Take Counsels

You may have heard of a Catholic thing called the “Evangelical Counsels.” They are called “evangelical” because they are rooted in Jesus’ teachings as found in the Holy Gospels (ευ', "good" + αγγελίον, "message"). They are called “counsels” as opposed to “commands,” because Our Lord didn’t make them mandatory; but one might say that, for the person who seeks holiness, they are as optional as a life preserver on a stormy sea. 

They are three in number: Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. Together they form three prongs of a single plug that connects us to, and keeps us grounded in, holiness--likeness to Jesus Christ. You might recognize them as the vows that men or women take to align themselves with a religious community.

The Scripture readings of last, this, and next week wonderfully illustrate this threefold way of life. Last week’s words on the Creator’s intention for marriage (sexual complementarity, fidelity, permanence, exclusivity, and openness to new life) concern Gospel Chastity; This week’s exhortations against dependence on wealth and other possessions deal with Poverty; and next week’s story of James and John in their search for status speaks to Obedience, our need to "render an account" to another person throughout our lives.

Again, the Church has called these “counsels” because Jesus presented them as paths to perfection, to become the clearest channel of divine mercy. To be perfect, however, is to be steadfast in striving toward their realization in our particular lives. In a sense, one can strive toward evangelical poverty no matter how big your bank account or home, or if you have neither. Evangelical chastity is possible for married or unmarried persons. A company’s CEO can seek evangelical obedience as readily as its janitor can.

The key is to place our individual skills and ills at the Lord’s service. Skills and ills, because God can use both for His glory and for another’s benefit. We cannot cling to anything we have as if we made it happen and it would go away if we loosened our grip. Our treasures, our plans, our institutions—whatever occupies our minds most of all–we must continually offer to God with full appreciation for it, and with a sense of its preciousness and fragility, as if He would take it away the moment we offered it. It’s not that we don’t want it, and it’s not that God will necessarily take it; but when God Himself reserves the place of priority, all else falls into place for His sake.

Who's Got All The Dirt?

The other day I was making coffee when, after a couple of minutes into the brewing cycle, I sensed that something was amiss. Liquid began to drip over the side of the carafe. I opened the lid and spotted the culprit: the basket and hot water spout were out of alignment, which threw off the brew. Fortunately I was able to salvage some of it, much stronger than normal. As I figured, my first cup also revealed grounds at the bottom: good grounds for a homily!

What here we call grounds, in another setting we might call “dirt”—which has been well defined as “matter out of place.” Farmers don’t refer to the earth of their crops as “dirt”; rather, they call it “soil.” But when the kid drags it into the house…then they call it “dirt”! Are we so much concerned with hygiene as with order and propriety--“a place for everything and everything in its place”? That was a charm of Israel’s Law: it gave them order and harmony. On top of that, as we notice in the First Reading, the Israelites imagined that the neighboring nations admired and envied them for possessing that Law—and behind that, they admired their intimate relationship with their God. Obedience to that Law was the way the Israelites maintained union with God in every facet of their lives. Unfortunately the constant temptation was to identify literal obedience with pleasing God. That’s why Jesus so often railed against the Pharisees: many of them followed the literal traditions without necessarily paying attention to the meaning underlying those traditions.

We hear enough in the Gospels about Pharisees who are turned off by Jesus’ stern convictions, but not so often about any who heard His convictions and took them to heart. No doubt there were some who paused long enough to get honest with themselves, to place their lives humbly in the pure light of Incarnate Truth: Jesus, Himself the Law’s Only Perfect Fulfillment. Now as then, the way to fulfillment is found in Him, and not in attempted obedience to Law, in which we cannot help but fall short and reveal our need for Grace.

Can we allow God to see the “dirt” in our lives, so that He can purify us and fill us with His nourishing Word and Sacrament, whereby we can offer Him fitting worship and obedience? Whether or not anyone else takes notice of us, to compliment us on our wisdom and intelligence, can we appreciate what is best for us and seek that with all our hearts? With such a disposition of heart, we may notice the dirt in others’ lives just as much as before, but it won’t bother us so much in light of our own. We may even be inspired to seek conversion together, and therefore more effectively.

Person of the Year

"Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be well?' The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.' Jesus said to him, 'That question had two possible answers: yes, or no.'" (Jn 5:2-8a, except for that last part, which came to me in prayer.)

