Getting to the Point: humility

Showing posts with label humility. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Works of Mercy: Bearing Wrongs Patiently

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. My trip out west to give a retreat to some of our MH people in Regina went well, but as always, it’s good to be home.

Our Wednesday trip through the works of mercy has taken us to an interesting one of the spiritual works, namely, to bear wrongs patiently. What’s that about? What does that have to do with mercy? And is that really a good thing? Why should we put up with other people’s failings and bad behavior anyhow? Isn’t that just being a doormat, a patsy, a victim?

It is worth noting, first, that the next work of mercy will be ‘to forgive offenses willingly’. The Church is making a distinction here between things actually done to us as deliberate wrongs (offenses) and simply things that are out of order, not what they should be (wrongs).

This is a distinction that we don’t always quite succeed in making—that between things that simply annoy us, irk us, bug us, and then those things that actually are injuries done to us on purpose. And we can work up quite a little martyr complex for ourselves, based on the fact that people just are not conforming to our (perfectly reasonable, OF COURSE) expectations and standards.

Well, phooey. Of course people don’t live up to your expectations and standards. That’s because they don’t have to. That’s because you’re not God. Take a pill. Settle down. Unclench. This business of bearing wrongs patiently is a fundamental matter of human maturity and a necessary part of living a peaceful life in this world with your fellow man.

People are… well, what they are. Some people talk too much. Others are untidy. Some people have less than ideal hygiene. Others are moody and withdrawn. Some people are indecisive and anxious. Others take charge of every situation, whether that is exactly called for or not. Some people are immature and emotionally volatile; others are grumpy and dour (especially first thing in the morning – yikes!). And… some people are hyper-critical and take careful notice of exactly what everyone else is doing wrong, eh?

In other words, when you’re trying (or not) to bear other people’s wrongs patiently, be aware that they are also having to bear your wrongs patiently, too. A little perspective and perhaps even a sense of humor goes a long way here. We all get on each other’s nerves—this is one of the things you find out, living in religious community as I do. Everyone gets on everyone’s nerves… at least sometimes. ‘There are no compatible people,’ one of our wise elders once said.

The thing with bearing wrongs patiently is that it saves us a lot of time and energy, that we can then devote to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, instructing the ignorant, comforting the afflicted, and so forth. In other words, in itself it is a work of mercy, but it is a work of mercy that chiefly is a matter of not doing something, namely trying to fix everyone and especially to make him stop doing that thing that is SO ANNOYING!!! And in that refraining from action, we free up our cluttered calendar so we can actually do things that do some good in this world.

Now, I’m writing lightly about this matter, because as I say, a little bit of good humor really does go a long way in terms of how to actually be patient with the foibles and shortcomings of those we live. I do know that sometimes the wrongs can be quite difficult to bear and that it can be actually heroic in some cases to live in certain situations. Making light of it is often a good strategy, but of course sometimes we have to go a bit deeper than that.

On the other hand, there can be a tendency to make mountains out of molehills here, to just harp about every little thing that is wrong. And the thing of it is, when we fall into that, then the legitimate works of instructing the ignorant and admonishing the sinner are spoiled—the signal-to-noise ratio gets out of whack. Someone who is constantly complaining and never satisfied with anyone’s efforts is not going to have much luck addressing things that are actual problems that do need addressing. Choose your battles, in other words.

On a deeper level, we have to realize that it is the actual people God has put us with, and specifically those aspects of these people that we might find hard to bear, that are the purifying and sanctifying agents in all of our lives. ‘We are the hairshirts of God for one another’, Catherine Doherty famously observed. The question, she went on to say, is ‘do you love your hairshirt?’

It does help the more we can realize that all the ‘wrongs’ we poor martyred people have to put up with (snort) are in fact there to help us become the saints of God we are meant to be. So we can stop complaining a bit about them, simply accept that we are, in fact, not God, and that other people are not put on this earth to be pleasing to us. And… get on with the real work of the day, which is to love and serve, serve and love, and attend to what God is asking of you and of me, not of them. So, let’s try to do that, today.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

An End To Entitlement

Our Thursday journey through the Mass has taken us to the remainder of the offertory rite. Once we have given thanks for the bread and wine and expressed our firm faith that the Lord will make it into the bread of life and spiritual drink, there comes a whole series of prayers that introduce a new element into our worship.

