Doctor, doctor, give me the news...

I'm interested in learning more about Doctors of the Church. I admit that when I first heard the term many decades ago, immediately thought of medical doctors, and wondered if the church might have had a bad cold, or something. Other protestants thought the same thing.

The easiest way to understand what a Doctor of the Church does is to think of those doctrines which mean the most to you personally; the Incarnation, the Trinity. The Incarnation was defined -- and defended against Arians -- by St. Athanasius, and he was made a Doctor of the Church for his efforts. The doctrine of the Trinity did it for St. Augustine. These two are the most obvious examples, and best show how important their contribution is to the most essential parts of Christian belief. A Doctor of the Church makes the church healthier.

Perhaps just being Catholic has made me interested in Doctors, but I don't think so. They have always fascinated me. In fact, when Pope John Paul II, raised St. Therese of Lisieux to be Doctor of the Church, that was probably the jump start came in to my spiritual life. At that time, I was in a terrible state spiritually, so hearing that she had been raised to a Doctor really hit me in the basement o' faith. What did this mean? Why her of all people? Anyone who has read my blog more than once knows what role "her of all people" currently plays in my devotional life. Maybe I should say here that St. Therese was the motivation to my conversion? Wow, what a thought.

But there are a large number of Doctors of the Church these days. Here's a list.

Piety and Ascetic Practice

Just my thoughts on the subject.

There is a type of religious piety that is an end in itself; the counting up of devotions kept, litanies and chaplets said, hours spent in silence, or the saying of a prayer that someone else wrote, but another person altogether has granted a certain indulgence to you -- payable post-death.

There is another type of piety that says such religious practices are a great waste of time, and reflects a lack of faith.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of middle ground.

The kind of piety I wish to explore, and/or practice, will assist me with asceticism .

A temptation comes. It is subtle, it is one perhaps you know all too well. I think this could apply to almost any temptation, a fill-in-the-blank approach. Your temptation comes, and the usual thing is for you to give in. Okay, if you can nail that moment down, the giving in, it is possible to find a way of stopping your own will to sin.

Now that takes a bit of work. I want to look at various practices that might be useful. First, here is what I do not think is a good idea. Once it was considered reasonable to use the scourge upon ones person. Not very many people still use the scourge, and that's a good thing. Use of the scourge could easily get caught up into the sexual sphere, and then you have two problems instead of one.

I'm have to find something because growth must occur. I'm on a plateau, and acedia could easily creep up and knock me out of the race.

There are Litanies. By the time you finish reciting a litany you're not likely going to be giving in to the temptation you were trying to overcome--at least that day. I'll do it.

There is Hail Mary, full of grace.... Once around a rosary is fifty-three Hail Mary's. Experience has taught me that after fifty-three, I'm not up for my planned, and usual sin. I'll do it.

The point is that no matter how many times you say you will not do something, in the end, you do it anyway. That type of sin has to be rooted out with special acts. That is the purpose of this post, what will actually break open those moments of weak will, and help me push a little closer to God.

Forgive. A Small Weapon

The last two sentence of today's gospel reading for mass:

“If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

Isn't it funny how easily we forget that simple set of sentences? The passage follows hard upon the Lords Prayer, and of the several things prayed for, it is forgiveness that Jesus tells us is most important. He does not emphasise resisting temptation or deliverance from evil. No, what Jesus says is important is forgiveness.

It could be interesting to go through a list of things we consider important and beside each one put an X, because it is not forgiveness. You are most Christ-like when you forgive. Forgiveness is divine. It is participation in the holiness of God. It is an act motivated by love that comes exclusively from God.

We might say that forgiveness is an ascetic practice. Perhaps forgiveness is a precautionary measure against temptation and evil. Where we foster feelings of ill will, anger, or jealousy, there are the ingredients of temptation. And a distressed spirit lures evil to itself. Ill will, anger and jealousy, all can be neutralized by forgiveness. It is both precaution and weapon.

