Getting to the Point

I have been going over the Mass weekly on the blog, to show how the liturgy provides a pattern for our whole life—how in fact everything there is to say about being a disciple of Jesus Christ can be found in a close study of its forms and rites.

We are backing off the specific rites last week and this week to look at some of the fundamental symbols that make up the heart of the Mass. Last week we looked at bread and wine; this week let’s talk about the priest and the altar. Bread and wine are brought to the priest at the altar, and it is from there that the action of the Eucharist proceeds.

Why a priest? What is the point of this character in the funny clothes up there at the front? Why can’t anyone of the congregation do it, or the whole congregation together, for that matter? We can always say ‘Cuz Jesus told us to do it that way,’ and leave it at that (certainly, I believe that to be the case), but is there more than can be said here? Does it mean anything, this priestly office in the Church? Why is he at an altar? What special significance does that have?

While a full theology of the priesthood would be well beyond the scope of this single blog post, I think the great symbolism of the ordained priesthood in the Mass is to signify Christ the head of the Body, Christ to whom we bring the offering, Christ who is the sanctifier of the gifts.

Bread and wine, I said last week, carry within themselves a symbolic meaning that encompasses the entirety of human life. We bring the bread and wine and not simply offer it ourselves but hand it to ‘another’ to be offered. This other is, of course, a human being like ourselves, really no better or worse than we are in any respect, but has been ‘set apart’ for this role by his sacramental consecration.

And so the symbolism is direct and clear and deep – the radical resolution of our lives and all that is in them consists in our ‘handing them over’ to, not ‘another’, but to The Other who is God.

The altar, meanwhile, is essentially the place of sacrifice. We do not just offer the sacrifice any old place, in any convenient location—there is a place where the offering is to be made. In the context of the liturgy this means we perform the action of offering and consecration on a piece of furniture that has been solemnly consecrated for that purpose and hence can be used for no other.

Priest and altar symbolize together the radical ‘other-ness’ of our faith. Christ has come to us, God has made Himself so very near to us, so very intimately one with us, and this is a great gift, a great and awesome joy. But He is still the wholly Other, the Holy One who is utterly transcendent even or perhaps especially in His drawing so near to us, His making Himself so available to us.

The Pope has called since the beginning of his pontificate for the Church to not become ‘self-referential’. This is rightly taken to mean that our mission is outwards, that we must have a constant care to reach out from the sanctuary to those who are outside of it and seemingly cannot or at any rate will not come in. But there is this other sense in which we are not to be self-referential, and it is upwards, not outwards.

For us to be rightly missionary and outwards-directed, it seems to me we need to first be utterly non-self-referential in the sense of our whole selves being directed, referred, to Christ. Bread and wine are brought to the priest and placed on the altar. Our whole selves—everything in our lives right now, no matter what it is—is only rightly ordered when it is brought to Christ and placed on the altar which is the place of His own self-offering, His own gift to the Father for love of the world. The Paschal Mystery, and our lives are only what they should be when every bit of them is taken up into it, when it becomes Our Mystery, too.

The truth is, most of us hold something back. We may offer our prayers and explicitly charitable deeds as bread and wine for the priest and the altar, but our work life is our own. Or we may get it that our work life is to be consecrated for Him, but our personal realtionships are ours to manage. Our maybe those belong to Him, too, but our interior lives, our emotions and wounds and hard places within—well, He doesn’t want all that junk, does He? That’s what psychiatrists are for, if we can afford them.

And so on and so forth. Most of time, when our lives are not flowering into the fullness of holiness, of life made radiant and beautiful in Christ, it is because we are keeping some of our bread and wine to remain just that, our own bread and wine to be dealt with as we wish. And the bread goes moldy and the wine turns to vinegar, useless to us and to others, when it could have been transformed into food and drink for the world.

