Latest Patristics Post

Over at the patristics blog I've just begun a series on St. Basil the Great. The first post is just a very brief introduction to his life. This weekend I will begin the posts discussing some of his writings. Check out the intro post here.

Heresy and Prayer

I'm getting verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves, I'll give you a topic: heresy and prayer. (SNL reference for those who are lost).

Recently in class we've been discussing heresy. Not so much the specific heresies, though that's been touched upon, but rather heresy as such. Today we had an interesting discussion that I thought could lead to a fruitful discussion here: Can heresy affect one's life of prayer? If so, how? Feel free to discuss the specifics of what you understand a particular heresy to be, or simply to discuss in general terms.

For the sake of this discussion, and to keep things on track, I don't think it's necessary to argue about whether or not something is actually a heresy, or to get into lots of mud throwing there, fun as that might be otherwise :)

The Illusion of Sin

Jesus wants me to tell you again...how much is the love He has for each one of you - beyond all what you can imagine...Not only He loves you, even more - He longs for you. He misses you when you don't come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don't feel worthy.
--Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, p. 42

This is the real message of the death and resurrection of Christ, that we have a God who not only loves us, but who longs for us, who actually aches when we are not with Him and when we don't know how much we are loved by Him.

Feeling unworthy of God's love can often seem like a kind of humility, but it's a lie. We are worthy because God makes us worthy. We are made by God to be loved by God, and recognizing our being loved opens us up to the fullness of life, a life perfect in joy, in hope, in peace. The message of the Cross is our constant reminder that we are worthy, because God has entered into our human condition, as broken as it may be, and bridged the imaginary divide between God and man. By our faith in Jesus Christ, that bridge not only vertically unites us to God, but horizontally unites us to our fellow man, as well. Faith in Christ enables us to love like Christ, to love as He has loved us, to pour ourselves out for the salvation of the lost and the hopeless, by bringing them the light of Christ which alone can dissipate the darkness of sin's illusion.

That's exactly what sin is, an illusion. Rather, sin creates an illusory separation from God, but if we were truly separated from God we simply would not exist, we would not be. What does St. Paul say? "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:38-39, RSV).

Yet no matter how illusory this perceived separation may be, it nonetheless affects us as reality itself, and we experience this separation as true. This is why we pray, why we have liturgy, why we do good works for the love of God, why Christ gave us His Body in the Eucharist, why we read Scripture, why we listen to sermons, why we mutually share our faith, because in all of this we are strengthened in the hope of the Gospel and come to know our true union with God, and our awareness of this union enables us to live as children of the light, as daughters and sons of God. God communicates His very life to us so that we might always be strenghtened by the life we live in Him eternally. Jesus Christ is risen and has ascended to the Father in heaven, and in some sense, we too have already risen with Him, even if our resurrection is not yet fully realized.

Perhaps this also sheds some light on the mysterious connection between the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. By grace Mary was conceived without sin, by grace sustained in her life free from sin, and so without the burden of sin she was free to be fully realized in the resurrection. With us, then, purification is simply a means of dispelling the illusions that infect our souls so that we may walk only in Truth through faith in Christ Jesus.

Perhaps the most insidious illusion of all that afflicts so many of us is precisely the one that Mother Teresa alluded to in the opening, that we are somehow unworthy of God's love. We are redeemed by Christ and purified in His Blood, and we have been anointed and gifted with the very Spirit of God. We are worthy, because God has made us so. And the key to our satisfying this great longing of God, the seemingly unquenchable thirst of Christ, is simply to live in the knowledge that He loves us, and from a place of thanksgiving to love in return, holding nothing back from God and pouring ourselves out entirely in love of man.

Another Puzzle Piece

As a follow up to my post from yesterday, a few more thoughts have come to me. One piece of the puzzle that I'd considered and then forgotten about is my thyroid medication. Whatever this little depression is that I'm experiencing right now, it's the second time this year that it's happened. I wrote about the first time as well, and the first one was way worse. But there is a common factor in both of these, in that both times it has coincided with a reduction in my thyroid medication, from 224 mcg to 200 mcg. The first time I told my endocrinologist about how it was making me feel, and he upped it back to the 224. But after my most recent bloodwork he said that he has to drop it down again, because certain levels are high, which means that my medication is overcompensating.

When this happened the first time I thought that it was just that with the lower dosage that my metabolism was slowing down and all the other things that the thyroid does, and that this was making me depressed and lethargic. But now I'm wondering if perhaps it's not the other way around, that at the higher dosage the increased hormone release was masking something else underlying, since depression is something I've battled off and on for much of my life. Later on today I'll talk to the novice master and ask permission to see a psychologist so maybe we can work some of these things out. I imagine he'll be pretty open to the idea.

Another thing I want to make clear, since it came up in the comments, is that I am actively attending AA meetings and working with a sponsor. When I wrote about my being an alcoholic, I only mean that there are patterns of thinking and patterns of psychology that afflict alcoholics, typically underlying issues that contribute to the alcoholic drinking in the first place, and which are exacerbated by the drinking, and thus ultimately need to be dealt with in sobriety. Yes I'm sober, but I still need to work through these underlying issues, even though I've done some great work on this so far.

One thing that does encourage me is that I'm handling this in a much healthier way than the last time. For one thing, this mild depression hasn't overtaken my life as it has in the past. I'm not skipping prayer, I'm eating healthy and exercising regularly - in fact, physically I look and feel better than I have all year. I'm also not lashing out in anger at anyone, even if quietly I'm still dealing with some episodes of anger. I'm getting much better at dealing with all of that in a healthy way.

