Browsing tag: humility

  • Say Sorry

    If someone commits a fault…he must at once come before the abbot and community and of his own accord admit his fault and make satisfaction. (Rule of St. Benedict 46.1-3)

    Piety is honesty plus contrition. Religious exercises become void if in interactions with other people you never admit to having done wrong. Self-deprecation before God is a farce if you’re too proud to apologize to another human being.

    Christians must practice as a steady habit the willingness to admit when they’ve messed up and the readiness to say sorry. It’s impossible to overstate the worth of these habits for maintaining relationships, or the destruction that results from refusing to practice them. Far more serious than the fault itself is the denial of it. Infinitely more harm comes from the haughty refusal to say, “I’m sorry” than from the original offense.

    To err is human. No one expects you to be perfect. But if you refuse to admit a fault, you sever the bond of trust without which no relationship can survive. The one who proudly refrains from saying, “I’m sorry I offended you” places self-esteem above the worth of the other person. There’s nothing so corrosive as dishonesty. There’s nothing so repellent as pride. Now you have not only injured but insulted the other person.

    Certainly it’s all right to say, “I didn’t mean it.” Very rarely do we offend other people on purpose. Most lapses are due to a bad mood on a bad day. Usually there’s some sort of miscommunication. Almost always there are mitigating factors. How easy, then, it should be to say, “I’m sorry I did such-and-such. I’m sorry if I offended you.” It should be easy, and yet, how many adults have never learned to do this simple thing!

    Owning up is important because, first, it shows that the mistake was unintentional. Second, it shows remorse. Third, it shows willingness to take responsibility. Together, these are signs of good character. And integrity is worth more to a relationship, a family, a society than any material asset. Conversely, a deceitful, remorseless, irresponsible person cannot but cause harm to everyone.

    Therefore children should be trained always to say, “I’m sorry,” whenever they’ve given offense. Afterwards they can relate details of intent, blame, and circumstance. First apologize, then explain.

    There are tones of voice that can contradict an apology and make it sound insincere to the aggrieved party. Then the person becomes furious at feeling manipulated. So children must learn to say sorry in a voice that is loud enough to be heard and that may be sullen but must not be insolent. This effort made, the offended person must accept the apology and cannot reject it as insufficiently contrite. If possible, the offender should make restitution. All parties should resolve to do better next time. And then forever the point is moot. Never drag out a past offence. Once addressed, it is dead and done with.

    Don’t wait to be confronted with what you suspect you may have done, but hasten to volunteer an apology. The humility, honesty and good will evident in such behavior make all the difference to any relationship. These habits keep friendships alive, marriages happy, children thriving. Without them, intimacy, trust and peace wither away.

    It’s true that there are vindictive people who will punish you for honestly admitting a fault. They walk away guilty before God for refusing to forgive. But you will have saved your soul from the rot that eats away the interior of dishonest people. You will have done everything you can to make peace.

    Sometimes, for any number of reasons, people cannot speak to a situation directly. So, they make some other gesture to show remorse. Be alert to such efforts at reconciliation. Be ready to accept any gesture that expresses an intent to make amends.

    As human beings we don’t convince anyone when we pretend to forget the bad thing that we did yesterday. We must apologize when we’re able to speak at all. Little kids can learn to say sorry. They learn to say it before they mean it. They learn to mean it.

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  • 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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  • Silent Night, Holy Dawn

    Elegant Definition

    We absolutely condemn in all places any vulgarity. . . .  (Rule of St. Benedict 6.8)

    In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.  He spoke, and called forth formed things. To live a holy life is to move within these forms willingly.

    A holy life is an elegant life.

    The savor of elegance blends qualities of restraint and creativity.  Vulgarity glaringly lacks both.

    What is vulgarity?

    Vulgarity displays itself verbally in language; visually in esthetics.  Jokes can be crass, but so can architecture.  Clothing but also conversation can be indecent.  The vibe of vulgarity involves an absence of restraint along with a will to self-assertion, especially in a group.  Crude people do not call themselves into question, because everyone they notice is doing the same thing.  A sort of pushy smugness combines too much confidence with too little content in too callous a crowd.

    Profane people do not stop.  They stampede in the direction of a boundary and trample it deliberately, because they can.  It’s also the only thing they know how to do.  They tend to be the set in power at the moment.  

    With no respect for boundaries, there’s no sense of danger.  Uncouth people back off the edge of the Grand Canyon taking selfies.  They die on a ledge a few hours later because the lives of paramedics can’t be risked for anyone that graceless.  Their barbaric friends take more pictures, then go on their way just as before.

