Saturday, July 31, 2010
Seminary in Rome
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Jews and their Lies
As I said, my own Catholic Church has her own ignominious history with regards to our relationship with and treatment of the Jews, but fortunately we have been working to correct that, and in the past 40 years relationships between the Catholic Church and Jews have grown peacefully and fruitfully. To that end I share here from the decree issued at Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate, with a special emphasis on what I have placed in bold:
4. As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock.
Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ-Abraham's sons according to faith (6)-are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles.(7) Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself.(8)
The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people.
As Holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation,(9) nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its spreading.(10) Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle.(11) In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder" (Soph. 3:9).(12)
Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues.
True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.
Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.
5. We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).
No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.
The root of all anti-Semitism is hatred, and the irony is that those who call the Jews devil worshipers because of their own anti-Semitic hatred are in fact speaking as the mouthpiece of Satan, for hatred does not come from God. But as I reflected on this last night and this morning, I realized something: I too have hatred in my heart, and while it might not be directed at Jews as a people, or at any group as such, it is still there, and by sharing in the same root hatred, I too am a racist, and an anti-Semite, and a murderer, and I too, and far too often, share in Satan's mission. Let me offer a few examples of my own hatred:
Three days a week I go running, and since I've been living in Old City, Philadelphia, my running route takes me to City Hall and back. Along the way, every time, I pass by a homeless person (I pass several, but this one in particular I have in mind). I suspect that this person is a man dressed in woman's clothing, but I am not certain. Anyway, the person wears a blue dress, above the knee, with hairy legs, and makeup on that looks more like a clown than a person. I mean, red lipstick covering far more than just the lips. The person has straggly hair, and just stands along Market Street, my running route, talking to him or herself. Behind him there is a collection of bags and belongings. I pass this person every time I run, and the reality is, I hate this person. I hate him or her for standing there. I hate him or her for being so ugly. I hate him or her for the hideous makeup. I hate him or her even for their mental illness. It's true, I am a monster, because I hate. I don't just hate this person, I am utterly repulsed, to the point of being nauseous every time I see him or her. I begin to run faster, even though by that time in my route I am really out of breath, I don't care, I just run.
Another example: recently I was in Mass, and the priest presiding is one who would refer to himself as a progressive. As such, he does everything possible to remove every masculine reference to God in the liturgy, even if it is simply a masculine pronoun referring specifically to Jesus Christ, whose humanity was explicitly male. So when the Eucharistic preface should begin, "Father, all-powerful and ever-living God..." this priest instead says, "Creator, all-powerful..." And during the doxology, when the prayer refers to the manner in which we pray to the Father through Jesus Christ, Jesus is referred as "Him," so that the doxology goes, "Through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and power are Yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever." This priest makes two changes: instead of saying, "Through Him..." he says, "Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ..." And instead of saying, "Almighty Father," he says, "Almighty God." Now, these are a few examples. My point, however, is that while it is natural to be annoyed at this for someone such as myself who takes the liturgy seriously, my feelings go far beyond annoyance. What instead happens is that a hatred erupts within me, a hatred first directed specifically at this priest, a hatred that is nothing other than spiritual violence, and soon I call to my mind every person I've encountered who shares his ideology, and I bring those people into this whirlpool of hatred going on. And this just in anticipation of receiving the Eucharist.
Thankfully, in fact, just before receiving the Eucharist. I say thankfully because if ever there is a time that my soul is in need of the healing power of Jesus Christ, the healing that is so manifest in the gift of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, it is when there is hatred stewing in my soul. And so by the grace of God and the force of my will I return to prayer and seek to prepare myself for this ever-magnanimous gift, and pray for my own healing.
That, in fact, is just my point. While the object of hatred is different, the same hatred that leads to the anti-Semitism that would call Jews "devil worshipers" is the very same hatred that I hold in my own heart at various times. And last night, I was feeling full of self-righteousness because, well, thank God I'm not like them, as the Pharisee in Luke's Gospel. But fortunately God has convicted me of my own sin, and allowed me to see that, in fact, I am just like them, and worse, even, for I seek to hide my hatred and my sin, instead of declaring it openly, as I am attempting now.
I'm not suggesting that all follow suit and make open declarations of their sin and their hatred. That is what sacramental confession is for, though at times I believe a public admission is in order. But the point I am hoping to make is just simply that we recognize our own culpability in the death of Jesus Christ, and that we each recognize the sin in our own hearts, be it hatred, greed, lust, pride, deceit, and so forth, and actively seek, through prayer and fasting, through active love of our neighbor, through communal worship, to be purified, sanctified by God through His Holy Spirit. This, I believe, is the role we play in the hastening of the Kingdom.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Villanova and the Vatican
St. Peter's Basilica
The Sistine Chapel
St. John Lateran
St. Paul's Outside the Walls
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Commentary on Book IV of Augustine's Confessions
Following are my notes on Book IV of St. Augustine’s Confessions:
ii(2) The woman who is often referred to as Augustine’s concubine in today’s language would be more akin to a common-law wife. He was faithful to her and loved her, and later he makes clear that during the nine years they were together he was never with another woman. In many ways his relationship with her perfectly exemplifies Augustine’s concept of sin as a disoriented good. Love is good, companionship is good, sex is good, fidelity is good, and his relationship with her possessed all these things to some degree or other. They were not, however, directed towards God, and as a result, despite the varieties of good found in his relationship with her, he nonetheless remained enslaved to lust and did not grow in virtue. Because Augustine was a Manichee, moreover, it is almost certain that when they did have sex it was with the use of birth control, and every attempt was made to avoid pregnancy. Sex is good, but a sexual relationship consummating the sacrament of marriage is rightly ordered when it remains open to the gift of life.
ii(3) In Augustine’s rejection of the soothsayer’s offer keep in mind the discussion in Book III about what constitutes a perfectly good moral act. Augustine’s rejection was good but his intention was not.
iii(4) Augustine recognizes in retrospect that astrology is pure superstition and to be rejected, but in his days with the Manichees, clouded by their errors he frequently consulted them. He argues at greater length against astrology in City of God.
Part of Augustine’s issue with astrology is the determinism intrinsic to it that takes away much of the responsibility from man for moral acts. It better enables man to justify sin or else to lose sight of real causes of evil. By removing personal responsibility for sin in the manner astrologers do, at least in the way astrology was practiced in Augustine’s time, Augustine further argues that astrology completely undermines the saving doctrine if Christianity – without culpability for sin, the sacrifice of the Cross is meaningless.
iv(7) This is a very touching and painful scene recounted by Augustine, and continues more or less through ix(14). As you read these sections a few themes are addressed that should be kept in mind: the nature of true friendship; grief, and how it manifests in a person controlled by passion versus how it manifests in a person who loves chastely (compare Augustine’s experience of grief here with the experience of grief of the death of his mother); what it means to say that we love someone and the role of beauty in the pursuit of love (or in Plotinian terms, in pursuit of the Good); the healing effect of time. Also consider the apparent pleasure Augustine took in being able to exert some control over his friend, and perhaps even a depraved pleasure that he took in leading him (temporarily) away from Christianity, and consider what I wrote previously about how Augustine in another work considered lust for power to be the most insidious form of lust.
iv(8) Chadwick notes the Manichee rejection of baptism as being superfluous and useless, but it is actually more than that. Manichees rejected sacraments entirely because they believed matter to be evil and the purpose of this life was to become free of our material prison of a body. Sacraments recognize the inherent goodness of matter and, just as in the incarnation, in sacraments the uncreated God can become united with created matter. So it was much more than the Manichees regarding baptism as useless; baptism contradicted the very core of Manichee belief and thus was considered to be evil.
