Ten chapters of traps! Is it worth it? If there is so much to beware of, how can we possibly get through life safely? If so much can go so wrong, what can we trust? How can we be safe? In this last chapter, we can take our eyes off the negative and focus on the positive principles of true spiritual freedom.
As a teenager I tried to learn to play golf. The idea of golf is simple - swing the club and knock the ball into the hole. But as every novice golfer can testify, actually playing gets very complicated. You don't just stand there and swing. You have to keep your head down and eye on the ball, hold your left arm straight; you don't buckle your knees but do rotate your hips slightly, swing the club face straight through the ball (not from outside in or inside out), follow through (but don't lift your head!), and don't dip your shoulder. Oh, and change your grip; the fingers have to interlock. "WAIT!" you want to scream, "How can I keep all this straight?"
The secret, of course, is practice. The beginning golfer has to get out on the practice tee and hit golf balls over and over. Gradually, he gets the hang of keeping his head down and holding that left arm straight. Then he works on the hips, the follow-through and everything else. With help from a teacher and lots of practice, the new golfer soon works the basic elements of a swing into harmony. By the end of his first summer, swinging the club correctly even begins to feel natural. He has learned the basic habits that every golfer needs for playing the game.
The question for us in this book is similar. What we are really looking for is the character of a saint. What are those habits and elements of character that we need to develop to be saints? The goal is simple - to love God and dwell with him eternally. But the task is complicated. The reason for this is that human beings are complicated. Right at the start, we can draw a few lessons from the golf example.
First, we cannot completely avoid sanctity traps, any more than a golfer can avoid sand traps. We make mistakes and get into bad habits.
Second, much of our growth is a matter of correcting bad habits. Like the golfer who picks up a bad 'slice' (hitting the ball so that it actually curves off to the right), from time to time the Christian has to work on bad habits and correct them.
Third, we have to be humble and relax. Accept the fact that you and I are not per-fect. We will always make mistakes and have to improve.
In this chapter I will briefly outline the three basic factors that enable us to live free of sanctity traps. These are the three principles of Christian freedom.
1) Reverence Truth
In 1919 Fr. Rupert Mayer attended a discussion group on Communism. The leader of the group, a young man named Hitler, was favorably impressed with the priest and four years later sent him a congratulations telegram on his Silver Anniversary of ordination. Fr. Mayer was popular and well-regarded; his support would have been valuable to any politician. Hitler courted him. At that point the Communist menace was very real in Germany. Many writers, scholars, and churchmen were not as afraid of Hitler's 'quirks' (of course, he still was ten years away from the atrocities of his Nazi regime) as they were of the Marxist threat. But Fr. Mayer would have nothing to do with him. This simple priest saw something that smarter and more educated people missed. He recognized that Hitler had no regard for the truth. He had no scruples about lying. Cardinal Ratzinger writes that Mayer could recognize in Hitler's lying and exaggeration the "mask of the Antichrist". Then Cardinal Ratzinger goes on to say:
"If truth is not held in honor, then freedom, justice, and love cannot flour-ish. Truth, by which I mean the simple, humble, patient truth of daily life, is the foundation of all other virtues."*
The opposite of the truth is the lie. We tell lies to manipulate other people. Certainly this is clear in political advertising. Campaign commercials do not - for the most part - inform us about the facts. Instead they mean to inflame us against the candidate's oppo-nent. As mayor, "Jones" levied a fee on certain forms of garbage dumping. Most voters would probably approve. However, his opponent presents this as "yet another new tax on hard-working citizens" - which the voters won't like. But what the politicians do on TV, the rest of us do at work, in school, at home, in our business dealings. Cardinal Ratz-inger's point is that every one of those little truths is important, and if someone - like Hitler - regularly distorts the truth for his own gain, then he is using the mask of the Antichrist. Strong language! But truth is a serious matter. Without truth we cannot be free.
The most important truths, of course, are the truths about God. Each human being has an obligation to seek out the truth about God. St. Paul makes it very clear that even those who do not have Revelation can know something about God (Rom. 1:19-23).
