Seeking Truth, Part II

I didn't say quite all I wanted to say in that last post, I realized, because the question still remains, if self-knowledge is the foundation of God's love, how does one find oneself? From what I have read and learned, it turns out the saints are pretty unanimous on this account, too. The answer is best stated by John the Baptist (and how fitting for today, the the feast of the Baptism of the Lord): "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30)

This is also expressed again in John 12:24: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." This feels counter-intuitive, but if you think about the purpose of a grain of wheat, it is to cease being itself and to become something else entirely - a growing plant. Unless it is cracked and burst open, it will remain static its whole existence, which can barely be called life. It will never change, and it will not fulfill its purpose. So, it must "die" to create new life. I interpret this dying as the act we all must make, in casting aside our fears and masks, and allowing our egos to die. It doesn't matter to lose one's ego; let's not confuse that with personality or the inner light that makes you you. Rather, ego is the web of self-deceit we gather around ourselves: fear of being inadequate, fear of not being pretty enough or successful enough, the desire to always be first, to fault-find with others, and so on. Removing the ego, as the saints have found, and learning to rely instead of God to hold ourselves together, is what allows us to get to our true self. The ego is never in your corner and it is the least authentic part of you, because it is the most fearful.

Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote quite a lot on the ego and its place as a stumbling block on the path toward Christ: "No one discovers anything big unless he makes himself small." And: "I don't want my life to be mine, I want it to be Christ's. The more ego there is, the less there is of Christ." I see what he means, and that even beyond, nothing really is yours. Your time certainly is not yours, and your talents are not. They all belong to God. “If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.”

Br. Athanasius on Friday night talked about a flower growing (remember, that is the more important part, after the seed has died). He said, a flower does not know how it will grow. It does not sit and plan its own beauty. Similarly, we cannot micromanage our own progress in life because what God has in store for us is so much more unbelievably beautiful and real than anything we can imagine for ourselves. This certainly is true, even when I struggle with it. I struggle with it now, because I like to plan and there are certain things in my life I would like now, in a certain way, the way I see them. But, God must be telling me there is something else. And so I wait, like a flower unfolding, and that is fine, because many saints (known and unknown) have come before me and known this to be the absolute truth, that this is how God works, that we must decrease our egos so that He can increase. That we must make room for him in our lives so that we can be the real person He created us to be. In other words, I must get out of my own way! Truer words have never been spoken.

Lots of prayers on this topic. But, there is one very simple prayer that really covers all of this: Father, your will be done.

Seeking Truth

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by my friend Br. Athanasius, OP. Full disclosure: it was an event I planned for our young adult group because I knew what an outstanding speaker he is (as it is with the Dominicans) and the topic is heavy on my heart: that of mercy. In true Dominican-Br. Athanasius style, though, he took it to another level: while planning, we discussed mercy as a good and relevant topic, particularly in the context of the Year of Mercy. Yet where I thought of mercy in the general sense of what we show to others, he thought of mercy as it relates to ourselves: self-forgiveness, which equates to knowing oneself. And knowing oneself, as God created us, is critical in order to be close to Him. He asked us: how do we come to know ourselves?

Let me explain: God has made us in a certain way. Each one of us is an individual, so infinitely unique, that it is something of an imperative to be that someone He created us to be, and until we are, we will be miserable. To deny yourself is to deny God's plan for you. Yet for so many it is easier to live behind the mask; it is frightening to go deep, look at your weakness, and see that you are in fact not your successes, you are not the things you own, you are not of this world. In truth, you are not at all the author of your own existence. Can you look at that directly, and see that God's love is the only real thing holding you together? Saints are the people who have come face to face with this knowledge, accepting how dependent they are on God. This is everything. This is what so many saints talked about, this is the point of the Church, this is the purpose of life. It's everywhere. St. Catherine of Siena: "Be yourself and you will set the world on fire." St. Theresa of Avila: "Self knowledge is so important that, even if you were raised right up to the heavens, I should like you never to relax your cultivation of it; so long as we are on this earth, nothing matters more to us than humility."

Br. Athanasius shared how St. Therese, the Little Flower, expressed the dependence on God that is a hallmark of self-knowledge:

"Since He has granted it to me to understand the love of the Heart of Jesus, I confess that He has chased all fear out of my heart. The memory of my faults leads me never to rely on my own strength, which is nothing but weakness; but even more this memory speaks to me of mercy and love. When we throw our faults, with a complete filial confidence, into the devouring furnace of love, how could they not be totally consumed?" St Therese's Letter in 1897

Then we discussed The Great Divorce by CS Lewis, in which characters that represent various incarnations of our own self-deceit in this life get a chance to leave a purgatory-like place for Heaven. But many of them can't, because it's simply too real. It requires of them to drop the mask, to open their eyes, to forgive themselves, and it simply is too much. They can't go deep. They prefer to live a half-life in purgatory.

