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Posted at: https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/kozinski-on-girard-and-modernity/
Showing posts with label desire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desire. Show all posts
Friday, February 3, 2017
Rene Girard on the False Promise of Modernity
Great novelists, however, such as Stendhal, Proust, and Dostoyevsky, show the truly negative nature of the modern project: “In the eyes of the novelist, modem man suffers, not because he refuses to become fully and totally aware of his autonomy, but because that awareness, whether real or illusory, is for him intolerable.”[1] But they also show that modern man is very good at deceiving himself. He sees that the promise of autonomous fullness is not realized in himself, but he continually finds others in whom he suspects it is being fulfilled:
Footnotes:
1. René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1965), 159
2. Ibid., 57.
Each individual discovers in the solitude of his consciousness that the promise is false but no one is able to universalize his experience. The promise remains true for Others. Each one believes that he alone is excluded from the divine inheritance and takes pains to hide this misfortune. Original sin is no longer the truth about all men as in a religious universe but rather each individual’s secret…[2]The contrast between the pre-modern “religious universe,” and modernity is important. In more Christian times, it could be recognized that the emptiness and misery of man were the products of original sin, and thus common to all, but in the age of secular humanism the experience of nothingness is a shameful secret. We can see here a reason for the infinity of desire that Girard does not make fully explicit: desire (especially in its modern form) is the desire to be God. God is therefore the ultimate rival, and desire includes an implicit hatred of God.
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Footnotes:
1. René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1965), 159
2. Ibid., 57.
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Source: Edmund Waldstein, "Desire, Deicide, and Atonement: René Girard and St. Thomas Aquinas," Sancrucensis blog, May 12, 2016, accessed February 2, 2017, https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/desire-deicide-and-atonement-rene-girard-and-st-thomas-aquinas/.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Repost: "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire"
But I also admit a creative appetite to destabilize what we identify
as erotic in contemporary society and to invite the reader to consider
that our erotic arousal may not be as natural or innate as we think it
is. That far from being the liberation we proclaim it to be, it is more
socially proscribed than we care to admit. Moreover, many the tropes we
identify erotically transgressive are often centered around nostalgic
themes of past prohibitions; thus making them socially ‘safe’. [...]
Indeed Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Barthe’s formulation of thedifference
between texts of pleasure and texts of bliss (or jouissance) seem like
an almost too obvious, too simplistic ‘fit’ for creative writing in the
erotica genre. And yet, the vast majority of erotic fiction available
accepts, employs and perpetuates normative erotic signification. There
is little recognition or interrogation of the fact that we, as subjects
in the Symbolic world, are unconsciously adopting the desire of the
Other as our own, including the explicitly erotic desire of the Other.
Our world is inundated in pornographic memes that act as
‘erotosignifiers’ – incredibly effective triggers for things we believe
we must, as normal erotic beings, desire. But these very erotosignifiers
are the ones that most efficiently serve to maintain conformity and
reinforce structures of hegemonic control over the erotic via, as Zizek
has described it, “the Law’s obscene supplement” (The Parallax View
366). For all our mainstream culture’s disavowal of mindless hedonism,
sexual objectification, decontextualization, etc., these disingenuously
disavowed, but implicitly employed erotosignifiers serve contemporary
power structures in myriad ways. They provide a libidinal valve for the
enormous pressure of the socially responsible humans we are enjoined to
be. They rationalize our concepts of eroticism, in terms of gender
designations and roles, heteronormativity, socially validated forms of
sexual expression. Finally, train us to a commoditized understanding of
our drives, our identities and our intersubjective relations.
According to Bruce Fink, one of the central jobs of the Lacanian analyst in clinical practice is to get the analysand to become curious about their desires and the structure of their fantasies, to begin to question and critically consider how much of their desire is, in reality, the desire of the Other. (52-53)
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Source: Madeleine Morris, "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire," Investigations into Reading and Writing Erotic Fiction blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.remittancegirl.org/2015/06/05/creative-incursions-into-the-mine-of-fictional-desire/.
Indeed Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Barthe’s formulation of the
According to Bruce Fink, one of the central jobs of the Lacanian analyst in clinical practice is to get the analysand to become curious about their desires and the structure of their fantasies, to begin to question and critically consider how much of their desire is, in reality, the desire of the Other. (52-53)
---
Source: Madeleine Morris, "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire," Investigations into Reading and Writing Erotic Fiction blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.remittancegirl.org/2015/06/05/creative-incursions-into-the-mine-of-fictional-desire/.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Modest Dress and "Evil" Beauty
Some liberally minded people object to modest dress because they say modest dress enforces a notion that women's bodies are evil, that the beauty of a woman cannot be anything but temptation, and therefore modesty is degrading to the dignity of women.
And it may be admitted that modest dress may enforce such a notion among some people. But is this possibility a sufficient reason to reject modest dress? No, because the connection is not a necessary one. There is no logical connection between modest dress and the idea that women's bodies are evil. In fact, quite the contrary.
As semiotic beings, we organize and interpret sensation into coherent experience through signs and sign processes proper to our biology. Due to this primacy of sign usage, every subjectivity with which we come into contact is experienced as an object. An object is already an interpretation of a subject. As semiotic beings, we may then differentiate the objective and subjective dimensions of any being presented in experience, understanding that what I experience has its own subjective constitution. In this case, a woman with her dignity.
But a man, as with any animal, experiences the woman firstly as an object to be sorted into three possible categories of fundamental interpretation: 1) an object to be desired; 2) to be avoided; or 3) ignored. Such a categorization isn't evil; this is fundamental to animal experience. To reduce the totality of a woman's subjectivity to my preliminary, animal objectification of her would be evil, but the act by which we categorize any object of experience into 1, 2, or 3 is natural and necessary.
Men who struggle with lust obviously categorize women into the first: an object to be desired. Why? They interpret this object of their experience as possessing desirable features and characteristics, and the object then presents itself with future possibilities of fulfillment in multiple ways: animal, physical, emotional, familial, spiritual, etc. But desirable objects must possess positive goods that are recognized as such in order to be categorized as desirable. Hence, a man who struggles with lust is precisely someone who is stuck on one feature of a woman's positive goodness in relation to himself, namely, his own pleasure-seeking. As we noted above, the reduction of a woman's subjectivity to this simple objectification is precisely the objection to modest dress, but notice that our analysis up until now has had nothing to do with modest dress. The objectification occurs all within a man's psyche.
Where does modest dress enter in? It enters precisely in two ways: 1) women seek to help men overcome this objectification; 2) men seek to admit their weakness.
1) modest dress ought to be a means by which a woman says, "I recognize that you have trouble controlling your desires, that you struggle with objectification. I want to help in the way that I can." We are not responsible for each other's actions; hence a woman cannot be required to help a man work through his own psychological mechanisms. But she can help remotely by not encouraging the man's habits by presenting herself in an overtly sexual manner. In so doing, modest dress represents that a woman recognizes the power of her physical beauty to attract the gaze and attention of another, and, wishing to help the other remain both attracted but not enslaved to solely that dimension of her subjectivity, she wears modest dress as a reminder that she is more than her physical beauty. Her mystique is more than the physical although the physical is certainly part of it.
2) men must be willing to admit their weakness. There is a trend in our culture to object to modest dress on the basis that men should be able to control themselves, and having women wear modest dress implies that men can't control themselves. And yes, that is precisely the problem. Women are not responsible for men's lack of self-control; that is not what is claimed by proposing modest dress as a help. We must stop fooling ourselves into believing that we have self-control; look around and be honest. Most do not exercise self-control. This is a problem, and it leads to problems. But modest dress may help take first steps by not encouraging the man to be stuck at the physical level from the very first moment. If a man doesn't notice and become fixated on the physical beauty of a woman from the first instant, an environment is encouraged in which the man may expand his conception of women beyond the pleasure he derives from physicality.
Modest dress ultimately is objected to because it hampers pure individuality, which is the core of the indifference we exhibit towards each other in the spheres of our lives. Because of this indifference, cooperation is characterized cynically as mutually accepted manipulation. Real cooperation, however, means that we cannot exist as self-sufficient beings, but we must exist always in relation to each other, helping and complementing each other, seeking support from each other. We can do this without having to be responsible for the personal choices we each make as individuals; on the other hand, we don't have to go to the other extreme and leave each other alone in our struggles to achieve moral freedom.
And it may be admitted that modest dress may enforce such a notion among some people. But is this possibility a sufficient reason to reject modest dress? No, because the connection is not a necessary one. There is no logical connection between modest dress and the idea that women's bodies are evil. In fact, quite the contrary.
As semiotic beings, we organize and interpret sensation into coherent experience through signs and sign processes proper to our biology. Due to this primacy of sign usage, every subjectivity with which we come into contact is experienced as an object. An object is already an interpretation of a subject. As semiotic beings, we may then differentiate the objective and subjective dimensions of any being presented in experience, understanding that what I experience has its own subjective constitution. In this case, a woman with her dignity.
But a man, as with any animal, experiences the woman firstly as an object to be sorted into three possible categories of fundamental interpretation: 1) an object to be desired; 2) to be avoided; or 3) ignored. Such a categorization isn't evil; this is fundamental to animal experience. To reduce the totality of a woman's subjectivity to my preliminary, animal objectification of her would be evil, but the act by which we categorize any object of experience into 1, 2, or 3 is natural and necessary.
Men who struggle with lust obviously categorize women into the first: an object to be desired. Why? They interpret this object of their experience as possessing desirable features and characteristics, and the object then presents itself with future possibilities of fulfillment in multiple ways: animal, physical, emotional, familial, spiritual, etc. But desirable objects must possess positive goods that are recognized as such in order to be categorized as desirable. Hence, a man who struggles with lust is precisely someone who is stuck on one feature of a woman's positive goodness in relation to himself, namely, his own pleasure-seeking. As we noted above, the reduction of a woman's subjectivity to this simple objectification is precisely the objection to modest dress, but notice that our analysis up until now has had nothing to do with modest dress. The objectification occurs all within a man's psyche.
Where does modest dress enter in? It enters precisely in two ways: 1) women seek to help men overcome this objectification; 2) men seek to admit their weakness.
1) modest dress ought to be a means by which a woman says, "I recognize that you have trouble controlling your desires, that you struggle with objectification. I want to help in the way that I can." We are not responsible for each other's actions; hence a woman cannot be required to help a man work through his own psychological mechanisms. But she can help remotely by not encouraging the man's habits by presenting herself in an overtly sexual manner. In so doing, modest dress represents that a woman recognizes the power of her physical beauty to attract the gaze and attention of another, and, wishing to help the other remain both attracted but not enslaved to solely that dimension of her subjectivity, she wears modest dress as a reminder that she is more than her physical beauty. Her mystique is more than the physical although the physical is certainly part of it.
2) men must be willing to admit their weakness. There is a trend in our culture to object to modest dress on the basis that men should be able to control themselves, and having women wear modest dress implies that men can't control themselves. And yes, that is precisely the problem. Women are not responsible for men's lack of self-control; that is not what is claimed by proposing modest dress as a help. We must stop fooling ourselves into believing that we have self-control; look around and be honest. Most do not exercise self-control. This is a problem, and it leads to problems. But modest dress may help take first steps by not encouraging the man to be stuck at the physical level from the very first moment. If a man doesn't notice and become fixated on the physical beauty of a woman from the first instant, an environment is encouraged in which the man may expand his conception of women beyond the pleasure he derives from physicality.
Modest dress ultimately is objected to because it hampers pure individuality, which is the core of the indifference we exhibit towards each other in the spheres of our lives. Because of this indifference, cooperation is characterized cynically as mutually accepted manipulation. Real cooperation, however, means that we cannot exist as self-sufficient beings, but we must exist always in relation to each other, helping and complementing each other, seeking support from each other. We can do this without having to be responsible for the personal choices we each make as individuals; on the other hand, we don't have to go to the other extreme and leave each other alone in our struggles to achieve moral freedom.
