A Handbook On Chastity
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Introduction
One of our family was giving a sharing,
and in the course of it quoted Saint Irenaeus, the third century doctor
of the Church. Another member of the family, duly taking notes, wrote
down carefully, "The glory of God is manfully alive". (Always
read the notes to find out afterwards what you really said)
The note-taker pondered on it; she wondered
why the glory of God had to make such a manful effort to keep going.
She tried drawing it.
It was not a success.
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For
in truth, the glory of God is the human person living out to the full,
the total potential given by God! God cannot redeem the persistently
half-dead!
He
offers life and he offers it abundantly.
The Glory of God is man fully alive!
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If
the subtitle of this book had to be rendered in Greek, it would be enchiridion,
a word which means both handbook and pocket knife. A pocket knife is
an extremely useful thing. If you have a good one you can open letters,
sharpen pencils, whittle yourself a reed flute, get inside a can, uncork
a bottle and remove stones from the hooves of moderately co-operative
mules!
If this book is any good it will be similarly
useful. It is nor merely for reading, but for doing.
It is written from the perspective of
Catholic Christianity. It assumes that the reader, if a Catholic, frequents
the Sacraments and offers, at least, lip service to the ten commandments.
It does not therefore touch on the obvious necessity of making full
use of the means of grace.
Christians of other traditions, with upholders
of monotheistic religions and people of good will of any background,
could find useful things in this handbook. But it assumes that the reader
knows a few of the more obvious tenets of Christian belief (such as
the Trinity) on a level with the ordinary cultural knowledge expected
of all people who share a world.
This is hardly the last word! This small
book deals with the vertical aspect of personal integrity; it barely
touches upon the human friendships into which it may flower; that would
be the subject of another book.
The first eight chapters of this book
make no distinction with regard to the gender or the vocation of the
reader. It focuses simply on the total value of life.
For the human person, fully alive,
is the glory of God.
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Chapter
1
Who am I?
Elementary deduction
Set
out with three blank sheets of paper in front of you.
You are making a journey to find yourself;
firstly, by deducting from yourself the ways by which you are defined
from the outside.
Take
page one.
Head it Heritage.
List your parents, siblings, teachers
and the people who tried to teach and form you.
Do you identify your short temper, red
hair, patience and slight stammer as coming from your father? List it
under your father's name.
Do you think you acquired an interest
in history, a fondness for James Joyce and a tendency towards malted
beverages from your old English teacher? Name your teacher and list
these things under his name.
Compile as accurate a list as you can
find of the things inside you, good, bad and trivial, that came into
you as gifts or inflictions from other people. Do not linger over these
things. You are not unearthing them to brood over them. You are not
taking them out to form moral judgments on yourself or others. You are
piling them up to temporarily remove them.
Take page two
Head it Relationships.
List those with whom you live, work, and
interact. Narrow down what these relationships draw out of you or force
you to take on.
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Your children, for example, may challenge you to be unselfish in a way that would not otherwise have come into your life. The conduct of a colleague at work may involve you in a vindictive vengefulness that you didn't realize you had. Again, do not sit in moral judgment on yourself or others. You are not taking these things out to dwell on them, but to see what you have got left when they are not there.
Take
page three
Head it Gifts.
List your talents; the inward abilities
with which you are equipped. You may be a wonderful listener, a striking
amateur artist or a professional poet. Your talent may be to help others
to laugh, you may be a born friend or an able accountant. But though
you may express and reveal yourself through these gifts, they are gifts,
they are not you.
Lay
these pieces (or piles) of paper in front of you. They represent realities
with which you are deeply involved but they are not you.
Put them now, to one side. Fold them up
and place them inside a book of which you are fond.
Concentrate now on what you have left.
Who am I ?
When I have removed all the scaffolding, what have I got left?
What is there to define me?
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Centring on the Trinity
God.
God who creates me.
God who loves me.
God who empowers me with gifts.
Twenty centuries of living in the light
of revelation, in the pattern of the faith received, have shown us that
before all "human" endowing
is the Creator,
the Lover
the Life-giver the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
God
is before all things.
The human heritage is a reflection of the divine heritage.
The human loves are a shadow of the divine loves, and the gifts you
have received are indication of the Gift that is waiting for you.
Hold this a moment and ponder on it. Immerse yourself in this new reality. Allow yourself to receive what is being offered to you. It is the beginning of a new life, a life in which you are uniquely valued for your very self, a life in which you are being affirmed by the one who knows everything about you and still loves you, a life in which you are the object of a passionate, total and unconditional love, body and soul, mind and heart, spirit and psyche.
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Chapter
2
Who am I?
Meeting me
The
working hands exercise
You have met yourself in God's eyes. You
know God is still holding you and loving you. He is offering you a new
gift. God says to you: "I give you yourself".
You have used yourself all your life -
like you use the train to get to Manchester or Brussels. Now you are
going to encounter the train driver. You are going to meet yourself.
For this exercise choose a simple non-"creative",
manual occupation - peeling potatoes, digging the garden, performing
an exercise (if you are physically handicapped, select
any orthopaedic exercise) .
The first part of yourself that you encounter
in human development is your hands. To see your face you need an external
device. Recognizing your own face is a sophisticated process and it
can be painful. It has its place much later, in this handbook.
I am fond of digging so I shall follow
the process through this image - apply it to whatever you are doing,
The handle of my spade is polished smooth
with use. I put my hands together on it, place my right heel on the
blade which, simply with my inert weight, sinks into the ground. I press
and push with my hands, the blade rises and the clod of earth slides
off to the left. I take one step to the right and repeat the process.
