Getting to the Point: nature

Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

Sunday, October 12, 2014

The Best Thing That Can Happen To Us

Generally speaking, the notion of “human rights” is also seen as highly subjective and a call for a person to self-determination, a process which is no longer grounded in the idea of the natural law. In this regard, many respondents relate that the legal systems in many countries are having to make laws on situations which are contrary to the traditional dictates of the natural law (for example, in vitro fertilization, homosexual unions, the manipulation of human embryos, abortion, etc.).

Situated in this context is the increased diffusion of the ideology called gender theory, according to which the gender of each individual turns out to be simply the product of social conditioning and needs and, thereby, ceasing, in this way, to have any correspondence to a person’s biological sexuality.

Furthermore, much attention is given in the responses to the fact that what becomes established in civil law — based on an increasingly dominant legal positivism — might mistakenly become in people’s mind accepted as morally right. What is “natural” tends to be determined by the individual and society only, who have become the sole judges in ethical choices.

The relativization of the concept of “nature” is also reflected in the concept of stability and the “duration” of the relationship of marriage unions. Today, love is considered “forever” only to the point that a relationship lasts.

Instrumentum Laboris for Synod on the Family, 23-24

Reflection – This section of the Instrumentum gets into some very difficult territory indeed. As was discussed a few days ago, the word ‘natural’ has come to mean ‘that which comes easily or spontaneously’. Natural law, in this understanding, would simply mean that the iron law of humanity is to do whatever you most want to do, whatever comes easiest and reflects your deepest drives and urges.

It is one thing—a difficult, thorny thing—that this is indeed the prevailing ethos in secular society. And we who are Christians have to be very creative and engaging and compassionate and thoughtful in our dialogue with secularity. Not to get (too) repetitive, but I think one person who has modeled this creative and compassionate dialogue like no one else is Pope Benedict XVI, as I outlined in my book on his writings.

The fact is, the modern ethos of self-determination and freedom as license is persuasive to many perfectly decent and well-meaning people. The process of dialogue has to be done with great care and respect, in these secular circles.

However, it is quite another thing when this same ethos of nature finds its way into the Church and into Christian minds and hearts. It is not that we cease to be kind and compassionate in our communications, but we can be a bit stronger and more insistent.

Because it is sheer and unfettered nonsense, from a position of Christian faith, to advance this same idea of freedom and nature, happiness and human flourishing, as the carrying out of whatever desires we have and feel most strongly. Leaving aside the specific moral issues touched on above, the whole of our Catholic Christian moral sense comes from three principles.

First, that God is the author of creation, and that the meaning and order of creation is from Him. We do not make up our own meaning and order, but receive it from Him. Second, that sin has darkened the human world and put our desires into a state of considerable disorder. We cannot just listen to our hearts and follow our bliss; our hearts are, alas, deceptive. Third, that God has restored and perfected His divine order of creation and humanity in Jesus Christ, and is carrying out that work of restoration in every human being who believes in Jesus and comes to Him for healing. The path of discipleship, of obedience, of surrendering our wills and our lives to Jesus Christ is the fundamental moral path, the Law of the Christian.

In practical terms, this means that we don’t get our way in life. We don’t get to do our own thing. We don’t get what we ‘want’, at least not the immediate thing, generally, not usually. We don’t get to cut loose (footloose!), at least not as a general principle. Life as a disciple of Jesus Christ is life lived as a serious choice, made daily that “Not my will, but your will be done, Father.”

“I was always afraid that if I really surrendered to God, He would do me in. And it turns out I was right!” Someone said this to me recently in a casual conversation. I responded, “Yeah, and it turns out that having God do us in is actually the best thing that can happen to us.” It’s what we really need and, although it can take a while to get there, it’s what we really want, anyhow, deep down.

How this all applies to marriage, divorce, sex, gender, not to mention all the other moral conundrums of life, is for another day. But we have to start at the level of these fundamental principles and patterns, or our conversation goes wrong from the outset.

I also want to add, in conclusion, that the path of discipleship I describe may sound a bit ‘heavy’ and even grim. It is heavy, but it is far from grim. It is a joyful, free, peaceful, and beautiful path of life, and we need to proclaim that, too, or nobody will believe us or be interested in what we have to say.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

The Laws of the Flesh

To see Christ as God and man is probably no more difficult today than it has always been, even if today there seem to be more reasons to doubt. For you it may be a matter of not being able to accept what you call a suspension of the laws of the flesh and the physical, but for my part I think that when I know what the laws of the flesh and the physical really are, I will know what God is.

We know them as we see them, not as God sees them. For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws.

I am always astounded at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul that she says that will rise but the body, glorified. I have always thought that purity was the most mysterious of the virtues, but it occurs to me that it would never have entered the human consciousness to conceive of purity if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature…

Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

Reflection – Again, much to ponder here. This will be my last day with Flannery O’Connor, in the interest of blog variety. As always when I am thoroughly enjoying an author, I want to just keep going with her, but too bad for me – gotta do something different, starting Tuesday (Monday is my day off, as you may have noticed).

Flannery is a deep woman, and she is going deep here. The idea that the true nature of the physical and the fleshly can only be understood in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ—events which we call ‘miraculous’ and in our modern scientific consciousness deem violations of nature and the physical—this idea has deep implications.

It means that it is the nature of the physical and of the flesh to be completed, fulfilled, by the reception of God, the receiving of the Spirit. Far from some weird and inherently violent imposition of the Divine upon our unwilling and resistant humanity, it is the very essence of our humanity in its physicality to be penetrated and permeated and utterly transformed by divinity.

