One of the gifts of good liturgy is that we do not have to question it every time we approach it. Good liturgy is elegant, challenging, and familiar; it draws us out of ourselves without fear of harm. From time to time, however, it is good to ask why we do what we do in order that we might remember that there are reasons for what we do, that we are able to articulate those reasons, and so that the faithful might have greater confidence in the soundness of the liturgy and thus more willing to submit themselves to it.
As a priest, one is called to bless all kinds of things, food, houses, rosaries, statues, etc., there’s even a blessing for spacecrafts in “A Manual for Priests of the American Church”! And while you’ll find a blessing for livestock and cattle, what you won’t find is a blessing for pets. The tradition of blessing the animals that sustain us and work for us is ancient but the notion that we should bless our pets is a rather recent development. Should we be making such a big deal about our pets? Should we be blessing them? The way I figure it, if we bless our homes and the stuff that fills them, we might as well bless the living things that we share the homes with.
Let’s return to that seminal prayer by St. Anthony: “Lord, I want to be saved, but these thoughts will not leave me alone. What shall I do in my distress? How can I be saved?” I imagine that we have each asked that question in our struggle to be quiet, stable, attentive and prayerful. We have perhaps felt where there are soft targets in our hearts and minds for the logismoi to invade. We have perhaps found prayer elusive. We might be asking ourselves along with St. Anthony: “how can I be saved?”
Cultures of optimization have been prevalent since the industrial revolution, but what distinguishes this current one is that it demands women to not just appear more perfect but actually to change themselves mentally and physically to meet an unattainable standard. I remember a mentor pointing out to me that the ‘it girl’ ideal shifted like a pendulum every decade from at least the 1890s onward in order to maximize consumer energy and disincentivize wardrobes that could be retained and bestowed between generations. This meant that each new decade one might find themselves more or less within reach of the cultural norm. By the 2000s, though, the use of digital and surgical technology enabled the creation of an appearance that no one could actually possess, and which made everyone inadequate.
In our last post, we concluded that acedia or sloth is much more than the stereotype of the lazybones. Evagrius notes that “acedia is a simultaneous, long-lasting movement of anger and desire, whereby the former is angry with what is at hand, while the latter yearns for what is not present.” As the modern monastic writer Gabriel Bunge elaborates: “Everything available to it is hateful. Everything unavailable is desirable.” Where there is anger that things are the way they are and there is an indefinite desire for something else, whatever that may be. Acedia is a restlessness that manifests in a refusal to commit to one place or purpose. In the meantime, acedia makes us lose our taste for what is significant and what is insignificant as we fail again and again to discern between demands for our attention.
In this series of posts, we will consider the vice of ‘sloth,’ one of the more misunderstood among the vices. Before we focus on this vice in particular, though, we do well to look at what place the categories of the ‘seven (or eight) deadly (or capital) vices’ have in the Christian life. These are not a list found in the Scriptures–they do not have the same evident clarity as the Ten Commandments, the Summary of the Law, or the Beatitudes. Nevertheless, this list emerged immediately after the great persecutions ended and Christians began to have time and space (and longevity) to study and explain methodically the spiritual work of the Christian life.
The collect for the 10th Sunday after Trinity makes a curious request. After asking God to keep His ears open to our prayers, it asks Him to exercise His power over those very prayers: “. . . and, that [thy humble servants] may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee.”
I was not always a Christian. In fact, I wasn’t baptized until I was 40 years old. Befitting someone whose family on his mother’s side could trace their lineage to the Pilgrims, a group who thought Calvin was too Catholic, my father was not a fan of infant baptism. On the other hand, Pappy, his paternal Grandfather, had emigrated from England and inherited from him that Anglican dislike of a firm position. The result of which was that I was to ‘make my own choice,’ which took a long, long time.
Our parish is currently in the happy season of receiving many new babies into the congregation. Whenever we have a wave of baptisms, one of the questions I get asked is about the practice of selecting godparents or sponsors. This is one of my favorite questions to be asked as a priest. As I have been thinking through the practice of Tradition in our parish life, I realized as well that this question is directly connected to our inheritance and bestowal of the Faith. As an appendix to that series, then, I’d like to reflect here on the concept of godparents and to offer the practical advice I give to new parents when they ask about it.
