The Lord Is My Shepherd
Even under the shadow of horror
I will not fear evil
For Christ is my companion.
You let me lean on the staff that you hold steady
You wield the weapon that beats off attackers
You have brought food for the journey, and no enemy dares approach the fire that you light
You give me an abundance of everything I need.
With you I can live a good and merciful life
And when I enter into eternity, I will find welcome in the household of God.
Love your enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6: 27-35). (RB 4. 31)
Loving your enemies sounds like a nice idea until you actually have enemies yourself.
An enemy is not merely someone with whom you disagree. You can disagree with your friends passionately and perpetually.
Nor is an enemy an opponent in a game. An opponent recognizes the same rules you do.
“Love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Romans 13:10), but your enemies will accuse you anyway, even if you haven’t done anything to harm them. They insult and threaten you when you had no thought of interfering with them at all. An enemy is someone who acts on the intent to wrong you.
As Christians, if we must love our enemies, and if love does no wrong to a neighbor, we cannot ourselves be anyone’s enemy, can we?
So the enemy is not our neighbor. . . . Aha!
Nope. The parable of the Good Samaritan shows that we must be good neighbors to everyone, even longstanding enemies.
Maybe we’ve misunderstood love. God is love, but God is not our slave. Neither are we enslaved to those we love. A Christian concept of love is essentially voluntary. Love ends where coercion begins.
Christian love does set aside the self-interest of the moment for the good of the other person. But the good of the other person is not always what that person demands. When someone wants something that is not good, you say no, for love’s sake.
Love yields and sacrifices, but love is not suicidal. God is the one who called you into being. Therefore you must exist, and this may include resistance.
We know that “the Lord disciplines those he loves” (Hebrews 12:6; Proverbs 3:12). Therefore a Christian concept of love includes setting boundaries and enforcing standards. Without wronging anyone, you can communicate that you find the insults offensive and the threats alarming. Make sure your enemies realize how they’re affecting you. Sometimes people don’t know that they’re hurting you. It may be that your enemy is not a beast.
So give the benefit of the doubt. Make space. Swim away. There’s room enough in the ocean for both of you.
If, after you’ve peaceably turned away from a fight, your enemy pursues you, intent on dominating you wherever you may be, it is time to enforce the principle at issue. Whatever rule you enforce on your enemy must be one that you yourself are abiding by. To govern your own behavior by the same standards that you apply to others is one aspect of loving your neighbor as yourself. And the standard you try to live by was not invented by you. For example: loving your enemy.
Like animals, humans will usually decide it’s not worth the trouble of bothering you, once they discover that you’re peaceable when left alone but determined to defend yourself when attacked. There are occasions when Christians are inspired by the Holy Spirit to set aside their right to self-defense, imitating Christ’s sacrifice. But no human being has the authority to require someone else’s self-sacrifice. And if you’re the only one standing between your enemy and someone weaker than yourself, love may require that you fight.
There may come a time when your enemy is too big for you to handle alone. In this situation, escape is what you should aim for. Escape first, and then work on making new friends, so you’re not alone next time. A cohesive group is unappealing to aggressors. They’re looking for vulnerable singletons to pick off.
If only this were the end of it. We could take a break, go home, be safe. But sometimes strangers are not the problem. The enemy is someone close. Does loving your enemy include suffering wrongs at the hands of the one you love? These are deep waters, and murky. Explain the situation to a kind stranger. There are times when it’s the stranger who is your friend.
And then there’s the enemy who used to love you. This is the one who will break your heart. Why did this person despise your devotion and turn against you, treating you with contempt? There’s nothing quite like the distress of loving the enemy who once was dear. The world seethes with ex-spouses, ex-lovers and so many other exes who are now enemies.
On an ordinary day without tragedy, loving any of them comes down to treating people well who do not reciprocate your efforts. Converse cheerfully with complainers. Keep calm during a hostile confrontation. Patiently put up with irritations. Kindly share with those who’ve been selfish. Remain reliable even with those who are deceitful. Retain self-control around those who’ve rejected discipline. Intercede for those who’ve wronged you.
God himself promises to reward us if we behave well toward those who behave badly toward us. Nothing anyone can say will ever make this easy, but the Holy Spirit can make it possible.
Do not repay one bad turn with another 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9. Do not injure anyone, but bear injuries patiently. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 29-30)
First of all, bearing injuries patiently is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of goodness. Only the strong bear up. Only the good restrain themselves when evil beckons, because evil is not their master.
