Tag Archives: Pope Francis

Guest Post: Against the Institution of Female Acolytes and Lectors

Church, Church Authority, Eucharist, Guest Post, Magisterium, Sacraments, Women's Ordination, , , , ,

Recently, the Holy Father promulgated a ruling which allows for laywomen to be formally accepted into the to roles of lector and acolyte, roles which for sometime they have already been filling in practice. Up to this point, however, the formal acceptance was restricted to men. The move, while having very little visible effect on the current state of the liturgy, formalizes growing problems that will now be explored.

Why is Reading a Big Deal?

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the priest reads from Sacred Scripture from the altar while facing away from the people. This liturgical choice preserves two important ideas: 1) the sacredness of the Word of God and 2) the offering of the Word to God. The first idea, the sacredness of the Word of God, is shown by the fact that only a person that has been in some way consecrated to God is able to the proclaim the word of God in the Church’s public worship. In the past, a distinction has existed between those possessing sacramental ordinations (deacons, priests, and bishops) and those that had received non-sacramental ordinations (lectors, porters, acolytes, exorcists, and subdeacons). Those receiving non-sacramental ordinations (also called minor orders) were understood to be acting as an extension of the ministry of the deacon, who possessed a sacramental ordination.

It is also important to note that, keeping in mind the principle that liturgical actions often have both a practical and symbolic purpose, the restriction of the ability to read publicly to those who will have a clear reading voice and will be knowledgable enough to correctly pronounce the more difficult words in Scripture will stop the proclamation of the divinely revealed Word of God from becoming an event the faithful laugh about on the car ride home.

Why do you hate Altar-girls?

With regards to the second idea, it must be kept in mind that the priest is offering the entire Mass as a sacrifice to God. This reality is reinforced by the priest facing towards the tabernacle while he is proclaiming the Word. The addition of women to the role of lector, in addition to the problems created by reading while facing the people, destroys this because God has always indicated that He desires the priestly ministry of offering sacrifice to be reserved to males.

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, only men are allowed to approach the altar, be it as bishops, priests, deacons, or even humble altar servers. Why is this? Is it because the Church fell to the spirit of past ages and has reinforced in its liturgy sexist ideas? The answer is a clear ‘No.’ To see why this is, one only needs to open a Bible and observe the patterns of worship that have been in place since the beginning and have been shown to please the Lord. (Exo. 28-29, Num. 3) They all contain male-only clergy because they are types of Christ Who will be both Priest and Minister in the New Testament. Those who participate in that liturgy act as sacramental signs of Christ, Who is male. This practice continues into the New Testament when Jesus and His Apostles continued the practice of male-only clergy even though they could have changed it. This change would not have even been perceived as strange outside the Jewish community as female clergy already existed in other religions in other parts of the Roman Empire, e.g., the vestals.

While the change only allowed for female acolytes, the formalization of an altar server, the principle on display is one that would eventually advocate for the female diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. This principle is rooted in the denial of the different roles of men and women in the Church, roles that have been clearly established in Scripture and vindicated by two millennia of tradition.

What about the Priesthood of the Baptized?

Forgetting the problems introduced by these changes discussed above, let us ask ourselves the question, ‘To what end are these changes made?’  Some would advance that it is desire to teach the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized. In response to this, it must be realized that this method will never achieve that goal because it obscures that reality more than it reveals it.

The sacrifice of the Mass is the perfect prayer of the Church and it is the meeting of Heaven and earth. All the faithful ought to hear Mass and offer this most perfect offering to God. An authentic teaching of the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized would teach the faithful how to more perfectly offer this sacrifice, because offering sacrifice is exactly what priests do. However, the priesthood within the liturgy is not the same as the priesthood outside the liturgy.

The ordained priest has been given the honor of offering the Mass and the faithful participate in the Mass to the degree that they spiritually unite themselves with him in his offering. This, however, is precisely the opposite of what is shown by allowing more and more faithful on the altar. Does the man or woman that reads at Mass participate more fully than one that doesn’t? If so, does that mean that we need to multiply roles until everyone attending the Mass is able to more ‘fully’ participate? This, again, is exactly the mindset forwarded by the increase of the roles of the laity in the Church’s liturgy.  From this, confusion emerges and we are left with a faithful that has traded true spiritual participation for a visible and ‘active’ participation and reduced the ability of others to spiritually participate in the liturgy by needlessly multiplying distractions.

