The Rules We Ought to Follow
We are constantly bombarded -- by others and ourselves -- with demands that do not really oblige and compel, but rather distract us from the one thing needful. Setting them aside sets us free.
One of the challenges modern Christians face is that we like to write our own rules. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se in those areas in which we can write rules to govern ourselves and those in our care. The larger problem is when we exempt ourselves from rules and rubrics we don’t care to follow, on the view that somehow this is our right.
This is a slippery slope.
If you recall, the very first tragedy in human history was the decision of the First Woman to reject the limits that God had placed on her and the man, limits designed by God to protect their freedom and happiness. Somehow they bought off on the lie that Frank Sinatra had it right, it was best to sing “I Did It My Way.” For people whose agency is often restricted by others who arrogate to themselves a privilege to do so, Old Blue Eye’s song sings like a paean to human freedom. The challenge for us is that our agency is often enough restricted by those who do have the right to do so, and we don’t like the exercise of that right. Take a drive on any interstate and see how many people are observing the speed limit and how many are driving as though the limit were either a suggestion or an unjust arrogation by the State. Then you realize that “doing it my way” often means impinging upon the rights, and even lives and safety, of others. Suddenly it’s a paean not to freedom but to lawlessness. So I thought when driving down the mountain the other day the pickup behind me got a headful of steam and passed over a double yellow line — moments before a car out of the line of sight was coming up the opposite lane.
Right now we are all aware that the Church is beset with crises, so many, in fact, that to enumerate them might give one pause. The problem with focusing to much attention upon them is that there is little we can do about them, and that can lead to depression. We can, however, fast and pray, and those are no little things. To fast is to learn how little we actually need, and to eliminate the superfluous so that we can focus on the one thing needful. To pray is to focus on the one thing needful, to beseech God for it, and to receive it with thanks and praise.
The question is, what is the one thing needful? That isn’t so hard to discern, actually. There is one big crisis in the Church about which you and I can do something. The crisis in the Church, the real crisis, is that there are so few saints. St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, put it this way, in one of his most famous aphorisms:
A secret, an open secret: these world crises are crises of saints.
God wants a handful of men ‘of his own’ in every human activity. And then… ‘pax Christi in regno Christi — the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ’. (The Way, 301)
He further gives us the formula for sanctity:
“Let me stress this point: it is in the simplicity of your ordinary work, in the monotonous details of each day, that you have to find the secret, which is hidden from so many, of something great and new: Love.” - Furrow, 498
In writing these points, St, Josemaria gives echo to St. Therese of Lisieux and her Little Way, which in turn echoes Br. Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God.
The only real crisis about which you and I can do anything is our personal crisis: the decision to be saint, come what may, relying on the mercy of the Lord; or not, and then either presuming upon mercy or despairing of it.
We are neither Pelagians nor neo-Pelagians who think that we can become saints by our own efforts, even when those efforts are aided by grace. No, this is the path of folly, and many souls have come to ruin and despair by thinking that since God is already providing all the graces necessary, then the rest depends upon my efforts. I have seen what happens to souls who think this way, and likely you have, too. In sets either a smug self-confidence or a sense of hopelessness — the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit, manifesting itself as presumption or despair. The smug have something to say, for a while, but then pride begins to manifest itself and the poor soul comes to the end of the road with little to show for the effort, reduced to the recitation of talking points that have a glimmer of a spark hidden in the ashes. Those in despair have little to nothing to say: their lives may reflect the tranquil order that arises from heroic practice of the virtues, but their lack of joy tells the story. Peace without joy is the peace of a cemetery. The peace that God gives is living, quiet, effusive, and confident. It is contagious.
We reflect often upon St. Therese’s Little Way, but as spiritual writer and director Dan Burke frequently points out, her Little Way was lived in the context of a Carmelite convent in which every moment was regulated, penance was frequent and rigorous, the Daily Office and Holy Mass were celebrated and loved, and personal study and prayer rounded out the rest of the devotional life. To this is added the actual business of the monastery: food must be prepared and taken, clothing must be made or repaired, guests must be received and tended, and I have to struggle with that sister whose breath is bad or whose stomach always growls and rumbles during Matins or who never has a kind word or look for anyone. This is the context in which the Little Way was discovered and first lived.
So then to become saints, we must attend to the round of duties that is not so much a part of life but life itself, its very vertebrae. God must be worshipped and adored, liturgically and personally: not one or the other, but both. We give ourselves to this worship to such an extent that worship becomes the purpose of our life. Only then does prayer come alive, but partially, only partially: we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s not one or the other: it’s both. This worship of God, liturgical and personal, extends into the activities of our daily life such that those activities become prayer and then finally, after years of practice, really, our life itself is a hymn of praise imploring God’s mercy, thanking Him for it in confidence, and seeing the good, the true, and the beautiful in all of Creation. Our service to, our love for our neighbor springs from this round of worship and work, the double helix as it were of the Christian life. Then our prayer becomes fully alive.
