Month: May, 2009“Offering it Up” – Redemptive Suffering Part II – The Path to Greater Merit
A: Having marveled at the amazing truth that Jesus not only redeemed us, but through his grace has desired to give us a real, consequential role in the building up of his everlasting Kingdom through merit, now we are ready to tackle your question. If we are in the state of grace, our prayers, virtuous actions, and even our sufferings can become a source of merit. When we unite them to Christ (“offering them up” as you put it in the question), they become pipelines of grace extending from the heart of Christ into our hearts and through us into the Church and the world around us. That said, we also must remember that the diameter of the pipeline is not fixed. It depends upon four factors. Growth in spiritual maturity depends to a great extent on the interior discipline required in living out these four factors.
First, there is the amount of sanctifying grace present in my soul. The more I am filled with grace, the more merit my prayers, virtuous actions, and sufferings will have when I offer them to God. The more grace I am infused with, the higher the wattage on the lamp of my soul. This is because grace is what makes us more like God, more united to him. A kind word from a stranger can be pleasant, but a kind word from someone dear to me is much more meaningful. The Christian who prays regularly, receives the sacraments regularly, and makes an effort to practice all the Christian virtues, rooting out sinful tendencies and avoiding sin, is more united to God. They are in a better position to merit. As the Bible puts it, “The Lord keeps his distance from the wicked, but he listens to the prayers of the upright” (Proverbs 15:29). And lest you think this is just an Old Testament anachronism, here’s St. James making the same point in the New Testament: “…The heartfelt prayer of someone upright works very powerfully” (James 5:16). What goes for prayers goes also for virtuous actions and sufferings. United to the Vine Second, there is our union with Jesus. This is closely related to the first factor, but it is less formal and more relational. It’s a question of being aware of our union with Christ. We are members of his mystical body, and so he is always with us. The more conscious we are of this union, the more meritorious all of our actions become. When we are working on a project with another person, the beneficial synergy happens more fully and dramatically if we are in constant contact with that person along the whole process. Our project as Christians is to build up Christ’s Kingdom in our hearts and in the world around us. If we try to do the work on our own and then check in with the Lord at the end of the day, that’s good. But it’s much better if we work side-by-side with him throughout every phase of the project. This is the spiritual discipline of living in the presence of God, and it turns even the most mundane tasks into meaningful encounters with God. If I am habitually living and working aware of Christ’s presence in my heart, then saying the words “Lord, I offer this up to you” resonates deeply in my soul, opening up a wider flow of God’s grace (merit) through that offering. St. Paul encouraged the Christians of Colossae to practice this spiritual discipline: “…Whatever you say or do, let it be in the name of the Lord Jesus, in thanksgiving to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). To Want or Not to Want… Third, there is our purity of intention. We can “offer up” our sufferings, using them to gain merit, for many different reasons: because we don’t want to go to hell; because we want more glory in heaven; because we want our sufferings to win graces for others who are in need; because we want to show God that we love him no matter what, even if he permits suffering in our lives; because we want to conform our lives more perfectly to Christ… The same variety of reasons can be present in our prayers and virtuous actions. We can obey because we don’t want to be punished, or because we recognize that the virtue of obedience is pleasing to God and glorifies his wisdom; we can exhaust ourselves to earn a decent living because we are afraid of being labeled a failure, or because we recognize that God has given us a mission to provide for a family and thereby be a mirror of the Father’s goodness… The default setting for our interior intention is usually self-centered. But with God’s help and constant effort on our part, we can make it more and more mission-centered, Kingdom-centered, Christ-centered. Of course, usually we have more than one intention, e.g. we work for the satisfaction of a job well done, but also to benefit the world around us and to make a living, and also to glorify God. Multiple intentions are natural and normal – human beings are complex creatures. But the more we can consciously renew our supernatural intention, stirring up the reasons for doing things that are based on the wisdom of our faith, the bigger pipeline of grace we can become. This factor applies even to the littlest