Some of these prayers are prayed by the priest in a low voice (‘secret’ prayers), others out loud and one by the whole congregation. But all of them, one way or another, communicate the same basic idea.

The priest prays quietly ‘with humble spirit and contrite heart may we be accepted by you…’ and then washes his hands with ‘wash me O Lord, from my iniquity…’, then bids the people out loud to ‘pray… that my sacrifice and yours be acceptable…’ and the people respond ‘may the Lord accept this sacrifice…’

All of this is very significant. When we come into the celebration of the sacraments, we have to keep two things in mind. The first is that God is absolutely faithful and that his action in the sacraments is utterly assured. So when we are celebrating a sacrament, we can know without a shadow of a doubt that God is present, and is doing what He said He would do in that sacrament.

Second, though, is that we have to know that we are utterly unworthy of that action. That it comes to us as a sheer grace, a gift of mercy and love from on high, and not from any merits on our part. And furthermore, that while the sacrament itself is utterly assured, our own fruitful union with that sacrament is anything but assured. We need his mercy and grace there, too, so that not only is the perfect worship of the Son made a living and present reality in the Eucharist, his perfect offering to the Father for the life of the world made available to us in His Body and Blood, but so that we truly enter in and have a share in that worship and offering.

These prayers that come at this juncture of the Mass serve to remind us of all this, that we do not deserve to be there, but are only there because God is gracious and good. There is no ‘entitlement’ to the Eucharist or to the grace of God—it is sheer gift, given in mercy.

Well, as I keep saying, the Mass is the pattern of Christian life, and every bit of the Mass is meant to be applied and lived out in our daily experience of things. So this little bit of the Mass, which is short, mostly prayed inaudibly, and perhaps not the ‘main event’ we focus on, has great implications for our life.

Simply, we are never to think that we ‘deserve’ anything from God. That God is good to us, that He helps us, that His love comes to us in a myriad of ways and that He surrounds our lives with blessings (if only we had eyes to see them)—all of this is very true, very assured. But we deserve none of it.

And isn’t that much better, really? If we deserved it, then it would all be contingent on our not messing up, our not doing something that would make us no longer deserve it. But since we are such wretched sinners, such bumbling fools, and he still helps us, still blesses us, then we are kind of bulletproof, grace-wise, wouldn’t you say? What exactly could we do that would make God stop loving us?

It seems that all we need to do is turn to Him with sincere and heartfelt contrition and humility, and He is right there for us, always. Such has been my experience of life in Christ, anyhow. But then this prayer of the Mass tells us not to be presumptuous, either. We do have to acknowledge our sinfulness and our unworthiness: ‘with humble spirit and contrite heart.’ We can’t just waltz up to Jesus with arrogant expectation that He will come through for us, just because He always does. No, we approach Him on our knees, and it is for Him to raise us up onto our feet again.

There is a whole way of life, a whole attitude of spirit that is captured in these prayers of the Mass. A complete unity of expectant trusting faith in God’s love, and at the same time a deep knowledge of how little we deserve it, how poor we really are in all regards. And out of that, a deep peace, joy, gratitude.

The other attitude we can adopt—entitlement, complacency, arrogance, self-righteousness—is anything but joyful, peaceful, grateful. In fact, it is a recipe for ceaseless misery for ourselves and others. No, let us be content to be beggars before the Lord with nothing to give Him but our total neediness, knowing that is only from that place, the lowest place of utter wretchedness and absolute nothingness, that He is able to enrich us beyond our wildest dreams and give us the whole treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is His own self.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Despicable Me

I have been going through the chapters of my book Idol Thoughts on Wednesdays, on the eight thoughts that lead us away from God, that are in simple fact ‘other gods’, other ways of seeking happiness in this world.

