Religious Recipes
"I'm sorry for my sins. I need you Jesus." Jerry's tears began to flow. "Lord, I really need you. Come into my heart. Take charge of my life. Forgive my sins and help me love you." Kneeling by his bed, his face awash in tears, Jerry felt the weight lift from inside him. For the first time in years he felt peace inside. His bitter scowl melted from his face. He was free. He was saved. And he felt very good.
The Walker home had not been happy. Jerry and Beth hardly ever spoke any more, except to argue. They had married just out of high school - two popular kids in the match everyone said would happen. Thirteen years and three children later, they had separate lives under a common roof. Beth cared for the home and the two smaller children. Jerry had his work and the oldest boy - and his cards. Jerry loved cards - card games, card tricks, shuffling cards, fancy decks of cards. He had no time to talk with his wife, but he could manipulate a deck like the best dealers in Las Vegas. The Walker marriage was disintegrating from neglect.
Then Jerry heard a radio preacher talk about turning to Jesus. He hurried home, knelt down, and prayed. A couple of days later, Beth mentioned how much happier he had looked lately and wistfully added, "It must be nice." This was Jerry's cue. He jumped up from the table half spilling his coffee, and pulled his wife away from the sink. "Come on upstairs --- no, come on. It's OK --- Just kneel down right her, next to the bed --- That's right. Now repeat after me: 'I need you Jesus.'" Beth mum-bled, "I need you Jesus." "Lord, I need you. Come into my heart." Beth repeated all his words, exactly as he dictated them. Then, sitting back on her legs, she looked up quizzi-cally at her husband, as if to ask, "And now what?" Jerry's wonderful prayer didn't work.
This story had a happy ending, and Jerry now laughs at his clumsiness. A few days later Beth did start praying, but quietly in her own way. The wounds and divisions in their family soon healed. Jerry became a devoted father to all his children. But for one moment he had fallen for a "Religious Recipe" (R.R.)
What a Religious Recipe Is
A formula or set procedure for getting close to God is a religious recipe. It is a set of rules for pleasing him and enjoying his blessings. "If you want to be holy, follow these steps." Jerry had a genuine conversion experience. He poured out his heart in repentant prayer and God answered him. But then he used his own experience as a recipe. He thought his words and posture were the key to what happened, and not the humility in his heart. But Beth needed to approach God in her own way.
Many Christians are trapped by "Religious Recipes" and find it hard to get free. Some of these recipes are experi-ential: "To be holy, you must have this experience." This is a classical position within American Holiness Protestantism. Without the experi-ence of abject sinfulness and of being forgiven by Jesus, there is no salvation. (This is why the question, "Have you been saved?" is so important to them. If you were really saved, you must have had a particular experience.) The Pentecostal movement arose from the idea that there had to be some distinctive experience - the "initial evidence" - that every Christian must have when the Holy Ghost comes. When some of Charles Parham's Bible study class started praying in tongues in 1901, they believed they had discovered that "initial evidence". This was the begin-ning of Pentecostalism.
Some Catholics have picked up this attitude, even though the Catholic Church has always taught that salvation and sanctification are objective realities and not just sub-jective experiences. In the early days of the charismatic movement I met priests who were puzzled and offended by charismatics asking, "Have you received the Holy Spirit yet, Father?" They were not asking about confirmation or ordina-tion. They wanted to know if the priest had ever been prayed over and felt something inside - something they call the "baptism in the Holy Spirit". More recently, there are those who know that if you felt nothing special at Medju-gorje, then your heart must have been closed to Mary.* Sim-ilarly, many Catholics believe that no true Christian can be angry, troubled, or in serious doubt.
In other words, one kind of religious recipe says that God always touches every-one in the same way. If my confession in Medjugorje was a cleansing, life-changing experience, yours should have been, too. If saying the "Jesus Prayer" unleashed a flood of tears and kindled a fire in Ellie's heart, then it will in mine, too. But God never promised certain religious experiences. We can compare this with parents and their children. Daddy's sharp word and disapproving glare may silence one child into humble obedience, while it pro-vokes a second one to open rebellion and brings out all the sly charm of a third. Different children experience their parents' actions and love in different ways. Well, we are God's children, and we experience him in our own ways. God relates to each of us according to his or her individual personality.