Augustine at this time, Manichee that he was, and apparently a proud and arrogant one at that, thought his friend’s baptism laughable, and assumed his friend would think so, too. Upon discovering that his friend had embraced his baptism and apparently experienced a sincere conversion, note how Augustine just figures he can wait for his friend to regain strength, at which point Augustine thought he could easily manipulate him and convince him to renounce his baptism. The deeper point here is about the disordered manner in which Augustine viewed friendship. His friend asked Augustine to respect his choice and his new belief, but for Augustine their friendship was not rooted in mutual respect but rather on the friend doing what Augustine wanted.
iv(9) Because this friendship was not authentic, but was rooted in Augustine’s passions (in the classical sense), losing his friend meant losing an object of superficial emotional experience, and so Augustine replaced it with a very melodramatic, passionate experience of grief. It was clearly a very egocentric grief, and Augustine admits that his weeping itself became sweet and thus replaced his friend. Again, this is such a radically different experience of grief from what we will see in Augustine at the loss of his mother.
vi(11) Compare this with what Augustine wrote about the weeping at the theater. Augustine here says that he was more attached to weeping itself than to the dead friend who loss initiated the weeping.
Augustine here comes close to what today we would call a nervous breakdown. He says that he does not wish to live but is afraid to die. I just want to point out here how radical it is for someone in the fourth century to write this about himself. While feelings like this are frequently expressed in ancient fictions, for a person to admit and put into writing such a powerful expression of personal hopelessness is striking.
Augustine is also making a poignant commentary here, and through the next paragraph, as well, about the nature of grief and how it reflects the very natural human fear of one’s own mortality. That this death occurred when Augustine and his friend were both young is all the more fearful. This death of a friend caused Augustine to realize how greatly he feared dying himself. Keep in mind also that years earlier he had his own near death experience and was on the verge of being baptized, when he suddenly got better. The Augustine looking back on these two events certainly would also be considering the relationship between death and baptism.
vii(12) Note how Augustine seeks consolation in entirely exterior comforts, when his pain was interior. This typifies Augustine’s restless heart. There is a parallel here to Augustine’s search for Christ. Here, Augustine is repulsed by the many comforts he seeks because those comforts are not his friend. Yet in reality he was only chasing a phantom, anyway, since even his friend would not bring him fulfillment. Finally the time would come when he would again be repulsed by all his superficial, material, exterior comforts and would seek Christ, and in Him he would find rest for his heart and finally be fulfilled.
viii(13) There is a great similarity between what Augustine says here about the healing power of time and what Cicero writes in his Tusculan Disputations:
53. The proof of this is in the way our griefs are soothed by the passage of time. So great is this effect that in many cases time not only relieves our distress but actually removes it altogether, even though circumstances remain unchanged. Many of the people of Carthage became slaves in Rome, and so did many Macedonians after the capture of their king, Perses. When I was a young man, I also saw Corinthians working as slaves in the Peloponnese. Any of these people could have uttered that same lament from Andromache, “Before my eyes did all these things take flame…” and so on. But perhaps they had sung themselves out before I saw them. For their faces, their speech, their very gait and posture were such that, for all anyone could see, they might have been born in Argos or Sicyon. The ruined walls of Corinth had a greater impact on me, coming on them all of a sudden, than on the Corinthians themselves. For they had thought about the event for so long that their minds had become hardened with wear.54. There is a book by Clitomachus, which he addressed to his fellow Carthaginians after that city was destroyed, to console them in their captivity. I have read it. It contains a disputation by Carneades which Clitomachus took down in his notes. The opinion states as the thesis is that the wise person would be grieved if his homeland were to be conquered in war. Then are recorded Carneades’ arguments in the negative. Here we see the philosopher applying a strong medicine in a case where the disaster is still present. Had it been long in the past, however, no such strong medicine would have been needed or even wanted. If he had addressed that same book to the captives some years afterwards, he would have been tending to scars, not wounds. For gradually over time the pain grows less – not, usually, because the facts have changed or could change, but rather because experience teaches us the lesson reason ought to have taught, that what seemed so serious is not in reality very significant.
Again Augustine makes very interesting commentary on friendship. At this point in his life, his desires being disordered (and remember what Augustine means by that, not rightly ordered towards God), Augustine loves his friends as a substitute for loving God. Thus he loved them “as if they would never die,” which made his grief seemingly unbearable. But had he loved the God who can never die, and his love for friends been rooted in his love for God, he would still indeed of necessity experienced sorrow at the death of his beloved friend, but he would not have grieved as one without hope (cf. Augustine, Sermon 172.1). Had Augustine loved God his grief would have been tempered by the joy that his friend had died a baptized Christian, and he would have had hope that his friend had only gone before him, instead of departed from him forever. But since the friendship was disordered, so too was the grief.
x(15) Turning towards even those good things created by God and seeking fulfillment in them is a cause of sorrow. “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows” (Ps 16:4). Augustine made gods of his friends and sought God in external things, thus making those things into gods, and so his sorrow increased.
Augustine echoes back to his opening, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” The soul cannot find rest in transient things because of their instability and impermanence. By anchoring the soul to transient things the soul is always moving with them, when its natural state is stillness and silence. This perfect rest, this sabbath, can only be found in God because God alone is immutable, always still, always at rest, “undisturbed quietness” (see IV.xi.16).
xi(17) I could be wrong, but it seems that Augustine is also here commenting on the relationship between time and eternity. Time necessitates that we only perceive creation in part; eternity allows all to be experienced as an ever-present now.
xii(18) When good things cause the heart to turn to love of God those things remain a source of pleasure and the heart rests in God; when good things are loved solely in themselves and God is abandoned, they become bitter, and restlessness ensues.
To seek a happy life without God is absurd, since without God there is no life at all, and there can be no happy life when there is no life.
xii(19) I believe Augustine is making an argument here from ontology. On the Cross, the Son of God died – the hypostatic union denies the possibility of divine and human natures ever being separated in the Person of Jesus Christ (the same reason we call Mary “Mother of God” is why reason demands the admission that the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, died on the Cross). Because ontologically the Son of God is not just creator of life and not just living, but is in fact life itself, death could not conquer life but was conquered by it. The divine nature being immutable, life was able to experience death, pass through it, and ever remain life. This sheds light then on the resurrection. When the life of a person passes through death and comes out as life, when that life again animates the body, even the body can no longer die, for it already has. Life itself, that Son of God who ontologically is life, by passing through death has forever transformed the nature of death, and so for us death is no longer what it was before divinity dwelt there.