After reading Ida F. Goerres, The Hidden Face, I'm rather taken up with the idea of coming to a full understanding of St. Thèrése's, Little Way. It seems insipid, but I suspect that is due to unimpressive comparisons to the intellectual giants of theology, such as Aquinas, Augustine, and Bonaventure. She draws attention to this several times with statements about how she didn't want to be a great saint who achieved wonderful deeds. Thèrése did not want to go over the wall of obstacles, she wanted to go under it. The advantage to being little, to her, was the ability to just go under the walls of temptation and doubt.

Therese herself gave an excellent example. She relates that one afternoon during her childhood, a horse stopped in front of the garden gate, and although they spoke to the horse to make it move, it would not move. The others were not able to pass through the gate. However, Therese simply went between the horses legs, and got out of the yard.

There is no need to go through spiritual exertions, or raise a reasoned argument to resist temptation, when all one need do is realize that they are not capable of victory without the help of God.

“ I understand clearly how St. Peter fell. He placed too much reliance on his own ardent nature, instead of leaning solely on the Divine strength. Had he only said : 'Lord, give me strength to follow Thee unto death!’ the grace would not have been refused him.” That comes form her Councils and Reminiscences

Isn't that just another way of saying that the way is to go between the horses legs? That kind of attitude cuts a line right through a field of piety, and ascetic practices. There is no need, then, to develop a piety of fierce practices. We only have one way to prove to God our intentions, and that is to trust God. We can't all be great saints.

It is said that Therese never wrote theology. That is true, instead, she lived a theology called Love. Not a love that writes eloquent treatises, but one that simply 'commits love.' The word love is devalued in every way by our relentless confusion of it with the frissón of romantic urgings. It is an ascetic practice. One might try to love one's enemies, to discover just how much of an ascetic practice love really is.

Sacred Heart and St. Lutgard

As of Saturday, St. Lutgarde's day, I will have been going to the Abbey of Gethsemani for one year. Sacred Heart is tomorrow, and that marks my first Solemnity at the abbey. I believe it is important to mark those days in a person's life when remarkable things happen. Those are our red letter days. Days when God interacts in the course of our life.

St. Lutgarde (d.1246) the Cistercian mystic of Aywieres, Belgium had visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When once asked by Our Lord what gift she wanted, she replied: "I want Your Heart." To which Jesus responded: "I want your heart." Then Our Blessed Lord granted the Saint a very special grace. He mystically exchanged hearts with her. St. Lutgarde is the first known mystic to receive this grace.

My experience of the Heart of Infinite Compassion was responsible for my recent conversion to the RCC. Those words sunk into my own heart -- Look into my Heart of Infinite Compassion -- and put me on the path that lead to totally new ways of seeing my spiritual life, God, and most of all, the full love of Jesus.

So from here onward I shall observe St. Lutgarde's day as my Patronal Feast.

I have recently had a number of setbacks that were hard to take. Usually such things are gotten over within a few weeks, and then new paths open up.

In my reading on St. Therese I have encountered, again and again, how little attention she paid to things she felt, suffered. Or even what she really might have thought about some event, or statement, before she ... . I almost said before she clamped down with her doctrine. And while I believe that to be the case, I don't want to sound as if she were harsh, or driven by doctrine alone. That was not the case. What makes Therese a saint is how she used that doctrine of the little way, in such a way that it led her safe through the morass of emotions and pains and humiliations that beset every human, by disallowing them to disturb the peace between her soul, and God.

So what do we do when the 'how' we are feeling drives us into a corner? When persistent questions move into the mind, and make themselves quite at home. The only thing to do is to give them as offerings to God. Tap into the whole "suffering as an offering to God," and let it go. If one thing is certain in life it is suffering. God is in our suffering. Christ is as well, by the cross. That a powerful combination.

At Br. Raphael's funeral, Abbot Damien said that during WWII Raphael had taught pilots. One of the things he told them was "never navigate by what you feel. navigate by your gauges." (That was quoted form memory, so I may have changed the wording.) You can be sure that Therese never went by how she felt. If the metaphor can stand it, she always flew by the gauges.