A second kind of recipes are action recipes. A real Christian has to do some one particular thing. In the late 60s and the 70s, many Christians believed serving the inner-city poor was the acid test of real Christianity. Taking their cue from Acts 2: 42-44, the Bruderhof communities firmly believe that no one can be Christian except in a com-munity that holds all things in common. Today, many think that any true Christian must be actively demonstrating against legalized abortion. Or God cannot bless you unless you identify with and serve the African-American community. For some, the battle against sex-education or the English liturgy marks the border between true and 'modernist' Catholics. What all these have in common is that they set down some one thing - one work or activity - that we have to do to be pleasing to God.
This is what some of the Jews were driving at when they asked Jesus, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" (Jn. 6:28) For the ancient Jews, the tradi-tional works of piety were prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Jesus' answer was completely unexpected: "This is the work of God: have faith in the One whom he sent." (Jn. 6:29) Of course, this means much more than simply saying "I believe." Belief in anything has consequences. I might say that I believe that a low fat diet is best for my health. How-ever, if you see me loading up on butter, cream, sausage, and French fries, it makes sense to ask, "Do you really believe that too much fat will hurt your health?" It is like that with faith. Our acts have to show what we believe. The point is that we cannot reduce faith in Christ to some one specific action.
By far the most common and crippling kinds of Reli-gious Recipes are for spiri-tuality. By "spirituality" we mean a tradition or habit of prayers and devotions. One lady I know prays the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary every day for the poor souls. Another woman says a short prayer before almost every new activity. Some people build their prayer and devotional lives around daily Scripture readings and others around the Blessed Mother. Typically, Mexicans venerate the Virgin of Guadalupe; they say that Mexico is 90% Catholic, but 100% Guadalupano. Poles honor the Black Madonna of Czesto-chowa. One priest built his entire spirituality around the Little Flower. In his weekday Mass homilies and in the confes-sional, he always managed to work in a lesson from the life or writings of St. Th-érèse. Any of these spiritualities can be good and spiritually fruitful - until we turn them into recipes. There are two ways we do this.
1) A Christian's personal spirituality can grow stale, and like stale bread it becomes stiff and tasteless. Praying the Rosary is good, but mindlessly reciting it as part of your morning routine ("Hai'MAARY, fulla GRAACE ...")can be little better than no prayer at all, if it's simply a mechanical exercise. Reading Scripture every day is a won-derful practice, but the Apostle James warns us not to read it thoughtlessly, forgetting the word of life as soon as we close the Bible (cf. Jas. 1:23-24) When this happens, devo-tions become a burden, a daily chore without meaning. They become external - no longer from the heart. No longer do I say my prayers out of love for God but out of blind habit. I continue with them more out of fear of what will happen if I stop, than because they bring me closer to God.
In this way I can actually let an ingrained devotional habit cut me off from a fruitful devotional growth. My lim-ited time for prayer can get so "cluttered" with re-quired devotions that I have no time left simply to meet the Lord heart to heart. That is, I am doing the motions but not speaking to a person any more. This is a trap.
2) Some Christians impose their spiritualities on others. In the heady, early days of the charismatic renewal, some leaders taught that the charismatic experience is "normal Christianity". Does this mean that everything in the Church outside that movement was "abnormal"? In the mid-1980s cer-tain books connected with the Medjugorje apparitions taught that Mary's express wishes are that we all fast twice a week and spend two-and-a-half hours in prayer each day. To live as Mary's children we must pray the daily Rosary (slowly and attentively), pray the seven Our Father's, Hail Mary's, and Glory Be's, read the Bible, and attend Mass daily. All these things are good, but they were presented as a recipe: Drop your old devotions; here is what Mary wants you to do.
Invariably there is a threat behind such recipes. If you do not do this, your own faith will wither, and you will fall into sin. Your family will disintegrate and fall into the devil's snare. If enough Catholics do not respond to this call, the forces of evil will triumph , the Holy father will suffer, and Satan will wreak havoc in the Church.*
How Recipes Form a Trap
Religious Recipes are not just dead practices; they form a trap. They can be positively harmful. The reason has to do with idolatry.
