When Everything Goes Wrong

The other day I finally listened to Bishop Robert Barron talking with Dr. Jordan Peterson on the latter's podcast.  There were several good things that struck me from it and I would certainly recommend listening to it (you can find the video here), but there is one thing in particular upon which I want to reflect at this moment: the idea of right praise.

Bishop Barron mentioned the liturgical nature of the writing of the creation account in the book of Genesis and the reason for its structure: "The end of a liturgical procession is the one who will lead the praise."  Of course it was man that was created last of all the animals.  Therefore, when God gives Adam and Eve dominion over all the creatures there is far more to it than most of us would think when we hear the word dominion.  The dominion indicated is a lordship over the animals, but in order to lead them to praise of the Creator.  "All of these things belong in a chorus of praise of the true God led by us," said Bishop Barron.  It is our duty to praise God.

When we fail in that duty, much as when the Israelites turned to idols, everything goes wrong.  They became enslaved and began to lose their battles and suffered plagues and droughts and so on.  It is little different for us.

Right praise is essential for our daily lives.  Christ taught us that in the prayer He gave us, praising our loving Father in heaven: "Hallowed be Thy name."

Our daily lives often teach us its necessity in other ways.  I have certainly found it so.

Praise began to become a necessary part of my daily life through indirect participation in the Charismatic Renewal.  Listening to praise and worship music taught me to raise my eyes above my own struggles to look toward God.  One of these songs in particular seized my heart in the midst of some personal darkness and confusion: the song Blessed Be Your Name, which beautifully proclaims a decision to praise God no matter whether things go well or ill from a human perspective and which references the book of Job.

I keep being reminded that the devil's tempting revolves around one primary tactic: to make us look at ourselves instead of at God.  Praise powerfully counters that temptation by turning our gaze away from ourselves and toward God.

When I become focused on my struggles, my failure to achieve anything worthwhile, my inability even to accomplish the little duties I see before me, and so on, it is easy to become discouraged.  It is easy to feel hopeless.  Yet such feelings merely reveal disorder in the hierarchy of my life.  I was created not to establish my own little safe world of accomplishments and perfect order, but to give God right praise.

If there are places in your life where you are struggling perhaps you might dare to ask yourself whether the cause is the same.  Are you looking at yourself or are you giving God right praise?

God's Providence allows all that is.  By His will, including His permissive will, He has brought everything to this moment exactly as it is.  Thus no matter how dark the moment it is part of His plan.  And we also are part of that plan.  We take our rightful role when we choose to fulfill our vocation of leading all creation in giving praise to God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Are You Clinging to Your Teddy Bear?

Have you ever seen the above image or one like it?

It is quite a good illustration for how God works in our lives.  Although sometimes it seems like He is not quite so gentlemanly about asking us to give Him whatever teddy bear of comfort we are clinging to in our lives.  Sometimes He simply takes things away from us, leaving us in confusion and doubt.  Then we feel lost and abandoned.

He could of course show us the bigger teddy bear first to win our confidence.  Yet He rarely does.  In fact, He rarely even gives us the greater gift immediately after taking something from us.  Perhaps He gives it sooner if we surrender readily to Him whatever pleasure or security He is asking us to give Him.  Perhaps it is only because He is forced to take away the teddy bear that has become a danger to our spiritual health that He waits for us to turn to Him before He gives us the bigger one lest it should become an idol as well.

So many times I find myself wondering why He seems to deprive those dear to me (and myself as well) of things that seem necessary.  Surely if He truly wanted us to live life more abundantly He would provide us with the support and healing we need in order to be able to do so?

It is easy to allow the enemy to work here—so easy to believe the devil's dastardly lies that seem so much more consonant with the reality we experience and to believe them in such subtle ways that we scarcely even realize it.  We end up relying on our own strength.  We believe that God does not wish to answer our prayers and therefore we must accept His will—a truth certainly, but one that so easily becomes rather a lie lived in bitterness because it taints our view of the Father's love and goodness rather than uniting us with the passion of Christ.

"God alone suffices," said Saint Teresa of Avila.

Is that not the only answer to the taking of our teddy bears?

We think we need them.  We think we need to hold something to give us comfort and security and we can't bear the thought of facing Him with empty hands.

Yet His hands were empty as they hung on the cross for us, as He poured out His love for us, a love that would soon be transformed into glory in His resurrection.  He had no teddy bears.  Everything had been taken away from Him by the Father's will to which He surrendered absolutely.

God alone sufficed for Him as Man because He wanted us to know that it is true for us as well.  He really will give us everything we need.