Notice how while Augustine in his youth had been so critical of Scripture, now the words of Scripture are so second nature to him that they just drop from his pen. He has so immersed himself in Scripture that it naturally informs his vocabulary and his manner of speaking.
xiii(22) After his consideration of beauty in (20), and his love for someone he only knew through praises of other men (21), Augustine differentiates between what is communicated through the judgment of men and what is communicated through the judgment of God. One of the points I believe Augustine is making is that the value intrinsic to things, their beauty, their goodness, are objective realities because they are judged by God. If God judges a thing good, it is objectively good. Human judgments are subjective, however, and the so people can disagree about things, where objectively only one judgment is true. This is important to keep in mind in general when discussing non-empirical knowledge: disagreement among various peoples does not mean there is no truth.
xiv(23) Notice the vanity at work in Augustine – though that is secondary to the greater point he is making. Augustine wants not just to be a good orator, like Hierius, but even more he desires to receive praise like Hierius.
The greater point is how the passions and emotions – greater in number, he says, than the hairs on man’s head – cloud reason and take him away from clear perception of objective knowledge. “The light is obscured from it by a cloud, the truth is not perceived.”
xvi(30) Things can be good of themselves but not used well. Such it was with Augustine’s keen intellect – a gift from God used for evil. The very definition of sin.
Passion's Tide
You insidious vagabond
Casting your guile on prey so weak.
So charming with a smile
do you wander to and fro
with the self-styled appearance of
random meandering,
revealing no rhyme or reason
to your now resting gaze.
But while no map may chart the course
of your whence and thither,
and your rests seem to all mere happenstance,
I know now that each is but the next stop
on the train to Perdition.
No longer your companion do I desire to be.
But aware now you are that
the light of truth has revealed
what you seek to conceal in darkness,
and under the cover of darkness no more
may your subversive train pass.
So full steam you fly, and with
perilous speed we travel together to hell,
you on a journey home, I a prisoner
of my own capture.
Certain death awaits me,
yet only death can set me free,
and so from your soundspeed train I leap to my doom,
and pray that a Godspeed angel of light
might bear me up.
But salvation or no, to the nether terminal
alone will you return, and though my
victory abides only in hope,
of your sure defeat I rejoice.
So banish! Banish!
Back to your master,
you insidious vagabond,
ne’er to return again.
Restlessness
My gaze affixed in no one direction
Mind's eye fractured in pieces asunder
Abyss not sought found in recollection
Vast riches to plunder
Try, no severing this connection
Under His protection
The stillness that I seek cannot be sought
For seeking leads me to worldly perdition
I turn to where the snares are ever fraught
Captive of sedition
Yet the battle already has been fought
My ransom has been bought
Fallen angels' battle cry screeches fierce
Defeat is ne'er accepted easily
Victorious sword of truth heart does pierce
Yet I wrestle wear'ly
Remaining still at battle with my fears
With strength of many years
Upon the altar of my heart now lay
Demons and fears who are my sacrifice
Sweet incense my anxieties allay
Arise, free me from vice
So with my Lord in His eternal day
Forever may I stay.
Monday, July 19, 2010
A Kiss in Eternity
Fate the intersection of those moments in time
that bring two people together.
For a moment in time is so much more -
a passing instant here, true, but
the binding of the annals of eternity
brings that moment to timeless perfection,
so that while two exchanged but
a glance,
a smile,
before being lost in the rest of their day,
in not-time by that glance they are united forever.
And so I pray that in some future
present moment, not-time will embrace
the eternal perfection of our
one,
single
kiss.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Into the Silent Land: Some Other Commentary
Their conversation begins on Michelle's blog here, then Part II on Robin's blog here, then Part III on Robin's blog here. I believe that is as far as they've gotten so far, but add them both to your Google Readers because in addition to their commentary on this excellent book, they both keep excellent blogs discussion various aspects of the living as faithful Christians.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Encountering the Silence of Prayer
In another community a question of prayer came up, and I thought I'd share my response here for anyone who might be interested. I am just re-posting the lengthy comment because I'm too lazy to re-formulate it into a post that doesn't make specific reference to the OP's questions. Everything I talk about in this post comes from a book that I simply cannot recommend strongly enough, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird.
Before I respond, I want to recommend again the book that I referenced in another comment, Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird. It is by far the best book on prayer that I've read, and I say that not because the author is a friend and fellow Augustinian (I've encountered the same praise of his book by everyone I've encountered who has read it - just check out the reviews on Amazon), but because it is a very easy to follow, practical guide to Christian contemplative practice, it addresses succinctly and yet with real depth the many issues that come up when entering more deeply into prayer, and the book is entirely rooted in the desire to live a life in union with Christ. He has much more to say than in this relatively brief comment, but I hope I can here offer you some assistance that might give you the tools to get beyond this threshold where you now stand.
You mentioned that you felt as if your words of prayer were empty and meaningless, and you felt insincere in prayer. At the same time, you mentioned that you had a great desire to run to God in prayer. I suggest that in fact there was nothing empty at all about your prayer, and it was indeed full of meaning, but to see this we will have to examine what exactly prayer is.
Vocal prayer, meaning when we pray in formulated words, whether spontaneously or with a rote prayer such as the Our Father, is a great school of prayer, it teaches us how to pray, but in reality those words are not prayer in themselves. Prayer is what happens in the silence beyond those words, in the depth of your soul where no words can ever enter, but rather where the Spirit of God dwells as the ground of your very being. As St. Paul writes, "[W]e do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26). When we pray, our words help direct our consciousness towards God and allow our minds to learn to depend on God, but the real prayer is what the Holy Spirit does in us, and that prayer is far too deep for words. To enter into that prayer, we must learn to engage silence. We must learn, as Fr. Laird will say, to enter into the silent land. The practice that I am going to describe for you now is an ancient Christian practice that enables you to do just that, encounter the silence and discover more deeply your union with God. If you take up this manner of prayer, this contemplative practice, I assure you that your prayer and indeed your entire life will be transformed, and you will find yourself ever more receptive to God's grace, and ever more open to the peace of Christ.
There is an ancient prayer known commonly as the Jesus Prayer, and while there are a few variations of the same prayer, it is essentially this, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." The early Fathers of the Church, and particularly St. Hesychius, recommended the practice of uniting the prayer with the breath in a manner of meditation, or what we can call contemplative practice, as it is a practice that prepares the soul for deep contemplative prayer.
The practice would look like this: first, place yourself in a comfortable position. My recommendation is to find a wooden chair, and sit with your rear end pushed forward just a little bit so that your back does not rest against the back of the chair (or just use a back-less chair; if you're comfortable sitting in a lotus or half-lotus position, this too would work well), sit up straight, and just rest your hands either comfortably on your knees or cupped in your lap. Once seated and comfortable, begin by taking several deep breaths through your nose. This will help to relax you and still your mind. Then let your breathing return to its natural state, and begin the Jesus Prayer, united with breath in this way: as you inhale, silently say, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God," and then as you exhale, say, "have mercy on me." And just keep repeating this cycle. It might seem mechanical as you read this, and it may seem so in practice at first, but that feeling will quickly go away and it will soon become very natural.
