You're Not the Only Masterpiece in the House

It’s hard to find a piece of good advice that isn’t bad advice for somebody or, at the least, the wrong advice for a certain person at a certain time.  Indeed, perhaps the chief thing separating a good advice-giver from a poor one is that the former knows what to say to whom when, whereas the latter dispenses wisdom indiscriminately to all and sundry.  Likewise, the good listener knows when to accept and when to reject advice offered, and knows further that advice which was illuminating in one circumstance may be disastrous when applied in another.  This is perhaps especially true of the spiritual life, in which today’s victory is apt to become material for tomorrow’s temptation.

For some time I’ve been fond of two analogies regarding how earthly life works.  One compares life to a tapestry: while we live, we see only the backside, a confusion of buckling loops and tied-off threads.  It is only in heaven that the design on the other side will be manifest, and each dangling thread’s part in our good and God’s glory revealed.

The other analogy makes a similar point by comparing life to a story.  Like fictional protagonists, we don’t usually understand the significance of the little things we do and say and think and suffer; it is only when we finally view life from the Storyteller’s viewpoint that the plot becomes comprehensible, and we understand how its every twist and turn, however harrowing it seemed at the time, led towards the happy end.

These are comforting analogies, with a good deal of truth in them; but like any analogies they have their pitfalls, and may sometimes confuse more than they enlighten.  The problem (or potential problem) is that both analogies make it all too easy to assume that one is the central character.

Read the rest at the Register.

SQT 3-16-18—Spiritual Direction Edition

Seven Quick Takes is hosted at This Ain’t the Lyceum.

I’d been thinking about these for a while, and it seemed time to haul this growing list out, inasmuch as Lent is upon us.  Some of these may be worth a post to themselves … sometime.  Meanwhile …

1.     The problem with “forgive and forget” isn’t that it’s always wrong, but rather that it’s not always right—that is, it isn’t always the healthiest response to an injury.  Sometimes, forgetting is not possible.  And sometimes, it’s not even preferable: sometimes, coming to understand the injury from a supernatural perspective really is better than forgetting that it ever occurred.—Riffing off a good Jesuit’s homily-in-brief.

2.     “Sometimes you don’t have time for meditation, or a rosary, or reading anything.  Do you have a crucifix on your wall, somewhere where you see it often?  Good.  Then try just to look at the crucifix when you can during the day.  That is enough.”—Paraphrase of confessional advice to a mother of a newborn.

3.     “The sorrow of the world worketh death, says the Apostle; we must, therefore, Theotimus, carefully avoid and banish it as much as we can. If it be from nature, we must repulse it by contradicting its movements, turning it aside by the practices suitable to that purpose, and using the remedies and way of life which physicians themselves may judge best. If it come from temptation, we must clearly open our mind to our spiritual father, who, will prescribe for us the method of overcoming it, according as we have said in Part IV. of the Introduction to the Devout Life. If it arise from circumstances, we will have recourse to the teaching of Book VIII., in order to see how grateful tribulations are to the children of God, and how the greatness of our hopes for eternal life ought to make all the passing events of the temporal almost unworthy of thinking about.

“And last, in all the sadness which may come upon us, we must employ the authority of the superior will to do all that should be done in favour of divine love. There are indeed actions which so depend upon the corporal disposition and constitution that we have not the power to do them just as we please: for the melancholy-disposed cannot keep their eyes, or their words, or their faces, in the same good grace and sweetness as they would do if they were relieved from this bad humour; but they are quite able, though without this good grace, to say gracious, kind, and civil words, and, in spite of inclination, to do what reason requires as to words and works of charity, gentleness and
condescension. We may be excused for not being always bright, for one is not master of cheerfulness to have it when one will; but we are not excusable for not being always gracious, yielding and considerate; for this is always in the power of our will, and we have only to determine to keep down the contrary humour and inclination.”—Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God., book 11, chapter 21, conclusion.

4.     “The bees gather honey from the lily, the flag, the rose; yet they get as ample a booty from the little minute rosemary flowers and thyme; yea they draw not only more honey, but even better honey from these, for in these little vessels the honey, being more closely locked up, is kept better. Truly, in the low and little works of devotion, charity is not only practised more frequently, but ordinarily more humbly too, and consequently more usefully and more holily.

“Those condescensions to the humours of others, that bearing with the clownish and troublesome actions and ways of our neighbour, those victories over our own humours and passions, those renouncings of our lesser inclinations, that effort against our aversions and repugnances, that heartfelt and sweet acknowledgment of our own imperfections, the continual pains we take to keep our souls in equality, that love of our abjection, that gentle and gracious welcome we give to the contempt and censure of our condition, of our life, of our conversation, of our actions:—Theotimus, all these things are more profitable to our souls than we can conceive, if heavenly love have the management of them. But we have already said this to Philothea.”—Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God., book 12, chapter 6, conclusion.

5.     God answers all prayers.  Sometimes He says yes, and sometimes He says no.

6.     God answers all prayers.  Sometimes He says yes, sometimes He says no, and sometimes He says “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

7.     God answers all prayers.  He never says no.  His answers are Yes, Wait, and For you, I have something even better. 

Happy Lent

Every now and then in signing off on an email, one Catholic to another, I have to restrain myself from employing the phrase “Happy Lent!” as a complimentary close.  “Happy Easter” most people understand; but the idea of Lent as “happy” sounds off, at least in modern English.  Since most people would take it as sarcasm, I usually refrain.  But really, Lent is happy.

Mind you, I am not an utter barbarian: I would no more wish anyone a “Merry Lent” than I would express hope for their “merry death.”  That’s not just because “Merry Christmas” has different associations than the more solemn “Happy Easter.”  It’s because “merry” and “happy” actually have different connotations, even different meanings once word detection scrapes beneath the surface.  The first sense that the OED gives for “merry” is “That causes pleasure,” and most of the derivative senses of the word involve “pleasant” or “pleasing.”  The second major sense of “merry” is “Characterized by happiness or joy”—which makes sense, since “happy” and “merry” are sometimes treated as synonyms. 

Similarly, the secondary senses of “happy” “relat[e] to pleasing appropriateness or aptness” (italics added).  But the first senses of “happy” are those “related to good fortune.”  It is under this sense that the Beatitudes are sometimes translated with the word “happy,” even though that leads to some rather curious and (ahem) infelicitous combinations, e.g., “Happy are they that mourn.”  (Or, in the Old Testament, “Happy the man whom God chastises.”)  It is probably better on the whole, modern English being what it is, that “blessed” has been almost universally adopted instead; like “consubstantial,” it has the advantage of being a word that we all know we don’t quite understand, and thus cuts down on more serious misunderstanding.

But etymologically “happy” does suggest what the word “blessed” also aims to convey: the idea that one is fortunate.  It comes from the same root hap that yielded “happen” and “happenstance.”  Originally, all three were relatively neutral words relating to luck, lot, or chance.  But somewhere along the way some bright people (who were almost certainly Christian, and might recently have been discussing Romans 8:28) got the notion that, Providence being what it was, every hap that happened to a man was ultimately for his good.  So “happy” came to mean not merely “eventful” or “having stuff happen” but specifically “having good stuff happen, fortunate.”

Read the rest at the Register.