    Base people do not feel grief.  Mourning requires sensitivity to the border between life and death, and even this line of demarcation they do not perceive.  How could they?  All they’ve ever been taught is that they emerged randomly from nothing.  They fully expect to dissolve into nothing again, and not be missed.  Randomness is a brutal philosophy.  Its adherents show no pity.

    Elegant people are gracious

    In contrast, gracious people voluntarily honor boundaries: the lines between right and wrong; good and evil; being and nothing; beauty and ugliness.

    The antidote to vulgarity is humility.  If you treat other people with respect, you won’t commit obscenities, even though you make mistakes.  If you’re not trying to assert yourself over others, you’re not likely to infringe.  Minding limits, you engage your whole life in a practice of discipline.  This reeling in of yourself on the verge of a boundary is the essence of modesty.  It’s an active compliance that trains self-control, so you can live a graceful life.

    Elegant, definition: Elegance involves a sense of risk.  It’s a challenge to thread your way through without transgressing.  Who can do it?  But each attempt develops ability.  There are some who succeed beautifully.  We admire them and strive to imitate their technique.  Artistry is not the province of flippant violators.  Creativity does not ignore principles but rather applies them.

    For the Christian, beauty includes paradox.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  The greatest was the servant of all.  The virgin gave birth.  The creator of the universe chose human parents who couldn’t afford anything better than an animal shed to shelter in.  Again and again, Christian teachings balance improbable truths on a fulcrum of miraculous possibility.

    As we make our way, we search for this narrow ridge of redemption.  We find it, and then our feet slip out from under us, and we slide off.  But there is someone to rescue us.  Holiness is not only practiced but bestowed.  Failure climbs back as resilience.

    Within the ways of God we exercise complete freedom to create.  He is the one who called us into being, gave us shape and endowed us with talents.  Vulgarity is not our destiny.

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  • Trust And Obey

    The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience, which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all.…  [T]hey carry out the superior’s order as promptly as if the command came from God himself.…  This very obedience, however, will be acceptable to God and agreeable to men only if compliance with what is commanded is not cringing or sluggish or half-hearted.…  (Rule of St. Benedict 5.1-14)

    Sheer cussedness is not a Christian virtue, even if you are from Texas.  None of the translators feature “stubbornness” anywhere in the lists of fruits of the Spirit.  “Perseverance” comes close, but perseverance implies that you’re going in the right direction.  Going the other way just because it’s your way is called “perverse,” and that’s not in there either.

    If you can’t tell the difference between persevering and perverse, ask yourself when was the last time you were wrong.  If you can’t remember ever being wrong, or admitting it, you’ll belong in the short word crowd.

    Watch out, because perverse can slide into “perverted” when you reject all correction, on principle.  The day comes when even your instincts are destructive, and so are all your friends.  That population does not perceive that the impulse carrying them over the cliff is their own ill will.

    Rebellion gets attention, but rebellion for its own sake only tears down existing systems.  The perpetual objector doesn’t contribute anything positive.  At school, at home, at work, waiting in line and anywhere else, the person who just won’t do what anyone asks makes life tedious for everyone else.  The worst part of leadership, when you are the one in charge is dragging along the grudging trudger.

    All human authority rests on the authority of God (Romans 13:1-7).  Where a derivative power contradicts the sustaining source, we surely should question that rickety racket.  So do open your eyes, prick up your ears and wrinkle your nose before going along with anyone.  But on the other hand, you can’t expect to develop sensitivity to divine cues, which are spiritual, if you refuse to heed human instructions, which you understand just fine.  Obedience to human authority is a way of expressing obedience to God’s authority, when the one does not contradict the other.

    This is why the goal of the Christian cannot be to rebel and get away with it.  The Christian goal must be to establish a just society, so that there’s no moral dilemma opposing obedience to God and obedience to authority.  In all ordinary occasions of everyday action, obedience to intermediate authorities is the Christian default.  Not snide reluctance but willing participation is what we offer to those in positions of responsibility.  If you are habitually helpful, when a truly moral dilemma comes along, most authority figures will be well-disposed to listen to you.  Even tyrants run low on energy and resources.  They lean on the person they can count on.  Ten to one they would rather accommodate your objection on that day, since you frame it in a respectful way.

    And if they refuse to listen, you will be able to mount an effective protest only if you can work with other people.  Working with people always does end up requiring systems of authority, hierarchy and delegation, because perfect unanimity in all things is a divine quality, not a human one.  Deferring to each other is the closest we can get to harmony.

    Of course, the ultimate question is whether we can trust God, to want to obey him at all.  In order to trust someone’s leadership, you need to feel confident both in the goodness and in the competence of the person in charge.  God is good, but is he good enough?  It’s the longing for goodness–to find it somewhere in the mess, to retrieve whatever’s left of it from annihilation, to set it back on its feet–that keeps driving us to throw in our lot with someone who does not guarantee that we will not suffer.

