On the Side of Christ

The other day a priest friend of mine mentioned that a woman had recently come into his office, seen his San Damiano crucifix, and remarked, "That's not what Jesus looks like. Jesus is whole and loving and at peace now." It struck me how strange it is that people so often experience symbols, representations, and even actions of love as accusatory. While it's not false to say that Jesus is whole and loving and at peace, it is still by his stripes that we have been healed, still by his blood that we are saved. In fact, if you happen to believe the Gospels, Jesus' resurrected body maintained the marks of crucifixion - holes in his hands and feet, wound in his side. 

Why do we see the Cross as accusation? I'm sure there are many reasons, but one of them is the "good person" complex we've allowed to creep into our modern consciousness. The thought goes something like this: I'm a good person. I don't harm anyone on purpose, I don't drink excessively, I don't use drugs, I pay my taxes, I am a contributing member of society. I just want to be happy and not get in the way of anyone else's happiness. Isn't that enough? Can't you just leave me alone, like I'm leaving you alone?

No doubt. Also, word.

When this mentality encounters the Cross, it is confronted with a radically different view of human loving, which functions as challenge. According to the Cross, love is not staying out of each others' way (so long as no one is being overtly harmed). The Cross tells us that love is sacrifice and selflessness, even up to and including being pierced. In other words, love is being bound up in the community, pouring ourselves out for each other, not in order to be good, but because we are in love. More and more I am convinced that I must conform my life to that of the Lover - not performing actions because they will gain me attention, help me to progress along some path, or even because they are good, but because I am in love.
This is a subtle distinction. Of course I ought to perform actions that are good, and of course I ought to be aware of which actions are good and which are bad. But no one has to tell a man who loves his wife that he must not murder her. The rule has no relevance to him because he loves. Likewise, no one needs to tell one in love with Christ that he or she must pray, must go to Mass, must love others.

As Thomas Merton put it in his excellent (and excellently short) Life and Holiness, the Holy Spirit takes the Law and internalizes it - makes it internal to the Christian. The one who is in love no longer responds to the laws and rules, but acts from the internal impetus of the Holy Spirit, driving and enlivening love within them.

On the other hand, just as there is a danger of being turned off by the challenge of the Cross, there is a perhaps even greater danger of oversimplifying the whole spiritual life, as I have just done in the last few paragraphs. It is true to say "all we must do is love Christ," but there is no practical directive there. And why did I entitle this post "On the Side of Christ"? (back when I was in seminary, there was a retired priest who would get up to give a homily and say a few sentences, then say "Now where was I going with that?" & expect us to answer him. He played this off like he was trying to make sure we were paying attention, or trying to lead us to realize a point on our own, but the suspicion was always that he really didn't know where he was going with it and needed ideas to finish it off).
The side of Christ - that gaping wound into which Thomas was invited to put his hand - in some sense, this is our goal.

Now, I know, I know, I just used this image last week. But I just love it so much, and I've spent the whole week turning it over and over and trying to come up with something worth saying about it. That or I'm running out of ideas, you decide.

Why is this our goal? Because it is through Christ's sufferings that we are drawn to his heart. It is by being drawn through his side, as it were, uniting our sufferings to his, that we are drawn into the communion of his heart with the Father's, in the Holy Spirit. But he is not dead, but lives! - it is not just our sufferings that we must unite to Christ, but our joys as well. Christ's resurrected flesh maintained these wounds because they were no longer wounds but marks of love - not accusation, but the expression of his person, directed infinitely to our good and longing infinitely for our hearts. 
And so must our hearts! In giving ourselves away, in allowing the Spirit to direct our lives in humility and love, the very wounds of our hearts will be sources of joy as well, to the extent that we have given them to Christ. But there is no way to give ourselves to Christ except by giving ourselves away to each other. And there is no way to do this except through the Spirit, which is to say that it is mysterious, and dependent on our vocation, which is the call of the Father to our own hearts through the whisperings of the Spirit, to be united to his Son. 
From this perspective - the lens of love, which is not a question of lists and balances - questions of being a "good person" disappear. Read any of the saints, and they will tell you that they no longer matter (Paul - I now live no longer I, but Christ lives in me; Therese - I will spend my Heaven doing good on Earth, because I will be in union with Christ, who is at work in our hearts) - no saint has ever come to the end of their life and wondered whether they were a "good person." Instead, like St. Thomas More (whose feast we celebrate today), they very often died with a realistic understanding of their own sinfulness, but with an even greater trust in God's loving mercy. Before his execution, More wrote to his daughter from prison, "Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness..."