In the Scriptures, God reveals the truth about himself. St. Augustine said that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. The Church reads a portion of Scripture every Sunday at Mass. Over the course of three years, a Catholic will hear most of the Gospels and much of the rest of the Scriptures. At the minimum, then, Catholics should listen attentively to the Sunday readings and meditate on them. In the Liturgy of the Word, God speaks to us through the readings. The purpose of these readings is to let us know God better. We can build on this, then, by reading and studying the Bible regularly at home or in study groups.
To learn the truth about God, we have to listen to his word properly. Especially during the Mass, we should listen to God's word to see what he has to say. This should be our fundamental relationship with God's word. However, we often bring our own agenda to our reading. For instance, suppose I have recently been introduced to a new experience of the power and work of the Holy Spirit. Eagerly I search the Scriptures - especially the Book of Acts - to find everything I can about the Holy Spirit and charis-matic gifts. This is good, but it is still what I have on my mind. I must also simply listen for what God has on his mind. That is, during the Sunday reading about "if your right eye offends you", I should pay attention to what God wants to teach me about scandal and occasions of sin. Or for another example, I may be anxious about my teenage children, and I search the Scriptures for wisdom. This is good. But even as I try to guide my own children, God wants to guide me. What he says on Sunday through Matthew 6 about the love of money is for me. I must listen to that.
In other words, don't go to the Bible just for answers to your own questions. Parents know how frustrating it can be when children refuse to listen. Dad wants to explain what an education meant to Grandpa, but his son wants only to talk about getting a car. Dad wants his son to hear something more important. God is our Father. We need to listen to what he wants to say.
Of course, the Bible is not the only place we learn about God. We also come to know him through the writings of the Church - papal speeches and encyclicals, Council documents, and so on - and the writings of the saints. We also learn about God from modern teachers and writers, from magazines and cassette tapes. A wealth of religious materials is available from Catholic publishers and through the Catholic press.
"But wait!" I can hear the objections from every side "You can't simply rec-ommend everything. There are heretics and fundamentalists out there. Not everything published by a ‘Catholic’ publisher or written by a Catholic is orthodox. We need to know which writings are safe."
My reply to this objection is concise: "Let Scripture and the Church guide you. Then use your head." Only the Scriptures are the revealed word of God. Every other book or article on the faith has to measure up to Scripture. The Church provides us with additional guidance. She recommends certain writers as Fathers and Doctors of the faith - St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Thomas Aquinas, and so on. And she canonizes certain people as reliable examples of holiness and wisdom. We can learn from these, too.
Still, you have to use your head. Martin Luther based his new teachings largely on the Letter to the Romans (Scripture) and the writings of St. Augustine (a Father of the Church). Reading the right things does not guarantee that you won't fall into error. Reading the 'wrong' things won't make you a heretic. When you read, you have to think: "Is this true? Does it make sense to me? Does it fit in with what I already know about the Lord?" God wants you to seek him in love and in truth. If you read humbly (that is, to learn the truth), and you let the Church guide you, then - even if you stray off the orthodox track for a while - God can lead you to him. Heresy is not a matter of mistakes; we all make mistakes. Heresy is ultimately a matter of pride. (This is why we must be very careful about accusing other people of heresy.)
The truth about God is not the only truth. We need to know the truth about our neighbors, especially about those God has put close to us to love. This might seem obvious, but we often pass right over it. A married couple can share their lives, work, bed, and worries - and not talk to each other. Several years ago, social scientists noted a disturbing rise in the divorce rate of couples married about twenty years. After the kids are grown and move out, husband and wife discover they don't know each other. They had focused their marriage on providing for their children and raising them - to the neglect of their own relationship. After two decades, they are strangers! You can't love deeply someone you don't know.
When you know and love someone, you can rely on that knowledge and love. Starting with Eve in the Garden of Eden, human beings have always tended to trust strangers more than those they know well. Eve knew God personally. Then the snake came along with the "lowdown" on God, and she believed him. Shakespeare's Othello tells the story of a great general who kills his devoted and faithful wife, Desdemona. Jealous at having been passed over for promotion, Othello's aide Iago insinuates that Desdemona has been unfaithful. He drops hints and cleverly arranges circumstantial evidence to incriminate Desdemona. In the meantime, he professes his love and loyalty for Othello. In the end, Othello murders his wife on the word of a man who hates him. Othello is a great play precisely because this kind of thing can happen. In all sorts of ways, it does happen. Love for the truth should make every Christian profoundly suspi-cious of gossip. Most often, the unknown informant with the 'inside scoop' is bearing a false tale.
