A good, short article on the misrepresentation of Christ's admonition to "judge not."
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I envision a lost man standing before Jesus Christ at the final judgment, having a strong sense of the fate that awaits. He cries out, ‘Judge not Jesus! You said it yourself! I read it in red!’
I then imagine that Jesus goes on to explain to the man that he has misinterpreted Jesus’ words: ‘Did you not also read that you are to remove the log from your own eye so that you can see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s? I have no log in my eye. My eye is clear, and I see you as you are. I judge accordingly, and my judgment is true and right.’
In my imagination, Jesus continues, ‘Did you not read that I told my disciples not to cast pearls before the swine? Did I not mean that they had to be able to judge a swine when they saw one? Clearly you do not understand my words.’
To which the man replies: ‘Judge not Jesus! You said it yourself! I read it in red, you hypocrite!’
And he goes to hell, continuing to justify himself for eternity, still thinking that Jesus is the judgmental one.
---
Source: Heath, "Judge Not," Tides and Turning (blog), June 21, 2013, accessed February 24, 2015, https://tidesandturning.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/judge-not/.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Some Tactics for Chastity
1. Custody of the Eyes (and Imagination and Memory). This method is not simply about chastity but about self-control. The eyes may wander not only out of lustful intentions but harmful curiosity. Custody of the eyes is an exercise, small but continuous and sometimes arduous, in self-control.
We know from neuroscience now that pornography deteriorates the mind in a way similar to cocaine. Custody of the eyes takes on a real importance because the object of delight remains out of sight and helps provide opportunities for the brain to work in different ways.
Two particular helps for maintaining custody of the eyes: 1) prayer, focusing our attention and awareness on God; and 2) awareness of intention and attention, in which we maintain a recollected state of self-awareness of what we are doing and why. In any situation we enter, we enter with this recollection and mindfulness.
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2014/07/10/ye-have-heard-that-it-was-said-by-them-of-old-time-thou-shalt-not-commit-adultery-but-i-say-unto-you-that-whosoever-looketh-on-a-woman-to-lust-after-her-hath-committed-adultery-with-her-already-in/
2. "As If" Technique. Visualize and live "as if" you have already achieved the goal. See all the concrete differences such living would require and simply go about as if these were well established facets of your daily living. This was the recommendation of Aristotle for building all virtue. It is a self-reinforcing process.
We can also apply this visualization to when we're tempted back into old patterns of behavior. For some behaviors, it may be good to imagine, "If I did such and such, here's what I would experience. Would it therefore be worth it?" This practice might be difficult for those suffering from addictive behavior.
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2012/09/16/employing-the-as-if-technique-in-behavioral-modification/
3. Recollected Mindfulness. Maintaining self-awareness is important to avoid impulsive behavior and being swept away by stimuli. Recollection on God helps maintain this calm. When we have failed, simply turn back to God in contrition. This watchfulness also pays attention to the signs and beginnings of what tends to lead towards certain behaviors; this watchfulness will depend on remembering past experience and making records of how patterns begin and progress for us and in what circumstances. These should be all listed and learned for each person.
Mindfulness itself is developed first in little behaviors, such as in breathing, dressing, morning routines, walking, sitting, noticing ambient noises, etc.. Regular prayers before, during, and after activities that tend to distract us should be introduced.
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2012/07/20/being-impulsive-a-problem-for-moderns-and-ancients/
http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2013/08/07/taking-captivity-captive-the-role-of-mindfulness-in-overcoming-mindless-compulsions/
4. Honestly Naming the Thought or Sin. Speaking aloud to another or to God an evil thought or sin that we are tempted to helps to neutralize its power. Herein lies some of the power of regular examination and confession. When we face the possibility and reality of admitting shameful behaviors to a person we respect, such as a priest, or a person we wouldn't want to see us in a bad light, such as a coworker or mentor, then we are much less likely to act out on a temptation. Where our fear of God is lacking, our fear of others may supply. This practice also keeps us humble and honest with ourselves and others: "This is who I am. I admit it. I'm working on it, but this is what I've done, thought, what I struggle with, etc."
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2012/07/17/exposing-bad-thoughts-and-spiritual-healing/
5. Emotional Self-Understanding. Every temptation is preceded by emotional triggers that are deeply rooted in ourselves. We can come to recognize these feelings, their triggers, to see how they have been "solved" up until now by certain sinful behaviors. We can then admit these emotions honestly and openly. We can feel sorrow for the ways in which we have hurt ourselves and been fooled by the lies of the world around us into accepting harmful, self-destructive behaviors to run from our emotions and pain. We can connect our pain to past experiences and then see how they draw great power from childhood experiences or unresolved conflicts in ourselves or with others. Then we can bring all this to prayer, speaking our pain to God, asking Him to heal us, to help us, to comfort us.