We have come to the eighth thought, the granddaddy of them all, that is pride. In the book I liken pride to the ‘big bad’ in the modern crime movie—the villain who is at work directing all the lesser villains who are merely his minions (Despicable Me! But these minions aren't quite so cute and loveable...).

Pride is like that with the other seven thoughts—all of them essentially tend towards pride or spring from pride, and are strengthened in us by the amount of pride we have. As the Eucharist is the source and summit of divine life in us, so pride is the source and summit of all that is death in us.

Pride, fundamentally, consists in exalting ourselves above our true place. The Latin word for it, superbia, communicates that well—basically, ‘over-ness.’ When we consider ourselves to be more than we are, that is the simple form of pride.

Simple, but what complex forms it takes in all of us. There are the crude forms of pride, easy enough to recognize—dominance, arrogance, bombastic crude power trips. But it can be, and usually is, much more subtle in us.

There is the quiet steady assumption that we are always right, that our judgments, our way, our take on things are simply reality. God is the One whose word fashions the universe, who spoke and it came to be. It is a terrible arrogation of the divine prerogative when we believe our own ‘words’, spoken or interior, actually are the first and last word of what is.

There is self-centredness, which has a hundred faces. There is the steady consistent reference of all things in our lives back to ourselves—everything in this world considered and evaluated on the sole basis of ‘how it affects me’. In properly spiritual matters, I see this when people say they ‘like’ this Scripture passage or they ‘don’t like’ that one, for whatever reason. But the Bible is the Word of God—it is verging on, if not outright, blasphemy to speak of it that way – this Word of God is great, that one not so much, and so forth…

Pride is a tricky, subtle thing, and none of us should ever imagine we are free of it. It is a shape-shifter in the soul, but always singing the same tune: I-me-mine-I-me-mine… always putting ourselves at the center of all things.

And of course it is then the secret source of the strength and persistence of the other seven thoughts. God has laid out for us a way of happiness and blessed life in this world. The path of love received and given, life received and given, the human person made to be a receptacle of divine life, and in that receiving becoming a lover of all creation as God is the Lover of all.

Pride looks at all that outpouring of divine life and love and says, “Yeah, no thanks. I have a better idea! Seven better ideas, in fact.” And off we go on the paths of gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, despondency, acedia, vainglory. All the alternative plans for happiness that don’t involve all this silly God business (does He even exist, anyhow?).

Pride seems very alluring and compelling. Well of course we are the center of our own life—what else is possible? It’s only human to put yourself first in the order of things! What else can we do, and why would we? Isn’t it pathological to efface oneself and put anything else ahead of one’s own being?

Such is pride’s story when it is hauled out into the clear light of day and forced to defend itself. And it is a load of hooey. The truth is, we are made by God, made for God, made essentially for a life of communion with God, receiving and giving, giving and receiving. And out of that, loving, loving, loving our neighbors as the duties of our state of life direct us. The ‘self’ is simply that which exists to be this place of reception and seat of action, the necessary ‘I’ which can enter into communion with the divine ‘Thou’, and thence with all other ‘thous’ we encounter.

And in this, we are truly exalted, truly elevated above our station, but by God, not by our own efforts. We enter into and become sharers in the life of the Trinity, the very life of God made accessible to us in Jesus Christ. Pride, which is all about self-exaltation, actually closes us up in ourselves and dooms us to a small, narrow, constricted little life bounded by our own limitations and ambit… and we really are very small little creatures, it turns out.

The only way to actually climb the ladder of being and become a ‘Great Person’ is to embrace the radical humility of the gift, to paradoxically accept that we are nothing, can do nothing, have nothing of our own… and in that find ourselves mysteriously opened to the one who is Everything and gives us everything He is. And our lives become in that humility and that openness an entry into the Dance of Love which is the very inner life of the Trinity—radical exaltation following upon radical abasement and self-emptying.

As I always say at the end of these Wednesday posts, I actually have quite a bit more to say about all this, but then you wouldn’t buy my book if I said it all here, would you? So you can read the rest of my thoughts here. Have a great day!