Secondly, this principle isn’t about defending yourself in the moment of attack. You have the right to self-defense. This is about the aftermath: now what? Why did God let a bad thing happen?
Weak people fall apart and lash out at everyone around them as they disintegrate. For a brief moment, they enjoy an experience of power: the power to destroy. There’s something appealing about power, even when you know it’s fleeting, even when you know it’s hateful. The Church calls this appeal the glamor of evil. As Christians we reject it, along with Satan and all his works.
On the other hand, strong people hold themselves together, hold on to what they know is good and hold out for what they know is right. Sometimes they hang on by their fingernails. As Christians this is the character we aspire to, and God knows it’s hard. Sometimes the path leads straight up the face of a cliff.
Why does God let bad things happen? You can be on the right path and still fall and get hurt. Getting hurt doesn’t mean that God is against you. It means that there’s an inherent risk to living at all. You were thrust into existence without being consulted. But now that you’re here, you’re free to venture your all for the good. The promise of Christ is that ultimately your venture will pay off. Death is not the end.
People who have only this world to live for figure that nothing they do matters. But the Christian message is that everything you do matters, even the tiny things. For instance, even a small gesture of kindness counts in the sight of God. He is always at work everywhere for good, and he invites you to participate in that work, wherever you are, whoever you are.
But you are free to reject his offer. You can rage against your Creator. He allowed evil into this world, and now you can increase the sum of evil.
However, know that if you choose for what is right and true and good, God is on your side, even if everything else in the universe is against you. And he promises that the pain will last only as long as this life. Moreover, you will emerge into peace for eternity.
Meanwhile, there’s everything we have to face in this moment in time. Sometimes we can’t understand why God does what he does. Why does he hurt us? Why make us stay in place in a corner with a cone around our necks? We didn’t do anything wrong! So heave a big sigh and wait: maybe something good will come along next.
Don’t fret. Don’t chew on your hurt and make it worse. Instead, save your energy for the good you can do. If the path before you is clear, and if you have the strength, get up every day and keep going. Be patient. Bear up. There’s no quick fix to any killer problem, and you will encounter many problems along the way.
Most importantly, when you’ve honestly done everything you can do, then stand firm and wait for God himself to act on your behalf. If you can’t stand up anymore, sit down. If even sitting up is too much, lie still and be who you are where you are. There’s a time to let people who love you take care of you. You’re not alone in this. Fix sad eyes on your Maker. Remain alert to his call.
An injury can happen in an instant. The healing takes a long, long time. It saps all the strength you’ve got. Why does God let bad things happen?
We don’t understand why yet. Healing is your job now. We want you back.
Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so. Live by God’s commandments every day. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 62-63)
Of all the archaic vocabulary words that have become vestigial, holy has to be the most vacuous. We have no idea what it means, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want to go there. It’s probably the Christian equivalent of a no fat, no sugar, no salt, gluten-free, vegan blueberry muffin.
You try it.
(They make it look like a blueberry muffin, but a deep human instinct tells you that it’s going to be a bad experience.)
What we’ve heard about holiness is that there’s no money, sex or power in it. It’s sinless and spiritual.
Definitely go for it.
Naturally there are people who want to be holy, just as there are people who try to make you eat their special muffins. You pay attention to who they are, and you make a mental note to breakfast elsewhere next time.
(Of course we’re still friends!)
Although we don’t take the word “holy” seriously anymore in everyday speech, its cognate, “whole” is a workhorse we use all the time. Whole and holy are linguistic twins, but over the course of nine hundred years, the version without the W specialized as a religious term, while the other one got a regular job and put food on the table. At birth their meaning was: entire, unhurt, healthy, free of wound or injury. Whole also originally meant “restored,” in the sense of having recovered from a wound or injury, being healed.
As a matter of fact, the Old English parent word is still alive and kicking, pronunciation unchanged through the centuries. It is “hale,” as in hale and hearty, free from defect, disease or infirmity, retaining exceptional health and vigor. You could still use this word, if you ever met anyone who fit the description.
Linguistically it’s entirely plausible to assert that a holy life is a life restored to wholeness, a healthy, vibrant life.
Of course, St. Benedict was writing several centuries before any version of English existed at all. In Latin, his choice was “sanctum,” a word that English eventually swallowed whole to mean “sacred place.” For him and still for us, it means dedicated or set apart for the service of deity.