By the time I get to writing, someone else (often, several someones else) has written before me! If this lament were a subscription, today's issue would be the selection of Pope Francis as Time magazine's Person of the Year (henceforth, POTY). I've found several posts from aleteia.org--the first was "TIME Magazine Got it Wrong" by Daniel McInerny, "Why is Pope Francis TIME Magazine's POTY?" by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, and "Twitterverse Ablaze After TIME Announces Pope Francis as 'POTY'," a presentation of accolades from various sources who otherwise wouldn't be found in the same article.

Back to the opening Scripture quote. Jesus' actual response to the lame man was, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk." By divine power and human effort, a miracle. Just this evening, Jimmy Fallon declared Pope Francis' first miracle: he got people to read TIME Magazine.

It could have been Miley Cyrus

Jesus often directed people to do certain things in the process of demonstrating His authority in human affairs. So did Mary: she directed Juan Diego to gather unseasonal flowers in his garment and present them to the bishop--and a whole blasted continent more or less turned away from human sacrifice and learned of the Living God! Indolence, overcome through obedience.

Even though our Holy Father has won the accolades of the City of Man, he will not attenuate the Catholic Faith. Just you wait and see. But in the process, he may well both intelligently present the Faith and genuinely win people's affections. Some may wonder, invoking Our Lord's words, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you" (Lk 6:26); but I believe he will continue to deflect that glory whither it is due.

If the New Evangelization is all about glorifying God and actualizing self through generous and talented service--I'm game! It makes "Persons of the Year," only because it makes persons.

The Stuff of Saints, Part the First

In an earlier post, patient reader (or should I call you Theophilus?), I mentioned that, on Monday the 28th, I would be speaking to young adults on the subject of "Becoming a Saint in the 21st Century." Only since Monday did I recognize that Friday is "All Saints Day." The topic of presentation was apropos of the upcoming Holy Day, so the timing is Godly!

(The Diocese of Allentown had something to do with it, I grant. The Diocese works for God...though, in a certain sense, God works for the Diocese!)

I broke the topic into two major segments: "Becoming a Saint" and "In the 21st Century," and I began with the latter. Everyone in the room was a resident of the 21st century for the same amount of time, which is more than I could say for some of the venues I work (e.g. our elementary school)!

The most important things I noted about being a resident in the 21st century were:

• Technology, as evidenced by the "smartphone." The sheer inescapability of it, the overwhelmingness, the thrill, the headaches of it! The instant access to information, true or false, helpful or baneful. The ability to connect with people through social media (or, perhaps, the ability to fabricate a profile by which one can "interact" with a similarly-fabricated profile).
• The importance of education, for purposes beyond the mere content, and the pressure to continue education beyond the high school and undergraduate levels.
• Openness to new ideas: "searching," viz. experimenting with and "sharing" philosophies, religions, relationships, in the hopes of furthering self-discovery.
• Mobility, local, social, occupational, et-ceteral.
• Fluidity that extends even to ideas, even to the point that what one person holds as true, another may not, without recrimination or scrutiny, which derives in part from
• Relativism, the idea that any idea (especially my idea) is as valid as others. Substitute "faith/religious practice" if you wish.

What to do, in this marketplace of ideas? Is there a manual? Is there any sort of standardization to us "seekers"? Catholicism and Orthodoxy persist in positing a human nature that is universal, with its faculties of intellect and will that God made to understand truth and pursue goodness. We aren't actualized unless we are intent on understanding truth and pursuing goodness.

There is a big emphasis today on uniqueness. Cherished Catholic figures have relevant quotations:

• "Be who you are and be that well." (St. Francis deSales)
• "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." (St. Catharine of Siena)
• “To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should." (Gerard Manley Hopkins), whose entire poetic corpus is relevant. Special emphasis on "As Kingfishers Draw Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame," which I quoted in the talk. Hopkins reflected the post-Scholastic philosophical stress on the individuality, or "this-ness," of each created entity.

As for becoming a saint, I don't know if everyone gathered that evening had aspirations for sanctity. Sometimes I don't know if I do. The aggregate of saints, canonized and not, speaks to us about the desire for God that is written on the human heart. You may also call it the desire for self-transcendence--with which conscientious human persons of any or no religious persuasion will identify, though perhaps with a little bit of help.

It is crucial to admit the existence and relevance of anything outside of the self. The failure to do so may well epitomize the human condition. Recovering addicts speak of a God in terms of a "higher power," but is there an "other" power? Note that the Hebrew word for holy, qadosh, at its heart means "other." When the angels were declaring the thrice-holiness of God (cf. Is 6:3), they cried out, "Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh!" "Other, Other, Other!" To be holy, then, is to be set apart...unique!