This is what I am afraid of. If there is anything in this life to fear, it is the possibility of living a life half-lived, in hiding, far away from the light of God's love where you can convince yourself everything is fine, even if it's not real. And you don't care that it's not real. There is a great plunge into self-knowledge, a moment you decide to ask yourself, Who am I in relation to reality?

How strange is it to realize that hell is self-deception? That, truly, to sin is to mask who you are, how God made you?

This is one of those things I will pray on, and turn over in my mind, for the rest of my life. I do not know if I have explained this accurately or have done any justice to what Br. Athanasius spoke, but I know it aches in my heart and must be expressed. And I know there are consequences to taking off the blinders and choosing self-knowledge, but then, I also know God is with me - God is all there is, after all. He is the ultimate reality. Everything else falls away.

The jail (at Christmas time)

Tonight there was no jail ministry, though we didn't know that until we got there. Programs being canceled is not unusual; this is actually the third week in the row where for a variety of reasons the prison either goes on lock down, something is being fixed or cleaned, an inmate is being taken elsewhere, there is a staff shortage, etc. and we are not allowed up. Typically when this happens, we arrive at the front desk and they simply tell us we can't go upstairs (sometimes telling us why, sometimes not). Tonight was unique, however, in that we didn't know things were off until making it through the first two deputy/security check points, signing in, gathering our cart o' Catholic stuff (hymn books, a few images for the room, the table cloth and candles - never lit) and walking to the multipurpose room when we realized something was up and, indeed, our program was canceled.

I stood outside the hallway looking through the glass windows at a room that normally would be empty. It is bland; light gray cinder block walls, dark plastic chairs, fluorescent lights, a few tables and a white board. Tonight, though, there was an entirely new scene: young mothers, all inmates, surrounded by their children. The tables were covered in gingerbread houses, tubes of cake frosting, bowls of candy, green and red table cloths and Christmas decorations. The little room was alive, lively, with the activity of these little broken families celebrating Christmas together as best they could. As I walked by, separated only by a pane of glass running along the hallway, none of them looked up, so caught up in the moment were they and their children.

I can't stress enough how odd a scene this is to see. For one thing, I rarely see female inmates. This detention center has only one floor for women, and they don't often make it to our meeting, for whatever reason. And of course, one does not see children in jail, either. Aside from those surface issues, though, is the bizarre disparity between the physical circumstances in which this was happening, and the bigger picture of these women drawing their children to them at Christmas time. I couldn't help but wonder how these women, in their matching blue jumpsuit uniforms, felt. Were they embarrassed? Did they feel they had failed their kids? Or simply happy to have them there, accepting that time as better than nothing? How would they cope when it was time for the children to leave? And for those kids, sucking on peppermints in their mothers' laps, making gingerbread houses in a county facility - were they scared? Used to it? Just happy to be there?

And yet the biggest thing was the joy. Everyone was smiling. There was laughter, hugging and kissing, and that is really what suffused the bland little room and made it different. It was a little hard for me to understand how that kind of love can show itself in a physical way beyond the gestures of everyone involved, to the actual aura of the room, but there it was.

I stayed for just a moment to double check with the deputy that there would be no program. She was apologetic that we were not notified earlier, and as I left I glanced one more time at the little scene in front of me. In that moment, things were happening too quickly and I was distracted by the thought that by the time I see our regular inmates next it will have been five weeks total. Just a self-serving moment of "Ah, poor me." Then one more fleeting thought came and went as I buzzed out: although I was too distracted in that moment to show any real emotion, I think one day there will come a time, maybe after I have had children of my own and celebrated Christmas with them, that I will remember that scene and cry in hopelessness. That is all I feel I can offer them aside from prayers, but sometimes I think you just have to see the reality of human suffering and accept it, and in that way, share in it. What else is there to do?

But then, there was real joy in that room, and that is probably more important. It is the same love and joy that exists everywhere in the world, but somehow it managed to exist under these circumstances. This is God at work. And perhaps this is why, although our plans did not come to fruition, He called us to the jail all the same tonight, to see what He was doing.