When an ancient Roman planted his vines or a Phoeni-cian set out to sea, when a Syrian woman got pregnant or when a Hellene set out to war - whenever the ancient pagans undertook anything important, they sacrificed to the gods. They had gods for fertility, childbirth, sowing and reaping, war, the winds, and so on. If these gods were pleased, then good things happened. If the gods were annoyed, then bad things. So it was important to find the right sacrifices to please these gods. The ancient farmer would no more think of putting in corn without a sacrifice than would a modern one without fertilizer and herbicide.
The ancient pagans did not love their gods. There was no question of a personal relationship or covenant. They did what they thought would make the gods happy, so that the gods would look out for them. Sacrificing was serious busi-ness. The ancients were enslaved to their idols, because these held the keys to everything they needed. Like shop owners in a mob-controlled neighborhood, they had to "pay off" the gods to survive. Certainly modern superstition is very much like idolatry, and the accompanying fear makes its hold on the mind hard to break.
The idolatrous mind-set can infect our relationship with God. We pray and pray for a friend's conversion or a relative's healing from cancer, but God doesn't seem to answer. Then a spiritual person holding a Bible says, "Claim it in faith. Without a trace of doubt in your heart, repeat the Bible promise and claim it from Jesus!" This is the most blatant kind of recipe. It is a superstitious use of the Bible and prayer. It says: if my prayers didn't get answered, the problem was that I used the wrong formula. If my mother dies of her cancer, it was my fault. I didn't remind God of his promise, or a shadow of doubt flashed through my mind. The "name-it-and-claim-it" recipe comes out of unorthodox fundamentalist Protestantism, although many Catholics accept it. But Catholics too come up with "sure fire" novenas, prayers, and devotional acts. We treat God not as a loving Father who listens to us and cares for us, but rather as a trickster and a tease. He withholds good things from his children until they have jumped through all his hoops in just the right way.
A particularly dramatic example of this came out of the message of Fatima. In a private apparition to Sr. Lucia, the Blessed Virgin said that if the Pope, in union with all the bishops, were to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, Russia would be con-verted and a time of peace granted to the Church. In the ensuing years Popes Pius XII and Paul VI consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart but without mentioning Russia by name. One American priest founded an organization to push for the ‘proper’ conse-cration - one that explicitly mentions Russia. This priest went on to accuse certain churchmen of murder. In his orga-nization's magazine he argued that some cardinals and Roman Curia officials were preventing the required consecration. Now, anyone who does not stop another person from mur-dering shares in that person's guilt. But as long as Commu-nists remained in power, they would imprison, torture, and kill Christians. The Pope's act of consecration - so goes the argument - would remove these Communists from power and so prevent them from persecuting and killing Christians. Therefore these unnamed cardinals and churchmen were guilty of murder. This is superstitious, "recipe" thinking. It assumes that the Holy Father is incapable of listening to our Lady and discerning her wishes and her role in his ministry. It also assumes that Mary had really given us a recipe. Say these words or that prayer, and Communism will fall.
One Catholic explained to me once that Pope John Paul II should be removed from office, because he has neglected to preach the Gospel. Like St. Paul 2000 years ago, Pope John Paul II was invited to speak in a Jewish synagogue (the one in Rome). Unlike St. Paul, however, he did not preach the Gospel to the Jews. That is, he did not tell them pow-erfully and forcefully that Jesus died and rose and that he reigns now as Messiah and Lord. Therefore he has forfeited his legitimacy as an apostle. This, too, is R.R. thinking. My friend assumes that Christ orders his apostles to repeat certain words and phrases in certain situations, regardless of their effect. The Holy Father, on the other hand, tried to bring God's love to his hearers (who knew perfectly well where he stands concerning Jesus) as best he could. Christ called us to spread the Gospel, not simply repeat the words, "Jesus is Lord and Messiah."