I get into the rhythm of the movement, co-ordinating hands, feet and
spine.
Now I concentrate on my hands; dried earth
graining the pattern of my skin, the flex of knuckles, the movement
of the left hand to the spade-stave to shift the sod, the opposed prehensile
grip of thumb and forefinger that is the epitome of hand motion.
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These
are my hands. I am able to command them to work - and they obey me.
My fingernails are dirt ingrained; the faint blue of my veins slightly
proud of my skin. This is my body, co-ordinated in action, warm,
perspiring a bit from the effort, pleasantly exercised without being
tired. This is me.
Inside this body, indissolubly wedded
to the flesh, is the lone soul of me, revealed in the light of the Trinity,
and the inherited, relating, gifted me of my ordinary life. There
may be concentric layers of me-ness, but there are no dividing
lines.
You have given yourself ten to fifteen
minutes at this exercise. You are going to stop now, just where you
are if possible. Stand, sit, squat, lie flat on your back if you wish.
Concentrate on your heartbeat. Hold the
pulse in your wrist, or behind your ear. Count to ninety and keep in
time with your pulse (do not let your mind wander off into automatic
enumeration!) Your pulse will have slowed a little as you hold it.
By now your breathing will have shallowed.
Put your hands across your lower ribs and feel the slight movement of
the ribcage. Place your hands together in a relaxed position and interlace
your fingers. You can feel the involuntary pressure of your own joints.
You encounter yourself in a gesture of prayer.
Self Offering
After a time, open your hands. Place them palm to palm with your thumbs crossed in the traditional gesture of praying hands.
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Feel
the pressure of your finger tips and the slight tautness in the knuckles.
Look at your hands; they are pointing
outward and slightly upwards. They are like the prow of a ship, like
the growth-spear of a sapling.
They form a symbol of your desire to penetrate into God.
In the earlier ages, if you had been a
serf you would have extended your hands just like this and your lord
would have clasped them with his own, accepting your oath of allegiance.
This is how the king would have received your oath as a knight and how
a bishop would have received your loyalty, if you were a priest, and
how the Pope would have received your vow if you were a bishop.
Allow God to place his hands around yours,
clasping your two hands firmly together,
accepting you;
offering you a covenant.
This
covenant says:
I will be your God and you shall be my people (Jer 32:38).
I will take out of your body the heart of stone and give you a heart
of flesh instead (Ezek 36::27) -
and:
This is my body and blood,
the blood of the New Covenant
which is poured out for many,
for the forgiveness of sins.
{Mt 26.26-29)
Unfold your hands and place one under the other to form them into a cup - as if you expected a present. In the covenant of his body and blood your hands have been transformed into the Lord's hands. The blood in your veins is his blood.
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You hold your hands now like a child to
whom it has been said, "Open your hands and close your eyes...."
It is the position in which you extend your hands when you go forward
to receive communion at Holy Mass.
Your hands are still marked with the signs of your work. Go now and change your clothes (where appropriate) and wash your hands. Let the water flow over them, and feel its pressure.
Water
is another covenant symbol.
You pass through the Red Sea
in the escape from degradation to freedom,
you pass through the Jordan into the Promised Land;
you pass through the waters of Baptism to become a Christian with the
Holy Trinity in your heart.
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Chapter
3
Meeting place
There is space in every life: whether
you are the mother of ten, or the executive of a million. But accessing
it may involve you in making new choices or, in the (initially) uncomfortable
experience of getting up earlier.
Go into your room (or out of your room)
and shut the door. Select an image that is dear to you; a picture or
icon, two pieces of wood nailed in a cross, a candle which you light
or incense which you burn, and (this is not optional) a Bible. Keep
this small space holy and distinct. Let it be a permanent, visible symbol
of your inner availability to God.
Sit, kneel, squat, lie down or prostrate.
Let what your body does express concretely your receptivity. Renew the
process of centring on the Trinity as your Creator, Lover and Giver
on page 7 Renew the process of recognising yourself with the clasped,
pointed and open hands on page 9-10 Allow God's love to reach into you.
Now focus on Jesus, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity,
the Word.
The
Word became flesh
and dwelt amongst us (Jn 1.14).
What
am I, Lord, and who are you?
I want to know Christ Jesus.
Take
the Bible, the book of the sacred scriptures, and kiss it. Jesus is
present in the Word.
He is present in the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
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He is present where two or three are gathered
together.
He says :
"I am here."
You answer:
"I am here."
You want to know about him.
Read the Gospel of John from the beginning to Chapter 11 verse 44, straight off, in one sitting. It will be new every time you read it. It has unlimited dimensions.
But
today you are reading it in two dimensions.
You want to meet Jesus.
You want to meet yourself.
In
the beginning, Jesus the Word, describes himself.
Now we see him encounter his messenger,
the voice who cries out in the wilderness, straighten things out.
You are the one who sees the Spirit descend. You gaze at Jesus and say:
"I myself have seen and testified that this is the Son of God".
Follow the story:
The
disciples meet Jesus. You are a disciple.
He asks you: "What are you looking for?" and invites
you to "Come and see".
Everyone who encounters Christ in John's
Gospel is you.
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You
are Nathaniel, the Israelite in whom there is no guile, and you answer:
"You are the Son of God, the King of Israel".
You are Mary, the mother of God, who intercedes for the needs of others.
You are the servants at Cana and you do
whatever he tells you.
Do not be afraid to acknowledge that you
have been a moneychanger in the temple. Allow yourself to hear his command,
"Stop making my Father's house a market place".
