“I don’t know about all of you, but I’m already sick and tired of Lent.”
– Dr. Regis Martin, 8AM Theology Class, Every Ash Wednesday
So even though I don’t write about it often these days, long-time readers will know that I’m Catholic. Lent has always been just about my least favorite time of the liturgical year. Not because enduring Lent in the modern-day Church is particularly difficult – read about the old school Roman Catholic or the current Orthodox Lenten fasting rules, and you realize you’re getting off easy with the current rules on fast and abstinence. Even so, I’ve never been a fan of any kind of voluntary suffering. I’ve always felt like life deals quite enough punishment to most of us without our needing to take on more pain for the fun of it.
This Lent is interesting to me for several reasons. I’ve talked about it ad nauseam, but because my family has gone primal, everything we eat is different than it used to be. Lots of people give up their favorite gustatory delights as a penitential privation for Lent. But we’ve already given up all bread, pasta, desserts, pastries, cereals, candy, juices, and most alcohol. I’ve had priests recommend small sacrifices like not putting sugar in my coffee. Already doing that now. And I gave up caffeine entirely about three months ago, so that’s not an addiction I need to quit. There just isn’t much food left to give up, so that’s off the table, no pun intended.
Perhaps coincidentally, I find it interesting that one of the recommendations of the Primal Blueprint is Intermittent Fasting – which has health benefits that go beyond simply losing weight. Fasting isn’t just a spiritual practice, it would seem, it’s a physical one too. It’s good for us to fast now and then in ways we probably never knew. And since human beings exist as both physical and spiritual creatures, I can’t help but think that this recommendation from our Creator takes both of these aspects into account.
I’m not entirely certain what practices or penances I’ll engage in for Lent this year. I’m fairly certain I’m going to abstain from Facebook during Lent, primarily because I find that it’s a big time waster and my time would be better spent writing here, or working on other projects. I have more ideas than I ever give myself time to execute on, so the fewer excuses for not getting to them, the better. With that in mind, I’m probably also going to scale way back on TV. I don’t watch an inordinate amount, but after reading and writing all day at work, it’s hard to come home and want to sit down with a book. I’m far more inclined to watch a show, or a movie, once I finally have the kids in bed. If I do make myself read books though, I might even force some spiritual reading into my intellectual diet, which I’m sure would be good for me.
Which brings me to what may really make this Lent pivotal for me: the fact that I actually care that it’s Lent at all. The past couple of years of my life have been filled with both hardships and blessings, and often enough, they’re one and the same thing. I’ve done a lot of soul searching during that time, and I’ve come up against some real internal struggles with my faith and the things I have not only long believed, but written about and even taught for many years. Some time ago, I arrived at the conclusion that my Catholic faith, though it has so long formed the deepest part of my personal identity, was not something I was entirely comfortable with or ever freely chose. When one grows up Catholic, it’s all but impossible to escape the notion that separating yourself from the Church – even for the purpose of attaining sufficient distance to achieve clarity of thought – is not an option. I can’t “take a break” from Catholicism without committing serious sin. I don’t get to go on a guilt-free 6 month moratorium from Mass, or from moral precepts, while I decide whether or not the Catholic Church presents me with the most compelling case that it, and no other alternative, is the absolute truth.
Put another way, the notion of Hell as a consequence of choosing things other than those prescribed by God (or more specifically, His Church) is, in effect, a psychological gun to the head. There is no escape from the mentality that you must keep doing the very things you are struggling with believing or face the consequences. And any relationship that is so compulsory feels, to me at least, an unlikely place to encounter the love that is supposed to be the hallmark of man’s relationship with Christ.
I have tested the limits of what distance my Catholic guilt will allow me in the last few years. I can’t say it’s a very long leash. I have discovered, despite some serious temptations to atheism, that I do not like the man I would become if there were nothing to believe in. Personally, I find Dostoyevsky’s apocryphal maxim to be true: “If God is not, then everything is permissible.” There is no sounding the depths of human selfishness if there is no reason not to explore them.