I know that setbacks are a part of all lives, and we all know that you just keep on, keeping on. It is better though, to send it all to God. Fly by the gauges could easily become a motto for the spiritual life.

St. Alice

Today is St. Alice' day. I am not making it up, she was a Cistercian Nun who died in 1250. Although a nun, she contracted leprosy, and by necessity was isolated from the rest of the community. Fr. Andrew said that we should think of those whom we push to the edge of life, those who are shunned for being different from us, or are the wrong class, etc..

I've never heard of this saint, however some research has turned up an interesting piece of information. In 1250, people were still receiving the cup as well as the host. For hygienic reasons, Alice could not take the cup. This caused her a great deal of sadness. One day she had a vision of Jesus who told her that by receiving the bread, she had received both the body, and the blood.

St. Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, Part II

It is tempting to dismiss all of St. Therese and her little way as so much claptrap, produced by the overheated piety in late 19th Century, France. It was the time when science and technology were throwing bold light into corners of knowledge heretofore reserved for the church.

The great experience of the nineteenth-century Catholics was the secularization of the Western world, and, consequently, the expulsion of the church from its position of eminence.

We can see from this quote from The Hidden Face, by Ida Goerres, that the world was changing hard and fast in the late 19th Century. Science and Technology were presenting many challenges to the faith of France, already begun in its slide to atheism. The Catholic Church was also undergoing the biggest defensive operation of the last two centuries. During the First Vatican Council, of 1870, Papal Infallibility was defined.

Therese's message can pass unnoticed unless we are very careful to listen to her. The following is a lengthy quote from Councils and Reminiscences, I believe her sister Celine is the one who gathered the material.

One of the novices, greatly discouraged at the thought of her imperfections, tells us that her mistress spoke to her as follows:
"You make me think of a little child that is learning to stand but does not yet know how to walk. In his desire to reach the top of the stairs to find his mother, he lifts his little foot to climb the first stair. It is all in vain, and at each renewed effort he falls. Well, be like that little child. Always keep lifting your foot to climb the ladder of holiness, and do not imagine that you can mount even the first step. All God asks of you is good will. From the top of the ladder He looks lovingly upon you, and soon, touched by your fruitless efforts, He will Himself come down, and, taking you in His arms, will carry you to His Kingdom never again to leave Him. But should you cease to raise your foot, you will be left for long on the earth."

There is something special at work here. The novice was discouraged because of her faults, and Therese response is clear, keep trying, and, all God wants is your good will. Many people have objected to such statements, saying that it's too much like 'don't bother trying.'

Our pride is so strong, though, that to stay little as a child takes a great deal of effort. For me it does. Keeping my hand from directing the plow is the hardest thing of all to do. Imagine sitting in the passenger seat of a car with no driver and being told, don't grab the wheel. It's all well and good to say "God is in charge," but it's something altogether different to let go of the wheel and let God be in charge.

St. Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, Part I

There isn't a saint on the books, much less a Doctor of the Church, who has baffled me, and eluded me, as the Little Flower herself. The very term Little Flower makes me wince.

And yet! There is something compelling about her. I read Story of a Soul, about age nineteen, and it made a lasting impression on me. It both attracted and repelled me simultaneously. It is almost the pinnacle of over the top, saccharine devotional writing I most loathe.

And yet! There is something holy about her, as well. After reading it cover to cover she moved into my epistemological database, where she mixed freely with the murder mysteries, theology, history and literature, huge doses of epic poetry, drama of every variety, and the experiences of life. It wouldn't surprise anyone to know the vast majority of things that have gone into that epistemological database have been long forgotten -- St. Therese abides.

Fr. James suggested that I read The Hidden Face, by Ida F. Goerres. Published in the United States in 1959, by Pantheon, now part of Random House. I have been unable to find even Ms. Goerres birth and/or death dates. The reason he suggested it to me is to help me understand exactly what it was about Therese that was so special, because quite frankly, I couldn't see it.

