Identity Crisis

As I watch the news lately, I find myself thinking, what is happening to us as a society?  Where are we going (or not going)?  Though I generally discount the media's tendency to sensationalize sex, violence, and whatever else brings in ratings, I can't help but thinking, is there something more beneath the surface?

The short answer is, yes, there is.

We, as a society, are in the midst of an identity crisis.  Despite what the media would have us believe, it is nothing new; the identity crisis has manifested itself more than I care to count in various places and times since the beginning of human history.  However, it is only recently that global interconnectedness has allowed us to see all of the recent instances of the crisis occuring together, and in near real time.  The question is a question of the human condition in general, but churns at the same time in the hearts and minds of each of us individually as we grasp for meaning in life, and pain and suffering in particular.

The question is, what does it mean to be a human being?

This question has been asked since the day our ancestors turned their backs on God and were forced from the Garden.  Before the fall, they walked with God as friends, and knew only to turn to the source of all life--their Creator--for the answer to that question.  However, by turning their backs on Him and separating themselves from Him, as we do every time we sin as individuals and as a society, they distanced themselves so that the only place they were left to turn was to look within themselves and their own brokenness and sinfulness: "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked" (Gen 3:7).

However, God, having known what happened, immediately condemned the deceiver and promised a remedy to be able to return to that face-to-face relationship that he destined us for. "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, and you will strike his heel" (Gen 3:15).  He promised us an answer to the crisis that our ancestors found themselves in, and that we continue to struggle with in the present day.  That answer would be his very own Word, and not only spoken as it was in the creation, but come among as as a flesh-and-blood human being.  As he always does, he made good on his promise, and in the most sublime and humble way imaginable: he became one of us to show us who we are and why we are created.  Christ came not only to tell us, but also to show us, that we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father.  He demonstrated by his life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, how we are to live as beloved children and what unimaginable good the Father has in store if we do.

So what roll does obedience play in all of this?  To put it simply, it is the only way to reclaim and return to that identity.  Unfortunately, it is also our biggest stumbling block.  Because of that original sin, as discussed in the previous post, we have a sort of default toward disobedience.  Because of the choice of our original parents, and carried down in the sins of every parent since, we are conceived in its twistedness.  So, we must make a choice, first in baptism (as our parents and Godparents chose for us) but also in the gift of each day and each moment, whether to obey or disobey.

When we humble ourselves to obey, we don't have to continue to grovel and grasp for our sense of identity.  We are freed to recognize that it has already been given to us, and in the greatest way imaginable.  Christ himself became our identity, and as St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4-5, allows us now to live in a relationship of faith and trust in the Father through him, in the sure knowledge that if we do we will see him face to face:

So we do not lose heart.  Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

For in this [earthly] tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.  For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.  He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18; 5:2-3,5, 21

That is our identity.  There is our worth, not in being productive or wealthy or influential or any of the other dozens of false identities that this world would have us believe that we have to earn, but that in short time will pass away like the wind.  Our identity is the eternal and unfading righteousness of God, which can only be found by humbling and denying ourselves, and looking instead to the Other.

Turning away from that in disobedience can only lead us in one direction: back down into the dregs of groping for who we are, and being unable to raise ourselves from where we began and where the world continues to struggle.  If we reject Christ, we will continue to struggle with questions of life and death, the value of human life, and the choice to love and serve God in freedom or to become enslaved to the demands of society and who it tells us we ought to be, instead of resting secure in the identity that Christ himself has already given to us.

From the Mouths (or Attitudes) of Babes

We do not need to look any further for concrete evidence of our own tendency to disobey than our own children.  Before I get any further in I must say, my wife and I have not been blessed with the gift of children yet.  However, she has always had a knack for identifying and shaping childrens' spirits.  Those skills were fine tuned during the several years she spent as an elementary school teacher, so when she speaks or points out anything child-related that I as a hopeful dad need to know, I do my best to listen.

One trait that she identified and first pointed out to me a couple of years ago was an innate tendency in the vast majority of young children to pursue their own narrow-sighted will over the protective and broader-scoped will of their parents.  Any of you who have children know exactly what I'm talking about: insistence on sticking metal objects into unprotected electrical outlets, ingesting harmful substances that happen to look like Kool-Aid, and turning just about any manner of household tool into an implement of danger and destruction, sometimes over and over again with the same less-than-pleasant effect.  As we've observed our friends and loved ones begin to raise  their children, sometimes we cannot help but stand in puzzled awe wondering exactly what must've been going through that child's mind.  Little children need nearly constant protection from themselves.