The fact remains that I prefer to believe, and I still suspect that God and His Church are where I will find the truth, even though I continue to struggle. I do not have, as my Protestant friends would say, “A personal relationship with Jesus.” I find God to be the most impersonal of all persons, the most intangible of all realities, the most inscrutable and unknowable of all truths. Love is, as I’m sure Aquinas argued somewhere along the way, based upon knowledge. And yet what I actually know about God, in any rational, understandable way, is very little, despite 20 years of near-constant study. I certainly do not know enough to love Him in a way that compels me to willingly embrace the radical virtue and sacrifice that true Christianity demands. So there is nothing left to it but to unwillingly embrace these things, I suppose.
Some would argue that the alternative is worse, but I’ve seen a great deal of happiness in the lives of many atheistic hedonists, and I have known no few devout and faithful people who live lives without joy. I have experienced this contrast in my own life. The notion that sin doesn’t make people happy is, I think, a convenient lie. I have known too many jolly sinners. That said, happiness in this life is not salvation, and as Blaise Pascal pointed out to skeptics like me, that is quite a trade-off. There is a reason why Augustine plead with God, “Give me chastity, but just not yet!” It wasn’t because he was bored with his sinfulness. The pleasures of this world may never fill the God-shaped hole, but for many who pursue them, they do a fantastic job of making them forget that the God-shaped hole needs to be filled.
I don’t want to fill that void with anything else anymore, but I’m still a little punchy. I’m not sure what the catalyst was for this little sojourn into darkness, but it’s going to take time for me to open up again. So I take baby steps. There have been many events in my life that the faithful man would see as miracles, and the cynic would see as happy coincidences. Either way, I feel gratitude for them, so I make it a habit of thanking God every day, even on the days when I’m not sure that makes sense. Gratitude is a key to happiness, and may in fact be a key to faithfulness. It’s hard to be bitter when you’re feeling thankful. And I’d rather thank God than fate.
I’ve also learned a solid-gold lesson during this time. I’ve learned that if I want to have a happy, successful life, I have to count on myself, on my family, on my friends, and not on miracles and providence. It doesn’t mean I don’t pray for things. I just don’t count on those prayers moving the mountains I need to move anymore. For a guy like me, there has always been a temptation to a sort of providential laziness, a God-tempting fatalism that takes the pressure off of me and puts it on the Big Guy. “Seek ye first the kingdom and righteousness”, and all of that. And in that mindset, when prayers don’t get answered/life doesn’t go your way, you can blame Him. I did a lot of blaming for a while. Then I put my big boy pants on and decided that nobody was responsible for my happiness but me. Maybe that, more than anything else, was why I had to go through this. I had to stop depending on God for everything long enough that I could learn to depend on myself too. Who knows?
To be honest, I didn’t sit down to write a post about all of this. For obvious reasons, I have been reticent about sharing these personal struggles. I certainly have no desire to lead others astray through my own doubt and confusion. But perhaps because I have been through the darkest, lowest places already, I sense that there is hope, which I will likely only find with the help of others.
So if you would be so kind, would you pray for me this Lent? Would you pray that my Faith, if I ever really had such a thing, will be restored? That I will come to truly know Him? That I can learn to love God, and not just to fear Him?
Thank you. And know that when I do pray, I will pray for you.
Coincidentally this year, there hasn’t been a specific person/event/intention that I set my prayers upon this Lent, usually there is. So there you go, you’ve got my daily prayers for you and for your intentions (at least until Easter, after that I can’t promise anything!).
Thanks. I’ll take even one prayer, so more is fantastic. I really appreciate it.
You’ve got prayers coming, Steve, and I appreciate yours as well. My son’s baptismal rite was completed today . And it was a day in which I uttered once, and then heard once more, the spontaneous words “it’s great to be Catholic”. God is good.
Having dumped FB and suspended my own blog, one of the things that I’ve suddenly noticed is a resurgence of my interest in other people, or at least, other people’s blogs. So here I am reading you again for the first time in a long time (sorry).
And here you are talking about the same stuff we have talked about before.
You know that I have struggled with many of the same things you have. We’ve discussed it extensively. And I have also had big problems with the whole “personal relationship” thing. I mean, despite the unassailable fact that God exists, in three persons, etc., to my brain, that is, my psychology, having a relationship with God is equivalent to having a relationship with my imaginary friend. Not something that responsible parents are supposed to encourage their socially underachieving kids to do.