Thursday, June 25, 2015

I Am

My brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins… I am writing a weekly commentary on the Mass and how it pertains to, shapes, our everyday life. So we have now gotten to the penitential rite.

Last week I talked about how in the ritual greeting we express our desire that the whole body of believers be gathered into a place of grace, love, and communion, and by extension the whole human race as well.

Now we acknowledge frankly and freely that we have failed to live this out very well since the last time we came to Mass. I confess… that I have greatly sinned… in my thought, words, what I have done, failed to do… through my fault… my very great fault… pray for me… Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

We all know the drill. Right at the outset of the sacred mysteries of the liturgy, we are asked by the Church to be humble and simple and admit that we’re not such hot stuff, not doing such a great job of it. This humility is then the right space to occupy so as to let God do what He is going to do in the action of the Mass.

It is worth noting that all of us do this together—the priest is praying the exact same prayers here as the laity. Sometimes people who don’t like the Church accuse us of using guilt and shame as tools of control, keeping people down by telling them what horrible sinners they are. This is pretty far removed from actual contemporary Catholic culture, although I suppose there may have been some of that in an earlier era, at least in some places.

But this ritual expression of sin and our need for mercy is not that, but is a simple reflection of reality. We are all capable of thinking and saying and doing what is wrong and not doing what is right, and not just capable of it but guilty of it to some degree. So why try to hide it?

Living out the penitential rite in our daily lives would transform the world. I am always reminded of GK Chesterton’s contribution to an essay contest one of the London newspapers was having entitled “What’s Wrong With the World?” People could submit whatever they liked on that topic. GKC’s contribution read as follows: “Dear Editors: In response to your question ‘What’s Wrong With the World’, I am. Sincerely…”

Well, that’s it. I am. We live in a world where finger pointing, shaming, the judgment and outrage machine is running 24/7. It’s the Republicans’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s the feminists’ fault. It’s the white man’s fault. On and on and on it goes. What’s wrong with the world? You! And you, and you, and you… and I’m just getting started here.

What’s wrong with the world? I am. I do not love as I should. I do not give as I should. I am not as wise and prudent, self-controlled and compassionate, just and brave as I should be. It’s my fault, folks! Lay the blame at the feet of Fr. Denis Lemieux – I am the problem.

This is actually a path to great freedom and joy and simplicity of heart. When I no longer feel the need to defend my every decision as being unimpeachable, when I no longer need to deflect the blame for the world’s sorry state onto someone else—anyone else!—when I no longer spend all my energy looking for big enough stones to throw at whoever the latest poor schmuck is who has been ‘caught in the act’ of whatever (cf. John 8), but instead just say, “You know, I’m not perfect, I’ve kind of messed up a lot, and I want to try to do better,” it is amazing how much more peaceful that is.

This is really where the Internet in particular fuels truly toxic spiritual attitudes. There is always someone, somewhere who has just been ‘caught in the act’ of doing or saying something wrong. Whether it’s some doofus scientist making a tasteless joke about women in the lab or some TV reporter being snooty to the person who towed her car or whatever the ‘outrage of the week’ is, there’s always someone. And once we’ve decided to forego our own personal penitential rite, we can spend all day and all night chasing after the latest victim, the scapegoat of the day, pelting them not with stones but with tweets and getting them fired or whatever.

There is no end to it. Or rather, the only end to it is to say that I am not perfect, and to live that out by not being so horribly judgmental and accusatory towards everyone else. That is what the Church is getting at by starting each Mass with the penitential rite—let’s all just get down on the same level, which happens to be reality, that we are all struggling sinners who do not get it right.

And from that we can rise with Jesus to the action of grace, the action of God pulling us up from our sins and helping us to live in such a way that we don’t sin any more. Live in the Spirit, live in His Heart, and so love with His Heart. But that won’t and cannot happen so long as we are denying our sins and furiously blaming everyone else for everything else.

What’s wrong with the world? I am. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.