You are Nicodemus, you are the woman of
Samaria at the well, you are the sick people whom Jesus heals, the blind
who are given sight, the hungry who are fed, the dead who are raised
to life.
You are the person for whom Jesus did
all these things. You are the one whom, in his discourses, he is teaching.
In each scenario in St John you are offered a response that is an act
of faith:
Give me this water so that I may never
be thirsty again.
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life.
Yes, I believe that you are the Christ,
the Son of God who is coming into the world.
All
the while Jesus is telling you about himself:
Do not be afraid, it is I.
I am the light of the world.
I know my own and my own know me.
Let anyone who is thirsty come
to me.
The words I have spoken to you
are spirit and life.
Before Abraham was, I am.
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As
you reach these self-definitions in the text, stop and make them your
own.
I am not afraid! It is you, Lord.
You are the light of the world.
You know your own - you know me
and I know you.
I am thirsty; I come to you.
Your words are spirit and life!
Before Abraham was, before you
called anyone of us to know you - you are!
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Chapter
4
The hands of God
You have come out to meet yourself; to
know yourself in the first total primal relationship with God, creator,
lover and giver, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You have deducted yourself
from the human paradigms which shape you. You have encountered yourself
in the work of your own hands. In Chapter Three you entered into
your knowledge of Jesus as a person; now you are going to encounter
him in the work of his own hands.
Centre yourself in the Trinity as you
did on page 7, but now do it simply by saying: "In the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen", whilst
tracing the sign of the cross with your hand, from forehead to breast;
from left shoulder to right.
The Lord holds his hands out to you palms
downward. In your mind take his hands and hold them. Though their touch
is very light, they are very strong. Turn them over so that they are
palms upward and allow the consciousness of the wounds in the palms
to fill you. These very vulnerable hands are the hands of God.
If you feel the inner freedom to do so,
you can kiss those hands.
Set your heart in contented silence and allow the Lord to touch
you. In the Gospels his hands touch and hold and heal and free. Let
him and touch and hold and heal and free you.
He touched her hand and the fever left
her. (Mt 8,15)
He touched their eyes and said: "According
to your faith, let it be done to you". (Mt 9.29)
Jesus immediately reached out his hand
and caught him, saying to him: "You of little faith, why did you
doubt?" (Mt 14.31)
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They brought all who were sick to him
and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak, and
all who touched were healed. (Mt 14.36)
Jesus came and touched them saying:
"Get up and do not be afraid". And when they looked up they
saw no one but Jesus himself, alone. (Mt 17. 7-8)
Then little children were brought to
him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. "Let
the little children come to me and do not stop them, for to such belongs
the kingdom of heaven". And he laid his hands on them. (Mt
19. 13-15)
Moved with compassion, Jesus touched
their eyes. (Mt 20.34)
He took her by the hand. (Lk 8.54)
And he touched his ear and healed him.
(Lk 22.51)
Touch me and see. (Lk 24.39)
He showed them his hands and his side.
(Jn 20.20)
Put your finger here; and see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Doubt no longer but believe.
(Jn 20.27)
What we have looked at and touched
with our hands - the Word of life. (1Jn 1.1)
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Chapter
5
Look into this mirror
The Way of the Cross for Beginners
To most of us a mirror is a sheet of glass,
with silver backing, into which we gaze to see if our hair is straight
and our cosmetics and front view are suitably adjusted. We do not look
to see what is right, we look to see what is wrong. And there generally
is something wrong.
I cannot answer for the other half of
humanity, but women generally look in a mirror in order to depress themselves
with the unloveliness of their faces. Personally, I live in a convent;
it has no mirrors. But that doesn't stop even the holy from craving
for that ultimate accolade: to see yourself reflected in the admiring
eyes of someone else. Our negative view of ourselves is usually converted
quite rapidly by a positive external reaction.
You are invited at this stage of your
journey, to make two experiments. The first may give you courage for
the second.
Sit quietly in a room that is not brightly
lit, and place before yourself any picture or icon of the face of Jesus
which attracts you(2).
Look
at this face
This is the mirror in which you see yourself
reflected. He is the fairest of the children of men (Ps:45.2).
He is the master craftsman at his Father's side (Prov 8:30).
You are made in his image and in his likeness.
(2) The face of Jesus is reflected within you; you may not actually need a picture at all. DO what helps you
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Behold his face
When
you "look" at a thing or remember an event you have a subtle
tendency not to see the picture, but what you feel about the
picture.
Begin now by looking simply, and without analysis: behold his face.
Hold this face
Who
are you, Lord?
What do I know of you?
What does your face tell me?
We are before each other.
You, Lord, hold your hands out to me,
and again, I take them. There is something in me like a gentle fountain,
a quiet but insistent pressure; an uninvasive voice drawing me to you.
Enfold this face
I
hold out my hands to you, Lord and you take them.
I love you.
You take my hands and let me touch your face.
I am afraid, but my longing for you is greater than my fear.
I love you.
I stay here as long as I wish.
When you Lord, want me to move on I will sense the change.
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For
the second exercise you will need a mirror, with sufficient space in
front of it for you to take a few steps back, and a felt pen which will
draw a mark on the mirror that can be easily be wiped off (and a cloth).
This is actually a technical exercise
in art to demonstrate the theory of proportion. Place yourself before
the mirror (again, preferably in a relatively subdued light). Look at
your reflection and draw a line on the mirror roughly round the ovalish
space occupied by your face.