In this simple symbolism of the Mass (which we know does not remain at the mere level of symbol, but is a living reality, the center of all reality in fact), we see the whole pattern of Christian discipleship and Christian holiness.  And as we go on in the Mass next week, we shall see exactly how our bread and wine are to be given to Him, and what He does with them to make them what they are meant to become.

It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.  

Desert Father Stories

Reflection – This will be my last desert father posting for the time being. I have more stories yet, and people have been giving me lots of positive feedback on them, but that’s enough for now; time to move on to another angle next week.

This one is a good place to end the series for now. One of the themes that comes up in the collections of desert father literature, and it’s very disarming and refreshingly honest that it does so, is the frank acknowledgment that the fathers were prone to one particular line of temptation above all, that there was one pitfall awaiting the monks of the desert that many fell into.

That pitfall, that trap, was the trap of vainglory. That is, comparing themselves to other men, and seeing themselves as superior because of the extreme austerity of life they had adopted. The movement into the desert was spurred to a great degree by a perception of the corrupt and godless way of life of the great cities of late antiquity, many of the fathers did in fact attain great levels of self-mastery and virtue and depth of prayer, and so vainglory—the temptation to consider oneself in relation to others and place oneself above them in rank—was an obvious danger to them.

It is a mark of the greatness of the fathers that they did not try to conceal this struggle from their followers and those chronicling their exploits, but took pains to point out that this was one of the more protracted and difficult struggles in the spiritual life. Later on, when much that is given in pithy stories and sayings in the desert father corpus was explicated at greater length in treatises on the spiritual life, it would be explained that vainglory is especially hard to eradicate because unlike the other sins which accompany our human weakness (gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth) vainglory attends our success and our strength.

Right at the moment when we’ve actually managed to do something worthwhile, the little worm of vainglory start whispering in our ear, “Well, aren’t you something special! You really made it! And of course you’re way better than those jerks over there…” Very insidious, very persistent, and something most of us have to contend with at least a little bit.

As soon as we are comparing ourselves to others and placing ourselves on the plus side of the ledger, vainglory is upon us to rob us of the merit of whatever good we are doing. And of course it has a trajectory—sin never stands still. From the interior conviction of our own superiority comes the expectation that others will acknowledge that superiority (it’s only right!), the effort to make sure our virtues and achievements are known and recognized, preferably in public, and the shock, hurt, and rage when others do not come across with the praise and honor we think we are owed.

From this hurt and anger then, we descend if unchecked into despairing of our efforts to be good, since it didn’t get us the result we somehow decided we wanted (the praise and honor of our neighbor). And from that, all the passions and appetites of the flesh come roaring back and the next thing we know we’re back at the bottom of the ladder struggling with basic virtue and obedience to the commandments. Such is the pitfall of vainglory and it is a formidable one, one that has claimed many a soul that was on its way to sainthood.

The remedy is found in stories such as this one. Anthony is told there is a man in the city (!) who is his equal, not by prodigious fasting and long prayers, but by generosity to the poor and a simple prayer life taken from Scripture. Another story similar to this has one of the fathers being told that two sisters living together in the city (!) were his equal because they had lived together many years and never exchanged a harsh word between them.

In other words, the best remedy of vainglory is to know that there are many people doing as well or better than us, morally and spiritually, under much more difficult circumstances and with far fewer advantages and helps. To continually look with marvel and awe at the good lives of other people, and look very little indeed at whatever good we might manage to achieve on a good day.

Vainglory besets us, and the fathers are clear that it is one of the longest and most protracted spiritual struggles there is. The desire to see ourselves as superior to ‘those people over there’, or worse yet ‘this person who is right next to me, with whom I live’ is a deep one in us, a terrible distortion in us of a godly desire for the true spiritual greatness we are indeed called to, our royal dignity, our sharing in the divine life.

But the more we can train ourselves to rejoice in the dignity, beauty, and divine grace we see in our brothers and sisters, and the more eagerly we desire to see all these goods in all men and women, and especially in those who do not seem to us to be on that path, the more we are constantly choosing to reject vainglory and live in the true spirit of Christ, of humility and abundant charity and mercy towards all.

