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Certainly
some forms of entertainment are salacious and must be avoided. Other forms
of entertainment may seem innocuous but are harmful when they divert our
vision from the accomplishment of God’s will. But can some forms of
entertainment such as wholesome movies and classical music provide a momentary
way to “chill out,” “escape,” or relax? What about watching
religious programming such as EWTN? What about news programs? How do you
suggest that people stay abreast of what is happening in the world around
them?
 ven Christ Himself needed time
away from His disciples to rest and pray. Thus, from His own example we can
see that “retreats” from daily work can be an important aspect
of our spiritual life. But we should keep in mind, according to Christ’s
own example, that a retreat must of necessity be grounded in
prayerful
communion with God. Otherwise, a retreat loses its spiritual value and
becomes nothing more than self-indulgence.
Prohibitions
and Loopholes
Now, in your asking multiple
questions about entertainment you have already lost your grounding in prayer
and have begun to fall into the trap of thinking that a Catholic mystic life
is a mass of legalistic prohibitions—and loopholes. And if you follow
that path, you will end up in Puritanism, which is a
Protestant heresy.
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When something
is forbidden to you, you desire it all the more unconsciously.
Spiritual growth,
though, is not a matter of forbidding pleasure; it’s a matter of pruning
away useless branches that bear no fruit.
Without pruning, the fruit is sparse and bitter; with pruning, the fruit
becomes abundant and sweet.
This is what
mortification means: to prune the
“vine” so that it becomes more productive. |
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So let’s just simplify things
here.
Spiritual
Pruning
To begin with—that is, to
begin to take up the process of your spiritual
healing—just follow the spiritual counsels
of this website without argument. Deliberately prune away every spiritually
unnecessary thing from your life and plunge into spiritual purgation for
three months. After three months you will have a better idea of what Catholic
mysticism—and real prayer—is all about
and you will see things differently. But right now you are so caught up in
the world—so overgrown with showy branches that
bear no spiritual fruit—that you
can’t see anything clearly, and so you lack the ability to discern what
is good for you and what isn’t.
I myself have a nice collection
of classical music and opera from my student years. But I never listen to
it anymore. If I try, it just seems flat and empty. There’s nothing
“wrong” with secular music, it just seems empty in comparison to
quiet prayerful contemplation.
Gustato spiritu,
desipit omnis
caro.[1]
(Once I taste
of the spirit, all carnal things become meaningless.) |
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Note, however,
that music can be used to assist prayer, especially when it may be necessary
to block out environmental noise and distractions. Contemplative instrumental
music, whether secular or liturgical, is best, though vocal liturgical music
is also good, as long as you cannot understand the language. For example,
I often pray while listening to Russian chants because I don’t understand
Russian; but I avoid Latin chant because I understand the Latin and get
distracted by the meaning of the words. |
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Wholesome, you
say. Really?
I also have a collection of comic
books from when I was about seven to ten years old. These were called
“wholesome” reading at the time: Tom and Jerry, Donald Duck, Chip
and Dale, etc. But as I look at them now, I see that they all were stories
about anthropomorphized animals living in a self-contained world, engaged
in humorous competition with each other as they pursued their own sense of
happiness. And in it all there was no mention, let alone model, of genuine
family life (father, mother, and children), and not
even a hint of dependence on God, let alone any mention of worship and
prayer.
So there’s
“wholesome” for you—at least, there’s “wholesome”
as defined by the social world around us.
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We watch television
and sports and we read newspapers and magazines in the hope of seeing
something that will make us feel good about ourselves. We play sports and
video games in the hope of accomplishing something that will make
us feel good about ourselves. We listen to music and chat on cell phones
in the hope of hearing something that will make us feel good about
ourselves. We make food into an addiction in the hope of smelling and
tasting something that will make us feel good about ourselves. And we
strip sexuality of its reproductive responsibilities and make it into the
most pervasively sought-after entertainment of all, in the hope of seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, and accomplishing something that will make
us feel good about ourselves. |
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But be careful here not to deceive
yourself by attributing any deep meaning to these “hopes.” Don’t
believe for a moment that there is such a thing as “wholesome
entertainment.” The desire to be entertained—to be soothed, satisfied,
and fulfilled—is, at its core, a social “religion” unto itself
that serves the god of narcissistic happiness in the frenzied quest to feel
good about our bodies while ignoring the most poignant hopes of our lost
souls.
Contemplative
Love, or Passive Sweetness?
Moreover, many persons use EWTN
as a passive sweetness to hide their emotional emptiness. Unconsciously
fearful of quiet silence, they try to fill it up with
illusions of activity, instead of facing their
vulnerability with quiet, contemplative trust in
God. Passively watching television doesn’t require the hard work of
prayer, reading, and active ministry, so if you can’t set aside your
sweetness for three months, then you have the proof that it is an
addiction, not a
nourishment.
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When Christ was
born, He emptied Himself for our redemption and
entered this world knowing that He was headed to the Cross, with no escape.
So what gives us the idea to think we have a right to “escape”
from the constant trials of a holy life? Moreover,
Christ told us to pray constantly. So what gives us the idea to think that
specious “entertainment” has any place in a holy life?
[2] |
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Turn away from self-satisfaction,
then, and learn to seek God alone. Once you have learned to seek God in all
things, through pure love, then you can deal with
the world as you need to, reflecting divine grace into the darkness
around you, using the resources of the world as tools for your ministry,
yet without craving the world and without danger of being snared by
it.
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Could you but
realize what happiness it is to love the Sacred Heart of Jesus, you would
despise all else to love but It alone. |
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—Saint Margaret Mary
Life and Writings, II, 678 |
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1. I found this quote in The Ascent of Mount
Carmel by Saint John of the Cross, Book Two, Chapter 17, no. 5.
(The English translation is my own.) Saint John refers to it as “a
frequently quoted spiritual axiom.” Saint Bonaventure, in his
Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum attributes the quote to
Pope Gregory the Great (cf. Opera Omnia S. Bonaventurae, Ad Claras Aquas,
1882, Vol. 1, p. 254), though the quote may actually have its origin in a
letter (Epistle 111) by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
2. Does this mean that recreation has no place
in Christian life? Not at all. Just make sure that everything you do is done
as pure love for the good (i.e., for the
salvation) of others, and, however you do it,
do it with prayer. If you need to take a hike to exercise your body and refresh
your mind from long hours of serving others, fine; pray the
Rosary while walking. Do you enjoy baking bread?
Embroidery? Woodworking? Gardening? Then pray the
Chaplet of the Divine Mercy or the
Jesus Prayer in the process. And, for that matter,
when you do anything, even menial labor, do it with prayer and it will
become the re-creation of your life.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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Read
an excerpt about spiritual blindness