Latin was a pagan language. In Latin it’s possible to be sacred to the deity and therefore murdered; pimped out as a temple prostitute; locked in an iron cage and suspended over toxic fumes to induce entertaining prophecies for the pilgrims. No one ever claimed that the pagan gods were faithful friends. On the contrary, they were reputed to be fickle, capricious, cruel. You sacrificed to the gods in order to buy their favor, or to buy off their wrath. The thing (or the person) you gave was then sacred to the god. To be sacred to the god was to be consumed by the god.
But English developed as a Christian language and follows a different logic. Holiness merges the concepts “sacred” and “hale” inextricably. This is because our deity wants our good. He doesn’t want to consume us. He flaunts the whole concept of religion by requiring us to consume him. What he wants from us is an interior change of heart that produces action for good. When we’ve done wrong, he wants us to feel remorse and apologize to the person we’ve hurt. He wants us to feel pity and do something to help when we see someone suffering. When he gives us opportunities and resources, he wants us to feel responsible and work to establish justice.
In exchange for dedicating your life to him, he offers to make your death temporary. You will pass through death and emerge immortal. As for your experience in this life, the language itself bears witness that when you offer yourself to the service of Christ, resolving to live by his commands, you will experience a restoration to wholeness.
Live whole. Die good. Be hale forever.
If people curse you, do not curse them back but bless them instead. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 32)
Sadly, the right to retaliate is not an inalienable right. It may be necessary to fight your enemies and to defeat them, for the sake of the common good. But the Christian must not inflict harm merely for the satisfaction of revenge. Yes, it’s hard. And unfortunately, this isn’t just St. Benedict’s idea. This is Jesus himself Luke 6:28.
Can we give them the light-activated puzzle map of the United States? If they fail to replace Montana, Alabama and Arizona, they’ll be learning about Helena, Montgomery and Phoenix every time the headlights of a passing car flicker through a chink in the curtains. If they bury it under blankets in the closet, in the middle of the night a strangled voice will say, “New Jersey: Trenton.”
Not only are we not allowed to give their children motion-sensitive, musical toys with no OFF button: God requires us to pray for them as well.
When we suffer an insult from another person, we have a reaction, anger, which is as natural as the body’s inflammatory response to injury. If you didn’t feel anger at being wronged, it would be an emotional failure, just as it would be sick for your body not to react to a wound. But just as your inflammatory response can itself become a problem if it doesn’t subside, so anger can become destructive to the person who feels it.
St. Paul describes anger as the devil’s foothold Ephesians 4:26-27 (also translated “place,” “room,” “opportunity.”) Anger serves as the devil’s foothold because it’s not in itself wrong. All the other vices are absolutes. Only anger has this ambiguous quality of being at the same time justified and harmful. St. Paul tells us, “Be angry but do not sin.” This means that anger itself is not the sin. The sin is what the devil tempts you to do when you’re angry.
Your anger is just. The wrong is real. To dismiss the offense would flaunt the law of God. But because the anger is justified, the devil can easily slip in temptations to vengeful acts which are against God’s law too. So, anger functions as the gateway through which righteous people can be tempted to do things which normally would repel them.
When the thirst for revenge sets in, it’s like a bacterial infection that develops in a contaminated wound. If it isn’t addressed immediately, it can become chronic, like vengeful feelings that persist for years after an offense. The infection can invade your entire body and ruin your health. Vengeful feelings can obsess you even after the perpetrator is dead.
It’s true that revenge can attain to the level of tragedy. There are wrongs that no mere mortal can bear alone. But usually the vindictive person is shallow and selfish. It’s the conceited person who punishes someone for an honest remark. It’s the spiteful person who exacts retribution for a petty grievance. You don’t want to become that person.
This is why God prescribes such a horse-pill. Praying a blessing on the person who has wronged you is like swallowing one of those enormous pills. The prayer operates like an antibiotic within the soul to combat vengeance. You don’t have to be enthusiastic about it, not anymore than you have to like those pills. It may take you more than one try to get it down. Your natural gag reflex might seem at first insurmountable. But even a nauseated blessing through clenched teeth will begin to alter your interior state. Whenever you have vengeful feelings, say, “God bless [so and so].” That’s all you have to do, but you may have to do it many times, every three hours for weeks. Daily for months. Weekly for years.
You’re not requesting on their behalf a life of luxury, flippant and carefree. Still less are you asking for evildoers to continue to do harm with impunity. When you bless those who’ve mistreated you, you’re asking God to intervene in their lives. You may have detailed ideas for how exactly God could proceed. He will consider your suggestions fairly. But at the end of the day, you surrender judgment to Christ.