Now get up and take a step back. Reposition
yourself so that your face fits into the drawn line. You will find that
your face and the space inside the lines are still the same size. Step
further back. Do it again. The result is just the same. Get as far as
you can from the mirror, reposition your face and you will find that
it still fits the frame you drew. Even if you could get twenty feet
away your face would still fit into the frame. The "place"
for you in the mirror does not change. If your reflection grows smaller
it is because you yourself have moved away.
Also - and this is the real point of this
exercise - you have probably for the first time, used the mirror objectively
without overly thinking about yourself!
Now sit down in front of the mirror and
wipe off the outline and take a look. Look at this face. It is made
in the image and likeness of God.
This face truly and objectively reflects
the face of God. The face of God is beautiful beyond description. This
face truly and objectively reflects the perfect beauty of Jesus.
It is not the case of whether you like
the shape of the nose or the line of the chin.
God-alikeness goes beyond that.
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The Way of the Cross for Beginners
Recall
to your mind the face of Jesus. The Father in heaven has no difficulty
in recognizing the resemblance.
Where do you find the mirror that makes
your focus clearer?
It is nailed to the wood of the cross.
Journey towards it(3).
(3) You have a choice. You can continue to make the exercise in front of a mirror. But you may simply wish to go somewhere else. Let the Lord guide you.
I.
You are condemned to death
The only purpose of life is death. Everything
that happens to you is designed as a preparation for death. Death is
the one thing you cannot evade. Do not let it become a negative nuisance.
Live for it. Work for it. Keep it as a constant objective in front of
you. Live each day as a preparation for the final, glorious encounter
with God.
II.
You take up your cross
You carry your remedy within you: your
pain and temptation; your hope and duty; your joy and your grief. These
are the tools to get you to heaven.
III.
You fall under your cross
Do not make a tragedy of it. Get up again
and dust yourself down and get on with it.
You are a beginner and the hardest and
most important thing to learn is the equilibrium of listening. Pray
your choices and give the Lord the opportunity to say yes or no. With
practise you can recognize the answer. Embrace the obedience of the
Gospels.
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IV.
You meet your Mother
You will have many wonderful and unexpected
companions on the journey; none more wonderful than this one.
Behold the handmaid of the Lord who says to you: "Do whatever
he tells you" (John:2.5). Mary is a friend - you can always
meet her after a fall. She is good at comforting the bruised and showing
the road.
V.
You meet your Simon of Cyrene
God will give you friends who will cheerfully
get under your burdened and sinful personality and help you carry it.
God may, for your growth, give you a soul-friend
who stays with you on your journey - a fellow pilgrim. You, too, will
help your fellow pilgrims to carry their burdens more easily.
VI.
You meet your Veronica
In Greek, Veronica - veron icon
- means true image. You will meet true images of Jesus on the road.
The quality they give to your life is usually quite disproportionate
to the brevity of your encounter with them. Their goodness becomes for
you, another mirror in which you see your own face reflected in the
face of Jesus.
VII.
You fall
The second fall - the less obvious stumbling
stone - is the desire amidst the good things and beautiful loves on
your journey, to pitch your tent and settle down into ownership. This
is the subtle desire to invest part of yourself in material, spiritual,
and emotional "possessions". Forget it. It is a temptation.
Embrace the poverty of the Gospels.
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VIII.
You meet other sorrowing women and men
Soberly beware of adulation and admiration.
You are only a servant doing what you are obliged to do. You are no
hero. Help those who might admire you, or pity you, focus themselves
on God and their own journey. Show them, not yourself, but Jesus who
carries their cross for them. Tell them what Jesus is doing.
IX.
You fall
There is such a thing as objective evil;
it lives in the same world as the world in which you live. In the end
you will 'kill' it or it will kill you. The Evil One (sorry to be explicit)
wishes to penetrate your personal integrity.
To focus neurotically on this is to go
halfway to giving evil the victory. God is infinitely more powerful
than evil, but you are infinitely weaker than evil. Focus on
Jesus who liberates us from death. Focus on Jesus who is love, and place
him between you and the evil one. He said: I have given you power
over demons and serpents to crush the enemy. But do not rejoice that
the demons submit to you. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Whatever you ask for in my name, believing, you will receive.
This fall is a surrender to the diabolic
temptation of exploiting other human beings. True love is expressed
in serving others; false love is revealed in forcing them to serve you.
All manipulation is unchaste. Embrace the chastity of the Gospels.
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X.
You are stripped
If you are responsive and eager, standing
naked in the Lord's presence will be a form of divine love play. Let
the Lord strip off your dragon skins, and surrender to his invitation
of love. Then his nakedness will cover your nakedness.
But if you are resentful and untrusting,
you will inevitably reduce a private exaltation to a public humiliation.
You cannot draw near to God, or be a real person for others, with your
full armour of crocodile hide. If you refuse to let God peel it off,
others will in the end, tear it off. Make your choice for love.
XI.
You are nailed to the cross
Become what you receive.
Receive what you are.
You have joyfully accepted the means of
growth in your life. Now allow yourself to be identified by them. You
have carried your cross; now let yourself be nailed to it, as a witness.
According to ancient tradition there are
three nails. One is to stop your right hand grabbing for possessions,
one is to stop your left hand groping to exploit others, and one is
rammed through both feet, to stop you running off the course.
XII.
You are crucified
Do not be afraid.
You are a witness to the death and resurrection
of Jesus. That is the whole meaning of the word Christian. Your big
witness is not what, given the opportunity, you might say; it is who
you are. You are transfixed in love, showing in your life, the open
and glorious wounds of Jesus.
