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The Struggle for Virtue
The Struggle for Virtue
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Week 10 (Nov 17-23): Ch. 10 - Christian Struggle
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Regarding the quote, it seems quite appropriate to my everyday life and my failure to identify those things which are truly needful. Interesting – we've already established the senses as doors to the soul (apologies if I have the terminology wrong), so when I gravitate to the easy and the comfortable, I'm most certainly satisfying those senses and thus establishing their place as the cornerstone of my soul. Comfort food, soft chair, leaving work early, whatever the action, it is grounded in gratification of immediate need for comfort. Thus, there is no room for asceticism. Conversely of course, being miserable for misery's sake is of no profit either. That is another trap people often fall into.
On a personal level, I wonder if we can grow into asceticism, the way people grow into other healthy habits. Slowly begin to implement things – a little more prayer, a little less food, keep the TV off, more spiritual reading. Each of these in and of themselves is not magical, lest we start ascribing 'values' to specific deeds, but rather an attempt to retrain the heart to have a good disposition, thinking more of God than other things.
If I wake up tomorrow morning determined to find 'happiness' even if I dress it in apparent ascetic garb, I am sure to fail. But, if I reign in my thoughts and actions, slowly, steadily, perhaps there will room for God's help to come?
It is a simple trap though to feel like a failure when we've made no effort at all to begin with, or to simply believe 'knowing' the right thing to do equates to doing it. I think I often intellectualize too much of ascesis: for example, I if I exercise my body I know I will eventually feel better. This is a fact (generalization, but work with me!). But knowing the fact does not make it so. This is a tough trap to get out of sometimes. I find it is easier to 'do' things when I have others around me who are of a like mind and goal, which is difficult – there is always the challenge of being an Orthodox Christian in the world, and then, even in our own communities, people are content with 'Sunday' Christianity; the other six days are for the world and our busy lives.
I am thankful for this text so far in that it keeps bring these issues to the forefront for me.
(I will write first, then read Gregory's comments.)I believe that many people, if asked, would agree with the author's contention that happiness comes from inside, not outside of a person. How many people would say before others that they think true happiness comes from having lots of money, an exotic vacation and a big screen TV?
I doubt many would even if they secretly believed it because pride would tell us that such an assertion doesn't sound very Christian. And of course we don't want to sound bad before others. But to say that happiness comes from within and to live it truly are vastly different things.
To look for happiness outside of ourselves includes but goes far beyond mere materialism. I may crave possessions - but I may also want attention or admiration; I may want my ideas to be respected and my opinions to be regarded as important; I may want various pleasures or comforts to stimulate my senses or relax me; I may want a life of ease rather than a life of hard work; I may want others to treat me with kindness or initiate apologies when tempers flare. I may imagine that any or all of these things would make me happy - or happier than I am now.
If the focus of my striving is **how I feel**, I will indeed be tyrannized by evil. The understanding I am taking away from this is not that it is wrong to enjoy. I may eat a fresh ripe strawberry and be thankful for its goodness. There is no evil in that - quite the opposite. However, if once the strawberry is gone, all I can think about is how to get more strawberries so that I can satisfy my desire, I am under the tyranny of evil, even if in a small way.
To receive God's gift in the moment is a joy He intended. To leave the moment to try to control and acquire pleasures, planning for them, storing them up, and making my enjoyment the center of my striving - that is tyranny. When Gospel Love is the center of my striving, loving God and loving my neighbor, I am equally content to accept pleasures and privation. All then is gift from God and the soul is happy and at peace.
To live for self is the ultimate disobedience. To live for other, the ultimate happiness. God made us this way because He made us for Love and our lives will be chaotic if we live for anything but that Love.
Thanks, Gregory, for your very practical reflections. I am so often guilty of intellectualism. It is a challenge to understand how to live more fully this ascetic way. If we leave it to chance, we are likely to do nothing. (Or at least I know I am.) Yet if we engage in certain practices, we can easily, as you pointed out, begin to attach value to the practices themselves. We can become gloomy Christians who think it is our duty to suffer; we can assume that we are doing "enough" because we have done this little thing; we can take pride in what we do; and so on.
It seems that we are creatures doomed to fail - unless we ask God to help us. Back I go to the 4 dispositions...
I have made a little progress. I am not as annoyed with the author for making negative comments about Roman Catholics as I was when I first read the book.But I still feel a need to correct his misunderstanding. Please note (p.124): Catholics do not believe that their efforts given them the right to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a reward.
(Sorry. I'll be quiet now.)
Mod
Interesting. I do have that text and will have a look.
Fr. Peter, The quote you offer from the Catechism of the Catholic Church is accurate but I'm afraid I do not see how it supports Vl. Averky's statement about Catholic teaching. I do not have the book you recommend but would be grateful if you wish to quote relevant passages.
If I might clarify, let's first be clear about what is meant be a "temporal punishment" (or penalty). As I understand it, it is a temporary (not eternal) punishment that is a person's even after their sin is forgiven. It doesn't mean that the sin is not completely forgiven. Rather is means that the individual still has some "work" to do, a lesson to learn, a penalty to pay, etc. In other words, I commit a sin and I repent, I am immediately forgiven but there still may be work for me to do to be cleansed of the impact of that sin, an impact that may affect others and certainly affects my own soul. Were there to be no impact, no "discipline", people could feel quite comfortable sinning knowing they could repent a few minutes later with impunity.
So if we are to accept that there is some sort of temporal punishment (whether one uses this term or not), what are we to do about it? Actually, I think we end up doing much of what is discussed in the present text. In addition to striving to uproot the evil habits and dispositions in us, we strive to do good deeds. These good deeds may include prayer, fasting, charitable work, etc. (Donations? perhaps if donations are to charity with a generous and sincere heart ...certainly indulgences are not for sale.) Of course, we are to pray and do good deeds for love of God and love of neighbor, but we also do them for the good of our own souls, do we not?
And so prayer, fasting, charitable work and so on are means that we are given through the Church (assuming that they are done with a sincere disposition) to obtain remission of this temporal punishment. These efforts of ours are not something that we can ever say has been entirely successful, i.e. we cannot know that the job is done. It used to be that the RCC assigned "values" to certain prayers or actions but wisely discontinued this practice because people were too easily confused. People (Catholics and non-Catholics alike) sometimes misunderstood that this meant one could calculate how much needed to be done and then earn it, to avoid purgatory - not true.
The inaccuracy in Vl. Averky's statement is in his assertion that Catholics believe that these merits are rewards that give the Catholic "the right to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven". I do not know any Catholic teaching that suggests that we ever have a "right" to enter the Kingdom - through any action of our own or otherwise.
I offer these thoughts in hopes that they encourage positive dialogue and mutual understanding. Not trying to be argumentative. I also acknowledge that my own weakness initially allowed me to be distracted by such comments by the author so that I was not fully appreciating the deep wisdom found in his other words.
Please discuss in particular the following quote from this chapter in light of our previous comments:
"Asceticism is the one sure path to the alluring lighthouse of happiness which all people seek. Happiness, as life experience shows, is not outside of a man, where he mistakenly looks for it, but inside. Happiness lies in a peaceful state of soul, in serenity and internal calm, which come from internal satisfaction following victory over evil and the eradication of bad habits that tyrannize the soul." (p. 125)