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/q_masturbation.htm
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/4humility.htm
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/healing.htm
6. Practice Satiety Prevention. Seek to reduce the immediate gratification of desire—in eating, listening to music/radio, watching TV/movies, reading, texting, chatting, playing games, etc. Exercise self-control, fast, and learn to find comfort and fulfillment in God through prayer.
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/q_masturbation.htm
7. Develop a Sense of Gratitude. A mystical sense of gratitude by which we recognize everything around us is a gift from God helps foster a certain detachment by preventing us from becoming inordinately fixated on the objects of our awareness. Through gratitude, we recognize each thing reflects in some way God's beauty. Such gratitude helps foster recollection and mindfulness.
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/gratitude.htm
We know from neuroscience now that pornography deteriorates the mind in a way similar to cocaine. Custody of the eyes takes on a real importance because the object of delight remains out of sight and helps provide opportunities for the brain to work in different ways.
Two particular helps for maintaining custody of the eyes: 1) prayer, focusing our attention and awareness on God; and 2) awareness of intention and attention, in which we maintain a recollected state of self-awareness of what we are doing and why. In any situation we enter, we enter with this recollection and mindfulness.
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2014/07/10/ye-have-heard-that-it-was-said-by-them-of-old-time-thou-shalt-not-commit-adultery-but-i-say-unto-you-that-whosoever-looketh-on-a-woman-to-lust-after-her-hath-committed-adultery-with-her-already-in/
2. "As If" Technique. Visualize and live "as if" you have already achieved the goal. See all the concrete differences such living would require and simply go about as if these were well established facets of your daily living. This was the recommendation of Aristotle for building all virtue. It is a self-reinforcing process.
We can also apply this visualization to when we're tempted back into old patterns of behavior. For some behaviors, it may be good to imagine, "If I did such and such, here's what I would experience. Would it therefore be worth it?" This practice might be difficult for those suffering from addictive behavior.
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2012/09/16/employing-the-as-if-technique-in-behavioral-modification/
3. Recollected Mindfulness. Maintaining self-awareness is important to avoid impulsive behavior and being swept away by stimuli. Recollection on God helps maintain this calm. When we have failed, simply turn back to God in contrition. This watchfulness also pays attention to the signs and beginnings of what tends to lead towards certain behaviors; this watchfulness will depend on remembering past experience and making records of how patterns begin and progress for us and in what circumstances. These should be all listed and learned for each person.
Mindfulness itself is developed first in little behaviors, such as in breathing, dressing, morning routines, walking, sitting, noticing ambient noises, etc.. Regular prayers before, during, and after activities that tend to distract us should be introduced.
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2012/07/20/being-impulsive-a-problem-for-moderns-and-ancients/
http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2013/08/07/taking-captivity-captive-the-role-of-mindfulness-in-overcoming-mindless-compulsions/
4. Honestly Naming the Thought or Sin. Speaking aloud to another or to God an evil thought or sin that we are tempted to helps to neutralize its power. Herein lies some of the power of regular examination and confession. When we face the possibility and reality of admitting shameful behaviors to a person we respect, such as a priest, or a person we wouldn't want to see us in a bad light, such as a coworker or mentor, then we are much less likely to act out on a temptation. Where our fear of God is lacking, our fear of others may supply. This practice also keeps us humble and honest with ourselves and others: "This is who I am. I admit it. I'm working on it, but this is what I've done, thought, what I struggle with, etc."
Cf. http://ancientchristianwisdom.com/2012/07/17/exposing-bad-thoughts-and-spiritual-healing/
5. Emotional Self-Understanding. Every temptation is preceded by emotional triggers that are deeply rooted in ourselves. We can come to recognize these feelings, their triggers, to see how they have been "solved" up until now by certain sinful behaviors. We can then admit these emotions honestly and openly. We can feel sorrow for the ways in which we have hurt ourselves and been fooled by the lies of the world around us into accepting harmful, self-destructive behaviors to run from our emotions and pain. We can connect our pain to past experiences and then see how they draw great power from childhood experiences or unresolved conflicts in ourselves or with others. Then we can bring all this to prayer, speaking our pain to God, asking Him to heal us, to help us, to comfort us.
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/q_masturbation.htm
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/4humility.htm
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/healing.htm
6. Practice Satiety Prevention. Seek to reduce the immediate gratification of desire—in eating, listening to music/radio, watching TV/movies, reading, texting, chatting, playing games, etc. Exercise self-control, fast, and learn to find comfort and fulfillment in God through prayer.
