Browsing tag: Holy Spirit

  • Hold Your Peace

    The ninth step of humility is that a monk controls his tongue and remains silent. . . . for Scripture warns, In a flood of words you will not avoid sinning (Proverbs 10:19). [Rule of St. Benedict 7.56-58]

    When you get to the point of being able to hold your tongue, you know that the Holy Spirit really has been at work within you.

    First of all, you interact differently in a group of people, when everyone is venting grievances. You know from long experience that if you don’t chime in with a complaint of your own, you can’t participate in the conversation. But are you really so bad off today? The Spirit prompts you to remember what you can enjoy and be thankful for. You don’t really want to be one of these people for whom the only pleasure in life is the complaining.

    Or it’s time for opinions. Some people cannot NOT have a say. Their thoughts clack on compulsively without intermission.  They always know best, no matter the topic, and if they really don’t understand, they’re not interested. In a serious discussion, they tell everyone that they themselves don’t know what they mean–and yet they keep talking.

    Because social status is at stake, or success in a classroom or at a job, survival seems to depend on asserting your voice. Existence itself hangs on beating out the competition. To remain silent–unheard, unseen, unacknowledged–can feel actually dangerous, like standing still in a stampede. What will happen to you if you don’t jump in and jostle a place?  We know where the unimportant people end up: at the bottom, invisible, irrelevant, trampled.

    And yet, beneath and behind, present everywhere, seeing everything, we find God himself, sustaining all, yet so often unheeded.

    Remaining silent, listening to others is a way to imitate the character of God himself, and in imitating him, to know his peace. It is a fitting stance for a human being to remain quiet yet present, without asserting self-importance, because God himself is willing to remain present yet silent everywhere, all the time, when if he wished he could overwhelm and silence all voices.

    When you practice this act of humility, you find after a while that the insipid remarks of silly people do not irk you as they used too. That burning urge to have your say has dissipated. You are able to hold your peace.

    But just as proud people everywhere despise God for his silence and mistake his generosity for weakness, so you too may find that someone with whom you have always been gracious turns against you. You offer a listening ear, loyalty and unconditional acceptance. In return you may get–slander. The chill slither of malice through your soul leaves a hole that will not soon heal.

    Be still. Don’t play into the backstabber’s game. God hears your silence and sees your humility. He himself will enter within to comfort and sustain you. When the time comes for you to speak, the Word himself will be with you. Commit your way to him and hold your peace.

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  • Love Your Enemies

    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.

     

     

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  • Curb Your Urge

    For this reason Scripture warns us, Pursue not your lusts Sirach 18:30.  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.25)

    We live in a culture where it’s supposed to be fun to let yourself go.  People announce that they’re about to let themselves go, and then they do it.  Not only do they not feel shame: they expect you to pat them on the back.  Most of the time they act with good humor, and with no thought of harming themselves or anyone else.  The binge is benign these days.

    Until it’s not.  The fact is that we have countless people who are suffering the tragic consequences of their own impulses–or worse, of someone else’s.  Some of them refuse to admit responsibility.  But others are discouraged, because they’ve tried and failed to change.

    Self-control is not an instant thing.  It’s the work of a lifetime.  It’s the practice of a life well-lived.

    If you want to be an athlete or an artist or any sort of skilled worker, you start at the beginning and practice basic moves first.  Checking your own impulse is one of the most basic moves of all.  It’s an element of any future action.  It’s not just that refraining from one action frees up time and energy for an alternative.  Curbing your impulse also builds strength and skill.  These in turn open up new possibilities that would otherwise have remained out of reach.

    A century of Freudian psychology has led us to assume that checking an impulse means repressing desire.  When you repress a desire, you don’t act on it, but it comes out in some other, weird way that you don’t control and that you may not even be aware of.  So you might as well let yourself go.

    Suffering the consequences?  That’s someone else’s specialty.  Next, please.

    The difference between self-control and repression is that self-control does not suppress desire.  Self-control nurtures and trains desire.  While the binge lets desire loose, without regard for other people, self-control keeps desire on a leash and exercises it with consideration for others.