But of course, the idea of having this personal relationship is what Christianity is supposed to be all about. Which meant that I had failed at the core purpose of the thing that is the most important thing in anyone’s life. I also knew that the kind of charity one is obliged to by being a Christian was something I really just didn’t want to do. I have also dabbled, and had much the same results/response.
Then I read a book by …err… some priest whose name I can’t remember, but who is a renowned spiritual director and retreat leader and whatnot. He said something that made me feel a great deal better; that the kind of love for God that the saints experienced, like Catherine of Sienna, is something we are not capable of on our own. We just can’t do it. As I had always argued, we are just not psychologically equipped to have a “close personal relationship” with someone we can’t see or hear. Not in the way I have close personal relationships with my best friends. Or even with my long-time internet blogging buddies. It isn’t possible, in the same way it isn’t possible for us to fly or breathe under water. I was so relieved to hear this I almost missed the rest of the point of his book.
Which was that we can, despite the shortcomings of our nature, actually have this weird incomprehensible thing, a relationship with an invisible, inaudible person, but the impetus has to come from His side. For our part, the relationship with God is qualitatively, as well as quantitatively different from the kind we have with earthly loved-ones. There is something about our human relationships, no matter how close or how committed they are, whether in marriage or best friends or parents and children, that is lacking. Even best friends, even spouses, even parents and children drift apart, get divorced, create uncrossable distances and irreconcilable disputes. They are not able to be in our heads in the way that we truly desire. You can only share so much with another human before you find the divide.
So, we’re kind of stuck. While we are not capable on our own of generating the kind of feelings of closeness and intimacy we desire in a relationship with God, we are also not capable of finding the kind of intimacy we ultimately desire with other humans. A conundrum. But we are assured by the teaching of the Church that it is this ultimate relationship, this perfect intimacy for which we were all created. So, it really sounds like a double-bind.
This book I read resolves the problem. The way you get it is by prayer. You pray, and God responds. But the trick is that contemplative prayer (he’s a Carmelite, I think, so his ideas are all Teresian) is difficult. You have to do it every day and concentrate, and have direction. All of which is work. Which is why I still haven’t done it.
But he says that it is ONLY this practice of contemplative prayer that produces the effects that get written up in the history of the saints. The heroic charity, the love of neighbour that defeats, even eradicates, our natural laze and selfishness comes only and exclusively from this prayer. it is a gift and result of it. And best of all, it is the only thing that creates the tremendous feeling of intimacy, safety and at-homeness that the mystic saints enjoyed and which, consequently, make it possible to enter into perfected human relationships too.
(Of course, it also produces the wretched dryness of spiritual Dark Nights, but that’s supposed to be all good too… but that stuff is all over my head…)
And he says that this result is not only for the select few. Since this sort of “extreme” holiness is in fact what is required of all people, and certainly of all Christians, it is actually a requirement.
But don’t worry. He says that if you don’t do it in this life, it will certainly figure prominently in Purgatory, that turns everyone into saints the hard way.
So, in one sense schleps like us are off the hook. We tend to think that this whole charity and love of God and personal relationship with Jesus is up to us, and are frustrated that we can’t do it. But in fact, no one can. It’s not how the thing works.
But of course, we’re back to the initial problem which is that in my case, at any rate, I’m too lazy, too bored, and too fearful even to try starting on that high road of prayer.
I’m hoping there’s an out clause somewhere that doesn’t involve standing waist deep in a lake of fire for ten thousand years.
Hilary,
That’s simultaneously helpful, fascinating, and terrifying. It’s also some of the best writing I’ve seen from you in a long time. There’s a note of hope in this, and it’s something I think we both needed. I know you’ve gone through a tremendous ordeal, and life never seems to get much easier.
But I’m glad you are sticking around, because I need friends who can tell me these things in the way that you do.
By the way, sorry that I’m a week late in responding. My spam filter was gobbling up comments and I didn’t realize it. I’ll be watching it more closely.