We can also probably remember in our own not-so-distant pasts, well into our teens and young adulthood, instances where we defied our parents' loving cautions because, ultimately, we thought we knew better.  It's not until we reached the age of having kids ourselves that we realized, for the most part, mom and dad were usually right.  Of course there are exceptions to the rule: negligent or unloving parents who seriously faltered in their responsibility of shepherding children into responsible adulthood, but for now I'm just focusing on the well-meaning, "normal" (as much as I generally abhor the use of that word) parents that most of us had.  As a child and teenager, my dad's punishment often seemed to be an unreasonable, arbitrary, and autocratic laying down of the law.  One day, though, that all changed.  I don't remember the exact date, but I do remember the feeling when when God gave me a serious adjustment in perspective.  Looking back now as a bona fide grown-up, I realize that without the discipline he and my mom gave, there's at least a fair chance that I wouldn't be here writing this post today.

Now let's apply the illustration to a bigger parent-child relationship, between our heavenly Father and we, his adopted children.  (Yes, I stress adopted; more on that in a later post).  Does it often seem that God--and his representative body, the Church--lay down a bunch of arbitrary, unfair "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots"?  It did for me, until a few years ago, right about the same time that my perspective of my earthly Father's discipline changed.  Coincidence?  I think not.  It is not until we ask for and willingly receive the grace that God freely offers, to see things more and more from his perspective, that we're ever able to rise out of our rebellious, sinful, and ultimately self-destructive tendencies.  Until we invite him in, we remain ignorant infants in faith, blinded by our own headstrong willfulness and unable to understand why he put so many rules in place, first on the two stone tablets given to Moses, later in the laws handed to the Levites, and finally by sending his own Son--his very Word--to live among us, speak to us, and show us the way back to the Father as our brother and fellow human being.  He gave us all of those rules and commandments for one reason: because he loves us as any parent loves their child, except infinitely so, and in that love decided to save us from ourselves.  If we do not follow them, we are like the headstrong child who, left without parental intervention, would eventually do themselves in, all the while thinking, "I know better."

Christ, the God-man, died for us and in the process of his living and dying on earth.  He obeyed, even though his humanity led him to dread fear of the horrible death that he knew he was being led to so much that "his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground" (Lk 22:44)  Yet in the end he surrendered, as he always had, to the Father's will; "not my will but yours be done" (Lk 22:42).  In the process, he gave us the perfect example of how to live as obedient children.  If we join him, we can be assured that our all-powerful and infinitely loving Father will reward us with the eternal glory of Easter Sunday.

A Primer on Obedience

I recently purchased the second album released by The Priests, and one of the songs in the collection was a hymn that I had never heard before, entitled King of Kings.  It has quickly become one of my favorites, not only because they perform such a beautiful rendition of it, but because the lyrics are such a powerful prayer of surrender. The third verse is particularly striking:

My life I yield to thy decree,
and bow to thy control
in peaceful calm, for from thine arm
no power can wrest my soul.
Could earthly omens e'er appall
a man that heeds the heavenly call?

This prayer of powerful surrender has inspired me to begin a series of reflections on exactly what we owe God and what the implications of our surrender are.  After all, in the end, all of our toils in life, all of our grand questions about the meaning of things--and the meaning of life and death itself--boil down to one thing: obedience.  Do I strive to be obedient to Christ in all that I do, and in all that I am, without excuses?  Whose will do I ultimately live to serve, his or mine?

Stop and think about it for a minute.  He--God--gave everything to save me and the entire human race from eternal damnation.  He, the very Word that was spoken and brought the universe into existence from nothing, stepped down from his throne to take on our human flesh, with all its weaknesses, temptations, sorrows, and pain.  Not only that, but he surrendered himself to be unjustly condemned to die a horrible death, all so that we might be reunited with the Father in Him.  He did all that for us, for me. What am I willing to give him in return?

Anything less than everything is not enough.

Calling a Spade a Spade

There is a serious schism growing in our Church. It is like a malignant cancer that has been steadily growing for decades now, and anyone who denies it must have had their eyes closed for the duration. Although many might be hesitant to use words like schism and cancer because of the divisive sentiment they carry, I am not. I'm going to call a spade a spade.

The division has been building steam for the latter part of the 20th Century. It is taking place in the pews of our own parishes, in our homes, and in our schools. It is a wedge being driven to the very center of God's design, human life and powerful cooperative role we have been given in the creation of it. It's being driven between those who faithfully adhere to God's plan for our procreation, life, and death that he laid out for us in the very creation of our bodies, and those who have fallen victim to the lies about human sexuality and contraception that our progressive culture sells us at every turn.