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/q_masturbation.htm
7. Develop a Sense of Gratitude. A mystical sense of gratitude by which we recognize everything around us is a gift from God helps foster a certain detachment by preventing us from becoming inordinately fixated on the objects of our awareness. Through gratitude, we recognize each thing reflects in some way God's beauty. Such gratitude helps foster recollection and mindfulness.
Cf. http://www.chastitysf.com/gratitude.htm
Fr. Cooper on Discernment and Discouragement
"All conditional propositions that disturb your soul come from the devil" (4m26s).
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.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on True Worship and Human Life
True worship is the living human being, who has become a total answer to God, shaped by God's healing and transforming word. And true priesthood is therefore the ministry of word and sacrament that transforms people into an offering to God and makes the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer. Therefore Christ, who makes an offering of himself on the Cross, is the true high priest [....]
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Source: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. by Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2011), 238.
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St. John of the Cross on Perfect Transformation in God
Since every living being lives by its operations, as the philosophers say, and the soul's operations are in God though its union with him, it lives the life of God. Thus it changed its death to life, its animal life to spiritual life.
The intellect, which before this union understood naturally by the vigor of its natural light by means of the natural senses, is now moved and informed by another higher principle of supernatural divine light, and the senses are bypassed. Accordingly, the intellect becomes divine, because through its union with God's intellect both become one.
And the will, which previously loved in a base and deadly way with only its natural affection, is now changed into the life of divine love, for it loves in a lofty way with divine affection, moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit in which it now lives the life of love. By means of this union God's will and the soul's will are now one.
And the memory, which by itself perceived only the figures and phantasms of creatures, is changed through this union so as to have in its mind the eternal years mentioned by David [Ps. 77:5].
And the natural appetite that only had the ability and strength to relish creatures (which causes death), is changed now so that its taste and savor are divine, and it is moved and satisfied by another principle: the delight of God, in which it is more alive. And because it is united with him, it is no longer anything else than the appetite of God.
Finally all the movements, operations, and inclinations the soul had previously from the principle and strength of its natural life are now in this union dead to what they formerly were, changed into divine movements, and alive to God. For the soul, like a true daughter of God, is moved in all by the Spirit of God, as St. Paul teaches in saying that those who are moved by the Spirit of God are children of God himself [Rom. 8:14].
Accordingly, the intellect of this soul is God's intellect; its will is God's will; its memory is the memory of God; and its delight is God's delight; and although the substance of this soul is not the substance of God, since it cannot undergo a substantial conversion into him, it has become God through participation in God, being united to and absorbed in him, as it is in this state. Such a union is wrought in this perfect state of the spiritual life, yet not as perfectly as in the next life. Consequently the soul is dead to all it was in itself, which was death to it, and alive to what God is in himself. Speaking of itself, the soul declares in this verse: "In killing you changed death to life."
The soul can well repeat the words of St. Paul: I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me [Gal. 2:20]. The death of this soul is changed to the life of God.
---
Source: St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 2.34.
The intellect, which before this union understood naturally by the vigor of its natural light by means of the natural senses, is now moved and informed by another higher principle of supernatural divine light, and the senses are bypassed. Accordingly, the intellect becomes divine, because through its union with God's intellect both become one.
And the will, which previously loved in a base and deadly way with only its natural affection, is now changed into the life of divine love, for it loves in a lofty way with divine affection, moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit in which it now lives the life of love. By means of this union God's will and the soul's will are now one.
And the memory, which by itself perceived only the figures and phantasms of creatures, is changed through this union so as to have in its mind the eternal years mentioned by David [Ps. 77:5].
And the natural appetite that only had the ability and strength to relish creatures (which causes death), is changed now so that its taste and savor are divine, and it is moved and satisfied by another principle: the delight of God, in which it is more alive. And because it is united with him, it is no longer anything else than the appetite of God.
Finally all the movements, operations, and inclinations the soul had previously from the principle and strength of its natural life are now in this union dead to what they formerly were, changed into divine movements, and alive to God. For the soul, like a true daughter of God, is moved in all by the Spirit of God, as St. Paul teaches in saying that those who are moved by the Spirit of God are children of God himself [Rom. 8:14].
Accordingly, the intellect of this soul is God's intellect; its will is God's will; its memory is the memory of God; and its delight is God's delight; and although the substance of this soul is not the substance of God, since it cannot undergo a substantial conversion into him, it has become God through participation in God, being united to and absorbed in him, as it is in this state. Such a union is wrought in this perfect state of the spiritual life, yet not as perfectly as in the next life. Consequently the soul is dead to all it was in itself, which was death to it, and alive to what God is in himself. Speaking of itself, the soul declares in this verse: "In killing you changed death to life."
The soul can well repeat the words of St. Paul: I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me [Gal. 2:20]. The death of this soul is changed to the life of God.
---
Source: St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. by K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 2.34.
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