Who is the person who does inspire respect? It’s the one who can laugh off an insult and make a joke of it. The one who sticks to principle in the face of harassment is inspiring, not the one who lashes out in fury. The one who gets back up after being knocked down and keeps right on running toward the goal: that’s who you want to be. Outmaneuver your opponents. Leave them in the dust, and leave revenge in the hands of God. “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.‘”
The abbot must know that anyone undertaking the charge of souls must be ready to account for them. Whatever the number of brothers he has in his care, let him realize that on judgment day he will surely have to submit a reckoning to the Lord for all their souls–and indeed for his own as well (Rule of St. Benedict 2.37-38).
Bad news: you have to face God on Judgment Day. Good news: you don’t have to dress your son in polyester and make him play Little League games in 100 degree weather while you broil on the bench. Patience, kindness and faithfulness are mandatory. Olympic medals, perfect test scores and perfect teeth are optional. You must conform to the image of Christ. You don’t have to conform to the image on the cover of the magazine.
Of course, we do want the best of everything, for ourselves and for our children. But we also want to be able to enjoy what we’ve got. When you see how miserable people can be when they have it all, you realize that there must be more to life than everything the world has to offer. You still want the good things in life. But you understand that the good life is not dependent on the good things. It’s all about priorities.
That he may not plead lack of resources as an excuse, he is to remember what is written: Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given you as well Matthew 6:33. (RB 2. 35).
Jesus says, “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” John 14:14. To ask in Jesus’s name means asking for something that’s consistent with the will of God. Raising the children you’ve been entrusted with is certainly consistent with God’s will. So lay out all of your needs in this area with no inhibition in prayer. You are the manager, the trainer (and the janitor). God is the owner. This doesn’t mean that you never lose a game. It means that you don’t quit when you see the bills. You have someone to turn to when you need more resources.
Your job is to negotiate a variety of temperaments, often different from your own. You coax, reprove and encourage as appropriate. This means adapting your strategy to each child’s unique personality and abilities. You cultivate each one’s welfare. But the child is not your possession. Parents are trustees of something that belongs to God. If you need ideas as you think about how to develop another person’s potential, check out these best-of-the-best movie trainers: Sam Mussabini, in Chariots of Fire; Mr. Miyagi, in The Karate Kid; Yoda, in The Empire Strikes Back; Mickey Goldmill, in Rocky.
The goal is not to turn our children into replicas of ourselves. It’s not even to realize an ideal. The goal is to form characters in the image of Christ. In the process of correcting our children’s faults, we realize exactly where those faults came from. Their most annoying personality traits are often the ones they inherit from us. Sometimes it’s only after having a child that we even begin to realize what our own weaknesses are. And so we realize that we too must change for the better. We ask God’s grace to transform us together with them into people who reflect his character.
“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” 2 Corinthians 3:18. St. Paul is telling us that God is the one in charge of this makeover. Our part is to contemplate Christ; to study him as the model; and to rehearse the lessons that we learn. When you look into a mirror, you adjust your own face to conform to what you think it should look like. As Christians, we adjust ourselves to resemble Jesus.
The call to mimic Christ doesn’t mean that you won’t face limitations. If God himself voluntarily took on human limitations, should a human being expect to transcend them? But at the end of the day, even the impossible–if it was consistent with God’s purpose–will be done. Sometimes the impossible is the ordinary day ahead. But you don’t have to face the whole day in one gulp: a Psalter organizes each day into segments, with prayers for each time period based on the Psalms. At whatever moment you feel yourself flagging, take a few minutes to pray and ask for strength to make it through just the next few hours.
Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: “It is high time for us to arise from sleep” Romans 13:11 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.8)
This “sleep” is the spiritual stupor of ordinary people who imagine that the front line is somewhere else. They think that they themselves have no responsibility for the outcome of the battle. They presume that they will suffer no consequences for their complacent inaction.
I myself had an experience of a call involving Scripture and a stirring up from physical sleep, on a particular occasion. At about 2 a.m., the morning of June 19, 2012, I woke up with the urgent sense that I should post verses of Scripture online. So I thought, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
But the urgency increased. I felt that I must check what the readings for the day were–not in the Upper Room guide to prayer that I’d been using for twenty-two years, but in the Catholic Missal, which I had downloaded on my phone at some point but had never even opened before. I fumbled with my phone in the middle of the night and read the readings: 1 Kings 21: 17-29 (the Lord sends Elijah to confront Ahab). Then there was Psalm 51 (“…in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense….). The Gospel was Matthew 5: 43-48 (“love your enemies“). Then I checked the daily Bible verse and saw Acts 17:30-31:
God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent, because he has established a day on which he will judge the world with justice through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.