We have no wish at all to pass over in silence the difficulties, at times very great, which beset the lives of Christian married couples. For them, as indeed for every one of us, "the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life." Nevertheless it is precisely the hope of that life which, like a brightly burning torch, lights up their journey, as, strong in spirit, they strive to live "sober, upright and godly lives in this world," knowing for sure that "the form of this world is passing away."

For this reason husbands and wives should take up the burden appointed to them, willingly, in the strength of faith and of that hope which "does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Then let them implore the help of God with unremitting prayer and, most of all, let them draw grace and charity from that unfailing fount which is the Eucharist.

If, however, sin still exercises its hold over them, they are not to lose heart. Rather must they, humble and persevering, have recourse to the mercy of God, abundantly bestowed in the Sacrament of Penance. In this way, for sure, they will be able to reach that perfection of married life which the Apostle sets out in these words: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church. . . Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church. . . This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 25

Reflection – So we continue to make our way through these last paragraphs of HV, and we see here the Pope acknowledging the fact that is pretty well known to everyone, and certainly to anyone married. Namely, marriage is really hard. It is a very challenging vocation, even in the best and most compatible, mature, harmonious marriages.

Even before children come along and raise it to the next level of difficulty and challenge (and joy and richness, too) there is an intrinsic difficulty in the profound intimacy and union that is the heart of marriage. Two human beings, wildly different in temperament, background, expectations, communication styles, each with his or her own set of wounds and weaknesses, vulnerabilities and challenges along with strength, beauty, and gifts, bind themselves to each other for life, to forge an unbreakable bond of unity, oneness of mind and heart. It is no easy thing, and many do fall short of the ideal or struggle for years to attain it, often with great pain and at great cost.

The secular world, faced with the challenge of marriage, wants to change marriage so that it is less challenging. Make it temporary, not permanent, for example. Make it almost as easy to end a marriage as it is to begin one. Remove children from the equation, or at least make them extremely optional. Even, in some extreme circles, make marital fidelity optional, the so-called ‘open marriage’.

The Church, looking at the same difficulties and challenges of marriage, but recognizing that the thing itself is a divine creation which we have no authority to change for any reason, says, essentially, ‘Turn to Christ.’ The grace of God meets us in the difficulties and stresses of whatever our life is. The Eucharist is the strength of our soul. Reconciliation is the healing of our soul of the wound of sin. Christ is with us always, through the graces of baptism, confirmation, and the special sacramental grace of marriage itself.

We can look at the difficulties of Christian marriage and easily say that it’s just too much, the Church or God is asking too much of people, and it’s just completely unreasonable, even deeply unkind, to expect people to rise to such a level of greatness of spirit.

Or we can look at those same difficulties and say that God must simply expect every married couple to really live by faith, to really learn to pray, to turn to Him, to receive from Him the strength and the grace to do what they themselves cannot do.

It really is that way with any truly difficult situation in life. We can be faced with any challenge in which to apply the Gospel and the moral law requires from us great sacrifice or generosity or suffering. We can say, ‘It is the Gospel and the moral law that are wrong. I’m going to do something else.’ Or we can say, ‘Jesus, have mercy on me. Help me, Lord, for I cannot do this by my own power. Thank you for giving me your grace to do this.’

Two different answers, two different attitudes, but what a difference in outcome. One leaves us in our own limited, mediocre selves, defining the whole world and God too by the terms of our own subjectivity. The other breaks us open to the abiding presence of God with us, God within us, Christ behind, beneath, above, beside me, the kingdom of God which is alive and active and in which we grow to the full stature of Christ. This is what the Lord, and His Church, are offering to all of us, but here in HV, to married couples specifically—a chance to become saints. Isn’t that good news?