Hoo boy, we’re really in the weeds this time with the heresy of Sabellianism. I’m talking real ‘Inside Baseball’ stuff here with terms like Patripassianism, Homoousios and modalistic monarchianism’ being bandied about. But while such words are unfamiliar, once one learns the definition, they’re not such a problem. On the other hand, a far more important word in our discussion is one that is familiar to every Christian but one that doesn’t limit itself to an easy definition, rather it opens into further mystery, that of ‘Trinity’. But before we can really dig in we have to go back, way back to the dawn of civilization.
We’ve discussed at length the danger of tradition when it becomes traditionalism, a frozen idea or a rhetorical tool used for power, control, self-possession, or coercion. I hope that, by now, I am in less danger of being regarded as a so-called ‘based trad.’ In the space created by our honest look at the benefits and pitfalls of tradition in the Church, then, I’d like to use this final essay to explore how it is that obedience to sacred tradition restores the fullest sense of our Christian identity as a member in the Body of Christ, the ‘blessed company of all faithful people.’
In my last essay, I unpacked some of the origins of deconstruction and pointed out how it is an inevitable product of modernity. Deconstruction pulls at the possibility of relationships, of symbol and meaning, of self to self. Deconstruction is the perfection of modernity’s idolizing of the self; it reduces all who practice it to irretrievable isolation within themselves. In the end, deconstruction leads the practitioner to lock the door from the inside of themselves, subjecting what is left of themselves to an endless ruminating scrutiny. They end in something like despair (although I do not know precisely what to call it because even despair seems too constructive a term). Yet, for all of the grim by-products of deconstruction, many questioning Christians are turning to it as a desperate last resort…
Thus far, we have defined tradition by its literal sense of ‘giving over’ and spoken of the ways that tradition is practiced in both sacred and secular senses. We also spoke of the specter of traditionalism and the way it parasitically feeds on sacred tradition to ensnare those who are seeking a reintegration with the Church before and after, the Church above and among. Traditionalism is a counterfeit of tradition that aims at secular power, using the gifts of the past as artifactual weapons…
We began by defining tradition in its broadest sense as “giving over” and discussed some of the ways Christians understand what it means to pass down the practice of the Faith through the generations. We also explored how Anglican Catholics have a unique sense of obligation to the past and to those giants of the Faith on whose shoulders we now stand. A high view of tradition is an expression of gratitude for what has been preserved through great trials, recognizing that many have suffered to remain faithful to the Lord as they encountered Him in the Church’s prayer, and for whom they endured unimaginable persecution. They understood that the Faith was a gift, one to be received and then given in turn within a view of the Church that was bigger than themselves but of which they were a vital part. It is to that volta between reception and gift in tradition that I would like to turn our attention in this essay.
There is a sweet sense of reunion that attends me when I look at the first, blank page of a new piece of writing. There, I am confronted with the fact that I never immediately know what I should write. It is a lonely feeling that, I think, ought always to attend the attempt to do something novel, and particularly by myself in an empty room. And yet, that lonely space has become the occasion for remembrance, in this moment a kind of invitation of past voices to speak again and come to my aid. If it’s a lesson-plan I am writing, certain master teachers come to mind. If it’s a sermon, then there are certain pastors. If—heaven help us—I am attempting a poem, then the much annotated stars of my Norton anthology start to emerge. Sometimes, it is a friend; sometimes, it is an ancient author I have never met but through their words. I try to ask as politely as possible: will you help me find my words with some of your own?
Whenever I hear ‘Montanism’ all I can think of is poor Vasily Borodin in ‘The Hunt for Red October’ uttering with his dying breath, ‘I would have liked to have seen Montana.’ Poor Vasily, who only wanted to live in Montana, marry a round American woman and drive a pickup truck... or maybe even a ‘recreational vehicle’. Sadly, it was not to be for Vasily, shot by the cook (who we all knew was up to something, the way the camera lingered on him in that one scene).
Love obliges us to know our beloved. For Christians who worship God in the manner He gave us in the institution of Holy Communion, love obliges us to seek our Beloved in the sacramental place in which He has promised to meet us. To seek Him in this way will reveal, over time, the heart of our Eucharistic liturgy.
Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday, and I can’t help but hear in my head the rock n’ roll classic hit, “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. Don’t mock me–it will forever and always be a rock and roll classic that will survive the ages and instantly bring me joy when I hear it. Just in case you’re not a regular listener of the “80’s on 8” Sirius XMU channel, to refresh your memory, the song opens with these lyrics:
Tomorrow is the Feast of Pentecost. In the week and a half since Ascension we have been waiting for the One Christ called the Holy Spirit to descend and meet us here. We have been opening our hearts and asking the Holy Spirit to come.