things we do, as St Paul makes clear: “Whatever you eat, then, or drink, and whatever else you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Going from Cold to Hot Fourth, there is the factor of fervor. You can have 20 kids in a math class, and every single one of them can be working on an exercise. But not every single one of them will be putting their whole heart into it. You can have 15 kids at baseball practice, but not all 15 will be giving their all for the whole two hours. Just so, we can all say the words, “Lord, I offer this up to you,” but we will not all say them with equal fervor; the more meaning we pour into them, the more merit we can acquire. When sufferings come our way, for example, we can accept them with different degrees of fervor: reluctance, patience, gratitude, joy. As long as we accept them out of faith, we will merit – we will help increase the flow of grace in the Church. But if we accept them with a greater degree of faith (e.g. “Lord, you are giving me a chance to unite myself more closely to Christ on the cross – OK, Lord, help me to share his love as I share his pain!…”), there will also be a greater degree of merit. Jesus stressed this factor when he identified the most important commandment: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). He said all. The implication is that we can love with different degrees of totality. Sanctifying grace, union with Jesus, purity of intention, and fervor are four factors that help determine the degree of merit that our prayers, virtuous actions, and sufferings (sacrifices) can win for ourselves, the Church, and the world around us. So, to answer the original question, there is much more to uniting our sufferings to Christ than simply saying the words, though that is the necessary catalyst. I hope this hasn’t discouraged you by giving the impression that the spiritual life is overly complicated. It really isn’t. In fact, knowing that one simple action (a prayer, a headache, an act of service, an honest word, a chore) can either open up a trickle or a torrent of grace is a jewel of wisdom. It should fill us with optimism and enthusiasm. We don’t have to convert nations or face lions in the Coliseum to do something glorious for God! Nor do we have to learn complex yoga techniques in order to develop spiritual maturity – we just have to dig deep into our soul before, during, and after our normal activities, and activate our faith so as to plug them into our Christian mission of building Christ’s Kingdom. (By the way, the easiest way to do that is to grow in the habit of “praying at all times” [1 Thessalonians 5:17]. When we do that, the four factors kick in and intensify automatically.) This is less glamorous than becoming a martial arts expert, because it is largely interior and invisible (to everyone except you and God), and therefore requires more discipline. As St Paul put it, we “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). But the good news is, as always, that we are not alone. God, Mary, the angels and the saints are all eager to help us, if we just give them the chance. Dryness in Prayer – Part III – God’s Part in the Struggle
Lack of consolation in prayer (also known as dryness) may be a result of un-confessed and un-repented sin, or it may come from sloppiness or laziness in our effort to pray. But if we are making a reasonable effort to do our part, and yet we still don’t experience (or stop experiencing) consolation, it’s probably God’s fault, not ours. God is not a vending machine; he doesn’t have to reveal himself to us in a tangible way every time we try to press his buttons. This is one of the big differences between Christianity and many other religions. In pagan religions, for example, the gods were obliged to respond to worshippers in a certain way, if the worshipper performed a specific ritual, likewise in Satan worship. But Christ isn’t like that. We can’t control him. He can hold us back from feeling his presence in our souls, even when we are sincerely and conscientiously doing our part. Why? Why would he allow us to experience dryness in prayer? Because he wants our love for him to mature. At times, we can become subtly attached to our experience of God in prayer – to the consolations that we feel as we gaze upon his beauty or taste his goodness. Subconsciously, we can begin to seek those consolations even more than their source. We begin to value the gifts of God more than the God who gives them, like the little child who enjoys Uncle Ernie’s company because Uncle Ernie always gives out candy. Candy is a good sign of Uncle Ernie’s goodness and love for a child, but getting to know Uncle Ernie better and developing a more mature relationship with him means learning to go beyond the gum-drops. When God withholds consolations, he is purifying us of this subtle attachment to our feelings, so that our faith can grow and mature. To become mature Christians, we must learn more and more to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). In this context of spiritual growth, dryness in prayer