Be Godly on the Road

We often say, “Be safe,” when someone tells us they are making a road trip. However, maybe it would be more appropriate for us to say, “Be Godly.”  One of the great riches of being Catholic is that the Church actually thinks about all of the challenges we face as Christians—and then seeks to guide and assist us.

The secular press was amused when The Vatican published “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road.”  Yet, one of our most frequent challenges is to be Christian in traffic.

On New Years Eve, the clearest way to express our Christianity in traffic is to ensure we are safe, and to ensure others are safe—even if that means saying, “You aren’t driving tonight.”  One hopes, of course, that our formation as Catholic Christians means drunkenness is not a concern for us, and that we serve our friends wisely (or our customers, if we are in the hospitality business).

So, in the interests of encouraging all readers of Christianity Richly to celebrate responsibly tonight, here are the “10 Commandments of Safe Driving”:

1. Thou shalt not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people.  (This one always convicts me of sin, because I so often think of only my priorities in traffic; “me first, me first.”)
3. Courtesy, uprightness, and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince people not to drive when they are not in condition to do so.  (This post is being added to the site on New Years Eve.  Take heed!)
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together in an atmosphere of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.  (As a bicyclist, I’d certainly appreciate more attention to this commandment.)
10. Feel responsible toward others.

If you are driving tonight, be Godly.  And Happy New Year from Christianity Richly. Warmest wishes and our prayers for health, joy, and progress on our spiritual journey (Hebrews 13:14) in 2010!

No False Starts

Today’s post is the third in a three-part series (see the bullet list, below).

• No forced feelings
• No forced faith
• No false starts

No forced feelings:  The first post in this series points out that the Catholic Christian does not rely on feelings, but rather on the fact of Christ’s atonement. The merit of His death for us, is made ours by grace through faith, the benefits of which are lovingly conveyed in the Sacraments.

No forced faith:  The second post reminds us that true conversion never rests on forced faith. “Forced faith” is an oxymoron and faith without content is false hope. True faith is the willing response of the heart to the historicity and reality of the Gospel, prompted by God’s Holy Spirit, not something we prompt in ourselves.

No false starts:  Having said that our reconciliation with God is not based on feelings, and that saving faith is all of grace—the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9)—we can live and pray with the confidence that God makes no false starts.  In the words of St. Paul, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). “Perseverance unto glory,” Father Garrigou-Lagrange calls this confidence.

Does this mean we will live every day in joyous hope and untroubled confidence? No! The publication of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light shows that one of the most Godly women of the twentieth century experienced decades of spiritual aridity, and even pain.  If you don’t have time for the book, a well written summary appears here (although the musings of atheist, Christopher Hitchens, who went into eternity in December 2011, also make a brief appearance).

What does all this mean? Just this: Christianity and Catholic Christianity in particular, is real; even “gritty,” in the words of George Weigel.¹  While at times we may be blessed with effusive joy and abundant sense of God’s closeness, at other times we may not. Yet Christianity is based on fact, not feeling. Rejoice when walking in blessed communion with God.  But in more difficult times remember:

When people came to John the Baptist asking, ‘What should we do?’ (Luke 3:10-18) he gave them the most reasonable, commonsense reply.  He said, in effect, ‘Live reality.’ God is asking you to be faithful to the ordinary circumstances of your life. He will make Himself evident there.²

Press on, in good times and in bad. God is faithful. Eternity is real. Meanwhile, never forget that “His love endures forever” (Psalm 136).  That is Christianity Richly.

¹ See George Weigel’s wonderful short book, Letters to a Young Catholic, Chapter 2.
² With thanks to Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P., and the staff of Magnificat, for these thoughts in their preface to the liturgy, Third Sunday of Advent, p. 177.

No Forced Faith

Today’s post is the second in a three-part series (see the bullet list, below).

• No forced feelings
• No forced faith
• No false starts

No forced feelings:  The first post in this series points out that the Catholic Christian does not rely on feelings, but rather, on the fact of Christ’s atonement. The merit of His death for us is made ours by grace through faith, the benefits of which are lovingly conveyed in the Sacraments.

No forced faith:  This second post reminds us that true conversion never rests on forced faith. Just as one should not rely on feelings, one cannot rely on forced faith. “Forced faith” is an oxymoron—two contradictory terms, employed simultaneously. True faith is the willing response of the heart, prompted by God’s Holy Spirit, not something we prompt in ourselves.

Do you have true faith—or are you relying on self-prompted (forced) faith more akin to an empty hope.  “Oh, I have faith.” “Faith in what?” must be the corresponding question. Faith without content is no more than a fleeting wish; a hope that there may be something more to life, without knowledge of where, or in Whom, to find it.

This is why Holy Scripture declares, “Faith is the realization of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith in faith is circular; a dog chasing its tail. True faith is based on objective knowledge, based on reality outside ourselves, accompanied by the realization that knowledge is true. That personal realization is evidence of God’s work in our lives.

God at work prompting faith!  “He is a God fully functioning,” as Paul Claudel writes in A Poet Before the Cross.¹ That is Christianity Richly!

¹ See “The Reality of It All,” footnote number one, for more on Claudel’s grace-filled meditation.

No Forced Feelings

This post begins a three-part series (see the bullet list). It was originally written on December 2, 2009, then revised on February 26, 2013, after reading Bishop Karol Wojtyła’s Love and Responsibility. 

The book was written in 1960. In addition to Blessed John Paul II’s  discussion of personhood as the basis for true love, the primary topic of Love and Responsibility, his caution about emotions and the “authenticity” of experience significantly clarified and strengthened my thoughts I had written about feelings. See especially the first and third paragraphs after the list.

___________

Many of us, whose pilgrimage began outside the Catholic Church, remember times we may have been concerned about our salvation. Specifically, thinking of our own conversion—when we “walked the aisle” or responded to an invitation to accept Christ—we find ourselves wondering, “Did I know enough?”  “Was I sincere enough?” “Was I old enough?”

By God’s grace, in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, these questions are answered.  The answer has three parts:

• No forced feelings
• No forced faith
• No false starts

No forced feelings:  In the Church, God meets us as what we are: men and women composed of matter and spirit. Our spirits long for communion, for deep belonging, for love—to love and be loved. We may not always be quick to identify the only truly satisfying Object of our love: God. But because our longings are so powerful, we too frequently imagine intense emotion also will signal the satisfaction of our longings—if our experience is genuine.

“Did I know enough? Was I sincere enough?” Often our response, our metric, is “Well, it sure felt like it!”

Yet authenticity is not dependent on feeling. “Emotion . . . diverts ‘the gaze of truth’ from the objective elements . . . The effect of emotion is that the consciousness is preoccupied above all with the subjective ‘authenticity’ of experience.”¹ This doesn’t mean Catholic Christianity is cold or abstract, by any means. Quite the contrary. It is physical—Incarnational. Moments of great spiritual passion are not uncommon. But it has objective truth as its foundation.

Hence, each Sacrament includes a “sensible sign” (some element that can be detected by the human senses) through which grace is conveyed.  For example, you feel the water of Baptism; the chrism oil of Confirmation.  You taste the bread of the Eucharist.  You aren’t left to wonder, “Did I?”  And, “Did it feel like it?” Instead, you can have the confidence that “God did, just as He promised!”

Let us pray in the words of today’s Morning Prayer (12/02/09) from The Liturgy of the Hours:

Lord, You are the source of unfailing light.  Give us true knowledge of Your mercy so that we may renounce our pride [belief that salvation is something that depends on anything but grace] and be filled with the riches of Your house.

That is Christianity Richly!

¹ Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), p. 154.