liturgical guilt

Have you ever had a bought of liturgical guilt? Can you envision what I’m talking about? A possible scenario is as follows:  you are deeply drawn in by all this monastic spirituality, lifestyle, etc. As you continue to see the value in this way of living, you decide to pick up some of its habits. I’ve talked about some of these before. For instance, praying the daily office – you start off with great fervor, praying 3 times a day. Woops! Then you slack off and it becomes 2, then 1. Then you forget one day. Then another day you’re too tired. Then a knock comes at your door – hey, it’s guilt come for a visit. He has come to tell you that you’re a terrible liturgical Christian, that you might as well give up – you’re so lame.

Let’s be more timely about this – say it’s observing Advent. You get a wreath with candles, a devotional of some sort, and mark out your plans to have a daily focused time of celebrating the season. You miss a night, maybe two nights. That’s probably all it will take for our friend to come and visit. “Pitiful,” he says.

Well, it happens to all of us. Unless you have someone standing over your bed, making you do something, or in your living room, forcing you to observe, observe! We will miss days here and there. We will not be perfect in our observance. We should resist the desire to make up for what we’ve missed by doing extra next time. We should work, with God, on sensing when guilt for things like this will come knocking and just not answer the door. Putting ourselves in a tizzy about things like this will only help to make us miserable and can eventually wear us out.

It’s the rhythm of life. We fall. We stumble. Our hair isn’t perfect. We forget to take out the trash. Oh well. And I’m not trying to diminish the need for and the value of discipline or disciplines. They are important. We need to continue to embrace them, but not by beating ourselves up. So, if you miss a night this Advent, OK, you missed a night. God is still alive and you very likely still love Him and He can’t stop loving you. Pick up and keep going tomorrow night.

too long

Wow, there are at least 2 people reading this thing! Amazing. I humbly apologize for not keeping up with this experimental new blog venture. I need to make myself stick to it. That is the monastic thing to do after all.

A new Church year is almost over and a new one beginning. Advent begins on Sunday. The rhythm begins over again. Why is this fun again? OK, no one said anything about fun. This would be a problem for people these days, and Christians along with everyone else – too much focus on everything curing my boredom. We have the attitude that if I don’t “feel like” I’m getting something out of it, whatever it is, then it isn’t worth it. This is deeply unfortunate. We behave and think like small, unformed children when we do this. We’re not getting it.

Things can be boring and still form us in the way that we should be formed. I’ll say that again in another way:  we can feel as if we’re “getting” nothing at all from a particular season or practice, and actually be “getting” more than we need. Whether or not we experience any seemingly positive emotional response to the liturgy, or prayer, or anything like that, really means nothing. Using emotions as a guage as to whether something is worth giving yourself to is dangerous.

So, here’s an encouragement for us all:  to put ourselves intentionally into the Christian rhythm of life, into the liturgical season we are about to enter. Await the coming of the Messiah. Live inside of Advent. Allow that rhythm to form you. Don’t worry about being bored or not being entertained enough. Don’t buy into the lie. Happy Advent.

new year, etc.

Well, happy new year. It’s Epiphany today so basically the Christmas Season is at a close. I don’t have much to say today, just wanted to post something to keep things going on this blog.

practices

One of the things that characterizes a Monk, or the Monastic life is Practices. To live as a Monk, one does certain things as a part of that life. There is a certain rhythm. Of course there is a rhythm to every kind of life one lives. Some of us don’t think twice about what we do day after day. We get up, take a shower, get dressed, drink our coffee, go to work, eat lunch, go back to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed – back up, all over again. Many, many people simply inhabit a rhythm like that without any intention behind it.

There is certainly nothing inherently evil in such a life. I live a lot that way myself. That’s not my point. What I want to talk about is how we might intentionally alter that default rhythm toward the Kingdom of God, toward a certain way of living a Monastic life “in the world.” This is about both underlying attitudes and practices. As always, our attitudes will dictate at least our desire to act in certain ways. We may not always succeed in living out our desires, but if an inward attitude is there, this is more than half the battle.

Most of the practices we can adopt into the rhythm of our daily lives are fairly simple. We can always find reasons why we can’t or shouldn’t do these things. We don’t have time. We’re too busy. One more thing will overwhelm me! I understand these thoughts. I’ve had them myself. But seriously, we’re talking about things like daily liturgical prayer. You don’t even have to make it up, it’s right there, written out for you. Even if you only commit to praying once a day, it doesn’t take long, and is well worth the intentional turning of your focus toward God for a few moments of the day. Not that I’m some living example of this, but it’s actually possible to do this a few times a day.

So, there’s prayer. Meditation is another monastic practice that can be woven into our daily rhythm of life. Chewing on some concept or word or short Scripture quote. This can be done anywhere actually – walking, sitting, lying down, in the shower, etc. Lectio Divina – the meditative reading of Scripture – is something we can do. That may take a few more minutes and is best done somewhere quiet. Most of us find time to read something here and there. We can certainly add some spiritual reading in there – maybe the Fathers, some monastic writings from the old mystics, something like Thomas Merton. We need not engage in this reading like some kind of hard-core theology student, as “study,” but so that we can glean what wisdom we can for life.

I’m sure I’ll talk more about monastic practices in the world more. I just wanted to introduce the topic. Have a great 3rd week of Advent.

specialty christians 2

I realize the end of that last post may have sounded like I have something against what we know today as traditional Western Monasticism. I do not. My point is certainly not to denigrate my brothers and sisters who are living that life. I have gained much through their ministry in the Church and in the world. I have no problem believing that some are indeed called to live in such a way. There may be need for reform in some of these Orders, but that doesn’t mean they have no use. There has always been reform and we should always be open to more if needed.

What I was, in a way, railing against, was/is the notion that anyone who is not called to, in a Catholic context, Holy Orders or to the consecrated Religious life, especially the Monastic life, is somehow not called to be holy or as holy as their habited siblings. This is one of those creeping lies that has made it’s way deep inside the Body and has, unfortunately, taken root.

Objectively, we should know this isn’t true. We know through the Scriptures and through Sacred Tradition that we are all called to be one with God, to be in deep, transformational union with Him in Christ. We know that the Married life is just as holy and legitimate as any life that includes a vow of celibacy… don’t we? I’m not sure about that one. The Tradition could probably used a little bolstering on that matter. Committing yourself to remaining a virgin or to celibacy even if you’ve already had sex, cannot be viewed as inherently more holy than those who are called (read, have a Vocation to) being in union with another person through the Sacrament of Marriage. Are we actually saying that there is a Sacrament, given to us by God, which is by its very nature, defective or designed for those who are called to be weak? God help us!

All of us who are members of the Body of Christ – Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox – live inside the One Great Vocation to be fully and completely transformed into the Image of Jesus Christ. We are ALL called to be deified, to be recreated, made into truly Human Beings. Some are not called to be half-holy and others to stand above them and others still, above them. This kind of thinking is sickeningly other than Christ-like.

Of course this does not mean we are all called to live inside that One Great Vocation in the same way. That’s another issue that flows out of what I was just talking about. The way we all end up answering that call and how God may lead each of us to fulfill that call is something to figure out I suppose. These are the kinds of things I want to talk about here. I hope whatever I say may be helpful – by His Grace.