There was a “share” feature on the app to connect to Facebook. It was urgent that I must do so immediately. I signed in, and I posted the verse.
This experience had never happened to me before. It hasn’t happened again since. Afterwards, trying to come to terms with it, I explained to God that this was the wrong message to the wrong person at the wrong time.
First of all, these days God does not “demand” anything. God is lucky if anyone condescends to acknowledge that he might exist. Second, if God wants to get a message out to all people everywhere, my Facebook page is not the place to do it. Third, people these days don’t repent. A few religious people make a practice of repenting routinely, but the people who do most of the sinning aren’t interested in repentance at all. There must have been some mistake. The angel tapped the wrong person on the shoulder. I don’t have the credentials, the platform, the authority, or the influence.
But St. Benedict actually gives some insight into the call of God. Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” Psalm 34:12 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.14-15)
There’s a promise here, and it’s not just pie in the sky bye ‘n bye. The promise of God for those who will heed him is a good life beginning here and now.
With this conclusion, the Lord waits for us daily to translate into action, as we should, his holy teachings. Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds. As the Apostle says, “Do you not know that the patience of God is leading you to repent?” Romans 2:4 (RB Prologue.35-37)
The call to each of us is to translate into action daily the teachings that we believe to be true. How do we live them out in ordinary life within a culture that has explicitly rejected them and that organizes itself along opposing principles?
Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. (RB Prologue.45-48)
Every Christian home is such a school. If the home is spiritually chaotic, then the child may emerge into adulthood unfit for any good purpose. Discipline costs effort every day. But the rejection of discipline costs far more. Everyone pays the price in illness, despair, loneliness and worse. Rather than raging at evil in others elsewhere, let us combat it where we are. The battle for good against evil will be won or lost in our own homes.
This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord. (RB Prologue.3)
St. Benedict is of course not the first to describe the Christian life as a spiritual battle: St. Paul used that figure of speech in his letters. On the face of it, however, it seems a bit histrionic to associate the domestic life with anything as dramatic as “battle.” Surely the metaphor is overblown.
But then you hear of another teenager who has committed suicide; of another husband who has abandoned his family; of another wife who has had an affair. You see people with all sorts of destructive habits hurting themselves and their children. The national abortion statistics come in for the year. Then it’s your own friends whose marriages rot out. Their cute kids grow up and do shocking things in the janitor’s closet in high school. You watch a four year-old fall apart emotionally because she realizes that her father just doesn’t care. You watch a seven year-old learn to be stoic. A battle? It’s a rout; a massacre; a spiritual slaughter. And if you abandon your post, not only you but your children will join the list of casualties.
So there is a war raging. Whether or not you want to fight, it will involve you. But how can obedience be a weapon? Isn’t that a hopelessly unfashionable idea? In Discipleship, the WWII-era Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the point that obedience to the commands of God is inseparable from faith in God. “You complain that you cannot believe? No one should be surprised that they cannot come to believe so long as, in deliberate disobedience, they flee or reject some aspect of Jesus’ commandment.”
Following the epistle of St. James, Bonhoeffer was explaining to a modern readership how false it is to think that an experience of faith must precede an act of obedience. On the contrary, you must take action to obey in order to experience faith. Bonhoeffer stepped away from the trend of Germanic philosophy since Kant and rejected the primacy of the thing in the mind over the thing in action. He stood against Nazi Germany and lost his life as a result. His side–our side–won that war, but insidious theories of self-invention spread through the post-war culture.
These days a call to obedience sounds like an insult, to many people. In the postmodern context, we are self-referential by default. We find ourselves sequestered inside labile minds, no longer even able to rely on the modern concept of the coherent individual, who at least knew who he was and what he wanted. More than in previous ages we need to obey the commands of God so as not to be constantly tossed about by our own confused thoughts and erratic feelings.
But once we’ve obeyed the revealed commands of God—then what? There’s all the rest of mundane life to live. Must each individual at every moment debate every choice that needs to be made? In a chaotic and arbitrary culture, willfully given over to the cult of randomness, it would be less exhausting to have some templates handy, some aids for the organization of behavior. A rational person faces relentless buffeting by the sheer nihilism of the surrounding environment. A Domestic Rule would be helpful, to provide some guidelines for self-regulation.