is an opportunity to truly adore God himself, regardless of personal preferences and satisfactions. The mature love is the love that “lays down its life for the beloved” (John 15:13), not the love that “has no root deep down and does not last, should some trial come…” (Mark 4:17). Dryness is an invitation to give ourselves to God, putting aside our desire to get things from him. Doing Our Part Amid Dryness When God sends us this kind of purification, our reaction should be like a patient on an operating table. We must not try to avoid the often painful dryness, nor panic in the midst of it. Rather, we should persevere in our good efforts, trusting that the wise doctor of our souls is hard at work in ways that we cannot see or feel, healing us of spiritual cancers that we may not even know we have. (St. Ignatius of Loyola used to advise keeping to the exact minute of the time reserved to meditation whether we experience immense consolation or immense desolation.) This is what spiritual writers call “passive purification.” Active purification is when we consciously deny our natural inclinations in order to follow Christ more closely (see our blog posts on mortification). Passive purification is when God puts us into the fire in order to burn away impurities that are beyond our reach. The result is marvelous: purified silver is more fully itself after being put through the fire; we become more fully what God made us to be after he purifies us. But the process is often painful. When this dryness occurs for long periods of time on the level of emotions or imagination, it is sometimes referred as the “dark night of the senses.” The “dark night” is an image that St. John of the Cross used to sum up the whole phenomenon of dryness and passive purification. When this dryness occurs for long periods of time on the level of intellect and will (see part I of these posts on dryness in prayer for an explanation of these different faculties), it is sometimes referred to as the “dark night of the soul,” since these two faculties are the superior, spiritual faculties of the human soul. St. John of the Cross went into great detail about the signs by which authentic dark nights can be distinguished from dryness that comes from other sources. In summary, they are as follows: 1) we find no consolation in the things of God, but neither do we find any in the things of the world; 2) we find ourselves still attending very carefully to our prayer commitments, and our anxiety comes because we fear we are not serving him well; 3) we find ourselves unable (at least for unusually long periods of time) to make reflections and considerations when we go to mental prayer, as if our minds were somehow paralyzed. In these three areas, however, it is difficult for us to diagnose ourselves; it’s like trying to look at our backs in a mirror. Two Tangents Two more observations are needed before leaving this topic. First, those who are taking their spiritual lives seriously and striving to grow in prayer can sometimes be distracted by trying to figure out exactly where they are in the various stages of spiritual growth. It’s as if they think that having the perfect label will make their efforts more fruitful and helpful. This can be a pitfall. Because we are all individuals, and God leads us through unique paths of spiritual growth, it is not always easy to fit our real experience perfectly into the abstract categories that theology has to use to reflect systematically on these issues. We can become obsessed with finding the right label, instead of staying focused on loving God through prayer and action in obedience to his will. It is helpful to understand more and more the principles in the spiritual life, because then we can understand ourselves better as we begin to identify how those principles are at work in our experience. Yet, spiritual naval-gazing is unhelpful. This is one reason why spiritual direction is such a useful tool. It helps keeps us objective and balanced in our efforts to discern how God is acting in our lives. Second, those Christians who are living out their vocation to holiness as lay men and women often receive their purification in ways other than the “dark nights” of the senses and the soul. The suffering and the struggles for fidelity to Christ that come with the vocation to marriage can be acute. The suffering and struggles that come in one’s effort to build Christ’s Kingdom through work, community, and professional activities can also be acute. God can use those struggles and that suffering to perform his purification-operations. He is not limited to using dryness in prayer. This is one more reason why we should be wary of spiritual naval-gazing. The key to spiritual growth is accepting, embracing, and fulfilling God’s will moment by moment, not anticipating how God will work in us and then forcing him to follow our expectations. We must let the Doctor do his work, without demanding that he first teach us the whole science of medicine. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC What is mortification?