In the beginning it may be difficult to sit like this for very long, so if you can only stay like that for ten minutes or so at first, that's fine. But ideally, you would practice this kind of prayer twice a day, for thirty minutes to an hour each sitting. Now, let's discuss some of the issues that might arise as you engage this practice.
As you begin with this manner of prayer, this contemplative practice, you will assuredly notice several things. First and foremost, you will notice how easily distracted you become in prayer. This is natural, and actually the goal of the Jesus Prayer is not to stop the distractions, but rather to learn how to engage them with silence. The distractions can come in any variety of forms. Perhaps you might simply find yourself bored, and so your mind begins to wander into thinking about what you are going to do later, or replaying some conversation you had with someone, or thinking about your favorite television show, or anything else; perhaps you will find yourself mentally engaging in an imaginary conversation with someone you know; the distraction could be more serious, such as a suppressed anger or fear suddenly arising, or a repressed memory of some painful event coming to the surface*. Or perhaps the distraction will be more self-centered, either in the sense of feeling awkward about this style of prayer (and it amazes me how easily we can feel awkward even when we are fully aware that there is absolutely no one around to see us), or in the sense that we suddenly become impressed with ourselves for praying in the way that we are. The distraction could also be the anticipation of some sort of spiritual experience, or thinking that we are suddenly "feeling something," and then wondering what it is we are feeling. These are just some of the seemingly infinite variety of distractions we can encounter as we encounter this silent prayer, and it is in these distractions that the beauty of the Jesus Prayer becomes apparent.
When we do experience any of these distractions, we proceed in exactly the same way every time: simply notice the thought, the distraction, whatever its variety, and then return to the prayer word. Return to the repetition of the Jesus Prayer united with breath. It's that simple. Notice the distraction, and return to the prayer and breath.
It might seem like the distractions themselves are the greatest obstacle to our encounter with deeper silence, but in fact it is not the actual distraction, but rather the commentary that we end up spinning on the distraction. So if we begin thinking about something mundane, when we notice it, instead of returning to prayer we can get agitated and annoyed with ourselves, and then start thinking about how annoyed we are, and how we shouldn't be thinking about this when we're praying, etc. Or if we think we're "feeling something," if it seems like some kind of special mystical experience is coming on, we might start getting excited, thinking about what is going to happen, or maybe thinking about how frightening it can be, or how unworthy we are or how saintly we are, whatever, but the point is we spin these mental commentaries on what was otherwise a single distraction, and it is that commentary that prevents us from crossing the threshold into deeper silence. And so the value of the practice that I've just described, the Jesus Prayer united with breath, is that it enables us to meet the distraction without the commentary, or if the commentary itself is the distraction, we can instantly return ourselves back to the practice of silence, and just focus on word and breath, word and breath.
This works no matter what kind of distraction we encounter. If Satan himself comes with his entire legion of demons and attempts to attack our silent space, we pay him no mind at all, but simply notice that he has arrived and return to the prayer. We are gazing now not at the distraction, but rather beyond that distraction into the vast depths of silence into God, into that place at the ground of our being where we are forever united with God. In this place, even Satan is nothing more than a pesky nag, and he cannot withstand the penetrating silent gaze into Christ that we are cultivating here. Just gaze into the silence, repeating word with breath, and let the distractions pass on by.
As you continue in this practice, over time you will become more and more comfortable with the silence, and the time might come when the Jesus Prayer drops altogether, and you just sit comfortable in silence, in what St. John of the Cross calls the "loving awareness of God's presence." If this happens, let it be, and just sit in that awareness. If in that awareness distractions come back, just return to the prayer and gaze at those distractions in silence, without the commentary.
There is a progression that comes naturally as a result of this practice, a practice which in effect is nothing other than excavating the present moment and discovering God, do not get caught up in thinking about where you are in prayer, or how far or how little you've advanced. These thoughts are nothing other than more commentary. If those thoughts arise, treat them just as any other distraction: gaze at them with silence, and let them pass on by. There will be times when the silence comes very easy, and then suddenly you feel like a beginner again. Don't worry about any of that. Just gaze into the silence, and be with God.
Finally, while, as I said, I strongly recommend sitting in prayer like this twice a day as an extended prayer, this practice does not need to be limited to those times. In fact, any time your mind is not necessarily engaged in discursive thought (meaning, anytime you don't actually have to be thinking about something specific), resume the practice. In the shower, while shaving, while driving, while sitting on your back porch, whatever you are doing that does not require engaged mental activity, just return to the Jesus Prayer and the breath. You might think, "Oh, I can't do that while driving. How distracting! I might cause an accident!" In fact, just the opposite is true. Again, this is a practice that develops your awareness of the present moment and encountering God there, and so it actually sharpens your senses and makes your mind more agile and more acutely aware of what is going on. And it helps to ensure that throughout the day you become conscious of God's closeness to you, and helps you to live in the awareness of that very closeness.
I hope this helps. I know it was very long, but I really cannot recommend that book strongly enough. It's a short read, maybe 140 pages, but so full of wisdom and depth. Blessings to you!
*If this does happen, and I say this for the benefit of anyone who reads this and decides to engage this most beneficial prayer practice, if suppressed painful memories begin to arise I strongly recommend that in addition to continuing with this practice that you also make an appointment to speak with a counselor who can guide you through the psychological components to this. However, you will note that this practice that I've just described will be invaluable in assisting with your healing.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Commentary on Confessions Book III
Following are my notes on Book III of St. Augustine's Confessions:
i(1) Two themes in particular are taken up here: one is the manner in which Augustine sought in exterior things fulfillment of a hunger that could only be truly fulfilled by interior food. This theme will come up frequently throughout the book (including later on in Book III). The second is the manner in which this strictly exterior seeking leads to concupiscence, which in turn poisons those goods which are sought.
ii(2) I don't believe that Augustine considers fiction per se to be mendacious, as Chadwick notes, but rather that fiction whose sole purpose is to bring us to the experience of sadness, pain, pity, etc., in such a way that we ultimately take joy in it. I believe Augustine is responding to a tendency to go to these shows for the purpose of being being moved to these emotions and thus enabling a person to convince himself that he is compassionate, merciful, etc., yet never demonstrating these virtues in real life. A theatrical performance allows for an emotional response while looking in from the outside, with the comfort of knowing that one will never actually have to get involved and act on those feelings of compassion. For Augustine, compassion only felt at fictitious theatrical performances is in fact merely fictitious compassion.
ii(3) Part of Augustine's lament is that the feeling of sadness and pity was not authentic, but rather it was a source of joy. It was in fact a depraved kind of pleasure, and further indication of the manner in which concupiscence poisons goods. He makes the point clearly when he says that someone who sincerely feels compassion would desire that a person not suffer. There are those, however, who actually desire to see suffering just for the sensual emotional response that suffering might produce in the observer.
iv(7) It seems to me impossible to underestimate the profound importance that the discovery of Cicero had on Augustine. I would argue that this marks the first of his three conversions: the conversion to philosophy, which would be followed by the conversion to Manicheeism, and ultimately the conversion to Christianity. I have heard others mark the conversion to philosophy as following the conversion to Manicheeism, but I think his immediate lover for Cicero places the conversion to philosophy first, and one that remained throughout his life. Augustine forever remained a philosopher, and first he sought philosophy in conjunction with Manicheeism, and then finally saw the fulfillment of philosophy as being in Catholicism.
