LEARNING LOVE

“We fear what we do not know. Is it to be wondered then, that we trust God so little? Learn these words: ‘Perfect love casts out fear.’ ”—Abba Mark the Greek

“Learn these words” doesn’t mean “memorize this.” Abba Mark means “discover the meaning of these words in your life. Put them to the test, try them out, make them your own.”

Fear freezes us up. When I give way to fear, it moves in like a particularly bossy and unpleasant relative and takes over my house. When I'm afraid I ruminate on my fears, turning over and over in my mind the reasons I should be afraid. I fret over them, unfaced . When I fret, I don’t think—I only dither. And when I don’t think, I don’t act—I only react. The irony is, I'm reacting against something which hasn’t happened.

Abba Mark says “we fear what we don’t know.” I’m ignorant about the future. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen to me?

Down the highway from my little ranchito is a big sign: “Indian Spirit Guide-Consultations, $25.” Religious statues populate the property outside the Spirit Guide’s house. The Blessed Virgin, the Lord Jesus and numerous angels are in prominent view, obviously vouching for the reliability of the Spirit Guide. The advertising signs around the property have been showing signs of wear, and several weeks back, one of the largest was blown apart by high winds. The other day, all the old signs disappeared; now, new ones are in place. The statues have been freshly whitewashed. It’s 2011 and business is booming for the Spirit Guide.

We turn to Spirit Guides and Ouija boards because we’re afraid. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us and so we look for some kind of Cosmic Assurance that things will be okay. We turn to alcohol and food and drugs and sex—and some people turn to religion—because we want to hide from fear.

But fear knows where we are all the time, it doesn't move on because we pretend it's not there. The angry aunt still occupies our parlor, scowling and forever muttering, “You just better be careful, little mister.” We can’t hide—so we twist alcohol and food and drugs and sex, yes, and religion, too—all potentially good things, into substitutes for God.

To grasp the meaning of “perfect love casts out fear” isn’t to know what’s going to happen. The person of faith has no more idea of what the future holds than does the Spirit Guide down the road. But they are certain of this: fear can’t stay in the same room—not even the same house—as love. “Perfect love” doesn’t know everything, but it firmly grasps the One Necessary Thing: I belong to God. He creates me, redeems me and sanctifies me, day by day.

What comes next, regardless of what it is—winning the lottery, having the person you love tell you they love you too, having a flat tire, or being diagnosed with cancer—assures us God is good.

We’re not made to tremble in silent fear at the disaster lurking just around the bend. You and I were made to sing hymns of praise to God, not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow, but certain that whatever it is, God’s love will be there waiting for us. Hidden? Probably. Understood? Rarely. But always present, the One Thing that never changes.

ONE FOOT AFTER ANOTHER

“Do not be surprised if you fall into sin, even that you fall every day. The great danger of sin comes not when we fall, but when we refuse to get up.”—Abba John of the Ladder

Lent is just long enough to be boring.

A week’s worth of Lent would produce a different crop of results. Everybody can persevere for a couple of days. Three days—a week, even—without television or two weeks without going to the movies—well, there’s not too much struggle in that. I can keep a New Year’s resolution longer. A chocolate-free two weeks might be just enough to convince me I have pretty impressive will-power. Maybe I can find a diet I’ll stick to after all.

Forty days finds most of my easy resolutions dropped somewhere behind me in the dust. I proved my point ten days ago: I can give up whatever I need to whenever I need to. That’s why I give stuff up, isn’t it? To test my will-power?

Will-power and Lent don’t really have much to do with each other—not much useful, anyway. If I fast for forty days, if I go without my favorite programs or sugar in my tea or even forty days without a taste of beef brisket (there’s a true Texas Lent!)—if I do all these things and tell myself come Easter Day, “I did it!” then it’s all better left undone.

Abba John says, “Don’t be surprised if you fall every day.” We don’t grow very much from our contests won, but those lost.

It’s not the falling, Abba says, but the getting up that matters. Far more Lents are dropped than “lost.” A lot of people give up on Lent, not because it’s too hard but because they’d rather do something else. Lent’s greatest lesson can be that the spiritual life we think we want just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Lent isn’t a spiritual sprint, but a spiritual plod: one day follows another, the drama of the Ashen Cross on our foreheads fades, it’s just not—well—interesting—any more.

Then Abba John’s words come to life: “the great danger is not falling, but refusing to get up.”

That’s the real contest of the spirit. Lent can prove of most value to me, not when I successfully keep it, not when I’ve mastered it, but when I lose it. When I fail, when I realize I could have kept my Lent successfully if I’d given up boiled okra rather than fried, then Lent’s real challenge presents itself.