In the Order of Malta, this Law is in effect the twofold charism: defense of the faith and service to our neighbors, especially the poor and the sick. Defense of the Faith, the tuitio fidei, means much more than the defense of others through the use of arms — this is the historical practice of the Order, in permanent abeyance since the Fall of Malta. It arises out of a much broader understanding, as tuitio can also mean care, consideration, nurture: think of what it means to pay tuition: one provides the means to an educational institution to educate oneself or one’s children. Prior to tuition, tuitio is the state of guarding, protecting, and safeguarding something or someone from harm. Before one can do that for others, one must do this for oneself. Hence, out of tuitio fidei arises a deep regard for the Faith, a holy desire to know, love, and nurture it within oneself in order to “be able to give a reason for the hope that is within you” and to transmit it to others, through words, when necessary, but principally through loving acts of service.
Care for the poor and sick is then but the extension of the tuitio fidei. One lives one’s life rooted in the Faith so as to love God and neighbor as we ought. Jesus gives us the perfect example of who our neighbor really is: the poor, sick one at the side of the road, mauled by robbers, mauled by life, in need of care and without the ability to help oneself and to pay for the care. Care for the poor and sick really means care for the helpless. I think it extends to those who annoy us, and especially to those who annoy us most, the ones who are the most helpless of all to solicit our favorable attention to them. As a dear friend of mine says, charity isn’t charity until it hurts. This isn’t Catholic masochism. This is rather the Catholic sensibility that our lives must be lives of sacrifice, in imitation of the One who sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world. You think the Way of the Cross and the Crucifixion were easy? That’s the pattern of redemption. The Imitation of Christ means our own willingness to suffer for the well-being, the salvation of those we may love and those whom we may find repulsive. Not either-or: both. And isn’t it often the case that it is easier to be charitable toward those we don’t know than it is towards those who know us well, with whom we live?
To care for the needs of strangers implies that we have means. First in the order of charity is our families. Then come the needs of the Church: divine worship costs not just time and effort, but money, too, and requires the education and upkeep of clergy who can lead us on the road to heaven. Finally — as in the culmination, the high point, and not if we can do so easily but rather the goal toward which we tend, we provide, to the extent we are capable, for those whose lives touch our own compelling us to act in their favor. We cannot meet these obligations unless we work well, unless, in fact, we turn our work itself into prayer.
The work we do is the way we use our gifts and talents for gainful employment and to spread the Gospel by living it in the actual circumstances of our lives. Our colleagues ought to know we are Christians long before we open our mouths. And they ought to derive some hope for themselves by the way they see us confronting the demands of life, of bosses who are sometimes overly demanding, of deadlines and goals that are impossible to meet. God loves a cheerful giver — he wants us to give it all we’ve got in the places where we receive remuneration for our efforts. He will amply reward us, one way or another, for our efforts. No Prosperity Gospel here: we are not tit-for-tatting with God, negotiating for advantage. We are simply recognizing that God cannot be outdone in generosity and when we employ our gifts for his glory and the benefit of others so as to meet our needs and those of those we love and care for, He blesses us by giving us the means we need to do His will. For some, that may mean great prosperity. For others, not so much prosperity but perhaps great spiritual gifts of insight and the ability to do the works of mercy in ways we never could have imagined. But He will bless; He will provide: in His time and in His way.
Look at the beauty of the churches of old and see the sacrifices, and the wealth, it took to create and maintain that beauty. Look at the schools, universities, hospitals, and other corporate and institutional works of the Church or her members and recognize that in them work is performed in a way, for the glory of God and salvation of souls, that creates health and the conditions for prosperity, too: things need to be paid for, and that can’t happen if there is nothing left at the end of the month. Christian poverty is not indigence: it is austerity lived so that we might enable others to live. Christian poverty means recognizing that everything we have is a gift, and a responsibility for which we will render account at the end of our earthly life. The burdens of life with others and with one’s own self must be borne, and offered up. The means needed to live with quiet dignity and then to help others do the same, to the extent we can, must be obtained, and offered up. And then the Lord will give us words to speak and deeds to do that lighten the loads of others and lighten our own when we give away freely what was given to us, in imitation of Him who has all because He is All and who gave himself, to the point of death, so that we might live.
I was speaking with a young friend of mine recently about how to do all of this, how to know what it is God is asking of us so that we can fulfill the Royal Law of Love, as St. James calls it, in the way the Lord wants with the power He gives us to do so. Two questions occurred to me. The first is sort of easy: what are the things I can get rid of without harm to myself or to the fulfillment of my duties? The second one is hard: what is the one request, command, demand of the Lord to me that I am denying Him? Where am I telling him “No!” Thing is, we won’t get to the second question before we answer the first one, and get rid of the stuff we don’t need. Clutter and surfeit are the branches of the bush in which we children of Adam hide. Clear the clutter, lift up your hearts in loving worship and your hands in loving service and watch the way your life begins to clarify. It isn’t complicated. But it is hard, because it is simple, and so we must train our wills to do the hard thing. One of prayer’s beautiful gifts is that when we lift our hearts to God in loving prayer, he changes the wills we have freely surrendered and He does the work through us. Then we live, as St. Paul said, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” with a peace and a joy that suffuses everything we do.
It starts not so much with the decision to live a holy life — the decision itself is easy to make — but with the decision to eliminate everything in our lives that impede holy living. Prayer comes alive when we fast. It lives and bears fruit when we eliminate the superfluous and ignore the irrelevant so that we can give ourselves to the one thing needful, that mission and vision the Lord reveals to those who persevere.