To teach reverence we must be reverent
My eggplant coming up — so excited!Teaching reverence to children, like anything else, is something we have to practice ourselves.
How can we do it if we fall prey to a relatively recent trend in devotional methods of reading Scripture? This trend feeds a growing industry in devotional products, and so becomes ever more firmly entrenched in people’s minds — but it needs to be resisted. I’ve written about this before…
What is the trend? It is to approach Scripture and also sacred persons in an exclusively psychological way. It’s the Ignatian method (using one’s imagination in contemplating scenes in the Bible), along with the exclusively historical approach, gone rather wrong.
This amalgamation has virtually driven out the other senses of Scripture: the allegorical, which presents images and stories as symbols of virtues or states (for instance, Noah’s ark as a symbol of the church or the parting of the Red Sea as an allegory for God’s triumph); the moral, “for our instruction” as St. Paul says, and the anagogical, which leads us to see what is beyond the literal meaning to higher things.
The latter sense, especially, is virtually eliminated from our way of thinking about the figures we encounter. When was the last time you thought of the elder brother in the story of the Prodigal Son as a representative of the Jewish people and the younger son as a representative of the gentile nations? Usually we only think about how each son felt and spend our time projecting ourselves into the story. I’m not saying that is not valid, but I am saying that we miss something if it’s the only way we ever think about this passage.
The anagogical meaning, a kind of “lifting upwards,” occurs when we are shown what it is we should desire, that is, the eternal happiness of the blessed.(St. Bonaventure, Mystic of God’s Word, 39)
Contemplating typology — that people or events in the Old Testament foreshadow or represent those in the New , or that a parable can be interpreted on a level that transcends the personal — can help us reach heights and depths of understanding and prayer, but we will never experience this profundity if we are always urged and even taught to see things as revolving around us, our needs, our brokenness, and our emotions.
In short, we will not be uplifted and led into goodness if we go the psychological route alone, if we ignore the traditional ways of entering into the spiritual realm. Its destructive destination is reached by imagining what a Biblical figure felt in a situation — innocent enough, and in a simplistic way, what St. Ignatius taught in his famous method of meditation. But when not corrected by other ways of reading, it ends in imagining that the sacred person felt what we feel.
But “my ways are not your ways” says the Lord!
Yes, it’s beautiful to contemplate the agony of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane; his feelings of abandonment, of friendlessness. But beware of the danger* of forgetting his divinity and thinking he was as ignorant of eternal matters as we are. Don’t speak of Mary as worrying or doubtful of God’s providence. Don’t refer to her as an unwed teen mom (which is counterfactual as well as vulgar). Don’t imagine that Joseph was a coward because you are a coward. these are all tropes I have seen, by the way — I didn’t make them up.
Holiness is otherness and we need to have reverence (awe and respect and yes, fear of the Lord). If every sacred thing becomes just an extension of our own pitiful existence, where will we turn to be led to a higher place? Most importantly, where will our children turn? We can’t teach what we don’t have.
I’ve been recording my notes on Instagram. Find my highlight called “dough process” for my tips.*From the Catechism, number 2146: “The second commandment forbids the abuse of God’s name, i.e., every improper use of the names of God, Jesus Christ, but also of the Virgin Mary and all the saints.”
{bits & pieces}Eric Sammons, editor of Crisis Magazine, interviewed me on the topic of the article I wrote with Leila Miller (linked within), and on feminism in general.The entire sexual revolution — and its aftermath, which includes sex education — is based on lies promoted by perverts. Does that sound like an extreme statement?
Well, see what you think after reading these two obituaries written in honor of the doughty Judith Reisman, “petite, jolly, tenacious, intense, righteous Jew, was relentlessly attacked by the sexual Left for her troubles. She was ostracized by academia. She was sued. She won. And Kinsey will never be the same.” Austin Ruse on The Little Lady Who Brought Down Alfred Kinsey.And RIP Judith Reisman, counter-revolutionary and founder of the anti-Kinsey movement.Reisman dedicated her life to exposing the poison of the porn industry and the fraud and sexual violence underpinning Alfred Kinsey’s work and legacy. She served as a research professor at Liberty University School of Law; completed a comprehensive analysis of child pornography in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler between 1986 and 1990 as a consultant to the United States Department of Justice; and testified about her findings around the world. The Reagan Justice Department gave her a large grant to study the impact of pornography. Her research has been instrumental in halting the spread of what she frequently called “Kinseyan sexuality”; as a result of her work, the British medical journal The Lancet called for the Kinsey Institute to be investigated for covering up sex crimes against children.http://radio.garden/visit/khasab/suj4...
Not sure what to make of this Radio Garden site, but you can go anywhere on the globe and listen to what’s being played on the radio!Dressing up in a 1898 Worth Ballgown (wish she had a maid to help her but oh well). I had reviewed Daniel Toma’s book Vestige of Eden, Image of Eternity here; I enjoyed this review as well. A reminder that this is a good book to give to one who has everything/is hard to buy for (cough Father’s Day cough cough). from the archivesAre you back to simple meals? Around here we are still getting chilly days (as in it snowed a not insignificant amount yesterday, after last week’s taste of warm glory): A frugal baked-bean supper can be just the thing!Want your kids to open up to you? Have them do dishes with you.liturgical livingfollow us everywhere!
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