    The lure of the binge is easy pleasure fast.  But the thrill tends to decrease with repetition.  You work harder to get less.  And you suffer the side effects.  With self-control, on the other hand, you start small, but the enjoyment increases with practice.  And the horizons are infinite.

    The best the binge can claim is not to have harmed anyone else.  But self-control allows you to do good to others actively.

    People who can’t control their impulses only get along with others who want to do the same thing at the same time in the same way.  When a whole collection of individuals are all out of control together, they meld into a mob.  The mob tramples any divergent individual.  But then the frenzy burns out, and the mob disperses.  The same individuals go back to competing ruthlessly against each other.  They separate, each alone with an ungoverned desire.  The endpoint is a life without any relationships at all: just interactions that serve the appetite.

    But self-control allows you to live in community.  Christian community aims not to meld but to harmonize individual desires.  It’s a complex challenge, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we do make a life together.  This calls for active participation on the part of each one, rather than a passive letting go.

    Life in a family is a training ground for harmony.  Baby learns to sleep at night long enough for Mom to get the rest she needs.  Baby learns to go for longer without eating, so that eventually the child’s habits match the habits of the family.  In practice this effort takes years, and every time a new baby arrives, another individual process is thrown into the mix.  Easy is not part of the deal.

    But the endpoint is paradise, which Jesus describes as a banquet Matthew 22:1-14; 25:1-13.  A banquet is a fancy dinner where people dress their best, eat together and enjoy each other’s company.  When you have a family sitting down to a meal together, you have a foretaste of heaven.  The food may be simple.  The clamor around your table may not sound divine.  But consider what you’ve achieved: you’ve taken human beings from a state of chaos to a state of sociability.  Even if it’s not yet heaven, it is the foundation of civil society, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

    Ultimately: heaven.  Here and now: a functioning society.  Earliest of all: a family meal.  But it all begins with harmonizing individual impulses.  And so, each one of us must achieve a measure of self-control.

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  • King Once And King To Be

    It is love that impels them to pursue everlasting life; therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road of which the Lord says: Narrow is the road that leads to life Matthew 7:14. (Rule of St. Benedict 5.10-11)

    When my son was not yet six years old, he asked me at Christmas: “How can God be both everywhere AND a baby in a manger?”

    I said, “Yes, and he’s also a Spirit who is present to each of us at every moment.”

    He said, “That’s CRAZY.”

    So I said, “One day you’ll learn that the really dangerous crazy people make perfect sense.  Everything fits together neatly for them.”

    Fortunately, at that point he dashed off to something else, so I didn’t have to explain that the baby is an exiled king who will one day return, and we’ve given him our allegiance, which involves us in all sorts of struggles while we wait for him to reclaim his inheritance.

    Or maybe that’s not theologically correct.  Maybe he is already King of everything.  It’s just that his enemy usurps his territory and seduces the allegiance of his citizens—usually the easy way, with inducements.  For those who don’t respond to inducements, there are threats.  For those who disregard threats, there are punishments.  Some of these are worse than being condescended to at cocktail parties.

    Sell out?

    In other words, there’s a romantic loyalty in the Christian call.  Something about love.

    The Christian does not obey a set of laws, a system of ideas, an abstract principle or an impersonal force.  The Christian has committed to obey a person.  That person is Christ.  So, Christian faith is not an exercise of the imagination.  Nor is faith an intellectual assent to a set of propositions.  Still less is it membership in a club.  You do have both an imagination and an intellect, and you are free to join clubs, but faith is something else.  Faith in God is trust in a person.

    It’s exactly at the point of obedience that you start to wonder if you really believe in this guy.  Why should you put yourself out for someone you neither know nor trust?

    You shouldn’t.  If it strikes you that God asks far too much, proceed with caution.  Take a step in the direction of what he seems to want, and see what comes of it.  And begin to claim his promises for yourself.  It’s only as you begin to experience God making good on his word that you’ll begin to feel confident in him.  If you never expect anything of him, you’ll never know him.

    Also realize that if you are yourself untrustworthy, you will never know God.  “Faithless” means treacherous, fickle, false.  This sort of person is incompatible with God.  If you want to experience a relationship with God, be faithful in your dealings with other human beings.

