Luceat!

“Shun the luxuries and pleasures of this life and the attacks of vice will be enfeebled, their force being drawn from the love of pleasure.
…
Keep therefore the words of Holy Scripture before your eyes: ‘He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world keeps it unto life everlasting.’ (Jn 12:25). ‘Therefore brethren we are debtors, not to the flesh that we should live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live’ (Rom 8:12).”

Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat, 33:6

The Spiritual Combat has been my constant companion since October of this year. I feel I’m in good company reading it with St. Francis de Sales who carried it with him and read from it every day for 18 years. I’ve certainly never picked up a book that has challenged me and enlightened me in such a compact and thorough way (excepting scripture). However, I’m not writing this post to sell a book.

I’m writing this post to combat the forces of evil.

“Paul, the Devil wants to kill you!”
- Janet Wolf

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Devil wants to kill us. In his raging jealousy He wants to deprive us of eternal life, and one of the easiest ways he has to steal the hearts and minds of human beings in modern America is comfort and luxury.

[Read more →]

I know–it’s an overly dramatic title, but I liked it because it sounded like a modern novel. However, what I would really like to briefly discuss is a reflection I heard this past weekend at a great retreat given by the CFRs to young adults in Florida.

One of the priests asserted that Jesus calls each of us to be a “participant and protagonist in human history.” He pointed out the effect of the “entertain me” culture that has caused many of us to live the life of a spectator, rotating between Ipods, YouTube videos, movies, tv shows, sports games, shows, etc. In these activities, our participation is merely passive or reactive. Our participation is, in a sense, instinctual; it does not employ the unique gift of human freedom. Entertainment is not bad in itself, but if it is the center of a lukewarm and unmotivated life, then we will quickly find that life to be dull and lackluster. We need to immerse ourselves in activities that engage our humanity, our personality, our intellect, and our will–activities that make us come alive. What does this look like? [not an exhaustive list, just a couple suggestions]

Serve others: Gaudium et Spes says that we can only find ourselves through a sincere gift of self. Those whom I admire as men and women of great character were also servant leaders. Through their selflessness they purified their base inclinations, gained a greater knowledge of themselves and humanity, and administered to the needs of Christ through helping His children. Their actions were intrinsically tied in to who they were, because those actions reflected the virtuous life and choices that a human is capable of attaining through God’s grace.

Have REAL conversations: Don’t just quote movies back and forth; discuss the characters, the plot, the moral implications of the protagonist’s actions, or how that work of art expresses something about culture, humanity, God, the truth, or yourself. Also, ask people sincerely how they are doing. Then, ask them specific questions about the things that they are intrigued by or love or hate. We are each called to be part of the human community. Take an active interest in the people around you. C. S. Lewis once said, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

Pursue virtue heroically: In order to do this, you must seek to engage the world in which God placed you. If you really try to do this by working hard to live as Christ would in every little thing, you will discover that you are living an adventure. Sometimes the biggest mountains to climb may be the stairs to the front door of your school or office to persevere for another day. Sometimes the most frightening storms can be the emotions in your own heart or another’s that seek to unleash themselves in frustration upon the next person who comes along. Sometimes the fight for peace is battled out in your own heart as you struggle to find time to be quiet with Our Lord in a busy schedule. The Christian life is not boring. I once heard it said that if you are bored with life, it is probably because you are becoming boring [ouch!]–seek out the unique adventure towards greatness that Christ offers you.

I mentioned that we should each be a “protagonist.” What does a protagonist do in a story? He or she makes decisions and acts on them and, in doing so, changes the whole story and propels the plot forward to its climax and conclusion. A true hero also goes through personal growth and revelation. How do you live your life? Do you ask the Divine Author what His plans are for your life? Do you then act boldly in His service? Discern as best you can and then act, for Our Lord will guide you in your active struggle to become the person He created you to be. Chesterton notes, “Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads…She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt.” In a similar strain, a friend once advised me, “God can’t move a parked car.” Our culture is obsessed with being busy for the sake of success or just to be as busy as the person next door. What modern man lacks is an understanding that we are not to “do” for the sake of action or material reward, we are to “be” and then our good actions and pursuits will flow out from who we are. Be a protagonist–become a heroic man or woman, and in doing so, God will write a beautiful story with your life.