The real question Lent poses is not “Is my will-power stronger than fried okra?” but “What do I do when I fall?”

Eating fried okra isn’t a sin, and I don't give it up to prove I can: it’s not a contest of will. It’s a gift. I offer to God all the uneaten fried okra I would have eaten for these forty days as my forty-day gift. We’re not giving up sin for forty days, like the Irish thief who refused to steal on fast days or the Italian prostitute who resolutely refused any Sunday fornication whatsoever. I give up my okra, not to prove I can but because, as much as I love okra, I love God more.

So in Lent, as in life, I plod along struggling with my temptations every step of the way. Sometimes I stumble. Well, usually I stumble. The stumblings other people will notice. The standings up are what God is watching for.

Plod, beloved.

AN ANGEL IN THE DESERT

“The brothers said of Abba Macarius that as God protected the world and bore the sins of men so Abba covered the faults of others as if they did not exist, refusing to cast blame on any but only pointing out his own faults. Whatever things he saw and heard, it was as if he heard them not. To them he was an angel walking the earth.” –from The Lives of the Desert Fathers

I have a favorite sin. It’s not the only one I commit—I’m an efficient sinner across the board—but it’s the one I most relish. I know it’s bad for me: it corrodes my soul, weakening my mind and dulling me to the feelings of others. I know that. I know what it promises is a lie, that its allure is false and its results hollow. Yet it tempts me daily—and the temptation “works”: after all these years of fighting it, my soul still savors its sweet smell.

What is it? Before I let you in on that, I’ll let you in on this: you have a favorite sin, too. Like me, it’s not your only one, but also like me, you like the way it makes you feel more than any of the other Six Deadly Ones.

Specialists in the study of the spiritual life call this favorite sin a “besetting sin.” It “besets” us throughout our lives. We may spend our lives combating it, winning some victories over it and losing some battles to it, but as long experience teaches us, it never surrenders.

We fight most effectively when we understand that, as the alcoholic never ceases to be an alcoholic, we never cease to have a soft spot for our favorite offense against God.

My besetting sin is called “vainglory,” an unhappy child of pride and vanity. It leaves me hungry for praise, the love of respect, of being well-thought of to the point of courting admiration. It’s the poison of my soul.

I fight it as I can. If my goal, though, is only to beat down my love of myself, I fight in vain. God offers me more. My besetting sin can become a habitual grace. Through prayer, through the sacraments, following as best I allow myself the spiritual teachers like those in the desert, my sin grudgingly gives ground to Grace. Charity and patience and humility slowly rise from the ashes of my vanity (those who know me know how far I have yet to grow in these gifts, but here and there they peek through in my life). Where Grace, God’s presence and power, finds a home, sin melts like wax.

It’s easy to believe in hell: we see it around us all the time. Watch an evening newscast. Little hells and big ones, most of human devising.

Heaven is harder to believe in because we see it so infrequently. But the Lord, in His love, won’t leave us without glimpses, enticements, promises of Good Things to come. A baby’s gurgling laugh, the palate of a sundown, the clasped hands of an old married couple: these are hints of heaven.

But now and again, Heaven blazes forth in unmistakable, unmuted glory. When the brothers talked about Abba Macarius, they spoke about him as if, through his actions, Heaven had come down. Not only did he not condemn or judge them, they felt that he, like God, protected them.

That Heavenly charity came at a cost. The cost was unseen, the hidden warfare that took place in Abba’s soul. Because he was willing to fight his sin, the ones around him tasted Heaven.

When next you hear the tempter’s whisper, remember Macarius, an angel who walked the earth. We can still follow his path.

A WHISPER IN THE DESERT

The brothers sought a word on prayer from Abba Evagrius. He answered them, “When I was a young man, I was given to easy anger, so I asked the Lord for His Grace to put it away from me. He did not. I turned to Him for many years, with prayers and fastings and vigils, asking for the gift of patience, but His back was always from me. Now I am an old man and the Lord has granted me that for which I so long asked. While I pondered on the years of empty asking, a Voice said ‘I wanted you to pray.’ ”—from Abba Evagrius’ Texts on Prayer

This is what God wants from us. We are each made, St Thomas Aquinas says, to be “friends of God.”

Fr Glenn Spencer, an old friend of mine, convinced me a couple of years ago to sign up for Facebook. He’s one of those bright, techno-savvy priests who’s up on all the latest trends and how to use them every one. He’s a techno-hare. I, conversely, am the technologically timid turtle, who gets baffled every time I have to get back into Facebook. Once I’m there, I still can’t quite figure why. What’s the point of announcing to the world that I believe Jezebel is the best movie Hollywood ever produced?