I believe that. This means, then, that we cannot talk about who we are and what our nature is and what fulfills us and how we are to be happy and have love in our lives and all those good things that people (rightly) get very worked up about, and expect to get anywhere in our discussions unless we gain this transcendent and divine perspective.

We think we know what we need to be happy. We think we know what it means to be a complete human being with a complete human life. But our thoughts are so utterly mired in the level of ‘the laws of nature and the flesh’ as we understand them—and we don’t understand them, not really.

So we think… we have to have sex. Or we have to have an intimate sexual love relationship, to put it more positively, which may or may not include marriage as we currently understand it. Or we have to have maximum autonomy in our personal choices. Or we have to have access to whatever career we wish. Or we have to have a level of economic security or freedom. Or we have to have… well, sex! This one does seem to come up an awfully lot in our modern notions of the laws of the flesh and the physical and what they demand of us.

It seems to me that this is why the life of poverty, chastity, and obedience is so important in the world. Those of us called to this way of life are called to bear witness to all flesh that there is a whole dimension to human fulfillment, human freedom, human security, and human love that is utterly beyond our normal human understandings and what appear to be our normal human capacities. The joyful, faithful life of a poor, chaste, and obedient man or woman preaches the Gospel of Christ to an unbelieving world with a unique power and conviction.

But this Gospel of Christ is true for all men and women. We are called, all of us, to receive the life of God into our human flesh. The nuptial imagery that fills our scriptures and our spiritual tradition truly is the heart of the matter. We receive God, as Mary received Jesus into her womb, giving her own human flesh to the matter, but the deeper reality being the divine person in this flesh.

As we ponder questions of same-sex marriage and abortion and euthanasia (I know, a complete grab-bag of unrelated issues, but the news is full of them right now), we who are Christians need to at the very least go to this depth of understanding in our own personal being. How to communicate this to unbelievers or people in anguish or in anger is another story altogether, but we have to get there ourselves first, and I think we often don’t.

Happiness, love, fulfillment, freedom, the nature of humanity—all of it is only found in the communion of love of the Trinity which becomes our communion of love in the Church on earth (imperfectly), and in the kingdom of heaven (perfectly). And that’s all for now, folks.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

What is Reality Again?

There is a second aspect [of Christmas] that I would like to touch upon briefly. The event of Bethlehem should be considered in the light of the Paschal Mystery: The one and the other are part of the one redemptive work of Christ. Jesus' incarnation and birth invite us to direct our gaze to His death and resurrection: Christmas and Easter are both feasts of the Redemption. Easter celebrates it as the victory over sin and death: It signals the final moment, when the glory of the Man-God shines forth as the light of day; Christmas celebrates it as God's entrance into history, His becoming man in order to restore man to God: It marks, so to speak, the initial moment when we begin to see the first light of dawn.

But just as dawn precedes and already heralds the day's light, so Christmas already announces the cross and the glory of the resurrection. Even the two times of year when we mark the two great feasts -- at least in some parts of the world -- can help us to understand this aspect. In fact, while Easter falls at the beginning of spring, when the sun breaks through the thick, chilly mists and renews the face of the earth, Christmas falls right at the beginning of winter, when the sun's light and warmth seek in vain to awaken nature enwrapped by the cold. Under this blanket, however, life throbs and the victory of the sun and warmth begins again.

General Audience, December 21, 2011

Reflection – Ah yes, a reminder here that the Pope is not, in fact, Canadian! December 25 as the ‘beginning’ of winter? Hah!
That said, we do have this beautiful opportunity in this part of this talk to reflect on how the seasons of the earth reflect the liturgical calendar. People often get this wrong, of course. Oh, Christians just put Christmas near the winter solstice so as to take over the pagan feast of Sol Invictus… and it’s all just paganism redux, taking over the cycles of earth and sun and giving them a superficial Christian gloss. We’ve all heard that kind of thing.
It’s entirely wrong. It turns out that the Roman pagans invented or located their big feast at the end of December precisely to counter the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ, which dates to centuries before the Roman feast is ever mentioned. Christmas is where it is because the Annunciation is where it is, and that is because of the ancient tradition that the Incarnation and Jesus’ life began the same day as he died, which was March 25 according to the primitive Church’s calculations.
But even beyond the historical facts, which are indisputable, there is a deeper point. We Christians do not look at the birth of Christ and say, ‘oh yeah, that’s like winter and the way life and light are present in the midst of death and darkness.’ We look at the winter and we say, ‘oh yeah, this is just like what God did in Christ.’ Jesus is not a symbol of nature; nature—the earth and what fills it, the sun, the stars, the heavens—is a symbol of Jesus.
He is the center; all of reality points towards him. The sun rises every morning as proclamation of the Resurrection of Christ. Flowers receive light and give forth perfume and beauty as a proclamation of the fruits of redemption. The modern world says that the real things are the immediate visible things, the measurable, the prosaic, and that we humans just dress them up with a glossy religious sheen, in which case who cares if it’s Jesus, Mithras, Baldur, or Pan? Christians say that the reality is Christ, and all the visible objects surrounding us are his heralds, signs telling us of his goodness and beauty.
There is a blanket of snow on the earth right now where I am: all creation is wearing its baptismal robes. The sun is shining where I am right now: the light of Christ makes all things radiant. The birch tree outside my window is slender and elegant, a thing of beauty even though it is bare of its leafy raiment: so are our souls naked before God beautiful in their simplicity. On and on and on: this is not pious fiction or sentimentality. The reality is God in Christ, and every atom of creation proclaims that reality to us. Come, let us adore Him.