It is like that with other promises. For example, Our Lady promised that no one who wears her scapular will be lost to hell. But this does not mean I can put on my scapular and then forget prayer, acts of charity, and the sacraments. The scapular is a kind of outward sign of an inner commitment. Mary's promise means that if I try to live out my devotion to her, she will be with me at the moment of my death. The scapular is a kind of outward sign of my inner consecration. It would be very strange if Jesus had offered his life in agony on the cross, only to specify that the key to salvation would be two pieces of flannel on a string! Jesus died for love of us, to bring us into a fam-ily relationship with God. We are God's adopted sons and daughters. He wants our love.
While strolling around a particular town one Sunday, I saw a small boy and his parents out for a walk. The father was playing a little game with the boy - a rather mean game, it seemed to me. He would run on ahead and call for the boy to come. The boy ran to him, but at the last second his father would move farther away. No matter what the child did, he could not catch up with his father, who kept laughing as though this were great fun. Soon the child started crying. The poor kid could not figure out how to please his daddy - what he must do to get close to him.
This is the kind of image we project onto God when we follow religious recipes. We treat him like a mean tease of a father. This entraps us. Religious recipes change our relationship with God in a fundamental way. He wants us to approach him as trusting children. Instead we act like cynical adolescents, trying to put on the right show for the "old man", or like fearful slaves, anxiously trying to appease a demanding master. In either case we are not free. Freedom is a gift for love. If all God wants for me is to follow the rules and say the right prayers, then the gift of freedom is just a dirty trick. God gave us freedom so that we can love him - even if we do make mistakes.
The Heart of the Matter
God created us to know him and to love him. If we consider how great God is, then it is clear that no recipe is adequate. God is transcendent. He is beyond the reach of any set of procedures. If I want to see the pope, there are definite steps I can take - get a passport, buy an airline ticket to Rome, go to the Vatican on a Wednesday morning, and so on. Any good guidebook to Europe will spell out the exact steps to take. This is because the pope is a human being who lives in a certain place and follows a certain schedule. God is different. He transcends, or goes beyond, any earthly powers.
To reach God we need supernatural help. In fact, we need first to be changed inside. Because we cannot see him or touch him, we need faith. His promise of salva-tion is beyond anything we could imagine or wish for; we need the grace of hope. He asks for our perfect gift of self; we need charity. These are called "theological" virtues, because they come from God. On my own, I can practice sav-ing money and so become thrifty. But I need the Holy Spirit to plant faith, hope, and love in my soul. By these graces, God himself makes us able to approach him. To reach God, we need God to reach us first.
God reveals himself fully only in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the way to God - the only way (Jn. 14:6). We have heard this often enough "I am the way and the truth and the life" but we can forget what it means. Philip asked Jesus, "Show us the Father." Jesus answered, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (Jn. 14:9) Jesus really is God's full self-disclosure. Any other way to God is incomplete. Only Jesus brings us all the way to God If we believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man, then clearly there can never be another way than him.
This means that to come to God, we need to make con-tact with Jesus. God wants us to know him and love him fully. Therefore he wants us to meet the whole Christ. This is why he gave us the Church. And this is why the Church is necessary for our salvation, because only through the Church can we fully encounter Christ. In the Scriptures - especially when read in the Liturgy - we hear the Lord's voice. When we go to Confession, Christ himself forgives our sins. In the Eucharist we join our small prayers and sacrifices with Christ's perfect prayer and sac-rifice of himself. At Mass we stand mystically at the foot of the cross on Calvary. In Communion we meet Christ bodily and embrace him. In this way, the Church - with its Scrip-tures, liturgies, and sacraments - is necessary. This is why the Church has set down certain rules - the "bare mini-mum", as it were - for weekly Mass, Confession and Communion once a year, and so on.*
Everything else in the Christian life - every form of spirituality, every kind of prayer and holy work - flows from Christ's presence in his Body, the Church. Every pri-vate or family prayer gets its life from last Sunday's encounter with Christ and anticipates next Sunday's. The sinner's prayer of remorse in his room prepares for his meeting with the forgiving Lord in Confession. Devotional reading of the Bible is like re-reading the love-letter Christ sends on Sundays.