The Mass, the sacraments are our salvation, not because they are objects, or forms or actions we perform in order to "get" salvation, but because they draw us to the heart of this man with the wounded side. Better: salvation is not a question of reaching a destination ("Heaven" as if it were a place), but of surrendering ourselves into the wounded yet glorious side of Christ, into that love for which we were made. Because, as Benedict XVI has said, Heaven is not a place, but a Person - Jesus Christ.

On Sex and Death II

Remember when I said I'd try to post Part II the next day? I hope you haven't been holding your (collective) breaths, because I'd have a lot less friends by now. Well here it be: DEATH.

Okay, so do I tell them now or later that this whole 2-part post was conceived of as an excuse to use this image? Later. Definitely later.

We'll pick up right where we left off: death is all around us, especially in the spiritual life, and that's not a bad thing.
Why do we look for fulfillment in sex? Because it is easier than the alternative. That is, it is easier to believe that some object can fulfill us (sex here being conceived as an object rather than as a personal, relational action) than it is to come to terms with the fact that no object can fulfill us. If it's so false of a notion, why do we want objects that can fulfill us? Because we get to control them. If we can earn happiness or use some object to find fulfillment, then we are saved from the terrible existential anxiety of being in a world that cannot fulfill us.
But this is the particular burden of human being: dogs, cats, snails, sea cucumbers - they fulfill their purpose by eating, growing, reproducing, and dying. If we were like every other animal in the universe, we would be fulfilled by objects - by food, by reproducing, by having shelter during storms, etc.

I shall shortly become the most self-actualized person on the planet! As soon as I eat my way to the other side of this table.

The simple truth, however, is that we are not fulfilled by these things, or by any other thing. Why? Because we are not things, and we are not made for things. We are persons, and that means that we are made for love.

Side note: I googled "made for love" and got this. Oh Yanni, tell me about love.

The death is in accepting this, which is a remarkably difficult thing to do. One of the effects of our concupiscence is the overarching urge for control, to make ourselves the center of our sphere of action, and in this case that plays out in this desire to be fulfilled in objects, in things that we control. But admitting that we cannot be fulfilled in objects means having this control torn out of our hands. Or better, this admission means letting go of this control, which will otherwise be torn away in one way or another.
Death is the ultimate horizon, the final denial of all of our claims to control, because, as they say, Death waits for no one.

And this would all be terribly sad if we were indeed objects. That is, if we were like the animals, looking for fulfillment in what we could get and survival, then death would only be the terrible thumb of the universe coming down and laughing in our face as it squelched out all dreams, hopes, and desires. Luckily, however, we are persons, and Death is an ally.

So much of the spiritual life may be summed up in one simple action: the death of the self-will. From where I sit in my current spiritual journey, it is becoming clearer and clearer that this is at least 92-97% of the work that must be done in my own heart. Allowing this "I, ME, MINE" to die is the simplest of all actions, but also the one against which our hearts buck most rebelliously. I say that it is the simplest because it is accomplished through one single action: love. It is also the one against which our hearts rebel because it means one single thing: death.

This is akin to what Christ says in the gospel: He who saves his life loses it, he who loses his life for my sake saves it. Why? Because this "saving" of my own life means grasping and ordering my life according to my desires and thoughts of fulfillment, but this "losing" of my life for Christ's sake means losing myself in Christ. But being united to Christ often feels like death - we are united not only to His resurrection, but to his death as well - to His sufferings, to His longing for union, to His fear, His thirst, His submission to the Father.

