struggle

Thoughts on the Church

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Recently I introduced a homily I was asked to give by calling attention to the exorbitant wealth of a certain celebrity, who owns a 165 million dollar estate, not to mention three others in Florida totalling 230 million, another in Hawaii at 78 million, one in Washington for 23 million, and a number of apartments in New York City for 80 million. My purpose was not to call attention to human greed or whine about having more than one needs. The point I wanted to reflect upon was that loving our neighbour as we love ourselves, is very difficult to achieve, because our self-love is far greater than we realize. The wealth that I call attention to is merely a visible image of what happens when all the conditions are in place that permit a person to provide himself with everything that corresponds to the degree of that self-love. If I have no concept of the degree of self-love that exists in me, then it is quite possible that if billions of dollars were to suddenly fall on my lap, my real estate portfolio might very well look like the above, at least after a few years. To love one’s neighbour as one loves oneself is a lifetime task to be achieved.

The Church, like the world, is made up of individuals who love themselves inordinately, so inordinately that we really have no concept. We don’t know until circumstances allow that monster to rear its ugly head. Is it any wonder, then, that the more a person gets to know the inner machinations of the institutional Church, the more discouraged, despondent, frustrated, angry, disappointed, disillusioned, disheartened one becomes? There are saints among us, and it is always wonderful to find them. These are the faithful who really do love others to the degree that they love themselves, as another self, as it were. And we do expect them to be in the majority in the Church–certaintly the majority of clergy. But this is not so, and it is always painful to discover this. It’s the pain of disillusionment at the very least.

Most people are not able to withstand the force of discouraging winds that an awareness of the current ecclesial state of affairs has on a person, which is why most people are kept in the dark, by the design of divine providence. I shake my head very often at the naivete of a good number of parishioners who seem to be utterly clueless, oblivious, to what is going on under their very noses, but I have to remind myself that they don’t see what I see, because they don’t have the inside angle that I have. And it is a darn good thing that they don’t, because they’d leave and we’d never see them again. I am very happy that I did not have that vantage point early on in my life, because I would not have had the spiritual muscle mass to withstand the major and minor scandals, and I would have moved on. One has to be ready for them, and God is merciful and does not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to withstand it. We think life in the Church should be void of such trials and struggles, a safe haven from the world in which trials, struggles, darkness, conflict, sin and stupidity are the norm. Life in the kingdom of God is void of this, but not life in the institutional Church. The kingdom of God is within you, as Jesus said in Luke, and it is among us too because among us are those who belong to that kingdom to one degree or another. It is the grace of that kingdom that allows us to continue to commit to this institution, because some goods can only be distributed and shared when institutionalized, such as schools, hospitals, universities, military, etc. Institutions are made up, however, of human beings whose fundamental battle in this life is against the enormous ratio that exists between one’s love of self and one’s love of neighbour. Most people are not actively engaged in that battle, and that includes clergy at all levels.

Creative and Destructive Conflict

Deacon Douglas McManaman
Also published at https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_422creativedestructiveconflict.html

The kiln tests the potter’s vessels; so the test of the just person is in tribulation.

A kiln is a furnace that dries out the potter’s clay and actually transforms it into a beautiful ceramic piece. We can’t use a clay bowl or cup that has not been in the kiln; it would fall apart, for it would be too soft. And of course, we are the clay, as we read in Isaiah, “Yet, Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand” (Is 64, 8). And so it follows that trials, sufferings, difficulties, are part and parcel of the spiritual life.

I have found over the years that the vast majority of people mistakenly believe that religious life, life in the Church, life in Christ, the devout life, is supposed to be a life of peace and tranquility, like the quiet of a cemetery, where everything works out smoothly and without a glitch. And so when things go awry, we tend to see this as an anomaly, that something is wrong, that if we are right with God, life should proceed without a struggle. But this is a serious misconception. Life is essentially conflict, because it is movement, and all motion is at some level a struggle. Anyone who has studied evolutionary biology knows this. There is no such thing as life without conflict and struggle.