Except for his Word and the sacraments God has given us in his Church - these things that Christ himself touches us in - no devotion, practice, or experience can reach all the way to God. For centuries the Church has warmly recommended the Rosary. Nevertheless, even this powerful devotion in inade-quate to touch God. The Rosary is a help, not an infallible way to Christ. It is a way of opening ourselves to God’s touch. In fact, the old practice of praying the Rosary during Mass was actually absurd.† The point of the Rosary is to call on our Lady's intercession while we medi-tate on the mysteries of Christ's life. In the Mass, Christ is actually present in those self-same mysteries - his Incarnation, death, and Resurrection. So praying the Rosary at Mass gets it all backwards - like sitting at a Chicago Bulls bas-ketball game and reading Michael Jordan's book.
Two other points are important here. First, even though there are no recipes for getting to God, certain acts do cut us off from him. Some acts - murder, adultery, pro-cured abortion, lying under oath - are simply incompatible with the love of God. These are called mortal sins. "Thou shall not steal" is a law, not a recipe. Sec-ond, promises to God do create obligations to him. The promise may be informal; one woman promised that she would keep Mary's image in every room of her house if a favor was granted. There is nothing especially sanctifying about placing pictures and statues all around the house. God never asked for this. However, since this woman promised it (and God answered her prayer), she created an obligation to keep that promise. A vow may also be formal, like the solemn vows to religious life. However, even private promises come under the authority of the Church. If the obligation is too burdensome or even harmful, the Christian can always bring the issue to his confessor or pastor.
"Love God and do what you will"
God made us for love, and love presupposes freedom. He wants us to give him our hearts. Saint Augustine once wrote, "Love God and do what you will." This doesn't mean, "Have warm feelings about God and forget your obligations." It means that the right choice is the one done for the love of God, provided (of course) that it doesn’t violate his law.
This motto is an excellent help for the scruples that come from recipe-thinking. God wants me to read Scripture, so I'll read a chapter a day. They say Mary insists on a daily Rosary and the seven Our Father's, Hail Mary's, and Glory Be's. The prayer group is calling on everyone to pray the Padre Pio novena for the homeless clinic, and Grandma had drilled into my head how much Jesus wants me to pray for the poor souls. And the Second Vatican Council wants lay people to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Is it any wonder that I dread the drudgery of prayer time and feel guilty when I finish? What's worse, I no longer feel that I am in touch with the Lord. What St. Augustine's maxim tells me is that I should spend that time of prayer loving God as I think best. I am free to love God in my own way.
One Christmas my wife gave me a wool overcoat and a complementing scarf. It is a wonderful coat. It fits me and keeps me warm. It also conveys a sense of gentle-manly elegance that I would like to think fits my personality. My teenage son would never think of wearing such a coat. He wears a jacket of blue and gold with "Notre Dame" embla-zoned on the back. His older brother wears a bright ski-jacket (his week on the Austrian slopes got into his blood), and my wife wears an overcoat that is both busi-ness-like and feminine. Who has the best coat? Which one of us wears the right coat? None of us - or rather, all of us. Each coat is warm and comfortable. And each one was chosen to fit the wearer's personality.
Spiritualities and devotions are like that. God has created each of us to be dif-ferent, and we express our love for him differently. You are no more obliged to raise your hands and praise God in tongues than my son is to wear a middle-aged man's overcoat.
The Church is not an army, but a community, a people. She is the Body of the one Christ, but she calls each of us to approach him personally. The Catholic Church is big enough for Dorothy Day (who founded the Catholic Worker Movement) and William F. Buckley (a conservative commentator and advocate of free-market capitalism). St. Thomas Aquinas was so intelligent he could dictate three books at a time to his secretar-ies; St. Maria Goretti was barely literate when she died a martyr just after her twelfth birthday. The Frenchman Louis de Montfort was effusive in his Marian devo-tion; John Henry Newman was an Englishman's Englishman, witty and restrained. St. Peter was impetuous; St. Paul was crafty (see Acts 16:36-39; 23:6-10). There is no recipe for sanctity, except this: to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
But love is something you do. The saints and spiritual writers give us ideas, patterns, and suggestions, but the love comes from within your own heart. Devotions and religious activities have to flow from love. If the Christian simply follows a recipe, then it's no longer love.
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