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Introduction |
Transformation |
Opposition from the
World |
Neglect |
Chastity |
Mysticism |
The Cross |
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Within
the unfathomable depths of God’s love and mercy, we can find a great
treasure that offers us personal growth, heightened wisdom, and enhanced
interpersonal effectiveness. Through deep faith—lived consistently in
a holy and devout life-style—common hassles and anxieties of life are
transformed into true peace and love.
Transformation
The wisdom of the Catholic Church
teaches us, though, that peace and
love, like any good thing, do not come without a
price.
When Saint Paul, for example,
was executed by the Romans, he showed that he understood very well what Jesus
meant about his followers having to deny themselves and take up their crosses.
For on one day, as a zealous Jew on his way to persecute Christians, about
twenty or so years before he died, he encountered Christ in a blinding flash.
Humbled—but not humiliated—and enlightened, Paul renounced a pompous,
self-assured lifestyle for a new Christian life of joyful devotion amidst
hardship and service.
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This astonishing
transformation is open to anyone. Lives of pain and trauma, bitterness and
hatred, emptiness and despair—lives that, despite free will, are enslaved
to psychological and spiritual
blindness—can be healed and transformed.
But please let’s understand right from the beginning that
spiritual-psychological healing is hard work. It requires discipline. It’s
tedious. It’s often frightening. And it points
to one theological fact: if it were possible to restore human
free will to a state of grace in any easy way, God
would not have resorted to the Incarnation, Passion, and Crucifixion of His
only beloved Son. |
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Opposition from
the World
Paul’s martyrdom—and
the martyrdom of all Christians, beginning with Christ Himself—shows
just how opposed the world is to the truth that Christ preached about the
reality of sin, our slavery to sin, and our need
to trust entirely in divine mercy. Still, despite
the persecution it received, the Church stood as a sanctuary from the debauchery
and impiety of the pagan world around it.
Neglect
Through the ages the mystic tradition
of the Catholic Church has offered to us all we need for growth, wisdom,
and interpersonal effectiveness, lived consistently in a holy and devout
lifestyle of true
peace and
love.
So why do even Catholics themselves
neglect and scorn this great treasure of the Church?
Well, in the last two thousand
years we’ve come a long way. The modern secular quest for cultural
diversity has been distorted into such
a neurotic obsession with being “open” and “accepting”
that we are terrified of being labeled
“judgmental.” If we dare to speak
the truth about sin, we are called “haughty”
and “arrogant” and lacking in compassion.
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And so, in our fear of persecution,
we accept anything—even sin itself—as our Christian duty. Think
about that. The world has seduced us into crucifying
Christ day after day in His own name. And most Christians aren’t
even aware of it.
We are being converted back to
paganism by humanistic
psychology.
So, you wonder, what does this
have to do with chastity?
Chastity
In its most simple sense, of
course, chastity refers to abstinence
from all sexual activity which is not open to procreation between a man and
a woman within the indissoluble bond of marriage and family.
But as the full human response
to divine love, chastity encompasses all
the psychological, social, and physical consequences of accepting that the
body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians
6:19) and in therefore distancing ourselves
from—or, in scriptural language, dying to—the
corrupt social world in which we all live, to prepare
ourselves for holy service in the Kingdom of
Heaven.
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If you take the
TWELVE FRUITS
of the Holy Spirit—Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience, Longanimity (forbearance),
Goodness, Benignity (kindness), Mildness, Fidelity, Modesty, Continence,
and Chastity—and mix them together, you get a fruit salad called mutual
cooperation. Mutual cooperation is the essence of Christian life. And
chastity is a core ingredient in that recipe. You simply cannot have mutual
cooperation if you are always making others into
objects for your personal pleasure. |
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 In short, chastity is not just an attitude
toward human sexuality, it is the full acceptance
of the human responsibility to holiness that Christ
preached—and lived in His body—and that contemporary society, in
all its “psychobabble” about happiness and self-fulfillment, tries
its best to subvert.
Chastity, then, is a way of
life—the way of life, the only lifestyle, the only
“orientation”—for anyone who would follow Christ and claim
to be Christian. And woe to the soul that spurns chastity. Love is
chaste, and to spurn chastity is to spurn love. If you spurn love, you will
find that in the end you are left with nothing
but everlasting broken emptiness. To spurn
chastity is to spurn Christ Himself, who, in His real and physical
suffering on the Cross—truly present to us in
the broken bread of the Eucharist—offers the only means to heal our
human brokenness.
Mysticism
This leads to a simple definition
of
mysticism: a direct and immediate experience of a
pure love for God perceived as more valuable than
any worldly attachment and that transcends all sense perception and logical
reasoning. And, if you read the writings of the Catholic mystics, you will
discover that, when they speak about love, they all say the same thing, in
faithful imitation of Christ: If you want to ascend to the heights of
divine love, then be prepared to
suffer.
 Now, in the Prologue to The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, Saint John of the Cross wrote that “we are
not writing on moral and pleasing topics addressed to the kind of spiritual
people who like to approach God along sweet and satisfying paths. We are
presenting a substantial and solid doctrine for all those who desire to reach
. . . nakedness of spirit.” That’s a strong statement,
and yet it was spoken from all humility by a
man who knew deep in his heart, from personal experience, that God calls
us all, purely out of love for us, to a healing sanctity. We are all called
to be saints, because saints are made, not born. And saints are made when
wretched, broken
hearts open themselves to divine love and, being willing to
pay the price of holiness, dedicate themselves,
through sacrifice, obedience, and prayer,
to the service of others.
The
Cross
Therefore, if you seek healing
for the emotional emptiness and loneliness that trouble you today, then accept
the Catholic mystic path of active and passive purgation of your senses and
strip yourself of your own self-indulgence and worldly attachments. Overcome
the emotional conflicts that prevent you from
doing what Christ told us all to do: deny ourselves, take up the
cross, and
follow Him (see Matthew
16:24).
Yes, take a deep breath. For
how many of us, religious and laity alike, attempt to follow Christ without
making any effort to deny ourselves? How many so-called Christians want
the satisfaction of believing they have God’s approval and yet turn
Christianity into a sort of hypocritical
complacency? How many of us have been deceived by New
Age
liberalism [1]
into “feeling good” about ourselves
by believing that we can enjoy the glory of the resurrection without seeking
the cross?
He who seeks
not the cross of Christ
seeks not the glory of Christ. |
—St. John of
the Cross,
The Sayings of Light and Love, no. 102 |
So, if you really want to trust
in God and find true psychological and spiritual
peace, then—instead of denying the cross
and taking up yourself—consider the
counsels of this website, in the spirit and sorrow
of Saint Paul himself: “For many, as I have often told you and now tell
you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ”
(Philippians 3:18).
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1. What is the difference between a liberal and
a conservative? A conservative—a true conservative—seeks to
conserve respect for the divine mystery of Christ’s Incarnation
and Passion that is behind every liturgical action of the Catholic Church.
A liberal defiles this divine mystery by reducing
Faith to mere human convenience and sentimentality.
Therefore, call yourself what you will, but only a true conservative can
be a Christian.
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Questions and Answers:
This is not a command for
virgins to obey and brides to ignore, for widows and not for married women,
for monks and not for married men, or for the clergy and not for the laity.
No, the whole Church, the entire body, all the members in their distinct
and varied functions, must follow Christ. . . . They must
take up their cross by enduring in the world for Christ’s sake whatever
pain the world brings.