There are, however, two kinds of conflict: destructive conflict and creative conflict. Sports (play) is essentially conflict and struggle, but it is an enjoyable one because it is essentially creative. Art is a matter of creative conflict, a battle between the sculptor and the resistance of the marble that he is about to carve into a beautiful figure. A life without creative conflict becomes intolerably dull and meaningless. In fact, heaven will be an eternity of creative conflict. Hadewijch of Antwerp writes:

God will grace you to love God with that limitless Love God loves himself with, the Love through which God satisfies himself eternally and forever. With this Love, the heavenly spirits strive to satisfy God: this is their task that can never be accomplished and the lack of this fruition is their supreme fruition” (Love is Everything: A Year with Hadewijch of Antwerp, trans. Andrew Harvey, May 1st). 

“Peace” and “rest” are not opposites of conflict, that is, heaven is not a life without obstacles and things to achieve. 

It is destructive conflict that is the problem. However, God joined a human nature, he joined himself to our humanity, and in doing so he entered into the destructive conflict that human sin has brought about in the world. The victory of that destructive conflict is death, which without Christ has the final word over our lives. But Christ came to die, to enter into our death, to inject it with his divine life, to destroy the power of death, to rise from the dead. He was victorious over death, and so he overcame the struggle of human existence, the battle against destructive conflict. 

Christ transformed the destructive conflict of death and sin in all its various instances into a matter of creative conflict, a matter of play, as it were: “When he set for the sea its limit, so that the waters should not transgress his command; When he fixed the foundations of earth, then was I beside him as artisan; I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing over the whole of his earth, having my delight with human beings” (Prov 8, 29-31). We can now share in his victory over both sin and death. He offers us his own humanity so that we might overcome our own life struggles with his strength: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil 4, 13). The kiln that dries out all our moisture (disordered love of self) and in time transforms us into something beautiful is the particular difficulties and struggles that we have to contend with in our lives. And some people have greater struggles than others; the heat of the kiln is much hotter in their lives, and perhaps they have been in it for much longer than the rest of us. But the result is a more beautiful product from the hand of the potter. It is not the case that God wills that certain people suffer illness or tragedy; rather, God the Son joined himself to a human nature in order to draw very close to us in our suffering and trials, to give us his divine life that we might overcome the world and its conflicts with him and through him, that we might share in the joy of his victory. The greater the struggle, the greater the victory, and the greater will be the joy in that victory.

This, I believe, is the key to unlocking today’s gospel: “Can a blind person guide a blind person?…Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?…first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye”. The spiritual life is a long and difficult road, a slow process of gradual enlightenment. I don’t know about you, but I do not like looking back at my life and being reminded of what I was back then, because I see my blindness. And of course, the blind cannot lead the blind. But the blind are leading the blind all the time. Even great saints had their blind spots. Study the history of the Church without triumphalist blinders: stupidity, arrogance, sin, oppression, envy, violence, lust for power, control, avarice, etc, is everywhere in our history. We have had great popes who did great things as well as some outrageous things; made great decisions as well as terrible decisions that were very destructive and whose repercussions are still with us today in many ways. It is a real mixture. But that’s life in the Church, as well as the life of the individual person in a state of grace. The spiritual life is conflict, a struggle, a struggle against our own blindness and propensity to sin and self seeking as well as the blindness of others and its repercussions. 

But before we can take it upon ourselves to correct others, we have to spend years in the kiln, in the furnace, allowing the fire of the divine love to change us so that we may remove the plank from our eye. Recently I asked my Confirmation class about the graces they are going to receive from God upon their Confirmation, specifically the grace of mission. 

“You are going to be sent on a mission; but to do what?” I asked them. 

One good candidate put up his hand and said: 

“To proclaim the gospel”. And of course, that’s a great answer. 

“But how are you going to do that?” 

“Preach”, he said. 

Well, the problem is you’ll lose friends quickly. If you want to be friendless, start preaching to them. If parents want to drive their kids from the church, start preaching. The way to proclaim the gospel is by the very life you lead. The gospel is the good news of Christ’s victory over death, his resurrection. We don’t need to use words. We just need to be a person who lives in the joy of Easter, a person who has the hope of eternal life, a person who is not overcome by life’s tragedies, because we believe that Christ has overcome the world and conquered death. Others will see that in us, by how we react to life’s difficulties and struggles, even life’s tragedies–that we have risen above them in the joy of the risen Christ.