Spiritual Progress Requires Desire and Strategy
I wish I had learned earlier on the importance of two notions in all human achievement and especially in the spiritual life: 1) desire, and 2) strategy.
Desire is not simply vague wishfulness. It is tied to strategy. I desire some end. Now, I must take on the means to reach that end. This is strategy.
Strategy is a plan, concrete, experimental, testable. I propose tests to conduct, make records, adjust where needed, and continue. This is a heuristic process, self-correcting, like science. It is precisely what St. Ignatius of Loyola proposes in his Spiritual Exercises with the emphases on discernment and self-examination. Mental prayer is effective, says St. Alphonsus and St. Francis de Sales, to the degree that we make a concrete resolution, foreseeing possible difficulties and solutions.
Hence, I should always have a big picture strategy and smaller tactics to execute and organize that strategy on the concrete level from day to day. At different points, especially by the end of the day, I must go over the plan and the day, how it was executed, make records, note failures and successes, adjust where needed, and plan ahead.
Desire is not simply vague wishfulness. It is tied to strategy. I desire some end. Now, I must take on the means to reach that end. This is strategy.
Strategy is a plan, concrete, experimental, testable. I propose tests to conduct, make records, adjust where needed, and continue. This is a heuristic process, self-correcting, like science. It is precisely what St. Ignatius of Loyola proposes in his Spiritual Exercises with the emphases on discernment and self-examination. Mental prayer is effective, says St. Alphonsus and St. Francis de Sales, to the degree that we make a concrete resolution, foreseeing possible difficulties and solutions.
Hence, I should always have a big picture strategy and smaller tactics to execute and organize that strategy on the concrete level from day to day. At different points, especially by the end of the day, I must go over the plan and the day, how it was executed, make records, note failures and successes, adjust where needed, and plan ahead.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
St. Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Lacan on Desire and Sin
It seems that Lacan is saying in psychoanalytical language precisely what Aquinas showed was the source of sin: an apparent good that isn't truly in accord with reason. When we see things under right reason, we look at them, in Lacan's terms, straight on, directly, for what they really are. An object becomes desirable when seen "anamorphically," distorted by a subtle projection of our subjectivity into the object, a mistake in the intellect's judgment; this is the subtle relation between beings in nature (substances) and beings of reason, as Aquinas puts it, and their very close intermingling in concrete experience; the separation of the two requires a lot of reflexivity usually. It would be interesting to see a semiotic synthesis between these two thinkers because the experience is clearly rooted in the semiosic process.
Objection 1. It would seem that the will is not of good only. For the same power regards opposites; for instance, sight regards white and black. But good and evil are opposites. Therefore the will is not only of good, but also of evil.
Objection 2. Further, rational powers can be directed to opposite purposes, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. ix, 2). But the will is a rational power, since it is "in the reason," as is stated in De Anima iii, 9. Therefore the will can be directed to opposites; and consequently its volition is not confined to good, but extends to evil.
Objection 3. Further, good and being are convertible. But volition is directed not only to beings, but also to non-beings. For sometimes we wish "not to walk," or "not to speak"; and again at times we wish for future things, which are not actual beings. Therefore the will is not of good only.
On the contrary, Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv) that "evil is outside the scope of the will," and that "all things desire good."
I answer that, The will is a rational appetite. Now every appetite is only of something good. The reason of this is that the appetite is nothing else than an inclination of a person desirous of a thing towards that thing. Now every inclination is to something like and suitable to the thing inclined. Since, therefore, everything, inasmuch as it is being and substance, is a good, it must needs be that every inclination is to something good. And hence it is that the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 1) that "the good is that which all desire."
But it must be noted that, since every inclination results from a form, the natural appetite results from a form existing in the nature of things: while the sensitive appetite, as also the intellective or rational appetite, which we call the will, follows from an apprehended form. Therefore, just as the natural appetite tends to good existing in a thing; so the animal or voluntary appetite tends to a good which is apprehended. Consequently, in order that the will tend to anything, it is requisite, not that this be good in very truth, but that it be apprehended as good. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 3) that "the end is a good, or an apparent good."
Reply to Objection 1. The same power regards opposites, but it is not referred to them in the same way. Accordingly, the will is referred both to good and evil: but to good by desiring it: to evil, by shunning it. Wherefore the actual desire of good is called "volition" [In Latin, 'voluntas'. To avoid confusion with "voluntas" (the will) St. Thomas adds a word of explanation, which in the translation may appear superfluous], meaning thereby the act of the will; for it is in this sense that we are now speaking of the will. On the other hand, the shunning of evil is better described as "nolition": wherefore, just as volition is of good, so nolition is of evil.
Reply to Objection 2. A rational power is not to be directed to all opposite purposes, but to those which are contained under its proper object; for no power seeks other than its proper object. Now, the object of the will is good. Wherefore the will can be directed to such opposite purposes as are contained under good, such as to be moved or to be at rest, to speak or to be silent, and such like: for the will can be directed to either under the aspect of good.
Reply to Objection 3. That which is not a being in nature, is considered as a being in the reason, wherefore negations and privations are said to be "beings of reason." In this way, too, future things, in so far as they are apprehended, are beings. Accordingly, in so far as such like are beings, they are apprehended under the aspect of good; and it is thus that the will is directed to them. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 1) that "to lack evil is considered as a good."
First, St. Thomas, then Lacan as interpreted by Zizek.
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Objection 1. It would seem that the will is not of good only. For the same power regards opposites; for instance, sight regards white and black. But good and evil are opposites. Therefore the will is not only of good, but also of evil.
Objection 2. Further, rational powers can be directed to opposite purposes, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. ix, 2). But the will is a rational power, since it is "in the reason," as is stated in De Anima iii, 9. Therefore the will can be directed to opposites; and consequently its volition is not confined to good, but extends to evil.
Objection 3. Further, good and being are convertible. But volition is directed not only to beings, but also to non-beings. For sometimes we wish "not to walk," or "not to speak"; and again at times we wish for future things, which are not actual beings. Therefore the will is not of good only.
On the contrary, Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv) that "evil is outside the scope of the will," and that "all things desire good."
I answer that, The will is a rational appetite. Now every appetite is only of something good. The reason of this is that the appetite is nothing else than an inclination of a person desirous of a thing towards that thing. Now every inclination is to something like and suitable to the thing inclined. Since, therefore, everything, inasmuch as it is being and substance, is a good, it must needs be that every inclination is to something good. And hence it is that the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 1) that "the good is that which all desire."
But it must be noted that, since every inclination results from a form, the natural appetite results from a form existing in the nature of things: while the sensitive appetite, as also the intellective or rational appetite, which we call the will, follows from an apprehended form. Therefore, just as the natural appetite tends to good existing in a thing; so the animal or voluntary appetite tends to a good which is apprehended. Consequently, in order that the will tend to anything, it is requisite, not that this be good in very truth, but that it be apprehended as good. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 3) that "the end is a good, or an apparent good."
Reply to Objection 1. The same power regards opposites, but it is not referred to them in the same way. Accordingly, the will is referred both to good and evil: but to good by desiring it: to evil, by shunning it. Wherefore the actual desire of good is called "volition" [In Latin, 'voluntas'. To avoid confusion with "voluntas" (the will) St. Thomas adds a word of explanation, which in the translation may appear superfluous], meaning thereby the act of the will; for it is in this sense that we are now speaking of the will. On the other hand, the shunning of evil is better described as "nolition": wherefore, just as volition is of good, so nolition is of evil.
Reply to Objection 2. A rational power is not to be directed to all opposite purposes, but to those which are contained under its proper object; for no power seeks other than its proper object. Now, the object of the will is good. Wherefore the will can be directed to such opposite purposes as are contained under good, such as to be moved or to be at rest, to speak or to be silent, and such like: for the will can be directed to either under the aspect of good.
Reply to Objection 3. That which is not a being in nature, is considered as a being in the reason, wherefore negations and privations are said to be "beings of reason." In this way, too, future things, in so far as they are apprehended, are beings. Accordingly, in so far as such like are beings, they are apprehended under the aspect of good; and it is thus that the will is directed to them. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 1) that "to lack evil is considered as a good."
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Source: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, 1a2æ.8.1, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2008.htm.
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[392] [T]he Lacanian objet a whose status is that of an anamorphosis: a part of a picture which, when the picture is viewed in a direct frontal way, appears as a meaningless stain, but which acquires the contours of a known object when we change our position and look at the picture from the side. Lacan’s point is even more radical: the object-cause of desire is something that, when viewed frontally, is nothing at all, just a void— it acquires the contours of something only when viewed sideways. [...]
This is the objet a: an entity that has no substantial consistency, which is in itself “nothing but confusion,” and which acquires a definite shape only when looked upon from a standpoint distorted by the subject’s desires and fears— as such, as a mere “shadow of what it is not.” As such, the objet a is the strange object which is nothing but the inscription of the subject itself into the field of objects, in the guise of a stain which acquires form only when part of this field is anamorphically distorted by the subject’s desire.1 [...]
[403] The objet a is the point at which the subject encounters itself, its own impossible objectal counterpoint, among objects—“ impossible” means here that a is the obverse of the subject, they can never encounter each other in a direct opposition or mirroring, i.e., there is no relationship between $ and a, they are like the two sides of the same spot on a Möbius band. What this means is that the objet a stands for the “object as such,” the frame of a variable; it is in this sense (Lacan’s version of) the transcendental object, a mark of the “pure” faculty of desire: it has no substantial consistency of its own, it is just a spectral materialization of a certain cut or inadequacy— or, as Lacan put it concisely: “The object a is a cut” (“l’objet a est une coupure”).
[404] [...] the objet a is not the inaccessible ideal object to which no empirical object is adequate—“the object a is this inadequacy itself.” In this sense, the objet a is “the presupposed void in a demand,” the void that sustains the experience of “this is never that”: the universal (“object as such”) comes to exists as a pure gap.
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Source: Slavoj Zizek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso Books, 2014), 392, 403–404.
This is the objet a: an entity that has no substantial consistency, which is in itself “nothing but confusion,” and which acquires a definite shape only when looked upon from a standpoint distorted by the subject’s desires and fears— as such, as a mere “shadow of what it is not.” As such, the objet a is the strange object which is nothing but the inscription of the subject itself into the field of objects, in the guise of a stain which acquires form only when part of this field is anamorphically distorted by the subject’s desire.1 [...]
[403] The objet a is the point at which the subject encounters itself, its own impossible objectal counterpoint, among objects—“ impossible” means here that a is the obverse of the subject, they can never encounter each other in a direct opposition or mirroring, i.e., there is no relationship between $ and a, they are like the two sides of the same spot on a Möbius band. What this means is that the objet a stands for the “object as such,” the frame of a variable; it is in this sense (Lacan’s version of) the transcendental object, a mark of the “pure” faculty of desire: it has no substantial consistency of its own, it is just a spectral materialization of a certain cut or inadequacy— or, as Lacan put it concisely: “The object a is a cut” (“l’objet a est une coupure”).
[404] [...] the objet a is not the inaccessible ideal object to which no empirical object is adequate—“the object a is this inadequacy itself.” In this sense, the objet a is “the presupposed void in a demand,” the void that sustains the experience of “this is never that”: the universal (“object as such”) comes to exists as a pure gap.
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Source: Slavoj Zizek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso Books, 2014), 392, 403–404.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Tolerating People vs. Tolerating Sins
In the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11), Jesus tells the woman, "Neither do I condemn you." People usually stop there when recounting the story, but it doesn't end there. Our Lord then tells the woman, "Go and sin no more."
Why do people stop before the last line? Because they usually tell this story as an example of what compassion and tolerance look like. They say, with Pope Francis, "Who am I to judge?" They end up mistaking compassion with blindness, and divesting mercy of truth, they end up with self-congratulation that will lead them all straight into Hell.
Christ made a judgment of this woman's behavior but not her being. Look at His words:
"Neither do I condemn you" in your very being, which is good, created in God's image, and called to a life of union with Him. No matter what you do or fail to do, I love you in your being, being a person, being a creature, called to be a daughter.