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XIII.
You are taken from the cross
Do not tear yourself off the cross. Allow
yourself to be lifted from it. Today was a day of growth. Mary, the
Mother of Jesus, and the blessed ones in heaven - the angels and the
saints - are still with you. Your Simon of Cyrene and all those who
have helped you carry your cross, your Joseph of Arimathaea and your
Nicodemus, are still with you, and your liberation will be part of their
service to Jesus. Accept God's love through others, as a gift. It will
free you of your burden.
XIV.
You are laid in the tomb
Each time you follow these stations of
the cross, something will die. Either by the steady chipping away of
grace on heartstone or by the sudden illumination of the meaning of
just one of these steps on the way. Let what has died be laid in the
tomb. Do not disinter it.
There are things which die forever. But
all the real things in your life will be raised up on Godšs third day,
and transfigured in a new life.
If
you have got through the exercises in chapter five, take a break.
Treat yourself to a cup of strong coffee,
go for a walk and/or go to sleep - you have earned it.
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....Take
a break
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Chapter
6
Returning to the second page.
Who am I?
In the Way of the Cross for Beginners,
you have begun to turn your view outwards, to relate your inner world
to your outer world. Before travelling on this road, focus clearly on
what you have learned.
You are created in the image and likeness
of God.
You relate, in the first place, to him,
not merely by choice, but by nature.
Before God you are completely yourself;
free, unique; able to choose not only the good, but the better, and
the very best person he made you to be.
God affirms you beyond anything human
affirmation approaches - if you allow him to.
God loves you beyond anything human love
can get near to - if you allow him.
God offers you a fulfilment, a passion
and an unstinting tenderness compared with which human sexuality and
love is an unsustainable triviality.
You are unique.
You
do not have to demonstrate your self worth by having a human lover,
a partner, or a poor human appendage to show off to other poor humans.
You do not have to exhibit your desirability
by being sexually active.
You do not have to raise up and fortify
your own ego by manipulating and exploiting other human beings.
Review these three statements:
You do not have to have a lover but you may have real friends.
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You do not have to be sexually active, but God may give you a vocation to celebrate his love for you by sharing it with a spouse. His love will still be greater than your love for your spouse or your spouse's love for you. You will still be a follower of chastity, but your chastity will be a dual chastity. You will leave your father and mother and become one flesh with your spouse, and you will preserve your covenant with each other in the same way that consecrated men and women preserve their covenant with the Lord. It will not take away your first love for God, though it will to some extent, diffuse it. Marriage is for this earth. Marriages are not made in heaven, they are only made on earth (Matt 2:30, Mark 12:25, Lk 20:35) But your covenant love for each other will help you to love God more deeply in the end, in heaven.
You
do not have to exploit or manipulate others. All power and authority
is vested in God and all abuse of power is unchaste.
If you take a person's freedom away; if
you exploit their weakness and even their sin, you will become a murderer
and you will have the reward prepared for murderers. You do not need
to batter the integrity or exploit the sexuality of another human being.
You have been offered God's heart as a plaything.
Pleasure is not in possessing, it is in
surrendering.
If you live by possessing others you will
obtain quick satiation, leaving you with a sick taste in the mouth which
you can only wipe out by an increase in the violence of your pleasures.
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This
has so obvious a spiralling effect that you start by craving power for
pleasure and end by craving evil for evil.
THIS IS A WARNING.
There is no way, ever, of standing
still; if you do not keep moving forward on your pilgrimage, the landscape
will eventually overtake you. You
will not be required to read this text again.
Now go back to the opening exercise of this handbook in chapter one and take the sheet marked page two out of the book in which you placed it.
You have listed the people to whom you
relate in your daily life. You have listed the ways in which they shape
your life by their demands on you. Go over the list again, and in a
second column, name the demands you make on them. Do not condemn
yourself - and do not justify yourself. Simply stick to fact. If there
are destructive elements in your relations with others, the first essential
step to healing them is identifying them.
Look at each relationship (in both its
columns) objectively. Place it before the Lord.
In the name of the Father and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, thank him for the good and constructive areas of
interaction.
Accept his help to release you from the
illicit demands you make on others, and from the illicit demands they
make on you.
Let
the Spirit help you discern those areas that are unclear.
Let the Son share with you the power of his redeeming cross in those
demands made on you that are just, but hard and challenging.
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Let the Father recreate all your relationships in the image of the primal relationship: The Trinity.
Loving God; opening yourself to him, makes you able to love others more deeply. But there is a new way of living with others that will make them and you very happy. However, it may involve you in a very fundamental change of attitude. Jesus said it himself, and it is implicit in everything that the Gospels teach:
"I have come among you as one who serves".
The
leaders of the nations play the Lord,
and those in whom civil authority is vested
act as if the world was theirs to hand out.
It must not be like this with you.
Rather, the greatest amongst you
must become like the youngest,
and the leader, like one who serves.
For who is greater; the one sitting at the table, dining out
or the one who serves him?
Isn't it the one sitting at the table?
But I have come among you as one who serves. {Lk 22. 25-27)
Have
in your mind the image of yourself holding a bowl of warm water with
a towel over your arm.
When you look into a person's eyes it
is usually because you want something. Try looking at their feet. Unshod
feet are pathetic and vulnerable - even the beautiful feet of babies
and athletes. But the majority of human feet - always being stood on
as they are, are tired, bent, rough, and neglected round the toe nails.
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The
leaders of the nations play the Lord,
and act as if the world was theirs to hane out...