Now you're probably thinking things like, "gosh you're depressing, Inkler," and "why the heck did I read all that?" and "I'm bored, I wonder what's going on over at the Comics Curmudgeon." As I've warned you, I am prone to windbaggery and beating-around-the-bushitis. Hopefully I'll tie this all together neatly in just a moment and we can all go on with our days.

What is the good news in all of this? Look back at the gospel: he who loses his life for my sake will save it. That is, to be lost in Christ is to be saved. To be lost in Christ is to be found. Why? Let's go back to the object vs. person dichotomy.

If in fact we are persons, it is only because we are made in the image and likeness of the Persons (Father, Son, Heiligen Geist) - in fact, the very concept of "person" was invented first to speak about the Trinity during the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. If our personhood mirrors the Persons of the Trinity, then our fulfillment must also mirror God. See Gaudium et Spes 24: "Man is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and he] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself." Why? Because the Trinity is a communion of Persons fully and sincerely giving themselves to each other. Christ realizes this self-gift of the Trinity perfectly on the Cross, giving himself for us all.

Fulfillment then is not to be found in an object, of any sort. If it were, salvation could not have come through the Cross. If fulfillment were in an object, God would actively be giving us things, rather than actively stripping us of them. This is the "gospel of prosperity" preached by some, and which imagines blessing as consisting of receiving material wealth. If this were true, Christ could not have called the poor blessed. 

Fulfillment is rather found in this self-gift, this pouring out of self and death of will, giving ourselves over to God and to each other. This is often experienced as death, and what a blessed death this is!

Oh sweet death, to lie at the foot of the cross and be washed in the Blood.

Just to pull things full circle, let's go back to sex for a moment. I wrote in that last post that sex will be disappointing and addictive when it is conceived of as an object, a "thing," an action that gets us something for ourselves, "fulfillment," as it were. But this is not the only approach to sex. Bl. John Paul II's great Man and Woman He Created Them shows us an entirely different and much more fruitful picture of sexuality. To actually go into that will have to be done in another post (thankfully, I really am winding down now), but the point is that in enfleshing the sacrament of marriage, husband and wife realize this self-gift in their very bodies. It is not that sex is inherently bad - in fact it is inherently good. So good in fact as to be a place of sacred encounter with another person, and ultimately with God, not only for the married couple, but for everyone around them as their love bears fruit. So my professor was correct: anything which does not acknowledge sex or death is kitsch, and therefore is not worth my time. May we always be dying, and may we always be loving.

Oh sweet life of death and love, to be drawn into the side of Christ!

On Sex and Death I

Once again, a week has gone by without a post. All I can say is

Anywise, I had a poetry professor in college who told us adamantly that whatever did not acknowledge sex or death was kitsch and therefore not worth his time. What resulted was a slew of either hyper-sexualized or mopey poetry about cats dying. My professor seemed rather pleased with this, but I can't help thinking that his statement was considerably more true than even he seemed to realize. This will be a long post, so I'm going to break it up into installments. Hopefully just two, but I do have an easy tendency toward windbaggery, so we'll see.
First, I know I'll have to argue about what "sex" is. I know this because I am a red-blooded 'Murican who has grown up watching tv and movies and listening to music and being exposed to advertising and reading books and driving on highways and opening magazines and walking down city blocks and being told how to look in order to be "attractive" and having unbridled access to the internet and watching friends try to "be cool" and (when I got old enough) walking into bars and (yes, I admit it) clubs and going to high school and going to college and pumping gas and going through drive thru's and looking both ways before crossing the street and being a runner and telling jokes and etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
The point is that no matter what, no matter what, we are bombarded with Sex, and a particular idea of it.

Did I mention how much I love love love Mary Worth? Well I do. And I'm getting to it, Mary.