"Go and sin no more" because what you are doing and have been doing will lead you only to destruction. If you therefore value your life and what is good, you will do what is good because our actions follow our desire and our values.
Christ tells the woman to stop sinning. By implication, Christ is judging her actions and saying, "You have been sinning." We might say in protest, "Who are you to tell me what to do?" But Christ is truth, and He knows better. Christ doesn't threaten her because He doesn't need to. Why doesn't He need to? Because he made clear the distinction between who we are and what we do. Who we are is good, but what we do is not always good.
Compassion is for people, not for actions. Tolerance is for people, not for actions. Actions and beliefs are open to praise or rejection. People are more than their actions and beliefs, and their value is determined by neither.
Why do people stop before the last line? Because they usually tell this story as an example of what compassion and tolerance look like. They say, with Pope Francis, "Who am I to judge?" They end up mistaking compassion with blindness, and divesting mercy of truth, they end up with self-congratulation that will lead them all straight into Hell.
Christ made a judgment of this woman's behavior but not her being. Look at His words:
"Neither do I condemn you" in your very being, which is good, created in God's image, and called to a life of union with Him. No matter what you do or fail to do, I love you in your being, being a person, being a creature, called to be a daughter.
"Go and sin no more" because what you are doing and have been doing will lead you only to destruction. If you therefore value your life and what is good, you will do what is good because our actions follow our desire and our values.
Christ tells the woman to stop sinning. By implication, Christ is judging her actions and saying, "You have been sinning." We might say in protest, "Who are you to tell me what to do?" But Christ is truth, and He knows better. Christ doesn't threaten her because He doesn't need to. Why doesn't He need to? Because he made clear the distinction between who we are and what we do. Who we are is good, but what we do is not always good.
Compassion is for people, not for actions. Tolerance is for people, not for actions. Actions and beliefs are open to praise or rejection. People are more than their actions and beliefs, and their value is determined by neither.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
"When you interrupt a girl's school day to force her" Meme Analysis
Regarding http://viralwomen.com/post/make_this_go_viral_pass_it_on:
Sexism isn't the issue here. The real issue is the "Law": even in the hypothetical world of unlimited liberty, "Law" would still dominate because the hypothetical world is not real, hence symbolic, and hence dictated and circumscribed by the dynamics of language, of limit. Limit means the condition for desire, but it simultaneously is the barring of desire. I can't have it—so I desire it—but I can't have it, so I am not free.
But, after knowing this dynamic of the Law and liberty, one has only two choices remaining: to submit or to defy. To submit would mean accepting our condition and moving forward. To defy would mean deliberately remaining in a fantasy world in which unlimited liberty is attempted.
To bring this matter into concrete terms: in life, we must submit to rules, even if these rules are without reason, because if we don't, there will be consequences. Sometimes who happens to actually get punished is not as justice dictates—sometimes a woman gets punished more than a man or vice versa. But regardless, the rules exist, and to move forward in normal society, one must submit to the rules. There is nothing wrong with this, nor does it suggest that rules cannot be questioned or changed, but rules must exist in one form or another, and they ought to exist to preserve some sort of freedom.
Either school is about education or it is not. If it is about education, then the rules ought to protect this value, no matter how people feel or think about the specific content of the rules themselves; the specific content is immaterial, but the form or actual structure provided by the rules is essential. The true, passionate pursuit of education, then, means that one will go to any lengths to obtain education, and submission to the rules becomes a nothing rather than the over-exaggerated focus of an impossible fantasy function seeking unlimited freedom. It doesn't matter if boys can or cannot control themselves. If the boy really wants to be educated, put a naked woman in the class—it won't matter to him because he is not there for the woman but for the education. But if the boy doesn't really desire education, then you could put a nun in the class, and he will still indulge in sexual fantasies even regarding the nun. Likewise, if a woman is pursuing education, then what she wears is immaterial. She will submit to the Law, just as the boy submits. Both submit.
This meme is about freedom, not the freedom to chose, but the freedom to pursue education, and the freedom to pursue education limits pure individuality, or the ego, which seeks infinity. It desires infinity, but the pursuit of the object of desire necessarily is a finite and defining project.
---
But what about the meme's internal construction? For one thing, it actually is a very manifestation of the sexism that it attacks, for it seeks to place the onus on men for limiting the freedom to choose to dress as a woman pleases. It implicates men as weak, selfish creatures for being unable to control their impulses. Finally, it locates the strength that upholds rules in men. (Some might also argue that the meme is a manifestation of so-called "heterosexism" because its dichotomy is between women and men who desire women—and even if the men didn't desire women, the meme is still man vs. woman). Women are complete, helpless victims; men are always scot-free. These are all sexist assumptions and disrespectful to the data. Actually treating men and women as equal means an equal submission to the law and equal punishment for its violation. Equality here is therefore defined with respect to submission and commitment to the law (and by implication, consequences for following or violating the law).
If someone wants to create a meme about how men and women are in fact punished unequally, then by all means, but that is a significantly different content than what we have here.
---
Further thoughts:
The psychological analysis avoids discussing whether the rules are in any way useful or "fair" ("fair" being such a vague concept that its discussion is relatively useless). The reason being that whereas the actual value of this or that rule regarding dress code is always up for scrutiny, the fundamental psychological-social dynamics that create the rules are simply unavoidable. Hence discussion of the rules themselves (concrete manifestations of the underlying psychological-social dynamic) may lead to a never-ending debate on dress code while always missing the fundamental point that the pursuit of anything, that is, the focusing of freedom on the pursuit of any finite object, necessarily limits freedom.
Why do the two pursuits mutually exclude each other? In that hypothetical world, they do not—one could go to school naked if one wished and still get an education. But we do not live in a hypothetical world; we live in a world of Law and conflicting desire. In the world of Law and conflicting desire, one cannot do as one pleases and must submit to the Other. Therefore if one actually cares about one's education, one will accept the limit of a dress code in order to unburden oneself of the hindrance of punishment and the subsequent deprival of education. If one cares about dressing as one pleases, one does so at the expense of education.
Besides, this meme comes from the perspective of one who has never inhabited any seriously professional world (of which school is supposed to also be, but American students in high school and up like to think that school means childhood and not adulthood).
Sexism isn't the issue here. The real issue is the "Law": even in the hypothetical world of unlimited liberty, "Law" would still dominate because the hypothetical world is not real, hence symbolic, and hence dictated and circumscribed by the dynamics of language, of limit. Limit means the condition for desire, but it simultaneously is the barring of desire. I can't have it—so I desire it—but I can't have it, so I am not free.
But, after knowing this dynamic of the Law and liberty, one has only two choices remaining: to submit or to defy. To submit would mean accepting our condition and moving forward. To defy would mean deliberately remaining in a fantasy world in which unlimited liberty is attempted.
To bring this matter into concrete terms: in life, we must submit to rules, even if these rules are without reason, because if we don't, there will be consequences. Sometimes who happens to actually get punished is not as justice dictates—sometimes a woman gets punished more than a man or vice versa. But regardless, the rules exist, and to move forward in normal society, one must submit to the rules. There is nothing wrong with this, nor does it suggest that rules cannot be questioned or changed, but rules must exist in one form or another, and they ought to exist to preserve some sort of freedom.
Either school is about education or it is not. If it is about education, then the rules ought to protect this value, no matter how people feel or think about the specific content of the rules themselves; the specific content is immaterial, but the form or actual structure provided by the rules is essential. The true, passionate pursuit of education, then, means that one will go to any lengths to obtain education, and submission to the rules becomes a nothing rather than the over-exaggerated focus of an impossible fantasy function seeking unlimited freedom. It doesn't matter if boys can or cannot control themselves. If the boy really wants to be educated, put a naked woman in the class—it won't matter to him because he is not there for the woman but for the education. But if the boy doesn't really desire education, then you could put a nun in the class, and he will still indulge in sexual fantasies even regarding the nun. Likewise, if a woman is pursuing education, then what she wears is immaterial. She will submit to the Law, just as the boy submits. Both submit.
This meme is about freedom, not the freedom to chose, but the freedom to pursue education, and the freedom to pursue education limits pure individuality, or the ego, which seeks infinity. It desires infinity, but the pursuit of the object of desire necessarily is a finite and defining project.
---
But what about the meme's internal construction? For one thing, it actually is a very manifestation of the sexism that it attacks, for it seeks to place the onus on men for limiting the freedom to choose to dress as a woman pleases. It implicates men as weak, selfish creatures for being unable to control their impulses. Finally, it locates the strength that upholds rules in men. (Some might also argue that the meme is a manifestation of so-called "heterosexism" because its dichotomy is between women and men who desire women—and even if the men didn't desire women, the meme is still man vs. woman). Women are complete, helpless victims; men are always scot-free. These are all sexist assumptions and disrespectful to the data. Actually treating men and women as equal means an equal submission to the law and equal punishment for its violation. Equality here is therefore defined with respect to submission and commitment to the law (and by implication, consequences for following or violating the law).
If someone wants to create a meme about how men and women are in fact punished unequally, then by all means, but that is a significantly different content than what we have here.
---
Further thoughts:
The psychological analysis avoids discussing whether the rules are in any way useful or "fair" ("fair" being such a vague concept that its discussion is relatively useless). The reason being that whereas the actual value of this or that rule regarding dress code is always up for scrutiny, the fundamental psychological-social dynamics that create the rules are simply unavoidable. Hence discussion of the rules themselves (concrete manifestations of the underlying psychological-social dynamic) may lead to a never-ending debate on dress code while always missing the fundamental point that the pursuit of anything, that is, the focusing of freedom on the pursuit of any finite object, necessarily limits freedom.
Why do the two pursuits mutually exclude each other? In that hypothetical world, they do not—one could go to school naked if one wished and still get an education. But we do not live in a hypothetical world; we live in a world of Law and conflicting desire. In the world of Law and conflicting desire, one cannot do as one pleases and must submit to the Other. Therefore if one actually cares about one's education, one will accept the limit of a dress code in order to unburden oneself of the hindrance of punishment and the subsequent deprival of education. If one cares about dressing as one pleases, one does so at the expense of education.
Besides, this meme comes from the perspective of one who has never inhabited any seriously professional world (of which school is supposed to also be, but American students in high school and up like to think that school means childhood and not adulthood).
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Repost: Lonergan and the Desire to Know
According to Lonergan, Aristotle expressed something fundamental in the opening lines of the Metaphysics: “All men by nature desire to know.” When the animal has its physiological needs met, it sleeps, but when the human has met its needs, we do math or theology or go exploring, for our intelligence is essentially dynamic love; so long as we want to know, so long as we care and direct our intelligence towards knowing, our consciousness continues to operate in a cumulative, self-correcting, and indefinite process of accumulating data and acquiring new insights. This dynamism is for some unknown, and we seek this unknown spontaneously, by some innate tendency, although it “is a conscious tendency . . . we do so intelligently.” Children ask incessant questions, without prompting, according to some inner impetus, although the dull child, the one who does not care to know, can rarely be coaxed or coerced into knowing if he lacks the desire, for knowledge does not just happen because the external data is present but because of the interior condition of inquiry and the interior operations by which we arrive at knowing. The interior condition manifests itself in questions, for we would not ask unless there was an unknown, and we could not ask unless we sought something. Something: what we seek exists as an ideal, but not clearly or explicitly or we would already have what we were seeking.
The transcendental condition of our questions is the dynamic desire to know, and to know what is unknown, an x, and this unknown x functions as a heuristic, as an intended ideal that as yet is not appropriated or known. It is whatever is intended by the question. But what is intended by questions is not empty or abstract. The condition of questioning is transcendental—the “pure question”—but “no one just wonders. We wonder about something.” Of course, we can wonder about many things, in many different ways, and there are different heuristics at different times, in different communities, and so on. The pursuit is intelligent and conscious, but it is not conceptually explicit, and it differs and develops as questions differ and develop, so “how do you proceed methodically . . . to the attainment of something that you do not know, something which, if known, would not have to be pursued?” According to Lonergan, the solution is precisely that metatheory by which we try to catch ourselves in the act of knowing which Budziszewski judged distracting:
Source: R.J. Snell, "The Meaning(s) of Natural Law," Intercollegiate Review, June 16, 2014, accessed July 1, 2014, http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2014/06/16/the-meanings-of-natural-law/.