If
there is someone in your life with whom you could share this beautiful
Christian gesture of the washing of the feet, you might like to do so.
Catholics of the western rite, and some
other Christians, see the washing of the feet enacted dramatically during
the liturgy of Holy Thursday, but in the liturgy of the eastern rites
it is performed more frequently, as a sacramental. It stands as a sign
of what Christianity is all about.
Make this symbol your way of life; choose
to become a servant. Stop looking to see what other people can do for
you and what they owe you. Recognize now and forever that no one owes
you anything, and you will have a wonderful life because everything
will come to you as a wonderful surprise.
To choose freely to be a servant is the
ultimate human dignity. It must be; Jesus himself did it.
And keep your eyes down on what you are
doing. Do not be constantly taking the temperature of others to see
how you are going down. God respects your dignity. Respect the dignity
of others. Do not be trying to probe them to poke a reaction. Keep your
eyes on the feet - that is, on the service you are performing - and
leave it to God to show you when witnessing as a Christian requires
more than living as a Christian.
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Chapter
7
Symbols of myself
Who Am I?
You already carry the symbols of Christian
servitude: the bowl of water and the towel. It is the heraldry of all
real Christians.
You are becoming yourself, formed in God's
likeness and image, living in the pattern of the Gospel, having something
other than the necessity of not starving to get up for in the morning.
You are precious to God.
You live in the heart of the Trinity;
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You have refused to live by preying on
others.
You have chosen to live as a disciple
of Jesus, and you can say with his mother Mary: "Behold the
servant of the Lord." (Lk 1:38)
Now this is fine. But how will you sustain
these choices in a world that is not on your side? How will you remain
yourself, in integrity and faithfulness to Christ?
My
choice has drawn you from the world (Jn. 15:9)
How are you going to interpret this with
your life?
It may have something to say about geography
- but the evidence of the New Testament seems to indicate that the Corinthians
mostly went on living in Corinth and the Romans mostly went on living
in Rome. Their withdrawal from the world, was mainly (but not entirely)
a choice of lifestyle, not a change of address. They threw out their
old gods, their substance addictions, their slavery to ritual sex, and
their subjection to sin and evil. Then they tried to form
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covenant
communities around a home that became a church. It had its ups and downs;
but that surprised nobody since they were not seeking perfection on
earth, as they had here no abiding city. Yet they managed, even
in the face of violent persecution, to preserve their integrity as Christians
and to hand on the faith to us two millennia later.
How did they cope with a culture that
was going in the opposite direction and battering them as it passed?
Well, they put on the full armour of Christ: that is why you must rely
on God's armour or you will not be able to put up any resistance when
the worst happens, or have enough resources to hold your ground.
So stand your ground, with truth buckled round your waist, and integrity for a breastplate, wearing for shoes on your feet the eagerness to spread the Gospel of peace, and always carry the shield of faith so that you can use it to put out the burning arrows of the evil one. And then you must accept salvation from God to be your helmet and receive the Word of God from the Spirit to use as a sword (Ephesians 6. 13-17).
Their hardware was invisible but of a
singularly durable nature. They put on Christ.
When you meet a person or a situation
do you use yourself to deal with it or do you put on Christ?
That is, do you literally place the Lord between you?
If someone throws a criticism at you about
your faith, (or anything else) do not leap in, on your own puny strength,
and try to knock them down. Put Jesus between you and the questioner
and ask for the answer in prayer. Let them see the Light of the World,
not your own shadow.
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When
you are confronted with a friend or stranger who is suffering and in
need, ask the Lord to give you the words. And when you are confronted
with hate and violence, ask the Lord to protect you: hešs been scourged
and crucified before. Place Christ between you and everything you encounter,
and become a living message.
Saint Paul's living message - his symbol,
if you like - was: "It is no longer I who live but Christ who
lives in me" (Gal 2.20).
Asked who he was, John the Baptist answered:
"I am the voice crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of
the Lord." (Is 40.3)
Saint Peter made an act of faith in his
way of life: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
And the Lord answered: "You are Peter and on this rock I shall
build my Church." (Mt 16. 16-18)
Symbolum is the Latin title for
an act of faith such as the Nicene Creed.
Saint Francis of Assisi put on Christ
to such a degree that people saw, not the little Poor Man, but the wounds
of the Crucified.
Saint Colette's motto was "As
God pleases - as God wills". And she was a woman who could
walk on a battlefield and stop a war.
I walk through the world myself, with
a single line from the Jesus Psalter: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus have mercy.
I am trying to be conscious that Jesus, who is the living water, pours
that water of life and mercy and love into my cupped hands for others
to drink. And the more public the place I find myself in, the more consciously
I try to smile. Have you noticed how few people smile?
Become what you believe; believe what
you are. You are formed in the image and likeness of God.
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He
is with you and within you.
In the words of the Deer's Cry
- the Lorica of Saint Patrick, which was his symbol:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ
behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my
left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ
when I am seated,
Christ in the heart of every one
who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one
who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.
Now
make the Sign of the Cross and invoke the Trinity.
Renew the process of centring yourself
in the Trinity on page 7 and renew the process of self offering with
the gestures of clasped, pointed and open hands page 9-10.
Ask the Lord to show you your symbol.
Ask him to teach you a prayer that will always carry you.
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Chapter
8
The river path
So far this small book has made no distinction
between the married and the unmarried, or the consecrated and the single.