This struggle between the spectator (who just does what everyone else does and may look busy, but is not authentically engaging his humanity in anything he does) and the protagonist (who lives aggressively in pursuit of ultimate goods) deeply affects our relationship with Our Lord. A relationship with Christ, and, especially, the power of the Sacraments are not magical or mechanical things. We cannot just show up to Church and have the graces we need downloaded into us like a cellphone being recharged when it is returned to its port. We must engage our freedom and choose to ask for the graces and receive them. The priest who spoke at my retreat said that the Sacraments are guaranteed opportunities for grace, BUT they require an authentic human response in order for them to be transformative for us personally. Our receptivity does not change the nature of the Sacrament (for example the power of the True Presence in the Eucharist), but our participation does change how the Sacrament will affect us interiorly. We are not simply the objects of redemption, we are participants in Christ’s redemptive act insofar as we accept the gifts offered to us.

Life is not a lazy river–you cannot just float in a circle and go neither forward nor backwards. Life is a powerful river and we, like the salmon, are meant to fight our way back to the source of the river of life and the place of our humble beginnings. We must fight against the undercurrents of our culture that seeks to sweep us away from our goal. You, my friends, cannot afford to be floating spectators of life in this journey. When the salmon are all fighting to swim upstream, you’ll notice that the only ones floating away with the current are the dead ones.

I’ll leave you with some final words from our beloved Pope Benedict:

“Fulfillment does not lie in comfort, ease, and following one’s inclinations but precisely in allowing demands to be made upon you, in taking the harder path. Everything else turns out somehow boring anyway. Only the person who recognizes and ideal he must satisfy, who takes on real responsibility, will find fulfillment.”

I thought I would chime in for the conversation at hand. Reading the recent posts, I am humbled to be in the midst of a group of writers with such wit and eloquence in prose. I have found myself asking, “What is my two cents on this subject?” I am not sure if I have two cents or even a penny worth of knowledge. Maybe you have heard the Christmas song with the following lyrics, “Put a penny in the old man’s hat, if you haven’t got a penny a half of penny will do, if you haven’t got a half of penny, God bless you.” I am blessed!

In my blessed state, I would like to comment on the human condition. I can only speak of this human condition from my own experience and the experience of Christ Jesus. My own human experience has been one of strife, mix emotions, glory, and hope! I have lived in deep sin, I have found great mercy, I have tasted the sweetness of success, and I have failed completely. I have cried in deep sorrow and laughed so hard that tears inevitable came. I find myself completely inadequate and at the same time fully capable.

I am just a normal guy, suffering from a fallen state of nature to obtain the greatness of what I am called to, my final end. And I don’t believe that my experience is too far off from the experiences of others, in fact I would propose that there is a common human experience, one that is found at the root of being human.

Curtis Martin, the founder of FOCUS, was in his college philosophy class at LSU when he first heard about dedicating your life to truth. The philosophy class was not proclaiming one truth over the other, but the professor did finish a class one day with these prophetic words, “If there is a truth and you dedicate your life to pursuing and knowing that truth, it will change you life.” I first heard about truth during my freshman year of college. I picked up the book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope by John Paul II. In this extensive interview of the Pope’s beliefs he addressed Truth! The prophetic statement of Curtis Martin’s philosophy professor was actualized in my life during my reading of this book.

It is only in this dedication to the Truth that one can examine the human experience. The danger of solely examining our experiences outside the realm of pursuing truth, leads us to a purely subjective knowledge of the world. A person might not have any experience of the Christian God, because he or she has never heard the Gospel proclaimed, but this does not change whether or not the view of the Christian God is true. It takes great reflection and discernment to know what is True in our subjective human experience.

Our subjective human experiences can be discerned reflected upon the perfect human experience of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that we find the fulfillment of human experience. Jesus is fully human and through his humanity we find a guide to our art of living. Jesus laughed, cried, drank wine, needed rest, became anger, was sorrowful and joyful. He lived out the human experience to the full. He said, “I have come to bring life, and bring it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Through the experience of Jesus we find out who were are, children of God.

In the adoption that we have each received into God’s family, as sons and daughters, is where we find the fulfillment of our human experience. It gives us a place to feel and live out our human emotions. It gives us a plane to lift up our sorrows and share our joys. I recently had breakfast with a man, who I think of as a sage in my own life. He shared me with a picture of his “girlfriend” (wife of 50 years). The picture he has carried in his wallet of his girlfriend for the past 50+ years is a picture of her as a little girl. He told me that all people should see others with the faces of children first and foremost, because that is who we are, children of God! I hope to one day carry around a childhood picture of my “girlfriend.”

It is in this childlike faith and wonder that we must approach the truth of the human experience. It is as children that we will experience our Father. Let us say with St. Therese of Lisieux, “Jesus, help me to simplify my life by learning what you want me to be - and becoming that person.”