Note how Augustine mentions his father's death merely as a passing thought, and contrast this later with the treatment he gives to the death of his mother.
iv(8) Augustine clearly sensed at this time in his life some strong interior movement, but he was unable to find his proper orientation. His internal compass was still calibrated according to the magnetic force of his concupiscence, and this would lead him along a long and tumultuous journey.
As an aside, if anyone has read Camus, I've often been struck by the similarity between these two men, separated by 1500 years though both born and raised in the same geographical location. From this point in Confessions up through the time of his conversion in the garden in Milan, I believe we see the same searching and the same frustration that Camus experienced, which led Camus to his famous philosophy of the absurd.
v(9) As Chadwick notes in several places, part of the problem for Augustine was that until Jerome's Vulgate edition of the Bible, translations of the Bible were clunky and awkward. Had Augustine been more spiritually mature and not enslaved by pride he would have more easily looked past the lack of aesthetic quality and instead sought the deeper meaning of Scripture, as he would later do. Instead he saw Cicero as being far superior because Cicero's Latin was of such excellence, whereas the Latin of the Bible translations of his time were linguistically inferior.
vi(10) Thus begins a nine year period of Augustine's life of formal association with the Manichee sect, a group who combined elements of Christianity, paganism, Zoroastrianism, and philosophy. A central tenet of this sect, to which Augustine alludes here, is that the material world is evil and thus to be avoided as much as possible. One's spiritual purpose is to be entirely liberated from materiality. Celibacy was required of the upper class and strongly encouraged of the lower class, and even then only allowable with the use of birth control. Procreation was forbidden, and a woman who became pregnant, whether she herself a Manichee or the man who impregnated her, must have an abortion. Interestingly, Augustine's concubine did become pregnant and they did not abort. This certainly may have been part of Monica's influence on Augustine, since abortion was proscribed under the Catholic faith from the very beginning of the Church, but I believe it is more likely an indication of Augustine's later very half-hearted involvement with the Manichees.
Augustine speaks often of man's hunger for truth as part of the makeup of his being. He affirms Aristotle's teaching in Metaphysics that, "All men are created with a desire to know." Augustine says the Manichees promised food for this hunger, but what they fed him was like air. Their food was empty and insubstantial, and in fact was deception and thus no food at all. Thus it contributed to his continual hunger and his spiritual malnourishment.
The image of spiritual hunger in Augustine is directly related to his theme of restlessness. Just as he begins Book I by saying that the heart is restless until it rests in God, here he affirms that the singular object of his hunger is God, and that this
desire to know" intrinsic to man is only fulfilled in God. Though no explicit Eucharistic reference here is made, Augustine's devotion to the Eucharist and his many writings on how in the Eucharist God feeds us with His very Self should be kept in mind when reading these passages on spiritual hunger and divine food.
There are two parts to the argument that Augustine makes in his exposition here on image and reality. First, if we form an image of the sun in our minds, or if we see an image of something in a dream, that image is an imperfect representation of the thing itself. The image is not the sun, but the image imperfectly represents the sun, it is analogous to the sun. Second, those false teachings of the Manichees, even though they used some words rooted in truth, in reality were not even an image of truth; they were in no way analogous to truth. The teachings of the Manichees were total fabrications.
vi(11) Augustine speaks of separation from God, yet in the previous paragraph he refers to God as life of the soul and the body, and elsewhere he has mentioned that if God withdrew from a person, that person would cease to exist. So it is important to recognize that when he speaks of separation, it is not an actual separation but rather a conscious separation (meaning, the soul loses its conscious recognition of its union with God), and a lack of that union with God that comes through faith. Actual separation from God is not possible, for God is the ground of all being.
Contrast "you were more inward than my most inward part" with "she found me living outside myself." Another recurring theme where Augustine seeks fulfillment exteriorly for the hunger that can only be filled interiorly. Cf. X.xxvii.38, "You were within and I was in the external world and sought you there."
vii(12) Here we get a fundamental Augustinian definition of evil as a privation of good. Augustine recognizes all that exists (except God) to have been created by a perfect God and thus is intrinsically good. Therefore any evil in creation is not its own substance but rather a privation of the good in which it was created, a result of the fall.
vii(13) Argument against moral relativism. Truth of moral laws and customs is measured by their agreement with God's eternal Law. Man cannot create his own moral code and call it true. In morals and ethics there is not "true for me," but simply "true."
There is an important argument at work here to counter those complain (as the Manichees did, and as we still here frequently today) that laws and ordinances in Scripture were different in previous ages. Augustine recognizes that God's justice considers the historical circumstances of man, and that, as Aquinas will later argue, God deals with all things according to their nature. The purpose of the Law is to turn men towards God and towards His eternal Truth, and this may require different dealings with men at different times. Thus it is necessary when reading Scripture to differentiate between God's dealings with man that are specific to a particular historical time and those which are eternal commandments. When something contradicts the eternal law, even if everyone everywhere were to do it and call it good, it could never truly be so.
viii(16) Keep in mind that for Augustine lust is not necessarily sexual, but rather any disordered, obsessive desire. In another work he regards lust for power as the most insidious of all (On the Free Choice of the Will).
It has been traditionally understood, contrary to some modern Protestant groupings, that the Ten Commandments were grouped as three on one tablet pertaining to our relationship with God, and seven on then other pertaining to our relationship with each other. Augustine sees great symbolism here: three commandments correlates to the three Persons of the Trinity; seven representing perfection, so perfect love for God is demonstrated by perfect love for neighbor. Also, the Psalms often speak of a "ten-stringed lyre," which Augustine sees as symbolic of the Decalogue. When we internalize the commandments, they form a perfect harmony in our soul, so that love becomes our perfect song of praise.
Because God is immutable (not subject to change) and because the Law is for our benefit, not His, transgressions of the law injure the transgressor, not God.
Augustine here echoes Plotinus' discussion of the One. Augustine recognizes that we experience true unity with God, and thus unity is a good. But when we abandon God, though in reality the unity exists, practically we have abandoned unity, and seek a false unity that sees the individual as a self-contained being. From Plotinus VI.9.1:
It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at all except as one thing? Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what it is called: no army unless as a unity; a chorus, a flock, must be one thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity gone, neither remains: thus even continuous magnitudes could not exist without an inherent unity; break them apart and their very being is altered in the measure of the breach of unity.
