via Wikimedia Commons, CC0

From The Desert Fathers (ed. Benedicta Ward):

Lot went to Joseph and said, 'Abba, as far as I can, I keep a moderate rule, with a little fasting, and prayer, and meditation, and quiet: and as far as I can I try to cleanse my heart of evil thoughts. What else can I do?' Then the hermit stood up and spread out his hands to heaven, and his fingers shone like ten flames of fire, and he said, 'If you will, you can become all flame' (131).

Those of us who struggle with scrupulosity (myself included) fret about religious minutiae and often overdo our religious observance in an attempt to justify and perfect ourselves from our sins, real and perceived. Our fear of sin causes a great deal of anxiety; we struggle to know Christ's freedom.

The monk Lot shows us what the first step toward holiness looks like for the scrupulous person: a moderate (moderate!) rule, a little fasting, prayer, meditation, quiet, and cleansing our hearts of evil thoughts as far as is humanly possible (because having evil thoughts is sometimes outside our control).

Most importantly, Lot shows us the importance of seeking out spiritual direction, which St. Alphonsus Liguori says is necessary for the person suffering from scruples.

But as Abba Joseph shows us, there is more to Christian salvation than Lot's pious life. If we will, we can become all flame. This is theosis in a nutshell. Salvation is more than being saved from sin. Salvation is being saved for unity with God. And unity with God means being drawn into him to the point that we become him.

In Jesus our humanity has been united to God, which is to say that our humanity is united to divinity. God can do this without violating his nature as Creator or our nature as creature because he stands outside his creation. He is other and can therefore enter into his creation as he wills. He does not cease to be God; we do not cease to be his creatures. And yet we become him.

When we turn our attention from being saved from to being saved for, we discover how much God is fighting for us. For me, this was the single most important turning point in my struggle against scruples. When my spiritual director told me to meditate every day on God's love for me, I discovered that God isn't ready to jump on me for each and ever fault and failing. He is loving and patient with me because He wants - wants! - to give me his very self.

When I began to believe this, I began to experience freedom, despite those pesky scruples. I have learned that I can ignore my doubts (so hard to do, by the way) because God wants me to know the freedom he offers in Christ. By God's grace, if I keep my eyes on him, I too will become all flame.

via Wikimedia Commons, CC0

From today's Office of Readings:

From the treatise On the Trinity by Saint Hilary, bishop
(Lib. 8, 13-16: PL 10, 246-249)

We believe that the Word became flesh and that we receive his flesh in the Lord’s Supper. How then can we fail to believe that he really dwells within us? When he became man, he actually clothed himself in our flesh, uniting it to himself for ever. In the sacrament of his body he actually gives us his own flesh, which he has united to his divinity. This is why we are all one, because the Father is in Christ, and Christ is in us. He is in us through his flesh and we are in him. With him we form a unity which is in God.

How then can we fail to believe that he really dwells within us? Because we can only see two inches in front of our noses. Because the weight of our sin binds us to anxiety and fear.

I need to be reminded, over and over, that God is for us. Who can be against us? He united himself to my weakness. I need not be afraid of his just punishment if I remember that my weakness is my strength. 

In an effort to be an informed citizen of the polis, I've been reading Michigan: A History of the Great Lakes State by Bruce Rubenstein and Lawrence Ziewacz. This is our fourth year living in Michigan and I decided that it's time to concede its (Michigan's) existence and try to like living here.

The view outside our house this morning. It's Pretty, But It's April.

For me, learning to like Michigan means getting to know the state's history and its current issues. That it is an election year helps; I don't like going to the polls to vote on local and state issues without knowing something.

In the wake of having also read Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons, one paragraph in Michigan struck me in particular:

Growth of cities [due to manufacturing, including the automobile industry] caused new societal problems as well. Decreasing agricultural prices coupled with a declining rural population meant that the Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer being the cornerstone of the Republic was rapidly becoming a fading memory. (pg. 210)

Why the yeoman farmer as the cornerstone of the American experiment? Why not manufacturers? Why not workers?

My husband suggested that the farmer is rooted to the land and their local communities in a way city dwellers are not; therefore they vote differently. I will go one step further and say that the stability of traditional agrarian life lends itself to a strong, intact family culture, one that was lost in the American Industrial Revolution.

Michigan brings up the fact that the invention of the automobile lead to a weakening of family ties as young adults left home instead of settling in their own communities. Manufacturing cities became populated by people who left home. For a job, yes; to support themselves and others, yes. But as a collective, they were in many ways transients and therefore together formed a transient culture separate from extended family. To extend the "rootedness" analogy, these people were transplants, set down in the murky and overcrowded soil that was the poor living conditions of burgeoning cities.

This kind of city life stood not only opposed to agrarian life but traditional city neighborhoods, where families settle down within blocks of each other and where people get to know their neighbors because they walk, work, and shop locally. Traditional neighborhoods are like Cheers, where everyone knows your name. The primary difference between the traditional city neighborhood and the rise of manufacturing towns was the strength of its extended family ties.