I’m glad we’ve had rather spirited discussion of late — kudos, all. I’ll offer here some scattered musings which I hope shed at least a bit more light on the topics at hand.

I’ve found that conversations about gender (even in circles composed of presumably like-minded individuals) so often go astray, diverted almost immediately into questions of permission and prohibitions. This is why I tried to lay a sort of foundation for the issues at play in an earlier post. We leap so readily from “masculinity/femininity means generally such-and-such” to “Does this mean I can or can’t do this or that? Are you saying I’m not a real man/woman if I do/don’t do this or that?”

I believe the volatility of such exchanges stems from our collective anxiety about identity. I also find that youth and young adults in the Church wrestle (consciously and unconsciously) with the suppositions about gender they’ve inherited from the post-Sexual Revolution zeitgeist, struggling to find a way to understand masculinity and femininity in light of the Faith. Those who have consciously embraced the moral instructions of the Church (leaving aside for now those who claim a Catholic identity and yet fail to challenge the assumptions of secularism) find they must often reject most popular mores regarding romantic relationships and inter-gender propriety.

For significant portions of the young Church, as I’ve seen during my time in FOCUS and elsewhere, a sort of siege mentality has set in. There is a very healthy way in which to view the ‘us/them’ dichotomy between members of the Body of Christ and those yet to be incorporated that is a recognition of the stark difference between being a Christian and not being one. However, when the ‘us/them’ is marked by fear and anxiety — “Lock the doors! Their ideas might get in!” — we’ve lost a necessary amount of confidence.

It is this latter approach to questions of gender roles and relationships I want to see zealous, young Catholics avoid. Too often this devolves into a ham-fisted moralization of the Faith, the imputation of roles and modes of behavior from without (”I have to court just like that guy who ‘kissed dating goodbye’, or I’m sinning!” or “X activity is masculine, Y is feminine, and never the twain shall meet!”) as opposed to the roles and relationships being the natural manifestation of living in accord with the gift of our being.

Katie does a good job of articulating the premises undergirding the ongoing discussion of Matt’s post and of giving us more to consider in reflections on bodiliness. What we have yet to do is propose a practical application. So, here’s a programme (attributed to Augustine) for bearing fruit as you ought: [Read more →]

There’s another great question raised by the recent set of posts. In short, “how is a man to subject himself to his wife in the context of mutual submission?”

It seems that if it is a man’s mission to lay down his life for his wife and play a humble role in her sanctification, then there must not only be the possibility of an external death, but a very real internal death as well. We often call this “dying to preference.” We die to ourselves for Christ so that he might live within us, and in that noble death a man ought to take into consideration the closest member of Christ’s body to himself: his wife.

How do we men do that? Here’s a (very) short list of ideas:

• if I have to give up my favorite sport to spend time with my wife that she needs, I really ought not think twice about it,
• if I have to leave a career that brings me more fulfillment than I’ve ever had in my life so that I can get health coverage for my wife and kids, I should prefer to do that,
• if my wife is allergic to my deodorant, I should switch brands, or even use those silly rocks if necessary

Now, here’s the scary part of all this. The word “mutual” is indeed a word that implies the involvement of two people. And just as not all men are paragon examples of St. Joseph, neither are all women that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Surprise, surprise. It’s a rather daunting task to figure out what sort of woman you’re pursuing before you’re married, and it takes all sorts of creative listening and observation in the wild to find character of true quality or determine a poverty of it. For the sake of Christ, our sanity, and our children’s upbringing, it’s a task worth taking on. We hear enough about the ways men use or neglect women in relationships to list them without thinking, but I think that the opposite situation could use a little lighting. There are essentially three scenarios that husbands fall into:

1. the man who is unfortunate enough to have married a woman who willy-nilly demands that her personal preferences be met no matter how frivolous they might be,
2. then there is the man whose wife allows him to act on his own through a loving request, simply letting him know all the legitimate needs of her heart,
3. and finally there is the man whose wife is so passive/resigned/distrustful that she won’t bother with telling him how she needs to be loved, content to wither away in obscurity.

I hope it’s clear that situation #2 is the ideal. A real man who loves his wife would jump at the chance to help her and is indeed looking for those opportunities on a regular basis. However that same man will eventually and rightly feel used in situation #1 and unappreciated or unnecessary in situation #3. So let it be known that in general men need essentially two things in life and love: the opportunity to fulfill a legitimate desire, and the respect, trust, and support of those who have that desire.