My impression considering this passage from Plotinus with what Augustine is writing is this: part of the ontological makeup of man (meaning, part of what it means to be human), is that we are created in the image and likeness of God, that we exist in unity with God. To attempt to depart from this, to live as though God is not essentially part of who we are, is in effect to be inhuman. The less we direct ourselves rightly towards God, living in awareness of that unity, the more inhuman, practically speaking, our lives become. This at least is how I understand what Augustine is getting at. Any other thoughts?
ix(17) While intention is not the singular determining factor in assessing an act's moral goodness, it must be considered and ultimately can only be known by God. A good act done with evil intent is not truly good, or rather, is not perfectly good; an evil act done with good intent is not totally evil. For Augustine, three factors must be considered in determining an acts moral quality: the act itself, the intent, and the circumstances in which it is performed.
xi(19) Augustine consistently returns to the faith, prayers, and tears of his mother as being pivotal in his conversion to the Catholic faith. This is one of two mystical experiences he relates concerning his mother - this one a dream she was granted to assure her of Augustine's conversion, the second a shared vision that Augustine and Monica experienced together at Ostea just before she died.
xii(21) While Monica received much consolation from her dream and was confident in its meaning, she was further reassured by her discussion with the bishop, who assured her that her tears could not go unanswered. We also get a glimpse of the fact that perhaps Monica's concern for Augustine also made her a bit of a nag. The bishop would have been well acquainted with the Manichee heresy, having been forced to them himself by his own mother (note the contrast between the bishop's mother and Monica, perfect antitheses), and likely also know of Augustine's bright intellect. He thus concluded that simply by applying reason Augustine would eventually come to recognize that Manicheeism was irrational and contained no authentic claim to truth. Monica received the bishop's words assuring her of Augustine's salvation as if coming from God Himself.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Lost at Sea
Upon the low-tide shore a violent crash
Unsettling waves of indignation
Underneath a fury of lightning's flash
Chaos and creation
Battling for dominance do they lash
Upon the sandy ash
Within the eye yet innocence is found
The laughter of children cuts through the air
Taming gods' fury with the sweetest sound
Discover the child's care
So deep within your heart will peace resound
Heart united with Ground
Wrath of God, or my own, within my soul
One from the other distinction is
like a mare running beside her foal
My anger is not His
Yet would I allow this devil cajole
Thus fulfilling his role
So let these righteous waves crash over me
and wash away the blemish in my heart
For waves as these are my theophany
My God will not depart
Instead His waves wash me into His sea
Now cleansed, I may swim free
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Where may I be found
Stirrings of divine suppressed
by inebriated exuberance
from the night there is no deliverance
long as I remain impressed
by the reptilian grandeur
darkening my eyes to that beauty true
thus persuading me never to eschew
to what my senses pander
Fleeting is the joy I know
piercing the shallow depths of my hardness
not entering the infinite largeness
where your Spirit's breath does blow.
Yet to that space still am I drawn
where the river of gladness ever swells
crowns the banks where your fertility dwells
Night anticipates the dawn
where on those banks your transfiguration,
darkness to all illumination
Commentary on Confessions Book II
Following are some notes on Book II of St. Augustine's Confessions
i(1) Augustine says that he recalls his sinfulness in order to better love God. He makes numerous contrasts of opposites: bitterness of sin's memory vis-a-vis sweetness of God's love; unity in God vis-a-vis multiplicity of carnal corruptions.
ii(2) Augustine here again, as he did in Book I, discusses how the disorder from evil can arise from fundamentally good desires. Desire to love and be loved is good, but directed in the wrong way leads to disorder.
Consider again Augustine's treatment of God's wrath in Book I, how the experience of God's anger is really the phenomonilogical experience of our own disorder. Here Augustine is getting at the point that we can in fact become so lost in our disorder that it begins to feel like right order.
Augustine here also begins a consideration that will show up throughout the book, God's respect for our autonomy, and the manner in which providence works along with our fallen human condition.
ii(3) Augustine clearly recognizes sexuality as a good and beautiful gift from God; he also recognizes that in our fallen condition it is the most likely good to suffer from disorder and ensnare us in overly-passionate lust, as opposed to God-glorifying and humanity-affirming purity.
iii(5) Modern psychology rather conclusively affirms that an authoritative style of parenting (as opposed to either authoritarian or permissive) is the healthiest throughout all the stages of a child's development. Augustine frequently describes his parents as being permissive when discipline should have been imposed (though later he attributes different motivations for their permissiveness), which contributed to his struggles with sin. Virtue and vice are nothing else than the formation of habits, and Augustine's vice was in part the result of bad habits too easily being permitted to be formed.
iii(7) It is important here to note Augustine's consideration of his friendships and how they contributed to his increased vice. As will be evident throughout this book and throughout many of Augustine's writings, and is at the heart of the rule for community living that so many religious orders still follow today, is the high value he places on friendship. Friendship is at the heart of Augustine's anthropology. He recognizes that human beings are created for relationships, and that is intrinsic to our being created in the image of a God whom we know to be a Trinity. But again, while friendship is a good, it is an intermediate good that can be used for good or evil. When used for good, it allows the community of persons to live "with one mind and heart intent upon our God," as he writes at the beginning of his Rule. When it is an association rooted in vice and debauchery, as Augustine's early friendships were, it contributes greatly to man's corruption.
iv(9) This marks the beginning of Augustine's famous discourse on the stolen pears. Some things to keep in mind throughout this discourse, to better understand the nature of Augustine's questions as he works through this reflection: 1) what has been previously considered regarding the nature of friendships; 2) the Augustinian concept that sin is not necessarily (or ever?) the choosing of evil simply for the sake of evil, but rather because of a disordered seeking after some good; 3) the manner in which sin so poisons the seeking of that good that the good itself loses the lustre of beauty that is essential to it; 4) in contrast to what I said in (2), Augustine also considers the possibility that depravity can become so great that wickedness itself will be regarded as worthy of pursuit for its own sake.
v(10) Augustine has a great respect for beauty in the physical world as a means of reflecting the beauty of God. This is a recognition of the fact that anything created by God must be beautiful and good. He also here considers that there are objective measures to beauty insofar as it reflects the harmony and order essential to God's creative design. There is a subtle Platonic concept at play here regarding the unity of the Beautiful and the Good.
God's law, then, is the imposition of order that ensures that goods always strive in the right direction, upwards; deviation from God's law, then, results in disorder, a return to chaos.
v(11) Here Augustine considers the case of Catiline, proffered here as an example of the most savage and depraved of persons. Even in one such as Catiline, Augustine believes it was not sin itself that Catiline loved, but rather some other good that he sought in a most depraved manner.
vi(13) This is a magnificent passage and beautifully translated by Chadwick. To those who read Latin this is a great example of Augustine's eloquence in language, and his masterful use of antitheses. In this paragraph Augustine goes through the litany of goods men seek in the world, and shows how these goods are ultimately empty when severed from the God who is both their source and their end (telos), yet when they are sought in a manner rightly ordered towards God, they are able to lead to a profound joy.
vii(15) To the best of my recollection this is the first use in Confessions of one of Augustine's favorite icons of Christ, as the Physician (Christus Medicus), who heals our iniquity and our sins, restores us to beauty and goodness and spiritual health.
ix(17) Ultimately Augustine concludes that it was the theft itself that he sought for its own sake, but that he would not have done it alone. A point I believe he could stress more is one he makes subtly, which is that he would only have stolen the pears in the group because in the group he would be ridiculed and shamed for deciding not to do it. In a way I think it can be argued that the good sought was a depraved seeking of honor.