The transcendental condition of our questions is the dynamic desire to know, and to know what is unknown, an x, and this unknown x functions as a heuristic, as an intended ideal that as yet is not appropriated or known. It is whatever is intended by the question. But what is intended by questions is not empty or abstract. The condition of questioning is transcendental—the “pure question”—but “no one just wonders. We wonder about something.” Of course, we can wonder about many things, in many different ways, and there are different heuristics at different times, in different communities, and so on. The pursuit is intelligent and conscious, but it is not conceptually explicit, and it differs and develops as questions differ and develop, so “how do you proceed methodically . . . to the attainment of something that you do not know, something which, if known, would not have to be pursued?” According to Lonergan, the solution is precisely that metatheory by which we try to catch ourselves in the act of knowing which Budziszewski judged distracting:
The solution . . . to this problem is self-appropriation. . . . The ideal we seek in seeking the unknown, in trying to know, is conceptually implicit. There does not exist naturally, spontaneously, through the whole of history, a set of propositions, conceptions, and definitions that define the ideal of knowledge. But to say that conceptually it is implicit . . . that these statements differ in different places and at different times—they are historically conditioned—is not to say that it is nonexistent. While the conception of the ideal is not by nature, still there is something by nature. The ideal of knowledge is myself as intelligent, as asking questions, as requiring intelligible answers . . . and if we can turn in upon these fundamental tendencies, then we are on the way to getting hold. . . .---
Source: R.J. Snell, "The Meaning(s) of Natural Law," Intercollegiate Review, June 16, 2014, accessed July 1, 2014, http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2014/06/16/the-meanings-of-natural-law/.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Distinction: Looking At and Looking Into
Relevant to modesty, there are two kinds of looking. First is looking at and second is looking into.
We look at a body when a body draws attention to itself in order to arouse desire. Of course, bodies cannot do anything by themselves but are controlled by people. It would be more accurate to say that a person draws attention to his or her own body in order to arouse desire. Lust is looking at bodies with such a desire and to arouse further such desire.
The desire in turn creates a fantasy in which the desire can be ultimately satiated although this satiation sometimes can even take the form of endlessly building up desire rather than releasing it. The fantasy focuses on the body, but its underlying mechanism and energy is found in desire.
The basic reason for creating this desire through the body is narcissism, and the root of narcissism is a lack of love. Love (as a noun) is a state of wholeness and integrity by which a person can live harmoniously according to the nature of his own being as a person—a substance who gives and receives of itself in relation to other beings. In order to reach this state, a person must first be loved (as a verb), and in the process of receiving love, the person is filled with love and can give it to others. When this love is lacking, the person lives on the verge of death, creating fear and despair.
Unable to withstand the pain of this proximity to death, the person seeks to create desire in the hopes that someone may love him. But the fatal mistake is made by drawing attention not to the deficient and suffering person, but to the body. The body, which becomes a vehicle of attention, the hook with a worm to drawn in fish, suddenly and paradoxically becomes its own end. Everything goes wrong. Instead of desiring the person, an attracted person desires only the body of the person that is doing the attracting. And the attracting person, forgetting or not knowing that he is seeking love and not merely the attention of another, mistakes that attention for love itself and thus finds ways to bolster the attraction of the body. Love is confused for attention, which is only the first step on the way to giving love (for we can love only what we actively attend to).
As for those who look at the body, because they remain fixated on the body and the fantasy—the image—, they cannot descend deeper into their soul and hence they either have no interior life other than the imagination or whatever interiority is present is quickly stifled. This is why the Desert Fathers noted that lust or sins of the flesh in general were one of the quickest ways of totally destroying the spiritual life and leading to what they called a distaste for prayer.
I would also note that looking at may also apply not only to bodies but to other creatures and things. Any-thing that is physical or at least can be visualized in some way and made the object of a fantasy can become an object looked at. Reading, watching movies, and all sorts of activities. Here, however, we shift from merely looking at and remaining on the surface to a slightly different but related notion of where one's attention is placed. When attention is not placed on the interior life, then the interior life is stifled. Hence attention has always been a necessary condition for effective prayer according to the formula that God does not listen to those who do not listen to themselves while praying.
But, on the other hand, we look into a soul and through the body when we exercise purity of heart. Purity of heart is the constant realization of and clinging to what is true and what is false in matters of true love. By doing so, the attention can never remain on the body because it sees the futility of doing so. Rather the person looks through the body to the soul and sees the truth. What truth is seen? Ultimately, purity sees the truth that most people defile purity, even by those who claim to uphold it.
Immodest dress always reveals an impure soul. A pure soul is not fooled by narcissism and thus would never dress narcissistically. Even if the immodest person is unaware of the mechanisms of immodesty and narcissism at work, that doesn't mean that those mechanisms are not in fact at play.
A person who draws attention specifically to the body cannot have an interior life beyond the imaginative realm for the very reason that the attention remains on the physical surface in order to produce a fantasy. Even those who focus intemperately on a certain spiritual faculty, such as the intellect or imagination, by being over-studious, for example, typically give little attention to the body and hence draw little attention. Although body and soul are not opposed in goodness, for both by being manifestations of being are intrinsically good, immodesty draws attention to the body to the neglect of the interior soul as well as the distraction of the will and desires away from the interior, where God is, to the exterior, where the fantasy thrives. Hence anyone who encourages this psychological-spiritual activity, whether consciously or not, is revealing a lack of interiority. If the activity is unconscious, as in many cases it seems to be, then the reason may firstly be due to ignorance and a lack of self-reflection, which would quickly reveal the emotional traps that a person has been going through, say in abusive relationships.
Just as grace can overflow to the body and have sanctifying effects on it—for this reason do we venerate the relics of Saints because in doing so, we can "touch" God in a way distantly similar to how we receive Christ in the Eucharist [1]—so too sin can have vicious effects on the body. There are some who are so depraved that one can see the emptiness of sin in their faces and eyes.
Nevertheless, modest dress does not necessarily reveal a pure soul. Attention to the externals of dress may be due not because of intrinsic purity but because of adherence to rules, a sense of duty, or the fear of punishment (and many other circumstances around the decision to dress modestly). A person can still obey the law even if they do not desire or appreciate the law or its deepest spirit and sentiments. Thus the law of purity demands modest dress, but the reason for this demand may be completely unapparent to a modestly-dressed person.
But what about those who know that and why the law of purity demands modesty and nevertheless are still impure? The only remaining possibilities are either weakness or malice in their character. And sometimes weakness can give way to malice and vice versa.
---
Footnotes:
1. Fr. Marie-Eugène, I Want To See God, trans. by M. Verda Clare (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1953), 30: "The transforming union extends its influence too over the sense powers and even radiates out to the body.... The body itself is sanctified by the radiation of grace; it is by virtue of this that it is honored in the case of the saints, and that God Himself sometimes glorifies it even here below."
We look at a body when a body draws attention to itself in order to arouse desire. Of course, bodies cannot do anything by themselves but are controlled by people. It would be more accurate to say that a person draws attention to his or her own body in order to arouse desire. Lust is looking at bodies with such a desire and to arouse further such desire.
The desire in turn creates a fantasy in which the desire can be ultimately satiated although this satiation sometimes can even take the form of endlessly building up desire rather than releasing it. The fantasy focuses on the body, but its underlying mechanism and energy is found in desire.
The basic reason for creating this desire through the body is narcissism, and the root of narcissism is a lack of love. Love (as a noun) is a state of wholeness and integrity by which a person can live harmoniously according to the nature of his own being as a person—a substance who gives and receives of itself in relation to other beings. In order to reach this state, a person must first be loved (as a verb), and in the process of receiving love, the person is filled with love and can give it to others. When this love is lacking, the person lives on the verge of death, creating fear and despair.
Unable to withstand the pain of this proximity to death, the person seeks to create desire in the hopes that someone may love him. But the fatal mistake is made by drawing attention not to the deficient and suffering person, but to the body. The body, which becomes a vehicle of attention, the hook with a worm to drawn in fish, suddenly and paradoxically becomes its own end. Everything goes wrong. Instead of desiring the person, an attracted person desires only the body of the person that is doing the attracting. And the attracting person, forgetting or not knowing that he is seeking love and not merely the attention of another, mistakes that attention for love itself and thus finds ways to bolster the attraction of the body. Love is confused for attention, which is only the first step on the way to giving love (for we can love only what we actively attend to).
As for those who look at the body, because they remain fixated on the body and the fantasy—the image—, they cannot descend deeper into their soul and hence they either have no interior life other than the imagination or whatever interiority is present is quickly stifled. This is why the Desert Fathers noted that lust or sins of the flesh in general were one of the quickest ways of totally destroying the spiritual life and leading to what they called a distaste for prayer.
I would also note that looking at may also apply not only to bodies but to other creatures and things. Any-thing that is physical or at least can be visualized in some way and made the object of a fantasy can become an object looked at. Reading, watching movies, and all sorts of activities. Here, however, we shift from merely looking at and remaining on the surface to a slightly different but related notion of where one's attention is placed. When attention is not placed on the interior life, then the interior life is stifled. Hence attention has always been a necessary condition for effective prayer according to the formula that God does not listen to those who do not listen to themselves while praying.
But, on the other hand, we look into a soul and through the body when we exercise purity of heart. Purity of heart is the constant realization of and clinging to what is true and what is false in matters of true love. By doing so, the attention can never remain on the body because it sees the futility of doing so. Rather the person looks through the body to the soul and sees the truth. What truth is seen? Ultimately, purity sees the truth that most people defile purity, even by those who claim to uphold it.
Immodest dress always reveals an impure soul. A pure soul is not fooled by narcissism and thus would never dress narcissistically. Even if the immodest person is unaware of the mechanisms of immodesty and narcissism at work, that doesn't mean that those mechanisms are not in fact at play.
A person who draws attention specifically to the body cannot have an interior life beyond the imaginative realm for the very reason that the attention remains on the physical surface in order to produce a fantasy. Even those who focus intemperately on a certain spiritual faculty, such as the intellect or imagination, by being over-studious, for example, typically give little attention to the body and hence draw little attention. Although body and soul are not opposed in goodness, for both by being manifestations of being are intrinsically good, immodesty draws attention to the body to the neglect of the interior soul as well as the distraction of the will and desires away from the interior, where God is, to the exterior, where the fantasy thrives. Hence anyone who encourages this psychological-spiritual activity, whether consciously or not, is revealing a lack of interiority. If the activity is unconscious, as in many cases it seems to be, then the reason may firstly be due to ignorance and a lack of self-reflection, which would quickly reveal the emotional traps that a person has been going through, say in abusive relationships.
Just as grace can overflow to the body and have sanctifying effects on it—for this reason do we venerate the relics of Saints because in doing so, we can "touch" God in a way distantly similar to how we receive Christ in the Eucharist [1]—so too sin can have vicious effects on the body. There are some who are so depraved that one can see the emptiness of sin in their faces and eyes.
Nevertheless, modest dress does not necessarily reveal a pure soul. Attention to the externals of dress may be due not because of intrinsic purity but because of adherence to rules, a sense of duty, or the fear of punishment (and many other circumstances around the decision to dress modestly). A person can still obey the law even if they do not desire or appreciate the law or its deepest spirit and sentiments. Thus the law of purity demands modest dress, but the reason for this demand may be completely unapparent to a modestly-dressed person.
But what about those who know that and why the law of purity demands modesty and nevertheless are still impure? The only remaining possibilities are either weakness or malice in their character. And sometimes weakness can give way to malice and vice versa.