One of the things it took me a long time to figure out is who all these people are who want to be my Facebook “friends.” Evidently what this means in not so much what you and I—and, more importantly, Cicero and St Thomas Aquinas mean by “friends”—today a “friend” seems to be more like a “contact.” I receive several “friendship” requests a week from people I don’t know and when I look now and then at who some of these actually are, other than the fact that we’re Adam’s descendants, I have nothing in common with many of them.

God has called us to be His friends—not His contacts or nodding acquaintances—but His intimates. This is why He made you and—sit down—not much else matters to Him. He will do with us, Abba Evagrius learned, whatever it takes to get us to pay attention. He seemed to turn His back on Abba’s prayer for patience—certainly a good thing to pray for—so Abba would keep praying. To forge the bond He wants to create between your soul and His, the Lord will give you gifts or strip them from you.

Why do good things happen to you? Because He is the Lover of souls and wants to draw you to Himself as the source of all good. Why do bad things happen? Because He is the Lover of souls and wants to draw you to Himself as the only True Joy there is.

He is indeed, as Scripture says, the all-consuming Fire. He burns everything away but your soul—who you really are—to bring you to your knees.

You and I were created to be His sons and daughters, priests and priestesses of His Creation. That’s why He made Adam and Eve and set them in the Garden. But we, like they, fritter away our High Calling and grub after the tinsel of the world—pleasure or power, possessions or pride.

So He does whatever it takes to get our attention, to wake us up from the nightmares we create in our lives and to which we so tenaciously cling.

Even the good—the patience Abba sought, our families, our health, our much-knowing, the peace of our favorite room, the love of a spouse—all these will be stripped from us. Only prayer—the cry of the soul—will be left us.

And, like Abba Evagrius, we too will someday hear the Voice whisper: “I wanted you…”

SANDALS IN THE DESERT

Abba Evagrius said, “When Moses sought to approach the Burning Bush, he was told to take off his sandals. When you seek to pray, bear in mind the sandals you wear which prevent your approach to God.”

I’m a sinner. I know it, but don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to think about it so much that I can turn even the forty days of Lent, a time to ponder sin, into something else. I can make it about me and how successful I am in keeping the disciplines of the season. I can change this time, given to “afflict my soul,” into a matter of liturgical colors and outward observances.

I’d be hard-pressed to blame anybody else for doing that when I do it myself so easily. But I’m efficient enough of a sinner that I can. I can blame you for sins I myself commit all the while telling myself you’re in far worse shape than I am.

The Pharisee in the Lord’s parable, who thanks God he’s better than everybody else, rings true because he says out loud what I think to myself. Each of us knows we’re better and more important than anybody else. We don’t like Lent, at least not the Lent that isn’t about liturgical colors and special hymns, because it’s rude enough say aloud the private truths we keep to ourselves.

You and I are sinners, and not delicate ones. The sins Lent strips away aren’t thoughts of taking an extra dessert now and then or smiles at an occasional risqué innuendo. When my sins are laid bare, they reveal a man who’ll claw at others to get something for himself. I’ll use you for me.

A Lent that holds up such a mirror to my soul is a Lent worth keeping.

Lent isn’t an end in itself, though. It means to help me see my sins, and seeing them make me sorry for them, and sorrowing for them fight them. From the day you begin to do that until the day you die, you’ll be fighting. Abba Anthony said “Expect temptations till your last breath.”

We fight for a reason. Abba Evagrius said, “When you seek to pray, bear in mind the sandals you wear.” When God spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, he first ordered him to take off his sandals, “for this is Holy Ground.” Nothing wrong with sandals. But Abba Evagrius sees them as standing for sin.

The goal of our lives is prayer. Prayer isn’t long words and complicated religious ideas; it’s living as God’s friend. Sin stands in the way of that, so Abba says, take it off, toss it aside.

A really close friend, a companion of your soul, is someone you can share yourself with. You can reveal the secrets of who you are. If I betray such a friendship, the pain is profound. Until it’s openly and fully shared, until I own up to my betrayal, the friendship cannot be repaired.

That’s what sin is. Lent is the uncomfortable reminder that you and I have betrayed our friendship with God. The purpose isn’t to make me feel bad, but to push me to restore the friendship: own up to what I’ve done, say I’m sorry, repair damaged love.

“Bear in mind the sandals you wear.” Take them off. Toss them away. Then step closer to the Fire.

