The God of the Atheists

I came upon this GKC passage in my Lenten Devotional. It's not the first time I've read it, but it will be the last time I keep it to myself.

THAT A GOOD MAN may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator, For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point — and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” No; but the Lord thy God may tempt himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane.

In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.

And now let the revolutionists of this age choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

The Loving Response of Obedience

"[The breaking of the first covenant] is a situation that comes after the failure of the test connected with the tree of the knowlege of good and evil, which was at the same time the first test of 'obedience,' that is, of hearing the Word in all its truth and of accepting Love according to the fullness of the demands of the creative Will." TOB 11:4

I was struck first of all by the capitalization of Love. Now that sounds very English teachery of me, but it has a great significance. We only capitalize very specific things, the beginnings of sentences, proper names, and places. Love is capitalized because it refers directly to God. Deus Caritas Est.

JP II sees obedience as hearing and accepting Love. Obedience, then, is our response to love. Within that loving response, I spoke last time is also the obedience of God's Will. Obedience and love, then, are intimately connected and intertwined. This connection frees the concept of obedience from oppresiveness, anger, and fear. It connects it rather to a loving response to God's call.

This seems appropriate to today's feast, the Annunciation.  No person in history, other than her Son, showed a loving response of obedience to God's call than Mary.  Mary's obedience became the opposite of Eve's disobedience.  She hears the Word of truth from the proclamation of Gabriel and accepts Love not only in her heart but in her womb.  She literally embodies and houses Love due to her fiat.  Let her be the exemplar for us as we look for freedom in obedience.

Erotic and Godly?

"There is a certain relationship between love and the divine: love promises infinity, eternity--a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence." Deus Caritas Est 5

This quote is within the context of the Holy Father's explication of eros. He refers back to the Greek understanding of an intoxication transcending into the divine so as to experience supreme happiness. He goes on to say this was enacted through various fertility cults, where men would go to a shrine and unleash their passionate desire upon a woman whose sole purpose was to be mediators of divine intoxication as objects of sexual pleasure. They were treated not as human beings, not as persons, but as objects for those men, objects for the sole purpose of pleasure.

This should sound familiar to us today. Pornography is not much different. Neither is prostitution. Pornography, though, seems to be exponentially more dangerous, if not for the sole reason of being much more accessible, but also from Matthew 5 where Jesus tells us that anyone who lusts after a woman already commits adultery in his heart. Pornography degrades, perverts, and deconstructs the idea and truth of eros. It divinizes eros instead of letting eros be a means to the divine. Furthermore, it destroys the God given dignity of the human person, who is himself an end (c.f. Love and Responsibility Karol Wojtyla).

Pope Benedict goes on to mention the Old Testament's rejection of this cult because it is, as shown earlier, "a perversion of religiosity." However, eros was not rejected, rather, its idea and enaction needed to be purified and tempered.

This desire, ultimately, for God is within us. Eros desires to transcend finite reality to be in union with the infinite, namely God. Aristotle had this concept in his cosmology. The umoved mover, whom he referred to as god, moved all things to itself. Everything moved in its own path back toward the unmoved mover. This can easily be translated into Christian terms. God moves "all creation together in Himself." "Father, I pray that they may be one as You and I are one." In the greatest sense, eros can be seen in this light.

However, "eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but also a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns," (Deus Caritas Est 4). The tendency in our culture today is to direct this desire for the infinite, for beatitude, (happiness), toward finite things. These things, or persons, offer fleeting pleasure. Through a temperate direction of eros, we can experience a "foretaste" of eternal life in love. It is like tasting a crumb of the greatest cake ever to be made, and this crumb springs your yearning on ever greater for the whole cake. This foretaste, directed and mediated through temperance, incites full throttle the desire to be in union with our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Honest Young Woman (or, Sincerity and Dialogue)

“An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion.” –GK Chesterton.

It is amazing the kind of friends one meets in this post-modern world of ours. One such friend, who is thoroughly Pro-life has, within the past three weeks, invited me to a couple of meetings with abortionists. The first time round, the abortionist was also a convert, so the meeting made sense. But the second one was unapologetically pro-choice and, what was worst, it was very much political. I make this somewhat flippant statement, but I mean it wholeheartedly. I believe that a sin is not nearly as bad as an erroneous belief, that politically advocating abortions is worse than having an abortion yourself. “For it is out of the heart that good and evil come.” See the preliminary quote if you think this idea needs to be fleshed-out anymore.

That is why, from among the many wonderful and strange things I heard that evening, there are two in particular that I want to highlight. The first came from the mouth of one of the Planned Parenthood doctors who had, from among the many noble elements in her liberal ideology, chosen to retract liberal socialism in favor of fiscal conservativism. Namely, she argued that healthcare reform demands efficiency, that abortions are cheaper and more efficient than paying to carry a baby to term and, therefore, the government should pay for abortions. What a strange logic! It would be like saying that public school meals should be low grade and cheap because that’s what’s best for taxpayers. The health of the person in question in never brought into the question. But is saving tax-payers money really the goal of healthcare reform? Is it not to provide better health care to the poor and marginalized, regardless of price? You cannot in one breath support an admittedly expensive overhaul of the healthcare system and then, in the next breath, say that you want the cheapest alternative. If you want good healthcare, you must be willing to pay for it. Regardless of whether or not socialized medicine is the best approach to solving the problem, it seems quite obvious to me that cheap ‘fiscally conservative’ healthcare is the worst. It’s like the inverse of cash for clunkers, where Uncle Sam forces on his constituents a poor product and in return asks them to pay for it.