John and Denise belonged to a highly structured spiritual community in which each man had a pastoral 'head' and each woman a 'handmaid'. After about a year of marriage, they found themselves fighting almost constantly. In a community that prided itself on wisdom for peace in personal relationships, the head and handmaid worked hard to help. John's head met with him, and Denise's handmaid met with her. Then these pastoral leaders would meet to work on the relationship. The head instructed John what he needed to do, and the handmaid instructed Denise. It was a wonderful system - but it didn't do any good.
After several months of watching his marriage deteriorate, John had an inspi-ration: He proposed to his wife that they cut out the "middlemen" and work out their problems together. Their fights did not immediately stop, but they were back to commu-nicating and into the love that had led them to each other. Soon afterwards they left the group - but they are still married to each other. John and Denise were living through third parties. Their knowledge of each other was replaced by a 'higher wisdom' that was really ignorance. Sometimes the advice of a third party can be helpful. But love is based on knowing each other, and this knowledge is irreplaceable.
Common sense is essential in the search for truth - whether this is the truth about God or neighbor. No religious insight should undercut the virtue of prudence (or common sense). We have certain "cultural icons" of untrustworthy people - used car salesmen, gold-digging blond floozies, opportunistic politicians. They are types that "only a fool would believe’. In real life, though, the bad guys don't wear black hats. The blond may be a gum-chewing friend to lonely bag-ladies, and the car salesman a "Big Brother" to a boy born with fetal alcohol syndrome. And the prophetic holy man might be an out-and-out swindler. The smart car buyer double-checks the salesman's claim that "this engine can run another 100,000 miles" before putting down $5,000 for the car. Likewise, every Christian should move cautiously before committing a tithe on his gross income or his entire life to a religious leader. Even if the Antichrist is outside the gates and pounding to get in, it is not time to give up common sense.
Finally, the honest search for the truth is never wrong. If you "trust me" and don't read the contract I put before you, I can take your money. Yet far too many Chris-tians feel uncomfortable checking on the claims of a sincere-looking prophet or leader who knows God's "now word". It is not "unChristian" or "unloving" to check someone out or to examine his teachings. Too often, that phrase, "trust me", is used to cut off the search for truth.
2) Grow in Virtue
The second principle of Christian freedom is to grow in virtue. A virtue is sim-ply a habit of doing good, of doing the right thing. Every Christian is called to grow in virtue. But paradoxically, many Catholics who want most to be holy neglect the work of developing virtues. The encounter with God they experienced is so strong, they think all the work is finished. This is especially true if this experience included a new freedom from temptation. It really does happen that someone with a habit like masturbating or drug abuse goes to Medjugorje or a charismatic prayer meeting and feels the rush of God’s love. In the days and weeks that follow, he no longer feels that urge to sin. God can and will miraculously free people from certain destructive habits of sin. But this does not mean that all sin is gone.
"Getting saved" is not enough. Neither is being consecrated to the Immaculate Heart or "baptized in the Holy Spirit". Going to a daily Mass in Latin won't do it. To be a good person and to persevere in grace, the Christian has to grow in virtue – in all the moral virtues. In his parable of the sower (Mt. 13:1-9,18-23), Jesus warns that some seeds (which represent God's word) are received with joy and spring up, but then wither away because they have no root. Remember the example of Ned in Chapter 11. Ned had found salvation, but he did not (or could not) develop the virtues of temperance and prudence when he got out of prison. As a result, temptation overpowered him.
Any "duffer" can occasionally hit a beautiful, 200-yard drive on the golf course. What makes someone a good golfer, however, is the ability to hit good shots consistently. Likewise, a good person is someone who consistently does the right thing out of habit. The good-hearted prostitute, so beloved in Hollywood films, may do an especially kind deed, but in the long run her habit of selling herself will undercut committed love and true intimacy. The alcoholic might come through with a generous donation, but he still can't be relied on to care for his family properly. A good person is one who can be counted on consistently to do the right thing.