St. Anthony leaves his cell in the morning and sees the whole world covered with the snares of the Demon. He is terrified. ‘Who then can be saved?’ he cries out to God. And the divine voice answers: ‘The humble one. And I tell you more: these snares will not even touch him.’

This same St. Anthony once prayed to God that He would show him someone who was better than he, who could serve as his example. He told Anthony to go to Alexandria; the first man that he met at the entrance to the city would be the one God had sent in answer to his prayer.

Indeed he did meet a man at the entrance to the city, and questioned him. Who are you? I am a tanner. And what do you do? I am busy at my tannery and serve my customers. But what are your works before God, your forms of self-denial? I have none.

But what do you do then? How do you spend your day? I spend my day working. And what do you do then? How do you serve God? Describe your day to me. Well, in the morning, after I get up, I place myself for several moments before the face of God, and I think that in this whole great city of Alexandria there can be no one who is as great a sinner as I. And in the evening, before going to bed, I again place myself in the presence of God, and again I think that in all this great city of Alexandria there is no one who is as great a sinner as I. such was the lesson God sent to St. Anthony.

Or there is the holy abbot Siso, on his death-bed after a long life full of struggles, interior combat, and the fruits of sanctity. The anchorites who were his neighbors and disciples have come to take leave of him. As he nears his end his face is illumined… Suddenly he is heard speaking to someone. And the elders ask him, ‘To whom are you speaking, Father?’ And he replies to them, ‘The angels have come to take me, and I am begging them to leave me here a little longer, that I may repent.’

And the elders say to him, ‘But you have no need to repent, Father.’ He answers, ‘I tell you truly, I have not even begun to repent.’ And they saw then that he had attained perfection. For ‘What is perfection?’ Isaac of Syria asked. And his reply was, ‘The depth of humility.’

Nicholas Arseniev, Russian Piety

Reflection – At the heart of the Orthodox spiritual tradition are the stories of the desert fathers, the first monks of the Christian religion, and the sayings passed down to us first in oral tradition, then in written collections.

The species of humility presented here may not seem like the most attractive model of holiness to us today. We are so used to the psychological language of poor self image, self-hatred, inferiority complexes and the like. Neurotic guilt.

It is easy—far too easy, really—for us post-moderns, with our sophisticated vocabulary and (supposedly) deep insight into the human psyche, to wave aside all this antique Christian stuff. And yet… the desert fathers established a way of life and a tradition of holiness and prayer that have endured for 1700 years, have laid down precepts and principles and practices that have helped hundreds of thousands to become translucently radiant with the charity of God, and monasticism shows no signs of passing away. Can Freud and his disciples say the same, really?

The best stance to take towards the writings of the desert fathers and their descendants is, really, humility. These guys (and gals) actually know something about God and how to get to God that we probably don’t. And it is this basic humility that is at the heart of it all.

The key thing is to live, able to say with sincerity, “I don’t know, I have it wrong, I need to repent, my brother and my sister are my superiors, and I am a very great sinner – the greatest one I know, anyhow.” It has nothing whatsoever to do, in its reality, with neurotic anything or complexes of any kind.

It is not complex at all, actually, but radiantly, divinely simple. And we need, really, to cut through our own psychological language and approach to these questions. Humility, virtually every saint, every monk, every wise person ever, has told us to be the absolute key and center of a vibrant, fruitful, beautiful, joyous spiritual life.

To live as a very small, little, humble person, in the midst of whatever responsibilities and charges and professional life, cares, etc., that one has (serving one’s customers in the tannery, so to speak) is the path to holiness equal, and in fact identical, to the hermit in the desert fasting and praying for hours, or the nun in her cell, or the priest at the altar, or the saint in the slums caring for the poor.

It is all about, and only about, opening one’s heart to the loving and radiant action of God, and the only way to open our hearts in that way is to humble ourselves, know our deep and total need for him, and cry out for his mercy and saving grace. There is no other path to holiness, and there is no other path but holiness to a happy, joyful life.