I will not dwell on this argument however, for something more fantastic happened that evening. Towards the end of the discussion, when all sides had made their points and spoke their peace, the small, nervous woman who had been running the Powerpoint stood up and spake thus; “I know that there are some conservatives in this room and I applaud them for their ability to remain chaste, but I want to have sex!” The room went quite for a split second before the Planned Parenthood officials interjected, politely asking the poor girl to calm down and reserve such comments for other times. Had I not been one of three men in the room of fifty people, I might have stood up and defended the young woman. I dare say, it is likely that she was the most sincere person in the room that night! If we are to dialogue about sexuality and healthcare, we must begin by discussing the reality of a couple alone in a room wanting to have sex. It seemed to me that the most appropriate time to discuss sexuality’s longings and desires is at a meeting devoted to “healthy sex.” The doctors and lawyers in the room seemed to think otherwise.

Which brings me back to where I began, with Chesterton talking about error being worse than sin. A young woman who stands up in the middle of a crowd and admits to not having the strength to live a chaste life deserves some sort of accolade. She may be a sinner, but it is Lent! Judge her not. Speaking personally, I think that she was honest and should have been commended for it. Yet, notice the strange reality that followed. Rather than being welcomed and applauded by her feminist friends, she is quieted down and asked to keep to herself. They were embarrassed of her (for her, about her, etc?)! I offer no solution to the conundrum here. I simply want to point out how erroneous beliefs lead to paradoxical behavior in reality. I, the close-minded Christian, was more than willing to let people stand up and say “I want to have sex!” It was the progressives that invoked censorship. Indeed, I hope that God rewards the courage of that young woman, the only one of us willing to speak about woman’s sexual desires at a meeting devoted to the topic of woman’s sexual health. More importantly, I pray for those who support abortion on demand but place strange limits on when women can talk about wanting to have sex.

Dominus Est!

I love short books. Sure, it can be a hindrance to really delving into a subject deeply, but I still love them. Why? Because they're short - and that means I can read them quickly and feel productive, which in turn encourages me to read even more! 

I got one such small book (maxing out at 51 pages!) in the mail this week. Dominus Est - It is the Lord! by Bishop Athanasius Schneider over in Kazakhstan (Central Asia) is a short work on the adoration and reception of Holy Communion. Interestingly, before getting into the theological arguments or scriptural references, Bishop Schneider first notes the example of three 'Eucharistic women' who demonstrated to him the blessed gift of the Eucharist and the manner in which to receive it worthily. I thought this was rather brilliant because in my own experience people tend to connect and understand more deeply the lived reality of someone else rather than a mere concept or theological point. The three examples of intense faith and longing for the Eucharistic Lord can speak to our hearts in a way that opens us to be more understanding and accepting of the theological points that Bishop Schneider puts forward. I would definitely encourage everyone to read this because it is a great 'primer' on reverence toward the Most Blessed Sacrament and gives us much to contemplate all in about an hour's worth of reading. 

Reciprocal Love

"Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:10), love is now no longer a mere 'command,' it is the response to the gift of love which God draws near to us." Deus Caritas Est 1

Christianity is a contiuation of the Shemah. Pope Benedict shares this insight. The Shemah is the prayer of Israel. They have it on their foreheads and on their door posts. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your hear, and with all your soul, and with all your might," (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This was the command given to Israel from the Father at Sinai.

The devout Jew utters this prayer throughout the day reminding himself to follow the law. Jesus "came not to abolish the law, but fulfill it," (Matthew 5:17). So what does this mean for us as Christians, this Shemah of Israel?

Well, with Jesus it takes on a new light. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be expiation for our sins," (1 John 4:10). This is the verse to which the Holy Father alluded. Not that we first loved God (we are not the initiators of this relationship between human and divine), but He first loved us. Therefore, our love for Him is no longer a command, as in the Shemah, but a response.

Our love for God is a response to His love for us. We first experience this love as children in the faith. We experience it most powerfully in our first conversion experience. We experience it at the proclamation of the Gospel during the Liturgy of the Word. We experience it even more so at the Liturgy of the Eucharist where that event is re-presented, becomes present for us. We experience it when we receive the sacrament of penance.

Then, what is our response but to love back. We give back to God what He has given us, by giving ourselves fully to Him just as He gave Himself for us. There is no holding back. It must be our all.

It's been a while....

So, it has been a LONG time since I posted anything here on RR. This is due in part to the fact that I have been trying to keep up my own blog that I began last year and also because of the return to classes and the rush to prepare things for ordination. In that time I have been reading a variety of books off and on, but haven't made the time to post anything about them. So I'll start doing so now.

Last fall, as I was finally getting used to the reality that I'm a deacon, I was given a few suggestions on books to read - three on Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and one on St. Therese. Being that I already had a relationship with Therese, I picked that one up first. It was written by Fr. Marc Foley, OCD and is entitled "The Context of Holiness". Essentially the point of the book was to integrate psychology and spirituality rather than keep them separate as we can often try to do (and rightly at points). He spoke of the psychological issues that Therese had to deal with in her own life and brought the spiritual level to them, which was a really interesting aspect for me to see. I had read The Story of a Soul and other writings on the life of Therese, but hadn't really seen it in this light before. The whole basis of the book is that our daily lives are not something to be endured but are actually the context of our own holiness - the decisions we make are the things that can allow us to grow in our union with God. Coming in around 100 pages or so, the book was quite readable and spiritual uplifting for me in dealing with my own trials and struggles in the midst of daily life.