---
Footnotes:
1. Fr. Marie-Eugène, I Want To See God, trans. by M. Verda Clare (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1953), 30: "The transforming union extends its influence too over the sense powers and even radiates out to the body.... The body itself is sanctified by the radiation of grace; it is by virtue of this that it is honored in the case of the saints, and that God Himself sometimes glorifies it even here below."
Friday, May 23, 2014
"In the winds that would blow then"
In a powerful scene from A Man For All Seasons, Thomas More rebukes William Roper for his blind eagerness to cut down all law in order to stop the devil. Roper does not see that in doing so, he would be doing the very work of the devil himself in causing social and moral chaos. Further, Roper doesn't realize his own weakness; he believes that he possesses the internal strength to face the devil directly. More questions:
Now, realize that someday all of those distractions will end permanently. You will have none of them whether you like it or not. And what winds will be blowing then?
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!Consider that there are other winds and other things that we use to protect ourselves from those winds. Consider, for example, the winds of our own weakness, the weakness that Roper was blind to. What have we planted thick with in order to keep ourselves from feeling those winds? Perhaps we're afraid to face them when we know that we should. Perhaps, knowing that we could not stand up to those winds, we fear them and hide behind distractions. What would we do if those distractions were gone? Like the Joker from The Dark Knight, who says, "I'm a dog chasing cars... I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! I just do things." We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves either if we had to face the truth of sin directly. So we distract ourselves.
Now, realize that someday all of those distractions will end permanently. You will have none of them whether you like it or not. And what winds will be blowing then?
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen on the Effects of Imperfections
[133] Because, writes [St. John of the Cross], dryness might very often proceed not from the Night, or purgation of the sensitive part of the soul, but from sins or imperfections, or from lukewarmness, or from some bodily indisposition, I here set down some signs whereby it may be known whether the dryness is owing to the said purgation, or to some other of the causes we have mentioned.
The first sign, he says, is that as the soul feels no pleasure and comfort in the things of God, so neither does it in creatures. This sign allows us to exclude one first cause: sins or recent imperfections. In fact these are often the reason why a soul falls into a sort of spiritual languor.
[134] Let us remember that, when he speaks, the Saint has in mind fervent souls, that is such as have set out eagerly on the spiritual road with a great longing to attain to sanctity. Since he knows that, in order to please God, he must be pure of heart, the novice who has entered religion really desiring to become holy has bravely undertaken the labour of perfect and absolute abnegation. He has definitely renounced certain pleasures, certain distractions, which held his heart in thrall in the world. He now sets himself faithfully to remove from his path everything that might be an obstacle to his spiritual progress. To speak in more concrete language: let us suppose the case of someone who, before entering the monastery, was passionately fond of playing cards. In itself a very innocent thing; in itself, yes, but not always in its consequences and under certain given circumstances. There are persons for whom card-playing is a source of continual imperfections, even sins: impatience, faults against charity, even against justice, are not rare among inveterate card-players. It is no matter for surprise if some soul, anxious to give itself completely to God and having experienced such difficulties, should have decided never to touch cards again. Perhaps he has felt the sacrifice in the early days, but to a spiritual person all these things soon come to appear but foolish trifles and the passion has been lulled to sleep fairly easily. But do not imagine that it is dead!
Since there are certain games not forbidden even to religious, it may happen that, in good company, our novice is invited to take part in a game which, for him, was once upon a time a continual source of failings. Before the urging of others, he gives way. He begins whilst keeping careful watch over himself but, forthwith, he feels that the passion is not dead! He is very quickly drawn into the old faults: impatience, temptations to cheating, anger become perceptible. Moreover, as he afterwards perceives, from beginning to end of the game all spiritual life seems to be forgotten.
When, on the same day, he goes to his prayer, or places himself in the presence of God, he feels that he no longer possesses the same serenity as before. He is a prey to certain agitation. In that hour of silence destined to converse with God, he finds he is pursued by vivid memories of the pleasure [135] felt some hours previously; he is even a little ashamed to perceive that he rather longs for other similar occasions. If the soul is generous, when faced with such an experience it reacts, asks God's forgiveness and renews, more decidedly than ever, its resolution to abstain from games of chance. In that case, it will be able to say: Felix culpa! But it is not always so, however. The first unfaithfulness will be followed by another, and that much more culpable because experience has rendered the subject aware of the consequences. These latter will make themselves felt much more strongly than on the former occasion. The passion will be fully roused and in the silence of prayer the soul will feel it so keenly that it will suffer disturbance and strong distractions from it. How can it hope that it sprayer will not suffer as a result?
"Every time," says the Mystical Doctor, "that the appetite gives way to some imperfection, forthwith it becomes inclined to it, more or less in the measure of the affection wherewith it applied itself to it" (Dark Night, I, c. 9, n. 2).
We have taken as an example at hint very innocent in itself and, already, we see how serious may be the consequences for the good progress of prayer… What will it be when there is a question of consenting to some inclination that is directly sinful, say in a matter of purity or singleness of heart? The religious who allows himself to be caught in the snare of a particular friendship puts a great obstacle in the way of his life of prayer. When we nourish within us a source of continual infidelities, the heart is inevitably drawn away by many inclinations to creatures. Now the more a heart is inclined to creatures the less free it is to occupy itself with the love for God. And as prayer chiefly consists in expressing our love of God, of necessity it will become less intense when there arise within us the evil tendencies aroused by our blameworthy failures. In expressing its love, the soul will speak less energetically; God's company, once its sole desire, will be less relished, will even be found boring, whilst recollection will be rendered difficult thanks to the numerous distractions which will be born spontaneously from the new attraction for creatures. Hence the soul falls into aridity; it no longer [136] finds pleasure and consolation in the things of God. But the same cannot be said with respect to created things. No, it has again taken pleasure in the things of the world and its heart desires to receive consolation from them. In this soul that has fallen into dryness, the first sign mentioned by St. John of the Cross is wanting.
Many souls, on the other hand, fall into dryness without this having been preceded by any willful imperfection. Unexpectedly they have found themselves transported from a region irradiated by the warm light of the divine Sun into a polar desert; there is no food either for the imagination or for the heart. Yet this heart wants only God and remains faithful to its Beloved. Here distaste for prayer is conjoined with distaste for creatures. The first sign of the Mystical Doctor is verified, but this does not yet suffice to recognize with certainty the aridity sent by God.
"The second sign," St. John goes on, "is that the mind ordinarily turns to God with painful anxiety, the soul fearing lest it is not serving Him but has turned back; seeing that it finds itself with no relish for divine things" (Dark Night, I, c. 9). This sign excludes another cause of dryness: lukewarmness.
Lukewarmness is a cooling-off of the spiritual life, a diminution of the energy wherewith the soul was following after perfection. It is often found in unstable persons, in emotional and changeable temperaments, ruled chiefly by imagination and in whom their actions are the consequences of impressions rather than of real decision of the will. It is not rare to find a soul that at the beginning of the spiritual life seemed fire and flame, but in which all this ardor was seated only in the sensitive part. Its fancy had pictured sanctity as a sort of charm, as a life not without suffering, indeed, but one wherein the divine consolations so far surpassed the trials as to render them all very light. In short, it has imagined the spiritual road to be a path of roses, the perfume of which so consoled the soul as to prevent its feeling the pricks of the thorns. It was urged to the quest of this [137] imagined ideal more under the impulse of some strong emotion than as a result of a serious decision of the will. Now, however, that it has come into contact with the realities of life, and finds from experience how much energy is required in order to go forward, it becomes tired of the continual mortification imposed upon it. It would like to take a holiday and, since this is not granted, it takes it for itself and then … these holidays never end! So it returns to a life more free, less recollected, in search of little human satisfactions and, naturally, all the fair energy of its early days disappears.
Moreover, not only the emotional souls are exposed to lukewarmness. This happens in every soul that, after a period of generous life, grows weary of mortification and allows itself to be recaptured by its self-love. How many young clerics, for instance, lose their devotion by letting themselves be overcome by a passion for study! Instead of considering study as an instrument of the apostolate, they seek therein the natural satisfaction of their intellect, or even, if they are very successful, an occasion of compliments and applause that ministers to their vanity. How can it be expected that the soul that permits itself to be caught again in the snares of its self-love will succeed in saying to God with conviction: "I love Thee with all my heart"? It is simply not true! That heart is divided. Whereas in the early days of conversion, or the entrance not the novitiate, it beat for God alone, now it follows its desires of personal happiness, personal glorification. Naturally such a soul is overtaken by dryness. When love is feeble, prayer is necessarily tepid; and when the soul is cherishing another ideal than that of pleasing God, it loves itself far too well to be able to love God intensely. Prayer will be full of distractions, it will seem too long, it will be easily neglected… We are far from the soul that, amidst aridity, turns its thoughts to God in loving anxiety, fearing lest it should be no longer serving Him.
"Hence there is great difference between purgative aridity and tepidity," writes St. John, "since tepidity implies no [138] little sloth of the will and weakness of soul, without diligent care to serve God; whereas what is simply purgative aridity carries with it ordinary care, together with painful doubt lest the soul is not serving God" (Dark Night, I, c. 9).
A soul that remains full of longing to please God, that suffers at the thought that it is not serving Him as once it did, that notwithstanding all the trials it experiences in prayer goes to it faithfully, as to an appointment with God, and would not shorten even by a moment the time which it has decided to consecrate to His service, that soul may be tranquil; its dryness does not arise from lukewarmness. That soul loves God. Its carefulness, its painful anxiety are unmistakable signs; they are the proper effects of the love that is ever anxious for its object, for the Beloved. Yea, it is a precious anxiety which keeps love awake in the soul amidst aridity. Happy the soul that is aware of it within! It may thereby rest assured that its trial is not unto death but unto salvation.
Besides the two former signs, St. John mentions a third, which has also its special importance. It is: "Inability to meditate and make reflection, and to excite the imagination as before, notwithstanding all the efforts we may make" (Ibid.).
This inability to meditate is scarcely distinguishable from the actual aridity; rather it seems to constitute an element of the latter. In fact the soul that is suffering from dryness is just precisely a soul that can no longer practice meditation. Therefore, for this to be a sign of the purgative aridity, it must be found conjointly with the two preceding signs; then, however, its value as a "sign" lies especially in the fact that this incapacity for reflection assumes a form that is ever more general, more thoroughgoing and more continuous. There is, indeed, a certain incapacity for meditation which results from temporary physical or psychological conditions. When we have risen very early in the morning, after a very hot summer night during which we have had very little sleep, we find our eyes heavy with sleep and, undoubtedly, this sleepiness will hinder the mental work of meditation.
[139] He who generously fights against sleep need not fear, for that reason, that he is not praying! He is doing even more than expressing his love, he is actually showing it in this trying struggle. We are supposing, however, that he resists the sleep; if he does not, and lets himself give way, he does not pray … he sleeps! The faithful soul knows how to profit by all the circumstances of life, whereas the lukewarm soul is continually losing opportunities. Hence he who is assailed by drowsiness is unable to meditate and suffers from dryness, but when the cooler weather comes and, with it, refreshing sleep at night, the obstacle will disappear and he will be able to return to his meditation. On the contrary, if the inability to meditate arises from the purgative aridity, it will tend rather to become permanent. At first there may be a certain alternation; sometimes the soul will feel inclined to practice meditation and at others will find it quite impossible to do so; finally, however, the distaste for meditation will become permanent.
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Source: Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, St. John of the Cross: Doctor of Divine Love and Contemplation, trans. Benedictine of Stanbrook Abbey (Cork: Mercier Press, 1947), 133-139.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Distinction: St. Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas on Freedom for Excellence vs. Freedom to Sin
Chapter 6, lecture 3, n. 501: But the one who obeys God is made a slave of this obedience, because through the habit of obeying the mind is inclined more and more to obeying and as a result achieves holiness. Therefore, he says: or of obedience, namely, of the divine precepts, which leads to righteousness: “It is the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:13).