Now I have read The Hidden Face, I can honestly say that St. Therese of the Child Jesus, and the Holy Face, was, and is, a saint. Goerres scrapes off the layer of sugar and icing angels that make the Little Flower the Uber saint of some bad catholic Disneyland, and shows me how to see and understand the reasons behind her being made a Doctor of the Church. That Therese Martin did indeed have something special to teach the entire church.

Solitary, Fact or Fiction?

A way of life that is already being lived as a hermit, is an excellent candidate for a vowed hermit. It is sheer impossibility for me, without the direct grace of God, to become a canonical hermit. That does not prevent me from discerning a rule of life for myself, and giving my vow directly to God, bypassing all human authority. The "bypassing all human authority" bothers me.

On Sunday the local lay Cistercian group met and we talked about obedience. To whom am I obedient? There is not an Abbot in my life, so not to an Abbot. There is not a religious superior in my life, so not to the Church.

When you are alone who keeps an eye on you to make sure the solitary life does not become an exercise in narcissism? A promise to God is more than a promise made to thin air. On the other hand, a promise made only to God is one that is easily wrangled out of if there is not another person, who not only knows of our vows, but expects us to keep them.

I would love to be a part of a community, but the reality is that it is not going to happen anytime soon. Choosing what is already fact is a lot easier to do than kicking for a "wish-it-was" that would coincide nicely with my own desires. When I was 18 or 19 I made a series of promises to myself and to God that, subsequently, I have come to understand were self destructive. The content was wrong headed, but the commitment was to God. The intention was good, and God has chosen to honor my intention, if not the silly things I did.

Strange as this is bound to sound, I need to be obscure. I need to enter the cloud of forgetting, and not look back. I need a superior who in some way does expect my obedience. So many things, incidents, and people, from my past, all pointing to this need as a lifetime of suppressed longing for God. To survive the world, a nervous breakdown, and the death of my hopes of religious life, I created a doppelganger from the wreckage of my 18 year old self.

God is dismantling that doppelganger. Perhaps it will lead back to a wounded, but healed self. This is the gift that solitary life holds out to me.

The Old Trail Drivers

(The title will be explained at the end.)

A curse of being a fast reader is that the sheer volume of books read begins to cause the titles/authors/subjects to run together. Rather like dye in a new red shirt migrating to that new white towel. The result can be a mish-mash of names, dates, plot points, spiritual insights, and theology, all mixed together in a soup called SteveT.

Because the mish-mash does happen I periodically go back and reread those books which meant something to me. Primary on my reading list is Fully Human, Fully Divine: An Interactive Christology, by Michael Casey, OCSO. That book more than anything else, helped bring about my conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. That does not mean the book is about things particularly Catholic, either. It is about Jesus and about you. Here are is the Chapter List from the first review on Amazon.com

1. Divine humanity 2. The recalcitrant body 3. Jesus baptized in the Jordan 4. Ourselves and others 5. Jesus tempted 6. Contrary imaginations 7. Jesus exorcises 8. Detoxification 9. Jesus the sower 10. Trust in providence 11. Jesus stills a storm 12. A quiet mind 13. Jesus the learner 14. An open heart 15. Jesus moves around 16. Ambiguity 17. Jesus transfigured 18. Meta-experience 19. Jesus the prophet 20. Confession 21. Gethsemane 22. Crisis 23. Desolation 24. Nakedness 25. Eternity

It isn't hard to see that this is no usual book of academic/technical Christology. This is a Christology that is deeply involved with the Incarnation, as historical reality, and present fact in our own lives. After reading this book I recall feeling as if I'd spent time with the physical, human Jesus.

So, why the title? There is a story told about my grandfather that he'd read very few books in his life, but he had read and studied the bible. He had also read a book called The Old Trail Drivers. He loved to quote the bible, but sometimes confused the two, causing my grandmother to say, "That's from The Old Trail Drivers, not the bible."

By rereading certain books this summer, the soup of self/mind will not prevail.