Of course it may mean we need to change our hearts.  We may need to change our prayers.  We may need to quit telling God what He needs to do and asking Him what we need to do and how we can fix things and simply enter into His presence open to receive His love.  Why not come before Him with empty hands and empty hearts and say to Him: "Lord, here I am; I come to do Your will.  Heal me in whatever way you wish."

Come Holy Spirit!

Joining friends in prayer for the Pentecost vigil stirred up for me so many thoughts and feelings about this pilgrimage that is the spiritual life.  It is amazing to me how powerful and yet how intangible is that interior battle.

"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak." - Matthew 26:41

Sometimes it seems incredibly tempting to turn away from the battle and follow the easier path of doing my own will since I seem to keep trying to do that anyway even when I disguise it as trying to surrender to God's will.  I hear that those who choose to follow that path do not have to face temptations.  After all, if they are already doing what the enemy wants, why would he bother with them?

I used to think that once one followed the path of holiness, it would become easier to choose the right.  Yet the opposite seems true: those who choose to face that battle find it grow harder day by day.

As my grandma has reminded me, the closer we go to the light, the deeper are the shadows.

Although the battle grows harder day by day and the shadows deeper, there is no surrender, however dearly-bought, that does not allow the Lord to work.  Opening one's heart in surrender and trying to empty out the desire for anything but Him alone may allow the enemy to attack with all manner of doubts and the heart to rise up in rebellion, but grace remains.

"For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want." - Galatians 5:17

Saint Paul was a man of great wisdom, as is my friend who gave me this scripture verse in answer to my questioning about this interior battle and the heart's rebellion.  I tend to think that any sin—or even resistance to God—spoils the good that I wish to do.  Yet I must realize that is the attitude of pride: it comes from the self who wishes to be perfect and to do great things for its own glory.

The sword of truth cuts deep.  It must, for it must pierce between our illusions and the reality of God.

So long as we form our own ideas of God and what it means to please Him and belong to Him, we rush toward a fearsome precipice.  This is to build our own idols in the place of God.  We may find ourselves creating schemes of grandeur for our service in His sight also that we may find our worth, but our true value lies in belonging to Him alone.

We are already His.  We need to prove nothing to become the children of God.  For He has already purchased us with the price of His blood.  All we need to do is learn to accept that reality and open our hearts to being His in all our apparent weakness and uselessness.

Otherwise, we risk losing our very selves.  In the words of Father Thomas Merton (shared providentially today by another good friend):

"Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

"This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

"My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love - outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

"We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves - the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people of the world, there is no great subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.

"All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge, and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

"But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake."

In that void—when we are emptied of all our illusions—we come to the feet of our Lord and Master.  There we begin to receive true love: the love that counters all the deceits of the enemy and reveals how irreplaceable we are in the eyes of Christ, who longs for our friendship more than we can ever imagine.  When we allow that love to fill us, then our emptiness becomes transformed into something beautiful.

May the Holy Spirit bring us to that emptiness, and to the shores of mercy, by our own consent!

Veni Sancte Spiritus!

King of the World

We know we ought not to have idols.  So we don't, more or less.  I mean we don't put up golden calves or statues of the gods and bow down before them and worship them, offering sacrifices of animals to appease their anger.  We might put our focus on other things or put other people first before God, but are those really idols?  We are so good at justification, we can justify just about anything and make ourselves believe we are not really putting those things or people first at all.

Yet how often do we make idols of ourselves, trying to be god unto ourselves?

There is a new song by Natalie Grant that I have heard many times on the radio and it always brings me back to that prideful reality in myself.  It reminds me that I must abandon myself to Divine Providence and not try to force my Lord to carry out my will.

The song is called "King of the World."  The words may of themselves provide fodder for meditation, so I will include them below, but they mean much more with the music: here.

"King Of The World"

I tried to fit You in the walls inside my mind

I try to keep You safely in between the lines

I try to put You in the box that I've designed

I try to pull You down so we are eye to eye

When did I forget that You've always been the King of the world?

I try to take life back right out of the hands of the King of the world

How could I make You so small

When You're the one who holds it all

When did I forget that You've always been the King of the world

Just a whisper of Your voice can tame the seas

So who am I to try to take the lead

Still I run ahead and think I'm strong enough

When You're the one who made me from the dust

When did I forget that You've always been the King of the world?

I try to take life back right out of the hands of the King of the world

How could I make You so small

When You're the one who holds it all

When did I forget You've always been the King of the world

You will always be the King of the world