Again, I want to be clear, this isn't anything serious, so those who worry about me shouldn't worry about this. It's not any kind of serious depression, and if I do end up seeing someone about it it's only because I want to make sure it stays not a serious depression, and that I have all the tools I need to deal with this in a healthy manner. As always, thank you all for your prayers.

A Bit of Easter Melancholy

Happy Easter everyone! I had a relatively nice hiatus from the social communications world of technology, though not as fruitful as I would have liked, I'm afraid. The purpose of my going offline as I did was so that I could enter more deeply into the Lenten season and hopefully do some solid work in breaking myself of the poor habits that continue to afflict me and I believe are detrimental to living the kind of religious life that I believe I want to live. It can be very frustrating at times. Intellectually I have a certain vision of how I want to be, but in terms of exerting the will to make the sorts of changes that I think I want, my heart is only halfway invested, at most. I have been able to spend a little bit of time reflecting on all of this, and I have several currents of thought that I'd like to explore in this post.

One of the things that is clear to me is that there are certain things about religious life and about the life of faith in general to which I am attracted both for the right and the wrong reasons. This is true of the lesser important, accidentals, if you will, things, as well as those things more essential. A typical example is my attraction to wearing the habit, which in my community of Augustinians is no small matter of contention. There are the right reasons, which is to say that it's an important sacramental sign of religious consecration and of God's presence in the world through the Church, at a time when these signs and external manifestations are, in my estimation, increasingly important. But there are also the wrong reasons in me, as well, such as a certain sentimentality for a past to which I have no connection, which I believe perhaps belies a deeper underlying issue with me, a sort of escapism, and which is probably directly related in some way to my alcoholism and my addiction, in that the underlying psychologies that led me to addiction I think perhaps are equally present in this sentimentality that often pervades my life in all sorts of ways (love for old cars, shaving with a straight blade, all kinds of goofy eccentrisms like that).

If I am right about this, and I'm not certain that I am (this is the blogger's version of the extrovert's need to think out loud, so that what I say isn't necessarily what I ultimately mean, it's just helping me think things through), then one of the problems that I see and that perhaps is what keeps getting me into trouble is that I think maybe this wrong reason also emotionally motivates me much more significantly, and this often leads to anger and argumentativeness in ways that are unhealthy. But again, in these things there are also right reasons for my desires, and it is my belief at this point if I can work towards a better emotional and psychological health then I can perhaps actually be a more integrated and effective member of my own community and actually be a helpful presence in articulating and living the values that I do believe to be important. The unhealthy psychology, though - always keep in mind (I say this to me more than to my reader) that I am an alcoholic, and that plays a much larger role in my psychological and emotional health than I've given credit in the past - consistently gets in the way of the talents and gifts that God has given me, and thus minimizes the effectiveness of my cooperation with the Gospel.

The other thing that I have really been struggling with is what the Desert Fathers called accidie, a kind of spiritual torpor. How this plays out practically in me is that, and this is directly related to my Lenten giving up of the online communications, is that I will often slip into a totally a-motivational "veg" mode, where all I want to do is sit in front of a television or computer screen and do nothing spiritual, nothing intellectual, just be, or not be. It's a kind of boredom, but more of a lack of motiviation. It isn't constant by any means, but it keeps coming back to me, and when it happens I descend into these spiritual and psychological spirals, a kingdom of being ruled by the tyrants Anger and Self-hatred. I suppose it's a kind of depression, and I've already decided that after this year is over, wherever I am next year I'm going to see a counselor, because I think that is going to be a necessary part of my growth.

Again, only thinking out loud here, but the other thing that is always floating around my mind is what if my anger/occasional depression/occasional boredom is because I really am not happy in this community. I do feel confident that I'm called to religious life, but I go through these phases where, on the one hand, I can't ever see myself as anything other than an Augustinian, and on the other hand, I'm terrified that I'm doing this for all the wrong reasons. Am I just afraid of making another change of mind, and putting my family through more torture? Am I just afraid of never being able to find happiness, and so settling for a community that might not be what I'm looking for just because I don't want to live in uncertainty anymore? I don't think these things are true, mind you. In fact, I'm almost certain that they're not, because I really am happy most of the time - just not today, and today happens to be when I'm writing. But again, given my tendency towards sentimentality, could that also be what's guiding my decision to be an Augustinian? I don't believe so, but I also believe that the decisions facing me require that I work through these questions.

Part of the problem though is that I just don't know how to work through them. I don't have a comfortable relationship with my novice master at all, and because of a variety of reasons he is the last person I would go to with these questions. I've been really let down by my spiritual director in terms of the frequency of our meetings, but hopefully in these remaining few months I can work all of this out with him.

I'm aware that this post is coming across as a real downer, so allow me to put a few things into context. First of all, within the next few days I have to write my formal request to profess vows in August. Second, on Thursday of this week the professed members of this community will be voting on whether or not we are approved for vows - it's basically a given that all four of us will be approved, but it's still out there as something to affect me psychologically. And so given the way that I think and the way that I handle things emotionally, it is possible that there is a hidden stress at work in me here that is causing me to dramatize some of these things. Of course, it's also possible that this is one of those few occasions of honesty coming from me, so who knows. In any case, please keep it all in prayer, which is exactly what I must do.

Oh, and Alleluia :)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! Had a wonderful Easter Vigil last night, and the entire Triduum was just amazing. I'll write more later.

Not sure if anyone saw this, but one of our Augustinian nuns, Sr. Maria Rita Piccione, OSA, composed the meditations for the Way of the Cross with the Holy Father in the Colosseum in Rome on Good Friday. Here is an interview with Sr. Maria Rita:





ETA: Text of a longer interview given by her that is chock full of awesome.