    We do accomplish something.  It is worthwhile.  Risks are worth taking for a life worth living.

    Obedience is trust taking that risk.  We trust the God who created the universe to figure out how to fix it.  He has a plan.  No one else does.  Christ is the only one offering redemption.  He is the one who climbs into the rubble of the world to rescue those trapped in the wreckage of ruined lives.  We follow him into dangerous places because we trust him to lead us through death itself into eternal life.

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  • Eat Your Vegetables

    Raising Kids

    …we must be vigilant every hour… (Rule of St. Benedict 7.29)

    The kid who is old enough to chew solid food will also be smart enough to realize that you’re cooking peas with his pasta.

    He’s willful enough to feel insulted.

    He’s passionate enough to throw a screaming fit.

    Because you’re a Christian mother–loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle and self-controlled–you don’t beat him with your wooden spoon at the end of a long, hard day.  Instead, you pour yourself a glass of wine, turn up the music, get down in his face with the bag of frozen peas and say: WATCH ME.  Then in defiance of his will you add the peas to the ziti while he howls and kicks on the ground at your feet.

    So what if he removes every pea from his bowl and refuses to eat even one?  So what if he peers into each tube of ziti and sticks his finger in it to expel each internal pea?  You’ve held the line.  You’ve retained your principles.  That was the Battle of the Peas, and you won it.

    When he’s a little older, you’ll no longer permit him to remove all vegetable matter from his personal space.  Even if he won’t taste the broccoli, he must tolerate it.  He may not remove it to the table, or throw it on the floor, or foist it onto someone else’s plate.  He must suffer the presence of the hated green thing.  When at last he resigns himself to its existence, you’ve won the First Battle of Broccoli.

    Then there’s the Second Battle to fight: he’s got to taste the broccoli.

    When he gags and vomits at your dinner table, you feel disheartened.  You’ve already toiled through years of cooking for an ungrateful, complaining family.  Now you want to give up and never eat again–not with them.  But the night is darkest just before the dawn.  The little boy who gags on his broccoli will one day volunteer to cook dinner for his whole family (Fettuccine Alfredo; extra Parmesan; no peas).

    Far, far more important than the presence or absence of vegetables are the social principles he has internalized:

    1. Everything the cook serves must be TASTED.
    2. The one who provides dinner must be THANKED.
    3. If you want it different, do it YOURSELF.

    The first two principles are essential to civilization.  The laws of hospitality are older than Abraham. Flaunt them at your peril.  The third undergirds a free society.

    So persevere.  One day you’ll reap the rewards of having trained your children in good habits.  When you feel yourself flagging, just take a look around at the consequences of giving up.  Habits of self-control and principle go far beyond food choices.  Children who’ve learned that food consumption is not an act of self-worship will later be able to put other forms of consumption into context.  Habits acquired in childhood are difficult to break.

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  • Beware Fatal Attraction

    Rage Definition

    We must then be on guard against any base desire, because death is stationed near the gateway of pleasure. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.24)

    Last week a man identified himself with death and stationed himself at the gateway of pleasure to deal it out.  

    This was not a Kenny Rogers kind of Gambler.  But was he one of us?

    Answer 1:

    We don’t see the appeal of murdering as many people as possible before killing ourselves.  If we were to kill ourselves, we’d just swallow a bottle of pills.

    Answer 2:

    Ending it all is not necessarily the goal.  You just want what you want, and you don’t care if it kills you.

    Answer 3:

    The lure dangling before your eyes is more playful.  You figure you can take the bait and leave someone else on the hook for it.

    Answer 4:

    None of the above.  You want to live a good life.  And you want to be happy.  Why does this have to be so hard?

    St. Benedict’s approach:

    St. Benedict warns us not against desire in general, but against base desire.  We keep all our other desires in check because our deepest desire is for life itself.  Only God can satisfy this desire.

    First mistake to avoid:

    The first mistake is to imagine that Christian faith requires a repression of desire itself.  

    Not so: Christian faith is all about the ultimate fulfillment of desire.

    Second mistake to avoid:

    The second mistake is to imagine that because desire itself is good, therefore all of our particular desires must also be good.  

    Not so: the practice of the faith involves learning to distinguish between right desires and base desires. We also develop self-control, so we can enjoy good impulses without giving in to bad ones.

    Third mistake to avoid:

    The third mistake is to imagine that because there are right desires and base desires, every impulse must have a moral rating.  

    Not so: many actions are in themselves neutral.  The rightness or baseness of a desire resonates within the forms of God.  Where God is silent, we may improvise as we please.  But where God reveals, we heed and harmonize.

