a dying man, etc. It would hardly be fitting to refer to the bishop’s love as divided between administrative work and the Lord, or a Missionary Sister’s love as divided between her love and service of the poorest of the poor and her love of the Lord. Rather, the very work they do is part and parcel of their love of God; it is the very expression of that love. The priest serves God by serving the parish in the many and varied ways this service takes shape, just as the Missionary Sister of Charity serves God when she cleans the dirty apartment of a poor woman living on her own in the Bronx (Mt 25, 31-46). And in precisely the same way, Christian married men and women are not, by virtue of their married state, leading divided lives with a divided heart; rather, their love for one another, their labor ordered to the good of the household, the sacrifices involved in raising their children and supporting one another are all part and parcel of their love of and devotion to God,  the very expression of that love. 

    Returning to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, it should be emphasized that the section quoted above is only a small portion of the entire chapter, and taken out of its larger context one easily comes away with the impression that the celibate life is genuinely religious, while the married state is not. Such an interpretation, however, would be contrary to Paul’s overall teaching on marriage. In the larger context of this chapter, we see that Paul believes we are in the last period of salvation history. He refers to his own time as a time of distress, which in apocalyptic literature, is said to precede the time of the Second Coming of Christ. Paul writes: “So this is what I think best because of the present distress: that it is a good thing for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a separation. Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a wife…. I tell you, brothers, the time is running out” (26-27; 29). 

    This is hardly the kind of advice we would give to young people today. What Paul says about those who are married and those who are not must be read in this context, otherwise we come away with the impression that marriage has little if anything to do with serving the Lord. 

    But Christ’s love for his Church is a conjugal love, and the love of a baptized husband for his baptized wife is that very same love, and vice versa. Marriage is a sacrament, a sacred sign that contains what it signifies, and it signifies the paschal mystery; for just as God called Abraham to leave (to be ‘set apart from’) the land of Ur and go to the land that He will lead him to, and just as God called Israel to leave Egypt behind (to be ‘set apart from’) with its pantheon of false gods, and just as Jesus leaves this world behind in order to go to the Father–that is, he consecrates himself (sets himself apart. See Jn 17, 19)—, so too in matrimony, the two are called to leave behind a world closed in upon itself; they are consecrated, that is, set apart, for they are called to leave behind their comfortable world of independence and self-sufficiency, to be given over to another, to belong completely to one another, in order to become part of something larger than their own individual selves, namely, the one flesh institution that is their marriage. The couple relinquish their individual lives; they are no longer two individuals with their own independent existence; rather, they have become one body, a symbol of the Church who is one body with Christ the Bridegroom.

    The lives of a married couple are a witness of Christ’s love for his Church and the Church’s ever expanding response to that love; they witness to that love in their sacrificial love for one another and for the children who are the fruit of that marriage–and raising children well demands a tremendously sacrificial love, especially today–in fact, given the circumstance in which couples find themselves in the 21st century, one could well argue that in some cases marriage and family life demand a far greater sacrificial disposition than does celibate life, given the increased cost of living, the housing crisis, food prices, inflation, job insecurity, time constraints, etc. In giving themselves irrevocably and exclusively to one another, without knowing what lies ahead, a young couple die to their own individual plans, they die to a life directed by their own individual wills, and in doing so, they find life; for they have become a larger reality. The heart of Christ is pure and undivided, yet the love that Christ has for us (the Church) is not in competition with his love for God the Father; rather, the two are one and the same. Matrimony as a sign of the very love that Christ has for his Bride is the ultimate meaning of marriage. In short, married love is undivided love for Christ and his Church. 

    Certain habits of thinking, however, are clearly rooted in a centuries old anthropological dualism that extends all the way back to the patristic era in which there was indeed an “embarrassment, suspicion, antipathy and abhorrence of sexuality”, an attitude that permeated hellenic culture, and of course that antipathy affected their evaluation of marriage itself.[2] I refer, of course, to the dualism that holds that the true self is the immaterial or noetic aspect of the human person, which is said to be in continual conflict with the material aspect (the body and the emotions). When such a dualism becomes a conceptual framework, other dualisms are spawned, such as a two-tiered understanding of nature and grace,[3] or the dualism of heaven versus earth (i.e., our primary purpose is to get to heaven, and not to work for justice and the emancipation of the oppressed),[4] or the dualism we’ve been discussing, that between married life versus religious (holy) life. 