The weakening of extended family ties leads to a decline in family culture, and as family is the most fundamental and important societal structure, this decline leads to the decline of the Republic. This is the argument social conservatives have been making for years, and there's a lot of truth in it. Family reminds us that we have a responsibility to others. Family leads to solidarity with others in a community as well. The more individualistic we become, the less we feel responsible for others' well-being. Does this affect public policy? Bet your life it does.

She's a pistol: My friend Jenny once used this phrase to describe her daughter, a bright and opinionated big sister and social butterfly. At the time I thought I understood what she meant. But back then I saw dimly, as through a mirror. Now, I see face to face. I have seen the εἶδος, the Form of Pistol. I was blind, but now I see.

Do you know the nursery rhyme There was a little girl by Longfellow?

There was a little girl,
           Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
           And when she was good,
           She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

That's my daughter. I was telling my husband the other day that it's a good thing she was an angel baby and that we bonded early. Otherwise she wouldn't make it to her third birthday.

Human development is a strange mystery. So is human personality. We didn't experience a typical two-year-old phase with our oldest, who has autism. Also, despite his tantrums due to his limited ability to communicate, he's an easygoing, compliant kid. His sister, however, has a lot more spunk and vivacity. She also has zero problems communicating. As my husband said, "Autism's looking pretty good, isn't it?"

I struggle with scrupulosity, especially as a parent. Underneath my day-to-day parenting decisions is a deep-seated fear that no matter what I do, I'm going to screw up these kids.

It's hard to surrender fear about my kids because I love them. They are the fruit of our marriage and of my womb. They've stolen my brain cells. They're mine.

But both human development and personality prove that, ultimately, my children aren't mine. They are unique; I can't fashion them into what they are not. I can only shepherd them, and even then I have to allow enough space so they can exercise their will: room to try, room to make mistakes, room to sin and repent, room to succeed and grow, room to discover in what particular ways they are the image and likeness of God.

God promises me a spirit of freedom when I have faith in him, when I remember that He's in control, not me. My parenting fears and scruples are futile. God instead offers me an alternative: peace. Thanks be for that.

Another confirmation from another Church Father (St. Cyril of Jerusalem) that God really, really, really likes us (yay!) and wants to transform us into His likeness. From this morning's Office of Readings:

From the Jerusalem Catecheses
(Cat. 21, Mystagogica 3, 1-3: PG 33, 1087-1091)

When we were baptized into Christ and clothed ourselves in him, we were transformed into the likeness of the Son of God. Having destined us to be his adopted sons, God gave us a likeness to Christ in his glory, and living as we do in communion with Christ, God’s anointed, we ourselves are rightly called “the anointed ones.” When he said: Do not touch my anointed ones, God was speaking of us.

We became “the anointed ones” when we received the sign of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, everything took place in us by means of images, because we ourselves are images of Christ. Christ bathed in the river Jordan, imparting to its waters the fragrance of his divinity, and when he came up from them the Holy Spirit descended upon him, like resting upon like. So we also, after coming up from the sacred waters of baptism, were anointed with chrism, which signifies the Holy Spirit, by whom Christ was anointed and of whom blessed Isaiah prophesied in the name of the Lord: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor.

Christ’s anointing was not by human hands, nor was it with ordinary oil. On the contrary, having destined him to be the Savior of the whole world, the Father himself anointed him with the Holy Spirit. The words of Peter bear witness to this: Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit. And David the prophet proclaimed: Your throne, O God, shall endure for ever; your royal scepter is a scepter of justice. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above all your fellows.

The oil of gladness with which Christ was anointed was a spiritual oil; it was in fact the Holy Spirit himself, who is called the oil of gladness because he is the source of spiritual joy. But we too have been anointed with oil, and by this anointing we have entered into fellowship with Christ and have received a share in his life. Beware of thinking that this holy oil is simply ordinary oil and nothing else. After the invocation of the Spirit it is no longer ordinary oil but the gift of Christ, and by the presence of his divinity it becomes the instrument through which we receive the Holy Spirit. While symbolically, on our foreheads and senses, our bodies are anointed with this oil that we see, our souls are sanctified by the holy and life-giving Spirit.

(Emphases mine.)

Reading this, I can't help but wonder, What happens to a person when God is within? We're so used to talking about Jesus In My Heart, etc., etc., that we don't stop to think about how scandalous and radical the basic tenets of our faith are.

The Holy Spirit dwells within - That's GOD HIMSELF! We receive Jesus in Holy Eucharist, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - That's GOD HIMSELF!

We believe that God comes to dwell within us, and not metaphorically in a psychologically-affirming, warm-fuzzies way. No, we mean that literally - God is within! And because He is, something happens to us: He comes within so that we might have union with Him. Our nature is elevated by the fact of his not-merely-metaphorical redemptive presence. 

!!!

The Good News of the Gospel cannot be reduced to some nice platitudes that get cross-stitched on throw pillows. The Good News of the Gospel is not that Jesus Christ will make you feel better about yourself (though I hope you do). The Good News of the Gospel is that the God will transform and transfigure us into Himself. He loves us that much.