It is easy to condemn those Catholics who lead a double life. They show up to Bible study and then go home and feed their addiction to internet porn. They attend church on Sunday and then publicly support a pro-choice agenda during their term in office.
However, we all lead a double life to some extent. How often do we join St. Paul and cry out to God, wondering why we fail to do the things we know we ought to do? Christ said, “No man can serve two masters.†Thus, this divided life we lead is a war between the supremacy of the intellect that recognizes God as the ultimate good and the will that argues passionately for momentary pleasures seen as an immediate good. The devil is the father of duplicity and division as well as materialism and hedonism. Which master will you serve?
In His goodness, Our Savior gave us His mother to deliver hope to human frailty journeying towards perfection. Our Lady never experienced the tortured division between her untainted love of God and a base love of self. She graciously teaches us the solution to a divided life, merely, a life devoted to love.
Love is the antidote for duplicity. When one loves, there is no will apart from that of the beloved. The lover’s whole life is focused exclusively on unity with the person loved.
This dynamic exists imperfectly, though evidently, in human love. When I wake up in the morning, I think of my boyfriend. As I dress, I smile and choose colors and outfits that he likes. I treasure every moment of time spent with him. His picture is in my wallet and all through my room at home. I listen to music he likes because it reminds me of him, as do a hundred other little things I encounter throughout my day. I love to talk about him with my friends and introduce him to them if the opportunity arrives. I consider his schedule along with my own when planning out my week.
If we loved God with the intensity that we ought, should not our lives at least reflect these same constant considerations and actions? When we wake, He should be our first thought. As we dress, our love for Him should be the silent reminder to dress appropriately and modestly. We would never want to leave His presence in prayer and especially in the Eucharist. His image should grace our walls and cars and wallets. We should delight in music that praises Him and through its beauty inspires us to consider His perfections. Everything in life should remind us of Him, our beloved. We should love to talk about Him and share that relationship with our friends. And we should certainly set aside time for Him in our busy schedules.
When there is a community of people living with unity of purpose and unity of love, a culture is born. If sub-cultures can flourish from a common “love†of motorcycles, Star Trek, or punk rock, certainly our love of the greatest Good in the universe should give birth to a beautiful culture that would inspire and attract others. “Catholic culture,†like “love,†is not a phrase to be tossed around as a useless ideal—it is a way of life, and the way to eternal life.
Often I am asked, “How do you expect to change the culture on campus?†It is easy to point to the fruits—a well attended Bible study, a new praise and worship team, a student who is abandoning a life of dissolute behavior, and a great discussion I had about Chesterton and Graham Greene. However, what really needs to change is who the students love. When we love Christ with the devotion He deserves and returns a hundred fold, that is when the culture will begin to change.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Nathan // Jan 22, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Kelly, great post! It brought goose bumps to me while I read it!
2 Dave // Jan 23, 2007 at 12:03 am
How true! Those last two points are spot-on — the question of who or what is loved and to what degree is absolutely fundamental to any discussion of cultural change or conversion. This resonates with special keenness as I reflect on the March for Life I attended in DC today; evil can only be overcome with love, with each man, woman, and child’s personal commitment to Love Himself.
3 Conor // Feb 15, 2007 at 4:02 am
Why love Jesus?
4 Conor // Feb 15, 2007 at 4:09 am
Kelly, I agree with what you are saying: love is what unites and builds culture but I think that a fundamental question which needs to be addressed is “Why Love Jesus?” The reason for loving Christ has to go deeper than “it is what we ought to do.”
5 Kelly // Feb 15, 2007 at 4:45 pm
You’re right, Conor. We “should” love Christ because He is God, God made us and hold us in existence, thus, we owe an infinite debt to Him and should seek to be in relationship with Him because He loved us first (all of which points could be proved reasonable through natural reason and logical analysis). However, what you’re asking goes one step deeper. It’s the question my little sister used to ask my Mom when she would get mad at me, “Mommy, I know Kelly is my sister and I can’t change that but what if I don’t WANT to love her right now?” We should love, because of the relationship, but we should also love because God is everything perfect that can fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts (something I couldn’t do for my sister). God is all good, all beautiful, and the essence of truth and reality. If you can acknowledge those attributes to be true, and if you believe that man was created with a natural tendency and delight in the good, the beautiful, and the true, then you can see how it benefits man to be in a relationship with His Creator and the Source of all that makes man happy. Gaudium et Spes # 22 states that Christ reveals man to himself. Through Christ’s divinity, we understand our calling to live in God’s image and likeness, and we receive our supernatural mission to direct our lives towards a heavenly eternal life that we only see hints of in our daily material lives. Through Christ’s humanity, we come to understand better the trials and joys of our earthly lives, and we also have a supreme example of the way to live a perfect and fulfilled human life. Relationship with God is not just a duty, it is a beautiful gift that the willing heart may receive in order to pursue goodness & happiness.
Secondly, [sorry, this is becoming post length!] Christ is the ultimate “love” that a culture should be based upon because He is the only person that can fulfill the deepest and eternal desires of man’s heart. I don’t mean that in a flowery “this is a nice thought” way. I mean it in a concrete, “nothing else will suffice to get you through troubles and give you lasting and satisfying joy” type of way. That’s why Christo-centric culture, above any other, is a complete way of life. We may be closet punk rockers or Harley fans, but we can never be closet Christians and still be called a true Christian. In Aristotelian terms, those materialistic sub-cultures, though not necessarily bad in themselves, are only about accidents (the exteriors, unessential things/likes/dislikes, and appearances); the culture of Christ deals with essences (the forms of things, who man IS and not just what he DOES/likes/dislikes, the realities of the universe.)
We love Christ because He gives meaning and purpose to life. We follow a culture of Christ because it deals with realities and gives us the tools to be better people. The choice is yours: live in a shadow land with no absolutes, no meaning, no identity, no final destination, nothing lasting, OR live united to the Source of Life, Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Joy, Eternity, Strength, and Love.
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