Pope Paul VI prophesied in his encyclical, Humane Vitae, that four devastating effects would come about as a result of the spread of contraception: (1) complacency about, and even rewarding of, irresponsible and sinful sexual behavior; (2) a loss of respect for the beauty and genius of God's design of the woman; (3) an abuse of power by government officials who, under the guise of "family planning" or "population control" resort to ever more extreme and amoral methods of stifling and snuffing out the dignity of human life, from conception until natural death; and (4) man's assertion of his own, newfound control over life and death leading to misuse of the human body as an object or commodity rather than a creation of God and temple of the Holy Spirit.

How much do we see the damaging, cancerous pervasiveness of this heresy in our culture today? It reached its previous milestone in the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, and now has reached a new one in the passage of legislation that does not prohibit the use of taxpayer money to fund the murderous holocaust of abortion that has cost over 50 million pre-born children their lives in their most vulnerable--and what should be their most protected--stage of life.

Yes, the President did sign an executive order purported to expand the restrictions of the Medicare Hyde Amendment to the new health care legislation, but its effectiveness is dubious for two reasons: (1) An executive order can be rescinded or changed at any time, as quickly as it is written; and (2) It sets the dangerous precedent that the President, with a stroke of his pen, can override or amend legislation. The latter is one giant step on the road that can only end in a de facto dictatorship.

Getting back to the point, the bottom line is that a significant number in our Church are being led astray into this "culture of death" as John Paul II put it. Whether by the failure of clergy and teachers to educate the faithful, or worse, by the obstinate--and often arrogant--failure of individual Catholics to inform their own consciences in accordance with the ancient teachings of mother Church, a condition has erupted that cannot be described by any other name than a heresy. Again, I'm just calling it like I see it. As renowned Catholic author and professor Peter Kreeft described in his Handbook of Catholic Apologetics, "The Spanish Inquisition wrongly destroyed heretics in order rightly to destroy heresies; modern "liberals" wrongly love heresies in order to rightly love heretics" (p. 28).

It is time that we as Catholics get to the business at hand of remaking our culture, and that starts with acknowledging where we have failed to address this issue--this heresy--in the past and dealing with it now, post haste. Several bishops have spoken out on this issue, most notably and vocally Archbishop Chaput of Denver. While we certainly look to them for leadership and inspiration, we ought not wait for them to act in our own individual lives and circumstances. We must encourage, teach, and admonish each other, within our own homes, schools, and churches, as Christ commanded us:

If another member of the church sins against you, go out and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 18:15-18).

There's a reason that one of the spiritual works of mercy is to "admonish the sinner." To correct someone who has strayed across the double yellow line into the lane of traffic opposed to God and to the holy mission of his Church is arguably the most important aspect of our mission of evangelization, and--not surprisingly--also one of the most difficult. None of us wants to hear that our actions or opinions are opposed to the work of the Church, especially if we don't feel that our stance is wrong. As children of Adam and Eve, we are predisposed to fall into the same lie that the serpent duped them with in the garden, that God, in setting boundaries for us, is really just a tyrant who is holding out. We think we should be able take the rules that we like, and throw out or ignore the ones that don't match our selfish desires. The bottom line is that we want to define the rules of our own reality, including the decisions about who lives and who dies, and once anyone buys into the lie that they have that power it is hard to give it up. The only way to counter this heresy of heresies is to lovingly encourage and remind each other that our ultimate duty is to submit to the saving power of Christ and the authority that he has delegated in the temporal realm to his Church militant here on earth. Obedience is God's demand, but it is also our joy and claim to the inheritance that he promised if we should only follow the example of radical obedience of his Son. It is our duty always to remind each other of this objective truth, especially when it comes to matters of life and death that are the central debates in our societies today.

On the same token, so need to encourage our bishops and priests to have the courage to preach about it in their homilies, regardless of how divisive a topic it might be. In the end, the divisiveness is like the necessary blade of a surgeon. Better to perform the surgery now, while there is time for repentance and a change of heart, and ultimately healing, than to abandon those whose hearts have not been hardened against the truth to continue to stumble toward the Day of Judgment. Anyone who is authentic in their faith will hunger for and only satisfied by the truth, regardless of the difficult demands it places upon us. Those who do not and have closed their ears and hardened their hearts against it, if they refuse to submit even to the authority of the Church, must be turned away as Christ demanded.  They must be treated "as a Gentile and a tax collector" in hopes that such tough love will drive them to seek repentance and reunification with the Church.

There is no time to waste. While we fail to act, lives--and more importantly souls--are being lost.