A: The root word for “mortification” comes from the Latin, mors and mortis, and it translates as “death.” In the spiritual life, therefore, mortification refers to voluntary actions by which we gradually “put to death” all of our vices, sinful habits, and the self-centered tendencies that lurk beneath them. Spiritual writers use terms like abnegation, sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and self-denial to refer to the same thing. Jesus spoke about mortification as an absolute necessity for growth into Christian maturity. Here are some of the better known passages:
St Paul regularly emphasized this “best practice” of the spiritual life. Besides the passage you mention in your question, here are some other favorites:
It may seem like overkill to list so many quotations (and there are a lot more), but I do so because this is a hard concept for us to accept. A secular culture by definition seeks heaven on earth. According to that mindset, suffering of any kind is valueless and to be avoided – a far cry from the Christian pattern of death to sin (through voluntary self-denial) as a path to true life. In Pope Benedict’s recent message for Lent, he explains the reason behind this pillar of Christian spirituality: “Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person.” In other words, because God has chosen to redeem our fallen human nature, and not just replace it, his grace enters into our wounded, self-centered, sin-tending souls, and gradually transforms them (think of Jesus’ parable of the leaven in the dough). But since we are free, spiritual creatures (not just instinct-driven squirrels), we have to freely cooperate with his grace in order for this process to fully develop. One of the ways we do this is through freely denying ourselves certain pleasures that are not in themselves sinful, e.g. not listening to the radio for the first three minutes of a half-hour commute, offering the silence as an act of mortification, and maybe using it to pray. When we do that, we learn to govern our tendencies to pleasure and self-seeking (which are always waiting for opportunities to run wild); we tame them so that they are fruitful and not destructive, like a tamed stallion as opposed to a wild stallion. This self-governance helps creates interior order and peace, so that we can better hear and respond to God’s action in our lives. The mortification is never an end in itself, but a means by which we become better followers of Christ. Spiritual writers have used many images to explain the value of mortification. Picture a jar full of very sour vinegar. You want to fill it up with sweet honey. First you have to empty out the vinegar, and then scrub the inside of the jar, and only then can you put in the honey. Just so, to receive the many gifts of grace God wants to give us, we have to empty out and scrub clean every corner of our heart and mind, otherwise the grace can’t get in. Think of a garden (as in Jesus’ parable of the sower). The soil is our fallen human nature, riddled and overgrown with poisonous weeds (vices, selfish tendencies, psychological and emotional wounds…). God comes and plants the seed of grace, the seeds of all the Christian virtues. We water those seeds through prayer and the sacraments. But we also need to pull up the weeds (and some of them have very deep roots), otherwise they will choke the growth of grace, and our virtues will end up looking like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. OK, now let’s get practical. What does this have to do with Lent? The Church is a wise mother. She knows that we like to feast more than we like to fast, which is perfectly normal. But she also knows that if we don’t fast (practice mortification), we will get spiritually out of shape pretty quickly. So she has built into the liturgical year certain seasons when we focus a little bit more than usual on this aspect of our spiritual life – penitential days and seasons, like Lent. So, fasting (some form of mortification, voluntary self-denial) is a normal part of every Catholic’s Lenten journey; it gets us in shape for the holiest days of the year – Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday. Each of us should choose some form of mortification (something that we notice, but not something that distracts us or overburdens us – balance and realism are important for a healthy spiritual life). In this way, we can unite our increased spiritual efforts to those of our Catholic brothers and sisters throughout the world, making this season a real family affair. Together we go with Jesus into the desert, where he spent 40 days practicing mortification, as a preparation for his public mission. In another post on this blog, we have made some suggestions about what you can “give up for Lent.” Hopefully this current entry has helped you understand more deeply the value of giving up something. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC The Fire Within – Book Recommendation
The Fire Within is a fantastic and engaging work of synthesis and systematization of the thought of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross on mystical contemplation. One of the more encouraging aspects of this book is the truth that the call to contemplation and deep communion with God is one that is meant for all Christians (as taught by the Saints themselves). One caution – if you have yet to read more basic works on contemplation and meditation (and their historic definitions and distinctions) you may want to pick up, “Prayer Primer” by the same author and read it first.