Sex has been commodified into an easy equation which, baldly stated, goes like this: sex = fulfillment. This idea is used first and foremost as a manipulative means of selling products. Look at nearly any advertising, whether it be for body spray or a car. The way it works is to tell the viewer that if they purchase this product, achieve this look, smell like this, grow or don't grow their hair in this way, wear these clothes, eat this food, drink this beer, etc, they will be fulfilled. We all want fulfillment. We will spend our lives seeking that fulfillment. The problem with advertising is that it very, very often resorts to the clear lie that (usually casual) sexual intercourse = fulfillment. How do I know this is a lie? Because if it wasn't, it would be the absolute last  thing the advertising industry would want to rely on. Advertising does not want to sell us happiness. It wouldn't work - we'd all buy the product and never have to buy anything else again. Advertising wants to lie to us: "buy this product! It will make you happy!... Oh, you're right, that didn't make you happy, did it? Well, buy this other product!" Or "Buy this product! It will get you sex! Wait, you're not happy yet? Well it can't be us, there must be something wrong with you, so, um, buy this other product!"

Entertainment works the same way. Why are casual sexual encounters so popularly depicted in movies, tv shows, books, etc? Precisely because they are not fulfilling. They bring us, the viewer, back for more. If pornography were fulfilling, how could it so often turn into addiction? This is the lie: fulfillment is to be found in this thing. It is an object. It is something that you can get for yourself, if only you could get just enough of this thing. Imagine any substance other than sex here. To the addict, this sounds perfectly reasonable. To the non-addict, it sounds perfectly insane. Then why is sex any different? We come across all sorts of examples in entertainment where characters think that if they just have sex, they will be happy/better/more fulfilled. 

For instance: I, like most people, was super happy, at least initially, with Fox's show "New Girl" starring Zooey Deschanel and several other fantastically talented actors. 

What was great about this show was the characters. The writing is hilarious and clever, the actors are engaging, and the show at first felt very refreshing. What's the problem? After a few episodes like this, every one of the characters is openly and apparently happily having sex with various and sundry. There was one point in an early episode where one of the characters makes a really lame comment and another character looks at him in dismay and says "You really need to get laid."

So what's going on here? Sex is an activity that people perform in order to achieve other ends, regardless of the person they are performing this activity with. Why have sex? So that you can stop being lame and be a better you. The absurdity here is the exact same with advertising: there is no thing that will fulfill you. As long as sex is conceived as a "thing," it will be disappointing, addictive, and depressing. 

Let's take a step back for a second and talk about sex. 

(I was about to google for an image to use after that sentence, then realized such an action just wouldn't be any good for my immortal soul)

We're told since health class in sixth or fifth or whatever grade (or earlier if our parents were irresponsible enough to let us watch MTV) that "sex" = ...well, I don't need to tell you, we're all adults here, right? RIGHT?! But the modern conception of sex is a shockingly narrowed one.

No, no I haven't. Maybe because they never gave me healthy idea of sexuality. 

Sexual intercourse? I hate to break it to you, but you and I are having sexual intercourse right now. How so? Because we are sexed beings - our sexuality is fundamental to our personhood, to our being created in God's image and likeness. Hopefully I'll talk about that more in a later post; it's already late and I've got much more to say here. But the point is that reducing sex to merely an activity separates our identity from our being. Too philosophical? This reduction and separation means that men can have surgeries to become women and women can have surgeries to become men. Because if sex is an activity that = fulfillment, it has nothing to do with how we have been created. The thought that identity follows being (in other words, that our personal identity is fundamentally related to how we have been created as sexed beings) requires humility and submission, two qualities that our modern minds buck against almost immediately.

Now, I know I've straw-manned this pretty terribly, but it really is that simple. But just because it is simple does not mean that this thought that sex = fulfillment is negligible. Take St. Augustine, for instance. After years of sleeping around, he realized that he wasn't being fulfilled. How did he react to this? Eventually he stopped, but not before praying "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet."

Why did he pray this? Because he wasn't done with the lie. He knew it was a lie, he recognized how unhealthy and harmful it was, but he couldn't help but continue to seek that fulfillment in the lie. What then is the answer? See his other, greater prayer: "Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you." We can know this, we can desire this, we can even long for this rest, but still the lie will be there to whisper that there is an easier way to be fulfilled than by resting in Christ.

AND HERE IS THE DEATH!!! Apart from actual ceasing of body functions such as breathing and heart pumping cellular regeneration and etc, death permeates our lives, and not at all in a bad way, either. But this is quite long enough for now. Hopefully I'll write Part II tomorrow, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.