Fasting: Dispelling the Satisfaction Delusion

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:1-4)

I have to begin here with full disclosure: I'm a wimpy faster. There's no two ways around it, I'm not that great at it. Fasting is not fun. When talk comes up of giving anything up that tastes good or that satisfies hunger, mixed feelings well up and I have an overwhelming temptation to turn the other way and high-tail it out. Even the two days of the year that adults in the Church are required to fast, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, seemed for the longest time like an unnecessary burden; today, though I now understand the purpose behind it, that feeling (temptation) often wins out and, at some point or another I lose resolve. But, even despite many times failing to follow through, the difficulty of fasting has made its power even more evident. I suppose that is what the Lord meant when he replied to St. Paul's appeal for relief of the thorn in his side, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9)  So, I write this as much for myself as for anyone else.

As a young adult growing up in the Church--when fasting became a requirement--I almost could not believe that we should be required to impose some suffering on ourselves, especially when we had food is readily available. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "What kind of sense does that make?"

Well, as I've come to discover fifteen years later, it doesn't make any sense--to the world that is. But, then again there are a lot of things that we do as Christians that seem like nonsense to a society that in so many ways is opposed to the Gospel. Christ himself promised that not only would the world not understand us, it would despise and hate us (cf. John 15:18), among other things simply for being counter-cultural and denouncing every idol that society promises will satisfy us. That includes the idea that is thrust in our faces at practically every turn, that having all of our temporal needs met, including the most basic need of food, will ultimately satisfy us.

Joining Christ in the Desert

Back to the physical reality of fasting, again, it is just plain, flat out, not fun. Not only that, but it is difficult. Where I come from, that would seem like a textbook lose-lose situation. By the end of a day of fasting, especially more rigorous fasting, as physical fatigue and hunger headaches start to cloud thoughts, the temptation to give in and give up only gets stronger and stronger. It is hard enough (and I've failed enough) just trying to make it through one day; it is almost unimaginable to have endured for 40. But, in following Jesus' example and allowing the suffering of hunger pangs to take us into an interior desert, we are brought to the reality that it is Christ himself, the new bread of life, that we are now to depend on.

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, conveyed this idea well in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, contrasting the Christ's temptation in the desert with his later multiplication of the loaves and fishes: "He himself has become bread for us, and this multiplication of the loaves endures to the end of time." Continuing, quoting the German Jesuit Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis, "'Bread is important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration'" (p. 33). Through fasting, we are prepared for the greater difficulties and temptations that fidelity and faithful adoration to Christ will inevitably bring.

The Holy Father continues,

"We live in this world, where God is not so manifest as tangible things are, but can be sought and found only when the heart sets out on the 'exodus' from 'Egypt.' It is in this world that we are obliged to resist the delusions of false philosophies and to recognize that we do not live by bread alone, by first and foremost by obedience to God's word. Only when this obedience is put into practice does the attitude develop that is also capable of providing bread for all" (p.34)

Fasting pulls us away from that 'satisfaction delusion' offered by this world and back into the eternal reality, to join Christ in the desert and, with him and in him, to submit our will to be steeled against the lies of the tempter. It allows us to rediscover the truth that the only thing that can satisfy us is the Word of God, whom we have the privilege of knowing as the person of Christ and experiencing in the flesh every time we celebrate the Eucharist.

To the Foot of the Cross

By fasting, we voluntarily impose suffering on ourselves and, in doing so, we allow our focus to be pulled away from our 'this world, here-and-now' comfort zone, straight back to the foot of the cross. It hastens our death to self, so that being emptied as he was, we can better dispose our will to his and, with greater focus and purpose, carry out the mission that has been given to us of spreading the Gospel. It gives us a stark reminder, through a real and tangible pain in our stomach, that to join in the joy of his work and ultimately the glory of his Resurrection, we must first endure the suffering, and pain of our crosses in life, and ultimately the death that he has transformed into a door to eternal life.

Prayer Booster

In Mark 9, after Jesus drove an evil spirit out of a boy, his disciples asked him, "'Why could we not cast it out? He said, 'This kind can only come out through prayer'" (other ancient translations add and fasting; Mark 9:28-29, NRSV). It would seem that Jesus is trying to make a point here, first about the necessity of prayer, and second that there are certain, powerful actions that ordinary, 'run-of-the-mill' day-to-day faithful living cannot by itself bring about. In order to reach this more powerful, higher level of faith in action, we must first enter more deeply into the mystery of prayer, by denying the needs of our physical body (albeit temporarily).  Even better, we should strive more frequently to enter into this self-denying faith.  For most of us, who otherwise have our bodily needs met, this is accomplished by fasting. In doing so our spiritual needs, both our individual needs and those of the of the faith community as a whole, are brought into clearer focus as we bring them closer to Christ by drawing nearer to his cross.

On second thought, those two days probably aren't enough.