In Christ, Dan
“Offering it Up” – Redemptive Suffering Part I – The Mystery of Merit
A: Before getting to the heart of this question, we have to peek at the presupposition. It has to do with a theological concept called merit. Part I: The Mystery of Merit Merit is the right to a reward. Someone who gains merit deserves a reward from others; they have earned something of value through their own efforts; someone else owes them a recompense as a result of what they have done. A worker merits his wages; a football player whose performance launches his team to victory merits recognition as the most valuable player; soldiers who risk their lives for their country merit respect, and also social security when their time of active duty is up. Jesus spoke often about merit. In his Sermon on the Mount he encourages us to look forward to the reward that will be great in heaven. In his parables about the final judgment he draws a direct correlation between how we behave here on earth and the reward that we will receive in eternity. Our modern sensibilities, influenced by a Kantian worldview, are disturbed by the thought of doing what is right in order to receive a reward. Jesus had no such qualms: “Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it” (Luke 12:33). In short, as Christians, our prayers, actions, and sacrifices serve as conduits, in a sense, of God’s grace. And it is God’s grace that redeems fallen humanity, rolls back the forces of evil, enlightens sin-darkened hearts, restores hope to those in despair, fills us with joy, wisdom, and strength… God’s Kingdom flourishes, in individuals, families, parishes, and societies, when the flow of grace is abundant. To increase our merits is to do our part to increase the flow of God’s grace in, through, and around us. Problem and Solution Now for the tricky part. On our own, we are absolutely incapable of obtaining supernatural merits. This is because we are fallen, sinful human beings. An unplugged lamp won’t give off any light, no matter how many times you turn the switch. Similarly, original sin unplugged our souls from the source of grace – God himself. When Jesus became man and offered himself in atonement for our sins, he plugged human nature back in to God, so to speak. This was the redemption. And so, anyone who is united to Christ through faith and the sacraments is now once again connected to the source of grace – they are living in the state of grace. Only in Christ, then, can we merit: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). But that’s the amazing thing: in Christ, we can merit. God has consciously chosen to give us the possibility of making a difference in his Kingdom. We are not just along for the ride. What we do and how we choose to live our ordinary lives can actually increase the flow of grace in the world, spreading Christ’s Kingdom and storing up treasure for us in heaven. Jesus has not only saved us from damnation, but he has given us the possibility of becoming active, meritorious collaborators in the work of redemption. Not because we deserve it, but simply because he generously wanted to give us that possibility: he wanted our lives to have real meaning, our actions and decisions to have eternal repercussions. His love makes us friends and collaborators, not just his robots or spiritual trophies. Though it may seem obvious, we should mention that no one can merit the initial grace of conversion for themselves. The unplugged lamp can’t plug itself in, though once plugged it really is the lamp that shines. A misunderstanding of this point helped fuel the fire of dissention that sparked so many painful divisions among Christians at the time of the Protestant Reformation. We cannot save or redeem ourselves; we need a Savior, a Redeemer: Christ. But on the other hand, once we have accepted Christ’s gift of grace, that very gift enables us to merit other graces for ourselves and for the Church. This is a marvelous, wonderful, and underemphasized part of the Good News! Now we are ready to tackle the question of whether it is enough just to “say the words” in order to win merit by uniting our sufferings to Christ. We’ll look at that next time.
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Q: Dear Father John, I was just listening to a radio show about redemptive suffering – they were saying that our suffering can have value if we “offer it up.” Is there any more to this (uniting our sufferings to Jesus’) than just saying the words?
Q: Dear Father John, I have been praying (mental prayer) for a long time. But lately I seem to be experiencing dryness in my prayer – I just don’t seem to get as much out of it as I used to. Is this the “dark night of the soul”? If not, what’s going on, and what should I do?
Q: Dear Father John, What is “mortification” and how does it relate to Lent? What does Saint Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 9 where he says, “I pummel my body and subdue it…” Is he talking about mortification?
The Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel-On Prayer