Friday, July 02, 2010
Theosis
Indestructibility
is what I discover
in my life divine,
God-united
theosis.
Until
I
die
I will
achieve this
in dark-nighted
rev'lation sublime
where Christ, and no other
consumes my humanity.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Commentary on Confessions, Book I
Following are some thoughts on Book I:
i(1)- "To praise you is the desire of man…" Augustine here is making a commentary on human nature that is at the heart of his anthropology. For Augustine, at the core of the human identity is the understanding of our being Created, as well as an understanding of the goodness of our Creator-God. In this life, then, human fulfillment lies in coming to recognize this aspect of our humanity. Restlessness seems to natural to us because in our fallen condition it is impossible, or apparently so, to live in constant awareness of this fundamental truth. As we go on later to consider Augustine's notion of concupiscence, keep this in mind, so as to examine the notion of concupiscence through its relationship to our conscious awareness of God as the ground of our being.
"Which comes first…" I believe Augustine here is highlighting the tension between the need of Christians to proclaim the Gospel and the mysterious ways in which God makes Himself known to all who seek Him sincerely.
ii(2) Here Augustine asserts the understanding of God as ground of all being.
iii(3) Several concepts are at play here. One is the Plotinian concept of creation as emanation. Consider Plotinus III.8.4, 5:
4. And Nature, asked why it brings forth it works, might answer if it cared to listen and to speak:
'It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in silence just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talking. And what is your lesson? This; that whatsoever comes into being is my vision, seen in my silence, the vision that belongs to my character who, sprung from vision, am vision-loving and create vision from the vision-seeing faculty within me. The mathematicians from their vision draw their figures: but I draw nothing: I gaze and the figures of the material world take being as if they fell from my contemplation. As with my Mother (the All-Soul) and the Beings that begot me so it is with me: they are born of a Contemplation and by my birth is from them, not by their Act but by their Being; they are the loftier Reason-Principles, they contemplate themselves and I am born.
5. This discussion of Nature has shown us how the origin of things is a Contemplation: we may now take the matter up to the higher Soul; we find that the Contemplation pursued by this, its instinct towards knowing and inquiring, the birth pangs set up by the knowledge it attains, its teeming fullness, have caused it – in itself the object of Vision – to produce another Vision (that of the Cosmos).
Without getting into the grand scheme of Plotinian metaphysics, Plotinus here is working from a framework of hierarchy, where creation is ultimately an emanation from contemplation. The result of this is that all of creation in some way maintains its connection to God. How does this compare or relate to the concept of a monotheistic Creator-God, particularly when a theology asserts the permeance of God throughout all of creation, as Augustine does by arguing that God is the ground of all being? Why cannot this permeance be considered pantheistic? Also, Augustine here considers the permeance issue and what that says about the nature of God. Christianity rejects the notion of God being composite. How can God be simple (meaning, non-composite) yet still be contained in creation?
v(5) In reading what Augustine writes about God's anger when man sins or when man does not love God as he should, consider both what was said in the previous section as well as in i(1). The anger cannot be regarded as caprice, but rather the manner in which man apparently experiences God when man sins. Sin does not hurt God, so the experience of God's anger cannot be compared to the gods of Roman myth who cast down might storms because they have been offended and hurt. Rather, as we considered in i(1), sin takes us away from God, and so we are thus taken away from the experience of divine love. This creates a variety of phenomenological experiences, including the feeling of divine wrath. But providence is always working its governance and drawing us back towards God, and so any experience of what we call God's anger is in fact oriented towards bringing us back to our natural path, our teleological fulfillment in God. The design of our nature is that we are oriented towards God, and so sin will always cause us to be disoriented, which can lead to any variety of experiences in relation to God, be they anger, apathy, despair, etc.
vi(8) It seems that Augustine's observations of infancy are quite in line with modern understandings of developmental psychology.
vi(10) Strongly rooted in Plotinian concept of time and eternity. Consider Plotinus III.7.1:
Eternity and Time; two entirely separate things, we explain, 'the one having its being in the everlasting Kind, the other in the realm of Process, in our own Universe'; and, by continually using the words and assigning every phenomenon to the one or the other category, we come to think that, both by instinct and by the more detailed attack of thought, we hold an adequate experience of our minds without more ado.
vii(11) Augustine certainly does not place any moral culpability on infants here, which I believe he makes clear by his reference to the "coming of age," meaning when the rational faculties become sufficiently developed. For Augustine, reason should always guide humans to positive moral behavior, and so the evidence of our fallen condition will not be so much the jealous eyes of an irrational infant (though that is a lesser effect of the Fall), but the immoral behavior of a person with a mature faculty of reason.
viii(13) Augustine recognizes the continuity of identity. The stage of his life has advanced from infancy to boyhood, but the infant has not gone away. The person he was in his mother's womb, the person he was as an infant. The person he was in his mother's womb, the person he was as an infant, and the person he describes as a boy, are all the same, just in different stages. Reminiscent of Aristotle's idea of substantial and accidental change.
ix(14) Augustine is clearly not a fan of corporal punishment. I think Augustine also says something important about how children are taught about God, and how if they are taught poor theology as children, they will grow up basing their discernments of God on that early teaching. Perhaps then it is important to develop sound education in faith just as in other subjects where what is taught is presented in an age appropriate manner but is nonetheless orthodox in nature. It seems that it is easy to fall into the Santa Claus trap: "We'll tell him the truth when he's older," so that children may be taught one thing about God when they are young, only to find out that it's not true when they are older, and that they were intentionally lied to in the process. This will only naturally lead to skepticism, doubt, and disbelief.
x(16) Here begins a common theme in Augustine, and it is important to note what he really seeks to understand. His lament is not that a child loves playing games. Rather, he is seeking to understand the motivation that differentiates innocent joy from the pursuits of our fallen nature. So it is pride, it is the thrill of deception, and so forth.
"Deliver also those who do not as yet pray, that they may call upon you and you may yet set them free." This one line is in keeping with Augustine's belief that anyone who sincerely seeks God will find Him, even if imperfectly. God's nature is to be found. God is for Augustine what Plotinus would call the highest object of all contemplation, and so the mind set out on contemplation, for Augustine, by grace will be drawn towards its natural object.
xi(17) The sacrament of reconciliation in 4th century Christianity was something very different in manner than the Catholic practice today. It was only available through a bishop, typically only available once in a person's lifetime, and the penance was typically very public and harsh. Because of this, baptism was quite ordinarily delayed, if not until death, at least until the child gets through the wild adolescent and young adult years (especially boys).
One thing that will come up several times throughout this book is Augustine's treatment of women. I submit that given the time in which this book is written, that Augustine's views of women are quite progressive, and I believe that has much to do with his adoration of his own mother, St. Monica. Here he refers to her as morally superior to his father, which is not a common sentiment in the 4th century, not as far as I am aware. It was quite common to consider men intrinsically morally superior to women.