    The theory isn’t that difficult.  It’s the practice that gets you, as you finger your way through the cacophony. All around are neurotic types who want to dominate, each according to his own devices. There are hedonist types who want to let everything go, especially themselves.  And there are neurotic hedonists: the peculiar creatures of our time.

    The neurotic hedonist rejects the forms of God in their entirety, by rejecting the very existence of God.  He sets himself up as a replacement for God.  This sort of narcissist glorifies the impulses of the self.  But the neurotic hedonist also regulates the worship of the self with a complex, compulsory structure.  Then when he really gets going, he tries to impose the worship of himself onto everyone else.

    The Enraged Man:

    A neurotic hedonist can develop into an enraged man.  For a lifetime he cultivates anger at everything that does not conform to his control.  For a lifetime he refuses to tune the one thing his creator asks him to adjust: himself.

    The Christian script calls for an entirely different way of living.  We worship God and attempt to follow his lead.  We subordinate our wills to his on principle and seek to harmonize our desires with his.  But within the parameters set by God, we enjoy complete freedom.  We’re under no compulsion to do anything in a fixed way.  We rid ourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander–how?  By giving thanks to the one from whom we receive every good thing.

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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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  • Fear Of The Lord

    The first step of humility, then, is that a man keeps the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets it. Psalm 36:1  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.10)

    The practice of humility isn’t so daunting once you realize that it’s not about what other people think of you.  It’s about your existence.

    The first step in this practice is elemental.  Over and over in Scripture, the fear of God is recommended to us as beneficial to our well-being:

    Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

    You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.

    Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

    Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.  Psalm 128:1-4

    Immediately it becomes clear that if your idea of happiness is winning the jackpot in Vegas, you’ve got the wrong God here.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the psalmists and prophets, St. Benedict and all the saints of the Church will bless you with a domestic life and a living wage.  God’s idea of happiness for his favorite creatures is not idleness, but satisfying work; not luxury, but abundance; not sexual adventures, but family.

    That’s the carrot.  But in case the carrot doesn’t motivate you, there’s also a stick.  When St. Benedict echoes the psalmist in proclaiming the fear of the Lord, he’s not talking about an intellectual assent to a coherent philosophical proposition.  He stands with all the other prophets in proclaiming that God is a Person.  And this Person holds each human being accountable for every free action.  God will punish those who willfully disobey his commands.  God will reward those who attempt to obey him.  Both the punishment and the reward will endure forever, once we’ve completed our journey through time.  So it is scary.  You’re supposed to feel a thrill of terror.

    But as always in this religion, there’s a paradox.  For those who don’t deserve much of anything, there is infinite mercy, if you’re humble enough to accept mercy.

    The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life Proverbs 14:27 

    The metaphor evokes fresh water in the desert.  On barren cliffs green things flourish.  How can this be?  A seed drifting on the wind lodged in a crack and sensed that it was time to send forth a tiny root.  Just so, the fear of the Lord is the mysterious spiritual sense that God endows his creatures with, enabling them to recognize his presence and to turn to him as the source of their vitality.

    Does it have to be fear?  Fear isn’t nice.  We’ve edited it out of religion.  But then again, we’ll pay money to feel it in a horror flick or on a roller coaster.  If it’s so bad, why do nice people seek it out and pay for it?

    Because we are alive.  Only living creatures can feel fear.  When we feel fear, we also feel alive, because we’re viscerally aware of a threat to our existence.

    The barren rock that never lived cannot fear losing the life it never had.  And people who’ve never felt alive can’t fear the loss of what they’ve never known.  They become indifferent to annihilation, their own and other people’s.  In interactions with others, these petrified souls exhibit a delusion of impunity.  Their moral indifference extends from their spiritual aridity. They’re untouchable, or so they imagine.  This is not a sign of progress or of superiority.  It’s a sign of something missing.

    The fear of God is the first step of humility, because humility is the root that aligns us in the proper posture with respect to our creator, so that we’re able to draw life from him.  We recognize our dependence on the one who called us into being.  We acknowledge the presence of the one who sustains everything at every moment.  And we send out at first just a tiny filament towards him, but as we grow and thrive, this will become a tough root mass that attaches us firmly to the region of our life source.

    What about the trouble that comes to everyone?  The trouble you face in this world is not the punishment of God.  The trouble you face now is what you have to get through on the way to your reward.  Now is the struggle of life in the desert.  Later is the rest at the oasis.

    St. Paul tells us that even if everything in the universe conspires against us–death, life, angels, demons, the present, the future, nature, culture, hurricanes, floods–God is still on our side, through it all, as long as we’re trying to do the right thing (Romans 8: 1-39).  Our struggle toward goodness through harsh surroundings shows that we are vital after all.

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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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