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  • Align Your Will With God’s Will

    Scripture tells us: Turn away from your desires Sirach 18:30.  And in the Prayer too we ask God that his will be done in us Matthew 6:10.  We are rightly taught not to do our own will, since we dread what Scripture says: There are ways which men call right that in the end plunge into the depths of hell Proverbs 16:25. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.19-22)

    You don’t need to wait for eternity to see the train wreck.  The bitter rewards of folly are everywhere exhibited around us.  How agonizing to watch as people you care about make foolish choices and then inflict the consequences on others.  Like King Lear they resent honest advice and choose instead to listen to flattery.  They reject offers of help and surround themselves with toxic influences that justify their decisions.  They go from delusion to destruction and leave sorrow in their wake.  Like the Fool, you trail along in the aftermath: faithful, sorrowful, impotent.

    Or not.  If you have a will of iron, for the love of mercy bend it to conform to the truth.  Sometimes that means diverging from those who have been companions.  There are others following behind you who deserve to arrive at destination safely.  Granted that it’s impossible for any human being to act always with perfect insight.  So, commit yourself to the will of the One who knows everything, and who is always, everywhere working for good.  This is what you’re doing when you pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”  You subordinate your will to the will of God.  You align yourself with his plan and trust his Spirit to guide you through this world and into redemption.

    It’s not that we never make independent decisions or take spontaneous action. We don’t wait around for a special revelation about every detail of our lives.  God is not a micromanager.  God is a delegator. Jesus compares our relationship with God to that of a steward whose master has gone away on a journey, and with whom there’s no communication.  He doesn’t know when the master will return, and he’s on his own with his responsibilities (Matthew 25:14-30.)  God entrusts us with enormous freedom to act at our own discretion–more freedom than we want.

    Subordinating your will means that when you have the impulse to depart from his command, you don’t bestow on yourself permission to disobey.  This temptation can come even after years of righteous living, as another steward parable describes (Matthew 24:45-51.)  It’s tough when you find that your practice of the Christian character, rather than earning you the respect and gratitude of those you’ve helped, actually inspires their contempt.  When someone to whom you’ve always been kind abuses you, it calls into question your mode of relating to others.  There’s a natural impulse toward revenge.  And yet, life depends on curving off to the good.

    This includes speaking out.  The record of Scripture and of the Church shows models who speak cogently and forcefully.  We don’t subordinate our will to the will of everyone we meet.  Still less do we defer to the collective will of any group.  On the contrary, knowing what’s right and wrong–based on the standard of Scripture and of the Church, rather than on a code of convenience–we have the courage to stand firm, and to protest.

    We don’t see what lies around the bend into the future.  But the message of redemption is that when we align our will with God’s will–even when we’re not sure where that’s going to take us–a whole new vista opens up.  There is a path forward, through whatever terrain we find ourselves in, over the horizon and into eternity.

    (“We can but trust God,” says the parson in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors.  Read it once for the detective story.  Then come back to it for the flashes of spiritual insight.)

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  • Yield Your Imagination

    Our thoughts are always present to God… God searches hearts and minds Psalm 7:10….  The Lord knows the thoughts of men Psalm 94:11….  From afar you know my thoughts Psalm 139:2….  That he may take care to avoid sinful thoughts, the virtuous brother must always say to himself: I shall be blameless in his sight if I guard myself from my own wickedness Psalm 18:24. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.14-18)

    Invite the Holy Spirit into the house of your mind Romans 12:2 ; Revelation 3:20.  The dark and horrible corridors hold no terror for him.  Hand him the keys, and you will find that the doors you tried so hard to keep locked will soon be propped open.  A ray of light will penetrate even fearful corners.  A breath of air will stir in stagnant places.  The Holy Spirit will not demolish your imagination: he will inhabit it.

    Your imagination is not the part of yourself that you must overcome.  Rather, your imagination is the organ God endows you with to help do the overcoming.  Just as he designed the human body with a liver that filters out toxins and aids in digestion, he designed the human mind with imagination.  If you were never exposed to toxins, you wouldn’t need the liver to be the heaviest organ in your body.  If you were living in the Garden of Eden, an impure thought would never enter your mind.  But even if you lived in a pristine environment, you wouldn’t necessarily do the right thing in it.  Adam and Eve certainly didn’t.  Conversely, history shows that the holiest people have often been exposed to terrible things.  Removal from contamination does not guarantee righteousness.  Proximity to evil does not produce sin.