A PALACE THE DESERT

Abba Germanos asked Abba Moses, “My thoughts often take me, unbidden, to unsavory places. How am I to keep them in control?” Abba Moses answered him, “Our thoughts wander like dogs from place to place, sniffing at things good and bad. We cannot stop this. Like the dog, the mind goes where it is fed. If we feed our minds with things of the Spirit, there they will go. If we meditate on ourselves and our comforts and the delights of the world, there will our minds build a home.”-from The Sayings of the Fathers in Sketis

Holiness is a habit. It grows slowly in us, purposely planted and constantly cultivated.

When I was a child, I was taught how to brush my teeth. Steady strokes up and down clean teeth more thoroughly, but since strokes back and forth are easier, back and forth I stroked. Throughout my early years, I built a dental habit. When one of the adults who had charge of my life occasionally corrected my brushing (as they did), I would comply till they were gone, and then do as I pleased. They didn’t know, as I did, my way was better. But those repeated corrections nestled into my brain, and when I became a man, I put away childish things. I brush my teeth now, not because somebody tells me to, but because I need to take care of my teeth. I'm now a confirmed up and down stroker.

Holiness is a choice, built on an accumulation of habits: daily prayer, weekly worship, regular, frequent reception of the sacraments, the pondering of Scripture; these form some of its essential components. Acts of kindness, the discipline of desire and the struggle with sin are no less necessary. All of us do some of these things now and then. Some of us do all of them occasionally. But when we build these practices into daily habits our spiritual lives blossom. Holiness is taking root.

“An old abba of the desert was asked, ‘How can I find God?’ He answered, ‘Fasting and prayer are necessary, but learn this: many of us know the Scriptures by heart, our mouths smell bad through constant fasting, we recite all the Psalms of David in prayer, but lack that which God seeks: charity and humility. Without these things, all else achieves us nothing.”

Holiness, living our lives in the presence of God, isn’t an accidental achievement but a conscious pursuit. It requires firm dedication and constant practice.

Warren Buffett, whose name you may recognize, speaks about business success in terms which might have come from the desert fathers: “Learn the fundamentals and practice them with ruthless discipline.”

We accept the necessity of discipline in other aspects of life: the athlete trains his body, the pianist masters the keyboard, the cowboy knows the cow. St Paul says, “I discipline myself lest…I become a castaway.”

Abba Germanos asked Abba Moses how to control his wandering thoughts and Moses replied, “We can’t control them, but we can guide them.” We direct our minds where we want our souls to go.

Where does your mind wander? What draws your heart? That’s where your soul is building its home, not just for now, but for forever. Is it the home you want?

A FIGHT IN THE DESERT

“Some people living in the world asked me: ‘How can we lead the solitary life?’ I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; be content. If you behave in this way, you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ”—Abba John of the Ladder

We follow Jesus into the desert for Lent: forty days, then we leave. The men and women who’ve stayed there live the Lenten struggle year-round. Abba John condenses the wisdom of those who remain, to those of us who don’t, into a few short words. “Do good to all, speak evil of none, be content.”

The Lord Jesus was even more succinct: “Be perfect.”

Okay.

And that means…?

We become what we do. God made us—not just generically, but personally. “Before I formed you in the womb,” God said to Jeremiah the Prophet, “I knew you.” Every human being, each soul, is formed by God, an individual creation. We come into this world of beauty and corruption, good and evil, kindness and cruelty: it forms us, too. And from all this, we form ourselves. We chose who and how to be; who we are.

Yes, there’s more to it than that. Much of who we are we didn't create. The current—and boring—homosexual controversy about “nature versus nurture” is the same old question posed yet again: "Given that I didn't create the world into which I was born, can I really be held responsible for who I am?"

The short answer, the Lenten answer, is “yes.”

Yes, regardless of all the extenuating circumstances I can march out to show I did this for that reason and blah, blah, blah. “Without temptation,” Abba Evgrius says, “there is no salvation.” We all know people whose lives are little more than a string of excuses and indulgences. There’s no challenge, nobility or heroism to such lives. You’ve been created for more. You and I were made for a fight.

In each of us there’s One Great Fight of our lives. We fight it from life’s beginning to its end, over and over. Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t.

My problem with this is that I usually mistake the enemy. I think it’s you, or the people who work in the driver’s license office, or “the whole, stinkin’ system.” But all the time I’m chaffing against somebody else, I’m the problem.

Lent comes around every year to gently prod us in the right direction. It reminds us Who made us, and the reason He did and what we should do now. Then, like a good coach, Lent says “If you want a real fight, here’s the enemy,” and pushes us into the ring with ourselves.

My One Great Fight is with me. The Fight is between “what I was made to be,” versus “what I’ve become.” What are my punches, what’s my strategy?

My right is “do good to all.” My left is “speak ill of none.” My footwork is “be content.”

Do this, Abba John says, and the Fight is yours.