Chapter 6, lecture 4, n. 508: In regard to the first it should be noted that man is by nature free because of his reason and will, which cannot be forced but can be inclined by certain things. Therefore, in regard to the freedom of the will man is always free of compulsion, although he is not free of inclinations. For the free judgment is sometimes inclined to the good through the habit of grace
or righteousness; and then it is in slavery to righteousness but free from sin. But sometimes the free judgment is inclined to evil through the habit of sin; and then it is in slavery to sin and free from righteousness. Now, slavery to sin consists in being drawn to consent to sin against the judgment of reason: “Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (Jn 8:34).
And in regard to this he says: When you were slaves of sin. Freedom from righteousness, on the other hand, implies that a man rushes headlong into sin without the restraint of righteousness; in regard to this he says: you were free in regard to righteousness. This happens especially in those who sin of set purpose: “Long ago you broke your yoke and burst your bonds; and you said, ‘I will not serve’” (Jer 2:20); “A vain man is lifted up into pride, and thinks himself born free like a wild ass’ colt” (Jb 11:12).
509. Yet it should be noted that this state involves true slavery and only apparent freedom. For since man should act according to reason, be is truly a slave when he is led away from what is reasonable by something alien. Furthermore, if he is not restrained by the yoke of reason from following concupiscence, he is free only in the opinion of those who suppose that the highest good is to follow one’s concupiscence.
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When we become slaves to sin, we are free from righteousness. But when we are free from sin, we are slaves to righteousness. Hence the arbitrary freedom of hedonism is diametrically opposed to the freedom for excellence although both make use of the will's profound dynamic energy behind habitus, whether virtuous or vicious.
Notice also how St. Thomas identified so clearly the false autonomy that exists in Western society today: "If he is not restrained by the yoke of reason from following concupiscence, he is free only in the opinion of those who suppose that the highest good is to follow one's concupiscence." Hence people say, for example, of a homosexual couple who "love" each other that they should be allowed to marry and follow their "love." The love itself is justification for the act. This is morality for excellence reduced to bestiality, the moral animal to the beasts.
St. Thomas also identifies the psychological indicator of slavery either to sin or righteousness: the predominant inclination to one or the other. Notice St. Thomas also says that we shall never be free of inclination itself, which is desire. If there is a predominant inclination to sin, such that we usually fall into sin by acting on that inclination, then we know we are enslaved to sin. But if the predominant inclination draws us to act righteously, then we know that we are enslaved to righteousness.
Hence the psychological test that I have given elsewhere to demonstrate one's predominant inclination, namely, can you go at least three months without fixation on some object or action? For example, only recently I was reminded of a song I used to listen to over and over when I was younger. The fact that I haven't thought of that song in such a long time demonstrates to me that I have no attachment to it any longer. I am "free" from that song, not a slave to it.
Then St. John of the Cross shows us that the way to freedom for excellence is to remove ourselves from that object of inclination and enter the dark nothings by which our desire can refocus on God. St. John of the Cross further shows that in the transforming union, the soul reaches such a state that although it may suffer temptations as God allows them, these are alien to its predominant desire, which is centered on God. Hence these temptations are hardly occasion for sin but rather occasions for further perfection.
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Source: St. Thomas Aquinas, Lectures on the Letter to the Romans, trans. by Fabian Larcher, ed. by Jeremy Holmes, Nova et Vetera, accessed April 23, 2014, http://nvjournal.net/files/Aquinas_on_Romans.pdf.
Monday, February 3, 2014
St. John of the Cross on Apostolic Work, pt. 1
Fulfilling the one thing the Bridegroom said was necessary [Lk. 10:42], and that is: attentiveness to God and the continual exercise of love in him. This the Lord values and esteems so highly that he reproved Martha when she tried to call Mary away from her place at his feet in order to busy her with other active things in his service; and Martha thought that she herself was doing all the work and Mary, because she was enjoying the Lord's presence, was doing nothing [Lk. 10:39-41]. Yet, since there is no greater or more necessary work than love, the contrary is true. [...]
A little of this pure love is more precious to God and the soul and more beneficial to the Church, even though it seems one is doing nothing, than all these other [active, exterior] works put together. [...]
Great wrong would be done to a soul who possesses some degree of this solitary love, as well as to the Church, if we were to urge her to become occupied in exterior or active things, even if the works were very important and required only a short time. [...] After all, this love is the end for which we were created.
Let those, then, who are singularly active, who think they can win the world with their preaching and exterior works, observe here that they would profit the Church and please God much more, not to mention the good example they would give, were they to spend at least half of this time with God in prayer, even though they might not have reached a prayer as sublime as [contemplation]. They would then certainly accomplish more, and with less labor, by one work than they otherwise would by a thousand. For through their prayer they would merit this result, and themselves be spiritually strengthened. Without prayer they would do a great deal of hammering but accomplish little, and sometimes nothing, and even at times cause harm. God forbid that the salt should begin to lose its savor [Mt. 5:13]. However much they may appear to achieve externally, they will in substance be accomplishing nothing; it is beyond doubt that good works can be performed only by the power of God.
Oh, how much could be written here on this subject! [...]
[Worldly souls] think these [spiritual] persons are excessive in their conduct, estrangement, and withdrawal, and assert that they are useless in important matters and lost to what the world esteems. The soul skillfully answers this reprimand, boldly facing it and all the other possible reproofs of the world; for in having reached the intimate love of God, she considers everything else of little consequence.
But this is not all. She even proclaims how she has acted, and rejoices and glories in having lost the world and herself for her Beloved. [...] If [worldly souls] no longer see her engaged in her former worldly conversations and pastimes, they should believe and declare that she has lost these things and withdrawn; and she has counted this loss such a good that she herself, searching for her Beloved and intensely enamored of him, desired it. [...] She declares her loss a gain, and as a result she became lost purposely. [...]
The place where people often gather for diversion and recreation [...] is usually called "the common." Thus, by the common the soul refers to the world, where worldlings engage in their pastimes and conversations and feed the flock of their appetites. In this verse she tells those who are of the world that if they neither see nor find her as they did before her complete surrender to God, they should consider her by this fact lost [....]
Those who love are not abashed before the world because of the works they perform for God, nor even if everybody condemns these works do they hide them in shame. Those who are ashamed to confess the Son of God before others, by failing to perform their works, will discover that the Son of God, as is recorded in Luke, will be ashamed to confess them before the Father [Lk. 9:26]. The soul possessing the spirit of love glories rather in beholding that she has achieved this work in praise of her Beloved and lost all things of the world. [...]
Few spiritual persons reach such daring and determination in their works. Though some do act this way, and are considered far advanced, they never lose themselves entirely in some matters, whether worldly or natural, and never execute works for Christ with perfection and nakedness of spirit; they think about what others will say or how their work will appear. Since these persons are not lost to themselves in their work, they cannot declare: "You will say that I am lost." They are still ashamed to confess Christ before others by their works. Because of their human respect they do not live entirely in Christ. [...]
Aware of the Bridegroom's words in the Gospel, that no one can serve two masters but must necessarily fail one [Mt. 6:24], the soul claims here that in order not to fail God she failed all that is not God, that is, herself and all other creatures, losing all these for love of him.
Anyone truly in love will let all other things go in order to come closer to the loved one. [...] She achieved this in two ways: she became lost to herself by paying no attention to herself in anything, by concentrating on her Beloved and surrendering herself to him freely and disinterestedly, with no desire to gain anything for herself; second, she became lost to all creatures, praying no heed to all her own affairs but only to those of her Beloved. [...]
The one who walks in the love of God seeks neither gain nor reward, but seeks only to lose with the will all things and self for God; and this loss the lover judges to be a gain. [...] The soul that does not know how to lose herself does not find herself but rather loses herself, as Our Lord teaches in the Gospel: Those who desire to gain their soul shall lose it, and those who lose it for my sake shall gain it [Mt. 16:25]. [...]
Everything is a gain for the soul whose gain is God, because all the strength of her faculties is converted into a spiritual communion of exceedingly agreeable interior love with him. These interior exchanges between God and the soul bear such delicate and sublime delight that no mortal tongue can describe it or human intellect understand it.
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Source: St. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 587-591, 29.1-4, 5-8, 10-11; 30.1.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The Shortest Way to Union with God
Some go slowly, others run, and others fly. Moreover, even among those who fly, there are differences; rapid is the dove in its flight, more rapid is the arrow, but the most rapid of all is the ray of light.
Do you wish to know which is the most excellent and the shortest way to union with God? Listen to the words of [St. Paul]: "Follow after charity" (1 Cor. 14:1). [...]
Charity is acquired by the practice of charity itself. Mark well that I am not referring here to exterior works of charity toward one's neighbor, which, according to the opinion of many, constitute charity. [...] Charity is something quite distinct from all exterior works. Charity is simply the love of God; or, in other words, inasmuch as God and love are one and the same thing, it is God Himself living within our souls. It is personal and infinite Love loving Himself within our hearts.
To exercise ourselves in charity, therefore, is to give way to God in our hearts. It is to detach ourselves from everything and to make ourselves an absolute vacuum in order that God may fill us with HImself. As the great mystic, Tauler, says, perfection does not consist in doing great things, but in letting God "be magnified, that is, made great within us" (Institutions, chap. 14). And in order to let God be magnified within us, all we have to do is give Him much space, to expand infinitely our capacity to receive Him. This we cannot do of ourselves, but neither will God do it unless we desire it ardently and ask for it day and night.
God is an infinite treasure and He wants souls rightly to esteem His value, to desire Him above all things and to plead for Him with great yearnings. God likes to make himself desired [....]
This most ardent desire for God is also what makes the soul fly and even shoot forth with the speed of a light-ray toward that supreme Center which so irresistibly attracts it to Himself. In its flight to God, the soul is divested of all that is earthly and mortal in its nature, and mundane things are definitely cast aside. In the holy exercise of charity one arrives more quickly at the summit of perfection and sanctity because in one simple act all the virtues are exercised and all vises attacked at their very root; for the root of all vices is pride or self-love and the root and soul of all the virtues is charity. [...] The soul must die in order to be united to God, and he who is dead is justified and purified of all sin; it is no longer possible for pride and self-love to reign in him.
This is the reason why St. Paul enumerates as manifestations of charity the practice of all the virtues (patience, benignity, humility, mortification, detachment, etc.) and the absence of all the vices (pride, envy, etc.) (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:4-7). Charity or the love of God, if it is real, must of necessity produce all these effects in the soul. If the effects are otherwise, then it is a pure illusion. Wherefore, if we dedicate ourselves preferably and above all things, with all the earnestness of our souls, to the acquisition of the love of God, we shall quickly and in a more simple and excellent way attain our perfection. [...]
The soul fixes its entire attention upon God and all its efforts are aimed at delighting and pleasing Him and doing His will in all things. In a word, it strives to love Him as He should be loved. As this is the soul's one and only objective, it forgets about self and is not concerned about anything except the sole object to which it aspires with all the energy of its being, which is the love of God or union with God. That is why however grievous and painful the trials God may send or however difficult the circumstances of its life, the soul's attitude in this regard is one of total indifference. It matters not whether it be in light or in darkness, in consolation or aridity; everything which may affect the soul personally is a matter of indifference to it. Its only occupation and concern is to love God, which it feels to be the only thing necessary. [...]
This is the path proper to great hearts and courageous souls who would be ashamed to bargain with God but rather abandon themselves to Him totally and without reserve. [...]
[The method of practicing the virtues and exercises of piety] is proper to beginners and also to the proficient. [...]
Souls will learn that an ardent, sincere, and profound desire to love God as He should be loved can admit of no deception, if, at the same time, it is accompanied by a desire, equally ardent and profound, to die to self and to all things. [...] In the desire not to be anything in anything whatever, to seek poverty and nudity of spirit, to desire to die in order that God may live within us, there can be no illusion. [...]
The best way of abbreviating all the spiritual paths consists in increasing charity by every means possible, especially by performing all our actions with the most pure intention of pleasing God, that is, by performing them with great zeal and with the sole desire of glorifying God and of praising His holy name.
This does not require much knowledge nor a great variety of interior acts. One act, repeated with all the fervor of our soul, would be sufficient. [...]