    It’s true that moral toxins can overwhelm the imagination, just as alcohol abuse can overwhelm the liver. You shouldn’t expose yourself deliberately to poisonous influences.  But day after day, a functioning imagination helps us process the moral challenges to which a fallen world exposes us.

    For example, there are occasions when the task that duty calls you to is onerous, boring or repellent.  When you’re cleaning up vomit off the floor, should you fully engage in the moment with all of your faculties?  Because the sight and smell of vomit can induce such nausea that you’ll be unable to complete the task.  In such a situation, the imagination offers a way to distance yourself–to redirect your attention–so that you can complete the task without quite focusing on it.  At the end of the day, right action remains the standard of right living.  If your weird fantasy helped you do your duty, then you’re in better shape than the people who ran away from responsibility because they couldn’t enjoy the moment.

    The imagination also serves as an aid to right living when we rehearse various options for behavior.  When we’re angry, we may imagine any number of phrases we could say to the person who has offended us, or vengeful actions we could take.  But what do we actually say and do?  The imagination gives us a way to consider the consequences of wrong behaviors without actually living them out.  Sometimes it’s only through the process of imagining a wrong behavior that we come to feel that it is wrong.  The important question is whether, after imagining our options, we reject the wrong and choose the right.

    A third way that imagination helps us is by entering into evil, not to embrace it, but to combat it.  If you want to vanquish evil, you must gain an understanding of how it works.  Not all thinking about evil things is sinful, not anymore than working with a deadly virus is sinful, if your goal is to find a vaccine.  However, you must take precautions.  Don’t underestimate the thing you’re called to combat.

    Your imagination also provides a place to escape to, when you’re too weary to cope with reality.  Sometimes your fantasy reveals a specific stressor that you need to address.  In constrained situations, the escape into fantasy may be the best alternative available.  We live in a culture with fewer physical challenges than ever before in human history, but with overwhelming mental challenges that produce chronic psychological exhaustion.

    God knows all of this.  Even in our most intimate, most embarrassing, most bizarre moments, we can always turn to God and ask for grace to grow into habitable dwellings for the Holy Spirit.  When we feel ourselves inclined to evil, we should admit it and ask for strength to behave rightly.  Entrust your thoughts to God, and keep dreaming.

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  • Character Building

    Post-Hurricane Clean-Up Meditation

    We shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom.  (Rule of St. Benedict Prologue 50)

    Patience is a topic that we get tired of quickly.  If we were hanging out in the Italian countryside like St Benedict, maybe it would be more appealing.  But crawling through the contortions of post hurricane traffic colic is not scenic.  Sure, the traffic was bad before.  Now it puts the colostomy in claustrophobic.

    We call this “character building.”

    Take it personally.  Maybe not just the houses need repairs.  Maybe we’re in for character remodeling too.

    Brothers, divine Scripture calls to us saying: Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted Luke 14:11.  (RB 7.1)

    Or then again, sometimes God takes it out of our hands.  No one has volunteered to suffer. So, he selects a few people for the exaltation track.

    Humility AND patience?  Seriously?

    To clarify: we are talking about the building blocks of character. Might as well take care of the foundation qualities first!  This is what you can accomplish as you’re inching down the road.  You can allow the Holy Spirit to purge your soul.

    That skeleton behind your drywall has been waiting a long, long time: it’s gotta go.  Did you really not know what the smell was?

    But maybe it’s not your skeleton.  Maybe you inherited it from your dysfunctional family.

    No worries.  Clean what you can salvage.  Start over.

    Of course you didn’t choose this.  No normal person wants to be a saint.  But God may be tapping you anyway.

    Patience is humility in action.  The combo is called repentance.  Buy one get two free.

    “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:6).

    (Skeleton photo courtesy of Isabel van Strien, who has been working day after day to help people cut out wet walls and clean their belongings).

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