Thus I believe Augustine also says something interesting about the family dynamic. In one sense, Monica took on a maternal and spousal role that was very much in keeping with tradition, and it was a great sign of her virtue and her humility that she did so. On the other hand, Patricus (Augustine's father), seemed to recognize her moral superiority, for he let Monica make such key decisions about Augustine's upbringing and religious education. As we will see later in the book, and already alluded to here, her great and radiant moral witness convinced Patricus to be baptized on his deathbed.
As the book proceeds there will be several insights into Monica's character that are timeless and worthy of consideration. What virtues do you see in Monica that are universally good and worthy of imitation in any context? Does Monica teach us anything about how to deal with conflict in our lives? These are some questions to keep in mind going forward.
xi(18) I believe Augustine is saying something interesting about the nature of freedom. There is one attitude that considers freedom to mean absolute license to do as one pleases, represented here by those who call for permissiveness prior to baptism. There is another train of thought, to which Augustine appears to subscribe, which considers formation in virtue as necessary for an authentic experience of human freedom.
This raises the question of Augustine's conception of human nature, which I believe is often misrepresented and/or misunderstood. Augustine believes that we are intrinsically good because we are created by God, but that original sin, the fallen condition into which we are born, fabricates in us an inclination towards evil, towards sin, and thus is a form of slavery because it prevents us from freely and naturally moving towards the good which is the natural telos of the human person. This understanding will serve as the underlying principle of Augustine's doctrine of grace.
There exists an interesting parallel here between his treatment of Monica's relationship to his father, Patricus, and man's relationship with God. If Monica found freedom in submission to her husband, who was not good, how much more will we find freedom in our submission to God, who is all-good and only orders us towards the good. Chadwick's footnote 20 is illuminating, as well.
xii(19) This notion of sin as disorder is absolutely essential in Augustine's thought, and also sheds light on our previous consideration of God's wrath, etc. What is experienced as punishment from God is often simply the experience of our own disorder – that is, the experience of being ordered, or re-ordered, in a way that takes us away from our natural good.
xiii(22) For this entire discourse on his education I believe Augustine is making an analogy to the disorder of the soul. For Augustine, this disorder does not necessarily mean doing something that is intrinsically evil. Rather, it means choosing a lesser good over a greater good – hence why it is disordered. We will see this in some detail in the famous story of the stolen pears.
Also, by choosing the example of mathematical truth, which he disdained to recite, versus the fables to which he loved to listen, there is a subtle point made about the fiction we pursue and thus call freedom, when authentic freedom is that which liberates us in truth.
xvi(26) Augustine brings up a similar point in the early part of City of God, where he responds to the accusation that Christianity and the imperial proscription against pagan cult caused the fall of Rome by arguing instead that it was the immorality and lack of virtue in the people, the people emulating the gods, that led to Rome's fall. Virtue is thus not merely a private matter but serves a greater good, as well.
xviii(29) Subtly here Augustine is moving along the hierarchy of goods. Previously he has considered how it is better to be skilled in reading and writing, in language, than to know fictitious fables. Now he is demonstrating that it is better to love God and be ordered by His law than to be skilled in language. Skill in language is an intermediate good, which means it can be directed towards good (praising God) or evil (praising evil men).
A Commentary and Discussion of St. Augustine’s Confessions
In another internet forum I am leading a discussion of St. Augustine's Confessions. I am going to post a series of commentaries on each of the 13 books, which I'll post at an accelerated pace, hoping to complete them all before I leave for the novitiate on August 13. I am going to post all the commentaries here, also, in part so that I have them all stored in one easily accessible location, and also in case any readers might be interested. Here is the introductory post I made in that community:
In the ensuing discussions on St. Augustine's Confessions, I will be working from Henry Chadwick's translation from Oxford World Classics. I believe it to be the best translation available both from a scholarly perspective (excellent introduction and commentary footnotes), and so it is the translation I most highly recommend. A close second is Maria Boulding's translation put out by New City Press in collaboration with the Augustinian Heritage Institute. If you have questions about other translations feel free to ask. I've read quite a few of them, and can offer my opinion as best as I am capable.
For a brief biographical sketch I would strongly recommend reading Chadwick's introduction. Just briefly, Augustine wrote Confessions between the years 397-399, beginning just a year after being made bishop of Hippo, an office he resisted greatly and did not want, but upon taking, found his Christian faith under attack by the Donatists, a schismatic group that once rather dominated the northern African region where Augustine lived. This book then is in part a response to those attacks, though clearly it turns out to be much more than that, as we will see.
Chadwick does a great job of pointing to the philosophical influences at work in Augustine's understanding of things. Of particular note is his Plotinian neoplatonism. I have access to the hard copy of the majority of the philosophical works that are referenced in Confessions (I took a course a few semesters ago called Augustine and Antiquity, where we began by reading those philosophical works mentioned in Confessions, then concluded with a reading of Confessions itself. Kind of the most awesome course I took at Villanova), and so when it seems appropriate I will offer some posts comparing what is written in those texts with what Augustine is saying, and I'll include block quotes of the original source material in order to faciliate discussion. One book mentioned, Cicero's Hortensius, is a lost text, though there are attempts to reconstruct it through sources that reference it.
While Chadwick and Boulding both offer excellent translations, it is important to note that no translation can really do justice to the literary quality of Augustine's writing. He is a master of wordplay, and most of the time that cannot come through very well in translation. From time to time I will post some examples of his Latin for those who wish to examine it and see a bit of his linguistic skill in action.
Even in translation, though, particularly with these two translations, his literary brilliance does shine through. It's important, however, not to get swept away in it. Our discussions will be most fruitful if they are geared towards cutting to the heart of what he is asking or what he is suggesting, so that we can examine his ideas critically. After reading this book maybe six or seven times now, I'm still working on really understanding him, and I've found it a very worthwhile venture. I don't expect everyone to share my passion for this particular literary work, but I hope the discussions prove fruitful and enjoyable nonetheless.
Finally, a word about reading timetables. Confessions is divided into thirteen books. The first nine are autobiographical, the final four are more philosophical and theological in nature, though are highly relevant to the first nine, and are fascinating in their own right, and in some cases rather progressive for the 4th century. I think it would be important, both considering people's schedules as well as the density of the writing, to take this slow. However, I have a limited amount of time where I can really contribute, as I am leaving for my novitiate with the Augustinians on August 13, and I will be spending a good amount of time with my family preceding my departure. So what I propose is this: I will post my own commentaries on the books at a more accelerated pace, so that hopefully I can offer some guidance to discussion on all 13 books. I will post all of my discussions under lj cuts, though, so that people can go back and reference them at their own pace. As for an actual reading schedule, I would propose generally taking a book per week for the first nine books, and then maybe two books every three weeks for the final four. So that would total a 15 week reading schedule. That is just a suggestion, of course. For now, let's begin Book I. Tomorrow I will post commentary on it, and I will continue to do so over the next three to four weeks, when I hope to finish. Happy reading!!!