We should be indifferent to everything except God, who is our last end and our beatitude.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 30-39.
Do you wish to know which is the most excellent and the shortest way to union with God? Listen to the words of [St. Paul]: "Follow after charity" (1 Cor. 14:1). [...]
Charity is acquired by the practice of charity itself. Mark well that I am not referring here to exterior works of charity toward one's neighbor, which, according to the opinion of many, constitute charity. [...] Charity is something quite distinct from all exterior works. Charity is simply the love of God; or, in other words, inasmuch as God and love are one and the same thing, it is God Himself living within our souls. It is personal and infinite Love loving Himself within our hearts.
To exercise ourselves in charity, therefore, is to give way to God in our hearts. It is to detach ourselves from everything and to make ourselves an absolute vacuum in order that God may fill us with HImself. As the great mystic, Tauler, says, perfection does not consist in doing great things, but in letting God "be magnified, that is, made great within us" (Institutions, chap. 14). And in order to let God be magnified within us, all we have to do is give Him much space, to expand infinitely our capacity to receive Him. This we cannot do of ourselves, but neither will God do it unless we desire it ardently and ask for it day and night.
God is an infinite treasure and He wants souls rightly to esteem His value, to desire Him above all things and to plead for Him with great yearnings. God likes to make himself desired [....]
This most ardent desire for God is also what makes the soul fly and even shoot forth with the speed of a light-ray toward that supreme Center which so irresistibly attracts it to Himself. In its flight to God, the soul is divested of all that is earthly and mortal in its nature, and mundane things are definitely cast aside. In the holy exercise of charity one arrives more quickly at the summit of perfection and sanctity because in one simple act all the virtues are exercised and all vises attacked at their very root; for the root of all vices is pride or self-love and the root and soul of all the virtues is charity. [...] The soul must die in order to be united to God, and he who is dead is justified and purified of all sin; it is no longer possible for pride and self-love to reign in him.
This is the reason why St. Paul enumerates as manifestations of charity the practice of all the virtues (patience, benignity, humility, mortification, detachment, etc.) and the absence of all the vices (pride, envy, etc.) (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:4-7). Charity or the love of God, if it is real, must of necessity produce all these effects in the soul. If the effects are otherwise, then it is a pure illusion. Wherefore, if we dedicate ourselves preferably and above all things, with all the earnestness of our souls, to the acquisition of the love of God, we shall quickly and in a more simple and excellent way attain our perfection. [...]
The soul fixes its entire attention upon God and all its efforts are aimed at delighting and pleasing Him and doing His will in all things. In a word, it strives to love Him as He should be loved. As this is the soul's one and only objective, it forgets about self and is not concerned about anything except the sole object to which it aspires with all the energy of its being, which is the love of God or union with God. That is why however grievous and painful the trials God may send or however difficult the circumstances of its life, the soul's attitude in this regard is one of total indifference. It matters not whether it be in light or in darkness, in consolation or aridity; everything which may affect the soul personally is a matter of indifference to it. Its only occupation and concern is to love God, which it feels to be the only thing necessary. [...]
This is the path proper to great hearts and courageous souls who would be ashamed to bargain with God but rather abandon themselves to Him totally and without reserve. [...]
[The method of practicing the virtues and exercises of piety] is proper to beginners and also to the proficient. [...]
Souls will learn that an ardent, sincere, and profound desire to love God as He should be loved can admit of no deception, if, at the same time, it is accompanied by a desire, equally ardent and profound, to die to self and to all things. [...] In the desire not to be anything in anything whatever, to seek poverty and nudity of spirit, to desire to die in order that God may live within us, there can be no illusion. [...]
The best way of abbreviating all the spiritual paths consists in increasing charity by every means possible, especially by performing all our actions with the most pure intention of pleasing God, that is, by performing them with great zeal and with the sole desire of glorifying God and of praising His holy name.
This does not require much knowledge nor a great variety of interior acts. One act, repeated with all the fervor of our soul, would be sufficient. [...]
We should be indifferent to everything except God, who is our last end and our beatitude.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 30-39.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Begging for the Perfect Spirit
Another sign of the right spirit and that these desires [for holiness] come from the Holy Ghost is their sanctifying action in the soul. In the first place, the soul's intentions and desires are purified so that its love for God is most pure and disinterested, intent solely upon His glory and good pleasure. Moreover, the more intense the soul's desires for sanctity become, the greater its longings for purification, and the more the soul is purified, the more does it yearn for still greater purity of heart. Its greatest concern and solicitude is to beg God to bestow upon it that "perfect spirit" (Ps. 50:14), that disposition and those characteristics which are most pleasing to Him. Its constant prayer can briefly be stated thus: "Make me what Thou dost want me to be, O Lord, so that I may please Thee in all things. I ask nothing more for myself, for I do not know what is best for me. All I ask is that Thy will be accomplished in me and that Thou be glorified in me and in all things." The greatest yearning of these souls, the desire that inflames and consumes them, is the desire to glorify God and to please Him in all things. What they want and what they base all their happiness upon is God's interests, not their own. So we see the importance of these lofty desires and the great role they play in the work of our sanctification.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 29.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 29.
The Desire for Sanctity
He who is actuated by any other motive than that of pleasing God, regardless of what he may do or the extent to which he may go, will avail little or nothing. This is the "most excellent way" (1 Cor. 12:31) of which St. Paul speaks, and which consists simply in the practice of the love of God or charity.
However, in order to follow this course it is necessary to abandon oneself to God entirely and without reserve and to have a blind faith and confidence in the designs of His infinite love. [...] It will always be true that without trials and crosses it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God: that His grace, by whatever means it may come, will never fail us; and that our intentions, aspirations, desires, and efforts ought always to tend toward one and the same thing: union with and the possession of God. [...]
It is important not to intimidate [souls], not to confine them within narrow limits or suppress their most noble aspirations, but to animate and encourage them to rise ever higher toward God by making them aware of the infinite riches of His love and of His desire to find hearts disposed to receive them. The important thing, finally, is to teach them to overcome and detach themselves totally from self in order to receive these spiritual treasures. They must be made to understand that one does not reach this goal by way of high-flown notions or aspirations to extraordinary things, but through profound humility and the annihilation of every desire that does not proceed from a pure and holy love of God. In brief, they must be made to realize that they will love God in exact proportion as they die to self. What danger can there be in this? What danger can there be in inculcating in souls the desire to be nothing in order that God may become their all? [...]
If [souls] know that the normal or ordinary characteristics of progress toward the mystical life are not sweetness and ecstasies, but trials and crosses which are sometimes so severe that the master of mysticism, St. John of the Cross, compares them to hell itself (Dark Night, Bk. II, chap. 6), then they will not lose heart, but will be greatly encouraged to pass through the terrible desert which leads to the promised land. [...]
As long as they come to love God ardently and unite themselves closely to Him, what does anything else matter? Only one thing is necessary: to love God as He should be loved.
If souls are taught to ask, not for the extraordinary, but for the ordinary elements of the mystical life, that is, the substance and reality of these graces which give it its sanctifying efficacy; if they are taught to ask fervently and perseveringly for the perfect possession of the Holy Ghost and all His gifts and fruits, then we shall see His marvelous effects of perfection and sanctification. [...]
Ardent desires and aspirations for sanctity, then, should be fomented and encouraged. After all, how do we know that God does not call us to greater things simply because we have not experienced them? Did the saints, perchance, begin their spiritual life at the heights? What danger can there be in desiring to ascend with them to the summits they attained? These fervent desires are inspired by the Holy Ghost Himself [....]
There is no better prayer than that which rises from the depths of our humility and misery and from the desire to receive the Holy Ghost and be sanctified by Him, putting ourselves in His hands entirely and without reserve, so that He may do with us whatever He wishes and that we may be consumed by the fire of His love.
If we proceed in this way, there is no danger of being deceived. Deception consists in believing that we possess the divine gifts when we do not, or in thinking that we can acquire them by our own industry and effort; but to desire and ask for them with all our heart is not in itself a source of self-deception. On the contrary, it is the best means of freeing ourselves from all error and deception, for it is these gifts that "sanctify us in truth" (Jn. 17:17). This is precisely one of the signs of a right spirit: the ardent desire to know that one is not being deceived and to be sanctified in truth. Therefore, good souls are always fearful and uncertain, regardless of how great the graces and gifts they have received [....]
Let us not, then, suppress the ardent desires for sanctity in souls. [...] Let us foment them by every means possible, being careful only that they be real and sincere. [...] Let us be guided in prayer by faith and the impulses of our heart and let us constantly and ardently ask for a boundless love of God and the gifts of His Holy Spirit, for He himself has promised them to us and seeks only to find a heart upon which to lavish them. Nor let us forget the saying of the saints: The more God wants to give of Himself, the more does He cause HImself to be desired, and the more we desire Him the more does He give Himself to us, because the hope of heaven attains as much as it hopes for.
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Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 9-10, 23, 27-30
However, in order to follow this course it is necessary to abandon oneself to God entirely and without reserve and to have a blind faith and confidence in the designs of His infinite love. [...] It will always be true that without trials and crosses it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God: that His grace, by whatever means it may come, will never fail us; and that our intentions, aspirations, desires, and efforts ought always to tend toward one and the same thing: union with and the possession of God. [...]
It is important not to intimidate [souls], not to confine them within narrow limits or suppress their most noble aspirations, but to animate and encourage them to rise ever higher toward God by making them aware of the infinite riches of His love and of His desire to find hearts disposed to receive them. The important thing, finally, is to teach them to overcome and detach themselves totally from self in order to receive these spiritual treasures. They must be made to understand that one does not reach this goal by way of high-flown notions or aspirations to extraordinary things, but through profound humility and the annihilation of every desire that does not proceed from a pure and holy love of God. In brief, they must be made to realize that they will love God in exact proportion as they die to self. What danger can there be in this? What danger can there be in inculcating in souls the desire to be nothing in order that God may become their all? [...]
If [souls] know that the normal or ordinary characteristics of progress toward the mystical life are not sweetness and ecstasies, but trials and crosses which are sometimes so severe that the master of mysticism, St. John of the Cross, compares them to hell itself (Dark Night, Bk. II, chap. 6), then they will not lose heart, but will be greatly encouraged to pass through the terrible desert which leads to the promised land. [...]
As long as they come to love God ardently and unite themselves closely to Him, what does anything else matter? Only one thing is necessary: to love God as He should be loved.
If souls are taught to ask, not for the extraordinary, but for the ordinary elements of the mystical life, that is, the substance and reality of these graces which give it its sanctifying efficacy; if they are taught to ask fervently and perseveringly for the perfect possession of the Holy Ghost and all His gifts and fruits, then we shall see His marvelous effects of perfection and sanctification. [...]
Ardent desires and aspirations for sanctity, then, should be fomented and encouraged. After all, how do we know that God does not call us to greater things simply because we have not experienced them? Did the saints, perchance, begin their spiritual life at the heights? What danger can there be in desiring to ascend with them to the summits they attained? These fervent desires are inspired by the Holy Ghost Himself [....]
There is no better prayer than that which rises from the depths of our humility and misery and from the desire to receive the Holy Ghost and be sanctified by Him, putting ourselves in His hands entirely and without reserve, so that He may do with us whatever He wishes and that we may be consumed by the fire of His love.
If we proceed in this way, there is no danger of being deceived. Deception consists in believing that we possess the divine gifts when we do not, or in thinking that we can acquire them by our own industry and effort; but to desire and ask for them with all our heart is not in itself a source of self-deception. On the contrary, it is the best means of freeing ourselves from all error and deception, for it is these gifts that "sanctify us in truth" (Jn. 17:17). This is precisely one of the signs of a right spirit: the ardent desire to know that one is not being deceived and to be sanctified in truth. Therefore, good souls are always fearful and uncertain, regardless of how great the graces and gifts they have received [....]