In order that situation #2 work out and not devolve into situation #1 or #3, the man actually has to step up: do something, take initiative, and find hidden opportunities throughout his day. Responding in trust to the desires of the wife without constant critique and suspicious interpretation is one mark of a husband who desires to lay down his life for his bride as Christ laid himself down for us all. Perhaps we all can think of the man who constantly calls into question everything his wife says, making her feel inadequate or beneath his consideration. Clearly, we’re shooting for the opposite effect.

If we are to mutually submit to one another, the woman must trust that the man is offering himself as a gift to her, and the man must trust that the woman will receive his love and respond again in love. Without this trust, doubt brews, resentment grows, and a coldness colder than spit during a North Dakota blizzard sets in. Certainly, there must be a greater joy to be had in living for others for Christ’s sake than in any amount of self-satisfaction regardless of the personal suffering that must be endured. That is the challenge that men must live up to, and if we can tear our muscles to pieces working out, how much more should we be able simply stretch our horizons of patience and perseverance in matters of the heart? If we can break bones to make a touchdown, certainly we are able to sacrifice our bodies and health to give ourselves to the most important person in our lives. And if we can stay up all night playing Halo, then maybe we could give up just one night to pray for our spouses or future spouses in the presence of the Lord.

On October 22nd, Matt, one of my fellow FOCUS Bloggers, offered on an opinion post entitled “Women Leading Men.” This post became not only the object of an excellent discussion online, but even more so the catalyst of conversation among missionaries, students and others across the country, and women in particular. Having been one to have participated in several of these conversations, including an hour long interview with the original author himself, I would like to put in my proverbial two cents as I believe strongly that Matt has brought us to a fundamental question being posed to the church in the modern world, particularly as it is manifest in the New Evangelization.

Matt knew he was potentially treading into stormy waters, but I do not believe he realized to what extent his opinion would evoke a reaction from his sisters, especially those sisters who perhaps did not fully understand the context and ethos of Matt’s argument. Someone suggested that the sub-title of my response blog should be “An ‘Unsolicited Talking To’ for One Mr. Matthew Muller.” After conversation with Matt, I do not believe he deserves an “unsolicited talking to.” However, there are several points that I should like to clarify.

First, none of what Matt, (and now what I) might have to say will make any sense unless we start off by stating a few clear presuppositions, drawn largely from John Paul II’s thought and finding their culmination in the Theology of the Body. We believe that human persons, created as both male and female, and indeed the whole of reality, are best understood in terms of the Trinitarian love of God revealed in Christ. Stated more explicitly, the communio personarum which is the Trinity revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ offer men and women a key to understanding their own masculinity and femininity, and indeed the entire created world as well. In short, we believe that the meaning of masculinity and femininity is intrinsically tied to the way that we live in relationship with others because we image the trinity in the very way that we relate to other persons. We would further claim that all men share something in common in the way that they relate with other persons and the world, and that in a complimentary way, all woman share something in the way they relate as well.

If we are willing to assent to these presuppositions, then we will agree that the way in which a man leads should and will look different than the way a woman will carry out the same task. I could write a masters thesis (and perhaps I will someday!) explicating the various strengths and weaknesses of men in leadership and women in leadership, but since I am already trespassing on my readers good graces with too many words, I will limit myself to three points. [Read more →]

Does man have an end? This became the central question in a discussion I had with a (fallen-away Catholic, now almost atheistic) philosophy major on campus this week. So many people on our campuses ask similar questions: What is my purpose? Why do I wake up and go about my daily routine day after day? Well, our discussion went something like this:

Does man have an end? Yes.

Why? Because everything has an end, a “telos”—most of philosophy and our daily actions are based upon this basic assumption.

Like what? This acorn. Action follows being. This acorn is designed to be heavy enough to fall to the ground, survive the fall and be partly implanted into the soil, where it opens, takes root, and hopefully is the seed of a new live oak tree. It’s basic function and purpose is to reproduce.

Man is born, reproduces, and dies too. What makes him need to have an end that’s different from an acorn? Man has the capacity to be more than just a reproductive being.

How? He has an intellect and will—this indicates an immaterial element to his being beyond just his body. If he is not only material, but also immaterial, then his end has to have an immaterial element to it as well. His purpose will be much greater than a mere material acorn.

Isn’t this another way of saying that every man searches for “specialness,” that way he is unique and over other things or people? No, as Catholics, we don’t have to search for “specialness.” We already are confident in our human dignity derived from having an intellect and will—what we believe is an indication that we are created specially in the image and likeness of God Our Father. We don’t feel that we have to go and ‘make a name for ourselves’[1], because God already created and ‘named’ each of us as His child.[2]

So what do you think man’s end is? [Read more →]