    In the patristic era, marriage was allowed, but it was not encouraged. It was Jerome who said that the saving grace of marriage (or sexual intercourse) was that it produced virgins: “I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell” (Letter 22, 20). Moreover, the parable of the sower was typically interpreted allegorically in a way that says a great deal about how married life was regarded at the time; the seed which fell on good soil bore fruit: some one hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. The seed that produced one hundredfold was said to represent martyrdom, the seed that produced sixtyfold represents virginity, and finally the seed that produced thirtyfold was said to represent marriage–martyrdom was obviously the best, followed by virginity, and at the bottom of the hierarchy was married life; for martyrdom involves the sacrifice of the entire body, virginity involves the perpetual sacrifice of the sexual act, while marriage apparently involves neither, but a capitulation to the flesh.[5] 

    Although marriage is not quite regarded in such a negative light today, we still have not entirely freed ourselves from every residue of this ancient worldview, and in light of the Hebrew understanding of knowledge as experience, perhaps we will not do so until we return to the ancient custom that the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches never relinquished, namely that married men can be ordained as priests. Whatever the case may be, the belief that things will eventually work out well as long as we continue to speak as we’ve always spoken and do what we’ve always done, without any significant change in the pre-conciliar way that many have been taught to regard the world and its relationship to the kingdom of God, might very well be denial, and denial has never accomplished much beyond impeding healing and growth. 

    Notes

    1. Letter from the Holy Father Leo XIV to the Archdiocesan Major Seminary of “San Carlos y San Marcelo” in Trujillo, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its founding, 05.11.2025).

    2. Donald F. Winslow. “Sex and Anti-sex in the Early Church Fathers” in Male and Female: Christian Approaches to Sexuality. Edited by Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse and Urban T. Holmes, III. p. 30.

    3. Peter Fransen S. J. writes: ““In the spirituality commonly met with in convents and religious writings, a distinction is drawn between the purely natural human values in our life and the “supernatural” ones. The natural values are treated as having little or no consequence unless they are sanctified by a special “good intention,” which has to be superimposed on them. The joy of watching a glorious sunset has no supernatural value unless I offer it up to God. A mother loves her children–but that is normal. A man goes to his office–but that is as it should be. If these activities and states are to have any value before God, more especially, if there is to be any “merit” in them in the sight of God, something must be added, namely, a “good intention.” A little more and these people would declare that nothing but the exceptional, the uncommon, counts for anything in God’s eyes. Hence they embrace a constrained spirituality that is not met with in the life of Christ or in the lives of most saints. 

    Of course, this is a wrong notion of the supernatural, the spiritual. The Germans have a name for it: the doctrine of the two stories. On the ground floor are the service quarters, on the top the drawing rooms. God does not deign to appear on the ground floor; He dwells only in the drawing rooms! The truth is that our divinization is also our humanization. We have been made children of God in a renovated humanity. God is pleased with our courtesy to others as much as with our prayers, with our enjoyment of nature as much as with our rejoicing in His glory, with our human friendships as much as with our faith, with our justice and loyalty as much as with our charity–so long as we act with the heart of a child of God. No special intention is required for the purpose.” The New Life of Grace. Translated from the Flemish by Georges Dupont, S. J. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971, p. 135. Further along, he writes: “The so-called “pure nature,” that is, a human existence in which divine grace has no part to act, has never existed. The call to grace,…owes its origin to the divine presence in our actual history.” Ibid.,  p 156.

    4. Fransen writes: “Love for God is greatly threatened when the neighbor is not loved. Some “pious souls” drink avidly the cup of maudlin devotions while indulging their own sweet will, and shutting their hearts upon the neighbor. A companion of St. Ignatius, and for many years his secretary, vented one day his long experience in the government of the religious in the sarcastic remark: “Why must ‘pious’ religious be those who are the most intractable, the most wayward and self-willed men? “Piety” meets with scant sympathy on the part of many outsiders, not because these people foster an aversion to fellowmen who consecrate themselves to God, but because such a consecration seems to serve for a cloak for hardheartedness, indifference and inhumanity. In their eyes, “love for God” appears either a pretext for grim severity, or a form of escapism from real life, a flight from the simple solid human virtues, such as courtesy, tact, sincerity and honor.” Ibid., p 304

     5. Op.cit., Winslow, p. 33-34.