Suppose salvation were a matter of playing good tennis: the best players are the saints. If this were so, I would be in bad trouble. When I hit my backhand I never know what the ball is going to do. But suppose Christ in his mercy visited the courts and transformed my backhand into a sharp, powerful, accurate stroke. Would I be saved? Of course not. My serve is still anemic, my forehand also needs work, and too often I get caught flatfooted. In fact, even if God were to give me Sampras’s serve and Agassi’s reflexes, I would have to practice - just as they do. Good tennis players need both natural gifts and good habits built up by practice.
By grace we are saved - but this is only the beginning. After the moment of grace comes the life-long effort to acquire and develop virtues - that is, to develop a tested character. This is why St. Paul warns against being too hasty in "laying on hands" (1 Tim. 5:22); new leaders should be men of proven virtue. Spiritual experience is not enough.
The Church has traditionally encouraged us to acquire the four "cardinal vir-tues": prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude.
Prudence is the habit of applying good sense and intelligence to choices. The word "prudence" comes from the Latin word meaning "foresight". And indeed, a prudent person is a foresighted one. While working on a major religious convention, I talked with a young man - one of the helpers - who said he was speeding while running an errand. He had a lot to do for the convention - the Lord’s work - and he was "just trusting in the Lord" to keep him safe. His trust was misplaced. God does not suspend natural laws just to protect us from our foolishness. (Fortunately this young man did not have an accident.) The virtue of prudence demands that we think ahead and exercise good sense. If the work is important to God, I must trust him to care for his work when I’m unavoida-bly delayed - and not foolishly presume on his protection while I violate the speed laws. So part of being a virtuous person is to become more prudent.
Justice means giving to each person his due. Philosophers distinguish between commutative and distributive justice. Commutative justice has to do with transactions, with giving fair return in exchange for some good. It is the kind of justice we want in the market place. The just person gives a fair deal for a fair price. Distributive justice gives each person those things he or she rightly has coming. If I find a $20 on the seat of my car after you have gotten out, justice demands that I ask if it’s yours. It is out of distribu-tive justice that parents give food and clothing to their children and their children give honor back to them. Distributive justice requires that we pay our share of taxes and that we care for the poor. A failure to grow in this virtue can undercut the finest spiritual efforts. A noted Catholic leader in the United States, a man who founded an effective organization to promote morality, who arranged to have Mother Teresa visit and speak to local Catholics, who generously promoted devotion to Our Lady, recently added this to his resume - a conviction for his prominent role in the notorious savings and loan scandal of the late 1980's. He neglected the virtue of justice.
Temperance is the virtue of self control, especially concerning the sins of the flesh. Athletes know that one of the quickest ways to get an opponent "out of his game" is to get him intemperate. Professionals try this with "trash-talking", but we amateurs do it, too. Playing tennis with my son (who has a better serve than I), I will sometimes play imprudently close to the service court, hoping that he will try to overpower me by slam-ming the ball especially hard. When he tries to "blow me out, he tends to miss. That is, I try to get him to abandon good habits and to be intemperately aggressive. Until he caught on to my "mind game", it was a good strategy. In the spiritual life, temperance is a serious matter. Perhaps the quickest way to seduce a Christian away from the life of holiness is to seduce him into giving way to the flesh or to anger. Satan does it all the time. Emotion can overpower good sense, and the pleasures of intemperance become a trap.
Fortitude or courage is the virtue of standing firm for the good and against evil. It is the virtue of the soldier - including the soldier for Christ. Fortitude resists the cruel gossip in the break room and the lying conspiracy against the boss. A rather unpopular supervisor in my wife’s agency was quietly accused by a coworker of "coming onto" another woman. Sexual harassment is a serious moral and legal matter - and the homo-sexual implications of the charge added to its gravity. It was easy to believe the accusa-tion; the woman was abrasive and seemed "different". However there was no evidence. My wife saw it as her duty to say, "No, this is wrong." She let the competent superiors know about the charge (which turned out to be false) and did what she could to stop the rumor. This takes fortitude. It is always easy to go along with the gossip. It is hard to stand up for someone nobody likes too much. Fortitude acknowledges that Jesus is Lord, even in a corrosive academic environment. Fortitude is the necessary virtue for martyrs.