Let us not, then, suppress the ardent desires for sanctity in souls. [...] Let us foment them by every means possible, being careful only that they be real and sincere. [...] Let us be guided in prayer by faith and the impulses of our heart and let us constantly and ardently ask for a boundless love of God and the gifts of His Holy Spirit, for He himself has promised them to us and seeks only to find a heart upon which to lavish them. Nor let us forget the saying of the saints: The more God wants to give of Himself, the more does He cause HImself to be desired, and the more we desire Him the more does He give Himself to us, because the hope of heaven attains as much as it hopes for.
---
Source: Fr. Victorino Osende, Fruits of Contemplation, trans. by a Dominican Sister (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1963), 9-10, 23, 27-30
Friday, January 17, 2014
St. John of the Cross on Why So Few Attain Perfection
And here it ought to be pointed out why so few reach this high state of perfect union with God. It should be known that the reason is not that God wishes only a few of these spirits to be so elevated; he would rather want all to be perfect, but he finds few vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work. Since he tries them in little things and finds them so weak that they immediately flee from work, unwilling to be subject to the least discomfort and mortification, it follows that not finding them strong and faithful in that little [Mt. 25:21, 23], in which he favored them by beginning to hew and polish them, he realizes that they will be much less strong in these greater trials. As a result he proceeds no further in purifying them and raising them from the dust of the earth through the toil of mortification. They are in need of greater constancy and fortitude than they showed.
There are many who desire to advance and persistently beseech God to bring them to this state of perfection. Yet when God wills to conduct them through the initial trials and mortifications, as is necessary, they are unwilling to suffer them and they shun them, flee from the narrow road of life [Mt. 7:14] and seek the broad road of their own consolation, which is that of their own perdition [Mt. 7:13]; thus they do not allow God to begin to grant their petition. They are like useless containers, for although they desire to reach the state of the perfect they do not want to be guided by the path of trials that leads to it. They hardly even begin to walk along this road by submitting to what is least, that is, to ordinary sufferings.
We can answer them with Jeremiah's words: If you have grown weary running with footmen, how will you contend with horses? And if you have had quiet in the land of peace, what will you do in the swelling of the Jordan? [Jer. 12:5]. This is like saying: If by the common trials (on foot) that form part of human life, it seemed to you that you were running because there were so many, and you took such short steps, how will you keep up with the horse's stride, which signifies more than ordinary trials for which human strength and speed is not enough? And if you have not wanted to forego the peace and pleasure of your earth, which is your sensuality, or contradict it in anything or stir up a war, I do not know how you will desire to enter the impetuous waters of spiritual tribulations and trials that are deeper.
O souls who in spiritual matters desire to walk in security and consolation! If you but knew how much it behooves you to suffer in order to reach this security and consolation, and how without suffering you cannot attain to your desire but rather turn back, in no way would you look for comfort either from God or from creatures. You would instead carry the cross and, placed on it, desire to drink the pure gall and vinegar. You would consider it good fortune that, dying to this world and to yourselves, you would live to God in the delights of the spirit, and patiently and faithfully suffering exterior trials, which are small, you would merit that God fix his eyes on you and purge you more profoundly through deeper spiritual trials in order to give you more interior blessings. [...]
For he tries them in this way so as to make them advance in gifts and merits, as he did with holy Tobit to whom St. Raphael said: Since you were acceptable to God, he favored you by sending you temptation that he might try you more in order to exalt you more [Tb. 12:13]. After that temptation, all the rest of his life was in joy, as Sacred Scripture says [Tb. 14:4]. We also see in the life of holy Job that once God accepted his works in the sight of the good and evil spirits, he immediately favored him by sending those great trials so that subsequently he could extol him much more. And this he did, multiplying his goods, both spiritual and temporal [Jb. 1-2; 42:10, 12]. [...]
People, then, should live with great patience and constancy in all the tribulations and trials God places on them, whether they be exterior or interior, spiritual or bodily, great or small, and they should accept them all as from God's hand as a good remedy and not flee from them, for they bring health. [...] People should hold in esteem the interior and exterior trials God sends them, realizing that there are few who merit to be brought to perfection through suffering and to undergo trials for the sake of so high a state.
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Source: St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 2.27-30, 667-669.
There are many who desire to advance and persistently beseech God to bring them to this state of perfection. Yet when God wills to conduct them through the initial trials and mortifications, as is necessary, they are unwilling to suffer them and they shun them, flee from the narrow road of life [Mt. 7:14] and seek the broad road of their own consolation, which is that of their own perdition [Mt. 7:13]; thus they do not allow God to begin to grant their petition. They are like useless containers, for although they desire to reach the state of the perfect they do not want to be guided by the path of trials that leads to it. They hardly even begin to walk along this road by submitting to what is least, that is, to ordinary sufferings.
We can answer them with Jeremiah's words: If you have grown weary running with footmen, how will you contend with horses? And if you have had quiet in the land of peace, what will you do in the swelling of the Jordan? [Jer. 12:5]. This is like saying: If by the common trials (on foot) that form part of human life, it seemed to you that you were running because there were so many, and you took such short steps, how will you keep up with the horse's stride, which signifies more than ordinary trials for which human strength and speed is not enough? And if you have not wanted to forego the peace and pleasure of your earth, which is your sensuality, or contradict it in anything or stir up a war, I do not know how you will desire to enter the impetuous waters of spiritual tribulations and trials that are deeper.
O souls who in spiritual matters desire to walk in security and consolation! If you but knew how much it behooves you to suffer in order to reach this security and consolation, and how without suffering you cannot attain to your desire but rather turn back, in no way would you look for comfort either from God or from creatures. You would instead carry the cross and, placed on it, desire to drink the pure gall and vinegar. You would consider it good fortune that, dying to this world and to yourselves, you would live to God in the delights of the spirit, and patiently and faithfully suffering exterior trials, which are small, you would merit that God fix his eyes on you and purge you more profoundly through deeper spiritual trials in order to give you more interior blessings. [...]
For he tries them in this way so as to make them advance in gifts and merits, as he did with holy Tobit to whom St. Raphael said: Since you were acceptable to God, he favored you by sending you temptation that he might try you more in order to exalt you more [Tb. 12:13]. After that temptation, all the rest of his life was in joy, as Sacred Scripture says [Tb. 14:4]. We also see in the life of holy Job that once God accepted his works in the sight of the good and evil spirits, he immediately favored him by sending those great trials so that subsequently he could extol him much more. And this he did, multiplying his goods, both spiritual and temporal [Jb. 1-2; 42:10, 12]. [...]
People, then, should live with great patience and constancy in all the tribulations and trials God places on them, whether they be exterior or interior, spiritual or bodily, great or small, and they should accept them all as from God's hand as a good remedy and not flee from them, for they bring health. [...] People should hold in esteem the interior and exterior trials God sends them, realizing that there are few who merit to be brought to perfection through suffering and to undergo trials for the sake of so high a state.
---
Source: St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 2.27-30, 667-669.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Lionel Bailly on the Maternal Signifier and the Phallus
What is the maternal signifier? The very first concept that the newborn baby forms is that of the mother: she exists as a signified even before the baby is able to articulate anything more complex than a cry. The concept of 'Mother' is the baby's first mental act of symbolisation [sic]; this concept comprises comfort symbolised in the ideation of a person.
But Mother is not always there. Faced with her absence, the baby performs its first act of repression: the maternal signifier is thus the first signifier that is repressed. Upon her return, the signifier is retrieved: and thus is formed the baby's leaky new unconscious. From the one signifier, with which the baby has such a passionate relationship, arise many concepts—comfort, loss, regaining ... and the beginnings of many hypotheses. The first hypothesis ... is that of the permanence of objects: via the mother's disappearances and reappearances, the baby comes to understand that objects persist even when not within its view. But this creates further questions: 'Where is she when she's not with me? Why does she go away?' These questions are there in proto-conceptual form.... The 'obvious' answer arrives in the form of the father....
Father occupies a place in the child's world as the single biggest distraction for Mummy and therefore the single greatest rival to itself.... These are great themes of power for the child and form the basis for the construction of many infant hypotheses....
'Father has something I haven't got.' But equally, sometimes Mother is with the baby, who might then quite naturally think 'Whatever it is, maybe I have it too.' The baby has now hypothesised the existence of 'the thing that satisfies Mother', or in Lacanian terms: the object of the Mother's desire....
The idea (signified) of the object of the mother's desire is an object that can fill 'the lack in the other'. Lacan named that object the Phallus. The word denotes its imaginary quality: a phallus is never a 'penis' but a representation or image of potency.... It is an imagined perfect object....
When the mother explains her absence, she does so by means of a metaphor in which she 'blames' it on her submission to rules (Law) and not as an effect of her desire: all her excuses are metaphors, from the infant's point of view—'It's time to sleep—Mummy and Daddy must have their dinner now ...' or 'I have to go, Mummy must go to work ...' To the child, 'must have their dinner now' or 'work' is an excuse veiling an incontrovertible truth: 'Mummy is seeking some other source of satisfaction than me, i.e. the Phallus.' It must be pointed out that at this stage, the Phallus exists as an idea—a signified—but one to which no definite signifier has been firmly attached.... It is represented enough to be fitted into a signifier chain such as 'She's gone for thingamajig again.'
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Source: Lionel Bailly, Lacan (Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 74-77.
But Mother is not always there. Faced with her absence, the baby performs its first act of repression: the maternal signifier is thus the first signifier that is repressed. Upon her return, the signifier is retrieved: and thus is formed the baby's leaky new unconscious. From the one signifier, with which the baby has such a passionate relationship, arise many concepts—comfort, loss, regaining ... and the beginnings of many hypotheses. The first hypothesis ... is that of the permanence of objects: via the mother's disappearances and reappearances, the baby comes to understand that objects persist even when not within its view. But this creates further questions: 'Where is she when she's not with me? Why does she go away?' These questions are there in proto-conceptual form.... The 'obvious' answer arrives in the form of the father....
Father occupies a place in the child's world as the single biggest distraction for Mummy and therefore the single greatest rival to itself.... These are great themes of power for the child and form the basis for the construction of many infant hypotheses....
'Father has something I haven't got.' But equally, sometimes Mother is with the baby, who might then quite naturally think 'Whatever it is, maybe I have it too.' The baby has now hypothesised the existence of 'the thing that satisfies Mother', or in Lacanian terms: the object of the Mother's desire....
The idea (signified) of the object of the mother's desire is an object that can fill 'the lack in the other'. Lacan named that object the Phallus. The word denotes its imaginary quality: a phallus is never a 'penis' but a representation or image of potency.... It is an imagined perfect object....
When the mother explains her absence, she does so by means of a metaphor in which she 'blames' it on her submission to rules (Law) and not as an effect of her desire: all her excuses are metaphors, from the infant's point of view—'It's time to sleep—Mummy and Daddy must have their dinner now ...' or 'I have to go, Mummy must go to work ...' To the child, 'must have their dinner now' or 'work' is an excuse veiling an incontrovertible truth: 'Mummy is seeking some other source of satisfaction than me, i.e. the Phallus.' It must be pointed out that at this stage, the Phallus exists as an idea—a signified—but one to which no definite signifier has been firmly attached.... It is represented enough to be fitted into a signifier chain such as 'She's gone for thingamajig again.'
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Source: Lionel Bailly, Lacan (Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 74-77.
Lionel Bailly: How the Subject Interacts with the Other
The Other is omnipresent: all our lives we will play with, struggle against, and learn to use its manifestations. Verbal jokes are directed at the Other—they seek to subvert the Other by slyly playing with the boundaries of obscenity, social acceptability, or with the rules of language itself [e.g. puns]. A person who bumps against a piece of furniture and automatically says, 'sorry' is addressing the Other; a person who is habitually late may be rebelling against the Other in its guise as Time; the Other is in money: the miser and the gambler are both trying to bend it to their will. But in psychoanalysis, it is the Other as language that is the most important, because of the structuring effect that language has upon the development of the Subject, and because the truth of the Subject can only be apprehended by means of it.
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Source: Lionel Bailly, Lacan (Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 73.
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Source: Lionel Bailly, Lacan (Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 73.
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