It has not alluded to gender. In fact it has only used the word chastity
onceand you might just have missed it. This lone appearance was at the
third fall of Christ in the Stations of the Cross. The reflections on
the falls of Christ took as their theme the three evangelical counsels:
obedience, poverty and chastity. These counsels are not merely the prerogative
of those who follow the consecrated life, they are central to Christianity.
Christianity is a religion that ceases
to exist if you do not obey God, witness to your dependance on him and
know, with secure joy, that you belong firstly and finally to him.
To allow God to love you and to want to
love him and to work to share this love with all humankind, is basic
Christianity. It is what you are, over and above what you do
or the life you follow.
Jesus said: If you love me keep my
commandments. (Jn 14.15).
And my commandments are easy (Mt
11.30) .
This
book is not going to tell you that ladies should wear long skirts or
less plunging necklines, or that gentlemen should avoid masculine display
and going around without tee-shirts.
A sensitivity to others - particularly
to the weakness and suffering of others - is the first sign that the
heart that has drawn near to the Lord. To want to get through life without
being a drag on others is seminal charity.
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This
book is NOT going to tell you that ladies should wear long skirts or
less plunging necklines...
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It
is also common sense. That people do not display common sense and that
they behave to others, provocatively and cruelly, on this and far more
profound issues, is a sign that the heart is out of joint.
It is obvious that if you avoid knowing
God (and you can avoid it if you work strenuously at it) and avoid encountering
yourself, there will, inevitable as the rising of the sun, appear in
your life patterns of unreasonable, compulsive and destructive behaviour
in regard to other men, women and children.
Life is full of objective duties, but
those who in forming others, place duty first, before sharing
the heart where love is to be found, are not just wrong headed and impractical,
they are sowing a whirlwind they will certainly reap.
God's revealed love is our faith. God
loved the world so much that he sent his only Son so that we could become
people who live forever.
For God sent his son into the world
not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be
saved. No one who believes in him will be condemned; but whoever refuses
to believe is condemned already, because he has refused to believe in
the name of God's only Son. On these grounds is sentence pronounced:
that though the light has come into the world men have shown they prefer
darkness to the light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody
who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, for fear his actions should
be exposed; but the man who lives by the truth comes out into the light,
so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God. (Jn
3. 17-21)
The light is love.
Being
married
Considering the space that the partnering-up
of humans occupies amongst the majority of the living, the Gospels have
very little to say about it.
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Even
such events as the marriage of Cana are there primarily for other purposes.
And asked directly about who belongs to who (Mt 22. 24-31) Jesus says
simply and straightforwardly, in a way not admitting of interpretation,
that marriage is for this earth and does not pertain in the kingdom
of heaven. Indeed the Good News - which is the perfect human
formation - concentrates solidly, on building a relationship in which
the human individual becomes the Father's beloved Son.
So the Gospels have the same non-distinguishment
of state and gender as followed by this small book However, if the Gospels
have little to say about marriage (and a lot to say about chastity and
God-centred living) and if Saint Paul's intimations can sometimes be
difficult to unravel, the Church, especially in the last one hundred
and twenty years, has had much to say on the married state. If you are
married, find it and read it.
How can you, as a married person, use
this book?
Well, as the Church teaches, your covenant
with each other, though it is of this world only, makes you one flesh,
and your chastity is lived by making that one flesh you have become,
consecrated. Your chastity, as it were, faces outward, your love and
mutual self-endowment is sacred, and you are invited to preserve it
from other invasive demands, passions and temptations. So genuine is
this form of chastity that there are now Secular Institutes within the
Church for married people.
Assuming that you have worked through
the exercises of this book as individuals, you might elect to use these
patterns in praying together; particularly the exercises in chapter
one and two.
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But now your original three lists are of those who formed you both in your way of life, of those whose relationships impinge on you both, and of those gifts and talents which you have received springing from your life together. And by rights, the act of physical self-knowing in chapter two should become for you the act of mutual self giving that is the essential sacrament of marriage; that is, the act of love celebrated as an act of prayer and happy, reverent, mutual appreciation.
Unmarriedness
as a preparatory state
Many cultures and most religions have
favoured the chastity of those who are not yet married, in some cases
preferring the virginity of women over the virginity of men, or at least,
giving it more conscious emphasis. For the act of mutual self surrender
of marriage to be a reality, there must be a self to surrender; a real
person who can really give himself or herself to the other. To be a
real adult one must have been allowed to be a real child. To grow, one
must be given emotional, spiritual, physical and intellectual space
in which to grow. The production in our culture, and at this time, of
destructive, sexual experimentation in teenagers, and even in pre-pubertal
teenagers is an assault on the dignity and sacredness of the human person.
Its results are self-evident. If one barters one's self worth for sexual
recognition in the eyes of others, one has made a bad bargain. One is
simply setting out in reverse with the scars already showing across
the back.
But it is useless to talk of moral values
to a fellow human being who has never been allowed to meet either God
or himself, and who is moreover, being "managed" by parents,
teachers and peers whose thresholds are not those of lived Christian
faith.
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To
grow into authentic freedom, the developing human needs (and has always
needed) a measure of enclosure to protect him from secular, cultural
manipulation. The least effective way to arrive at strong and
mature adulthood is by ripping off the protective coat of childhood
and discussing fully and frankly every sexual possibility at the earliest
possible age. Expose the victim to repeated dramatisation of sexual
tragedy at home and on the media, depopulate your world of God, and
if you start early enough you will produce a neurotic by fourteen, and
a one parent family by seventeen. By their fruits you shall know your
selves!
These principles of child formation proceed
from a generation of parents who, if morality came their way outsisde
the media, were exposed to it before they encountered God and a generation
of grandparents who were exposed to God before they had learned that
he was love.