If we want to be saints, we must grow in virtue. We must practice being good in everyday events. The enthusiasm of conversion and commitment will carry us only so far. Beyond that "honeymoon period" with the Lord, we have to develop and rely on strong habits of doing the right thing. And we must pray daily for the Holy Spirit to form in us those three "theological virtues" of faith, hope, and love.
Love: It's up to You.
Our Savior's one great commandment is to love. The night before he died he re-peated this over and over (Jn. 13:34-35; 14:15,21-24; 15:9-13; 17:26). Love has two sides or aspects, one "objective" and one "subjective".
From the objective point of view, love always does good for the beloved. Love seeks the objective, real good and not just good feelings. This means it is based on truth. Parents love their children by providing for them and by giving guidance and discipline. A wife does not love her alcoholic husband by pouring him the drink he wants.
Love seeks the good. It is unselfish in meeting the beloved's needs. It doesn't go half-way. A teenager who is hurting - maybe because of grades or an unrequited crush or even just that unexplained depression that comes over them from time to time - some-times needs more than just a quick word of encouragement and a two-minute prayer. He might need a walk with Dad or a long talk with Mom. The new widow needs company over the next year, not just a meal right after the funeral. In short, love tries to meet the beloved's real needs as much as possible.
This objective character of love means that you must know the beloved. Here is one serious way that the Obedient Wife trap destroys love. "Wife", according to this teaching, is a kind of position or role. Love means exercising leadership and supervision of her; it does not mean caring for the woman you love for herself. When Bonita lost her baby in the third month of her pregnancy, her husband promptly sought the wisdom of their "spiritual family's" leaders. They told him to grant her a week to grieve before returning to her normal services within the home and the group. This is not love, but following procedures. To love Bonita truly, he had to look at her and recognize her needs - not apply a formula and expect her to follow instructions. Even though both Al and Bonita agreed to this wisdom, by following it they actually helped dismantle the intimacy and self-giving of their relationship.
The "subjective" side of love complements the "objective". In a nutshell, love is something you do. Your love comes from within you. It is not a duty. To paint a picture for your sweetheart is an act of love, but to paint it for your art teacher is not. Even when duties are involved - for marriage and parenthood do involve duties - the giving that is love goes beyond obedience to a rule. Another way to say this is that love is thoughtful. A loving mother does not simply provide 2000 calories of nutrition a day to each of her children. She gives them foods that taste good and often includes desserts that they like.
Our cat, Nena, had kittens in our house, and it was interesting to watch her pro-vide for them. She fed them, of course, and made sure that they didn't stray too far away from their nesting box. As cats go, she was a good mother. But she made no effort to beautify their box. When a baby is born, its human parents will paint the room in pastels, buy Winnie-the-Pooh wall hangings, change the crib sheets frequently, and generally try to make things nice. One might say that these things don't really matter - the baby won't appreciate Winnie until she is two or three years old. But from the very first moments of life, good parents go beyond the child's physical needs to make things nice. This thoughtfulness is typical of human love.
Love is ultimately a gift of self. The poor juggler in the medieval tale gave the Blessed Virgin a show with the one thing he could do well. Married couples freely give each other the pleasure of their bodies in bed. The mother nurtures her baby inside her body for almost a year and then feeds it from her own milk. The father patiently prac-tices baseball with his clumsy five year old. And the day may come that the 16 year old son will need a high school batting coach to correct and perfect what dad once taught. Still, he will have been formed as a human being by the father who took the time to show him the basics.
Love is something that each of us can do well - even if we are not sure of ex-actly the right thing to do. Love is the best gift, because when you give yourself to another, you agree with God, who says, "You are very good." You show your beloved by your actions how good he is - good enough for you to invest yourself in.
St. Paul says, "Seek eagerly after love," (1 Cor.14:1) for love surpasses every spiritual gift. But love can flow only from freedom. Saints - more than any other persons on earth - can live in freedom, because they know God's love and respond to him in love. The secret, then, to freedom from spiritual traps and the bondage they bring is to love God according to the truth. This is God's word for now and for eternity.
© 1996 Adrian J. Reimers. All rights reserved.
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