Since this talk was intended for Catholic Christians of this or any century, we needed to cite certain transcendent characteristics of holiness:

Obedience to the Commandments. Stipulated by the Lord as a proof of one's love for Him (cf. Jn 14:15). Nobody likes to be told what to do and what to avoid, so maybe it would mollify us to hear the commandments described as "enshrinements of positive conduct that fosters a well-ordered society, a communion of persons like unto the Trinity."

Virtues: Stable dispositions to choose the good amid the various circumstances of life. Temperance, patience, kindness, humility, diligence, chastity, and charity: these are seven contraries to the “deadly sins."

Prayer: traditionally understood as “lifting heart and mind to God” (St. John Chrysostom). St. Teresa of Avila: “a friendly way of dealing, in which we find ourselves talking in private, with Him whom we know loves us." Dr. Ralph Martin recently defined prayer as “paying attention to God." Referring everyone and everything in our lives to God—in real time, when possible (and when isn’t it?). This, however, doesn’t preclude fixed, regular “sessions” of prayer, in which we engage the Lord through the Liturgy, the Scriptures, the Rosary, worthy reading, the events of the day, etc.

More later.

Eagle-Ear

The other day I had the privilege of attending and offering prayers for the "Court of Honor" (induction ceremony) for an Eagle Scout in our parish.  This young man assists us as a sacristan: he prepares the vessels and vestments for weekend Masses.  He began serving at the Altar a couple of years ago, and now his younger brother has followed suit.  (Incidentally, his two older brothers are also Eagle Scouts, and that younger brother undoubtedly is on the same path!)  We can rejoice in knowing that one more young man among us has proved worthy of this honor, and has placed himself at the service of his God and country.

As the Chartered Organization Representative for our parish units, I ensure that the troop and pack have a safe and welcoming place for their activities.  I also review and sign leadership applications, assist in counseling for religious awards, and stop in on events.

I can attest that our adults are competent leaders and--no surprise--our scouts are being formed in that vein.  Our troop turns out a number of Eagle Scouts each year, and the neighboring troop (to which the boy above belongs) does likewise.

I was never involved in scouting as a lad.  Separation anxiety got the better of me, along with a typical flare-up of "Why Even Try?" Syndrome.  Since that time, however, I gained profound appreciation for what the Boy and Girl Scouts do with our young people.  The seminary provides similar perks: discipline, practical skills, character formation, love of ritual, camaraderie, meals.  One way or another, I got what I needed!  

A number of our diocesan priests are Eagle Scouts.  In conversation with our scouts, it's always neat to bring out the connections between Scouting and the Priesthood; God knows that both "organizations" can use efforts for recruitment and retention.

Anyhow, here is a napkin from the Court of Honor, which features the Eagle medal and the twelve points of the Scout Law:

The question came to me, "What is the root of the word 'scout'?"  So I did what every word geek with a smartphone would do.

Curiosity Built The App

The deepest root, auscultare, immediately brought me back to the prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict:

Obsculta, o fili, praecepta magistri, et inclina aurem cordis tui, et admonitionem pii patris libenter excipe et efficaciter comple, ut ad eum per oboedientiae laborem redeas, a quo per inoboedientiae desidiam recesseras. (Text citation)

Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart (Prov. 4:20).  Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. (Text citation)

*(OK--so it starts "obsculta."  I'm no scholar, but I don't think there's much difference.  I'm not letting this whole article dissolve on account of a bloody particle.)

And what does "auscultate" mean?  Glad you asked.  To listen for the sake of making a medical diagnosis--ultimately, from the Latin auris (ear).  Listening in general is more than the "hearing" that children offer to their parents' call ("'Yeah, I hear ya!' Chris said, and summarily rolled over, to get as close to oversleeping as possible.")  Listening for diagnosis involves engagement of the whole self, intuition included: "What is really going on here?"

A scout's attentiveness enables him to "be prepared" for whatever instructions may follow, whatever nature sounds he may expect to hear, or which scout is out to capture the same flag as he is.  The constant next step of the scout's auscultation is, "What must I do now?"  The scout can have no desidia, no sluggishness that would hinder him from the prompt action that his goals require.

Who among us would not profit from a recommitment to kindness, thriftiness, cleanliness, reverence, loyalty, and all the rest?

We can take our cue from the scout, whose obedience to good direction sets him on the path to the twelve apostolic virtues that his Law dictates and to which his Oath forever binds him.