The answer to this is, to a great degree,
to provide a secure environment built on faith to give a child the security
to grow as a chaste human who is able to celebrate his or her
life and the Creator of that life.
Singleness
as a secular choice
For a person to be neither married, consecrated
or living in some style of sexually active relationship, it is relatively
rare. Only recently has the Church acknowledged such a state as consonant
with human dignity and God's plan.
Some avocations; teaching for example,
have in the past sometimes led to people becoming so committed to those
they served that they never got round to marrying.
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A
doctor (who was married!) once told us that in his opinion, no doctor
should ever marry and that he was tormented by the conviction that every
time he took the family to Tenerife, a patient died! An Anglican vicar
once told me that whenever he got the kids into the car to go for a
drive in the country, one of his parishioners always seemed to be about
to have a nervous breakdown. He wondered (in the presence of his wife)
why he had married. She was a good woman and a loyal wife, but she replied
with the bitterest imaginable sarcasm, "Because Saint Paul says
it is better to marry than to burn. Presumably Saint Paul failed to
consider the human dignity of the non-burner!"
God is still in this choice of secular
singleness. It is possible for you to be wedded to the truth and for
your children to be those you have taught or healed, or succoured -
or for your "children" to be the work of your hands, mind
and heart.
It is obvious from the statistics of divorce
and of serial relationships that far too many people try marriage who
have not the shadow of a vocation to live with other people, nor the
maturity and objective commitment to sustain a family. Acquiring a partner
has become in our society, the minimum basic for success and acceptability.
And being sexually active is how you demonstrate that you are an adult
in touch with reality and worth having.
This is simply not true! You have
value in yourself, in your dignity as a human person; not because you
are owned by another human person.!
Consecrated Chastity
Consecrated chastity is the public profession
of the three Gospel counsels of obedience, poverty and chastity that
is accepted - consecrated - by the Church.
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It
is a somewhat well kept secret, but the abilities and qualifications
needed for a life of consecrated chastity are the same as those required
for a successful marriage. The chaste man or woman needs a greater capacity
to surrender in love to God than two humans in a consecrated marriage
will need to surrender to each other.
The chaste man or woman needs to be a
nurturer: one who cares for others; one who puts others first; one prepared
to waste his or her life for love with more assiduity than a mother
and father with newborn triplets who scream all night.
The chaste man or woman needs to be one
who accepts others, who bears all things, hopes all things, endures
all things: one who is truly present to those with whom he lives, who
out of the love of the heart is open, available and willing to share.
If you have met a truly chaste person
you will feel that:
they have made you someone special,
that they have listened to you with the ears of Jesus,
looked at you with the eyes of the Father,
touched you with the hands of the Spirit,
and accepted you with the heart of the Trinity.
Neither in consecrated chastity nor in
consecrated matrimony is there any lasting place for people who are
cold, hard, embittered, frigid, rigidly disobedient to the prompting
of the Spirit, self-righteous or destructively critical. And if you
are still prepared to call your neighbour stupid, you will be punished
for it in eternity (Mt 5.22).
In both of these expressions of God's
life there are only places for people willing to change.
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Consecrated
life is like having triplets who yelp all night - only it's worse!
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The
standard is the same. Place yourself before God and he will transform
you into his image and likeness.
The distinction between marriage and celibacy
is just possibly one of outreach and duration. The celibate is, in
principle, there for the many, and marriage seems to last
longer. There are no other differences from the real perspective of
those who live them. The distinction made between them is not in our
hands, it is in God's hands. Many are called. Some may want one
or other form of life. But it is God who chooses. God's hand cannot
be forced. He has marked us all for our vocations, his directing hand
has prepared us for his choice; and our evasion of it is always a tragedy.
If you meet a person who cannot settle,
who moves like a hunter from relationship to relationship, or one who
lives a profligate life of compulsive sexuality, it is most often, in
truth, the appalling shadow of a lost religious vocation. And if, in
the disguise of religious dress, you meet someone who is both conceited
and frightened, one for whom nothing is right, one who basically is
always at odds with those who manifest the authority of Christ in their
life, one who, above all, tells you that prayer is torture and their
soul has never been anything but dry (though they will probably try
to tell you that to suffer this is their special gift and superior privilege)
you may have seen the terrible shadow of a self-deluded candidate for
the humble sanctities of marriage.
There are no vocations that are more
holy in the terrestrial sense. There is only the choice of God. Let
him be free to choose.
You do not buy a vacuum cleaner to wash
your car with. You do not light a lamp to put it under a basket. No.
You wash your car with a hose and you get your lamp out to light up
the dark.
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God
works in the same way. He made the grain of the wood and he works with
it.
If you have worked through this book and
you still do not know what God wants you to do with your life, go back
to page one and start again. This is the neverending story. It
will never end until you say yes or no. It is possible to say
no to God. It is just very sad. It also has extensive consequences in
eternity and is hell on earth.
Say yes to what God, who is truth, may
speak in your heart, and you will shed more tears of true sorrow and
laugh with more unalloyed joy than the heart can imagine, on earth as
it is in heaven.
I
am free, Lord,
because you have made me free
|
I
am free to love you, Lord. I
am not barren, I am allowed to be free. I
am free to love you, |
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|
I am free to adore you. I am allowed to let you love me. There
is nothing I may not ask You
want me. I
am free to give myself to you. Heaven
is not tomorrow and somewhere else, I
worship you, |
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|
I
want you. You
are free, Lord. |