Stripping down the Priesthood

What these changes leave us with, in addition to a liturgy less able to lead the faithful to union with God in prayer, is a sacramental priest stripped down and lacking identity. The priest has a sacred duty to offer sacrifice to God, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the center of his spirituality must be this sacrifice and his entire life must be conformed to this sacrifice such that his entire life becomes a sacrifice. Just as a married man must lay down his life daily for his wife (who is the altar upon which he offers himself to God) and they are so conformed together that they become one flesh, so to must the priest become so conformed to the sacrifice of the Mass that he becomes a Victim-Priest just as Christ was. These changes, however, lead him more towards the roles of presider and orchestrator. One by one, his sacred duties are ‘contracted out’ to the laity and therefore lose their priestly character and change the character of the priest. The retractions are even more impactful to the diaconate, who has the duty to preform the exact ministerial actions that are being given to the laity.

The clergyman (be him a deacon, priest, or bishop) is a man chosen by God and consecrated such that he is given God-like powers, e.g., forgiving sins, calling down Christ from heaven, and strengthening a soul to endure death. Why are we stripping him of his duties and making him seem like an ordinary man? The evidence of this transformation is clear from priests being uncomfortable with saying, “I absolve you”, and replacing the ‘I’ with ‘Jesus’ or something similar. How can a man unconvinced of the massive amount of supernatural grace given to him and unwilling to proudly proclaim, with St. Paul that, “by the grace of God, I am what I am,” (1 Cor. 15:10) going to be able to fill the souls entrusted to his care with supernatural grace. We, the faithful, must support our clergy in living out their vocation by insisting that they keep the clerical duties for themselves.

About the Author

Connor Szurgot is currently a senior study for his BS. He has given multiple talks to the Catholic Campus Ministry at his university on topics such as Eucharistic reverence and mental prayer. He is a member of the Thomistic Institute and is a regular participant in their intellectual formation. He enjoys discussing the practical and philosophical aspects of politics as well as religion, particularly systematic theology.

Plot Holes in Reality

Culture, Evolution, Moralilty, Natural Law, Science, , ,

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas makes the observation that when Aristotle reckons that  “art imitates nature,” he means that man, because he is an intellectual creature, can make things that help him fulfill his nature.  For example, a beaver builds a dam by instinct, while man uses his reason to fashion a house.  But it doesn’t just pertain to servile arts like building a house, but fine arts like making a movie or writing a book.  But because man is also fallen, he can also use those same arts to distort and do harm to his nature.  In this way we might say that, in addition to imitating nature, “art forms nature.”

Examples abound on how this uniquely human capacity is abused, but there is one way that has a profound effect in our age.  The aforementioned storytelling arts use the inherent power of storytelling to activate wonder and convey important truths about what it means to be human.  One way in which this art abuses our nature has been covered previously regarding “Drag Queen Story Hour.”  While this is still somewhat rare, thee is a more common abuse of story that may not even be on our radar at first—it wasn’t on mine until a friend of mine pointed it out.

Tolerating Plot Holes

We have all seen movies in which there are both subtle and gigantic plot holes.  Sometimes they are too much and we turn off the movie, but most of the time we simply tolerate them for the sake of moving the plot along.  We might think that the producers of the movies are simply lazy in not tying up loose ends, but in truth we should expect them when the story presents a falsehood about human life.  The problem is that if we watch enough movies, then we eventually learn to overlook them.  We become, in a very real sense, conditioned to overlook them—not just in the movies but in the rest of life as well.  Point of evidence is the current Covid crisis which is riddled with plot holes that the majority of people of good will simply accept. 

More on this particular example in a moment, but there is something further here that needs to be pointed out.  We accept the plot holes for the sake of the plot and to move the story along.  But if we look at it from the perspective of the producer, he has a plot in mind and includes the plot holes in order to make his story fit together.  In a certain sense then we can say that the plot holes actually reveal the plot and the intention of the producer.

This principle is important because it is applies to the incongruous in real life as well.  We will usually have one of two tendencies; to overlook the plot hole completely or to point out that it makes no sense and then, like the fist tendency, simply move on.  The point though is that it makes perfect sense because it moves the story along.  In other words, if we pay close attention to the incongruities rather than dismissing or mocking them, the plot that the artist is advancing will come into relief. 

Focusing on the plot holes themselves then will enable us to see through the agenda of those who insert them into reality.  These holes may look different in the various arenas of public life, but the principle is always the same.  If we consider three examples from the fields of morality, science and politics then we can learn how to see the plot holes for what they really are.

Plot Holes in the Moral Realm

Any number of examples could have been chosen to demonstrate moral plot holes, but a recent one from Pope Francis is particularly helpful here.  In a documentary that aired in October, the Holy Father was quoted as saying that “we have to create a civil union law.”  While not a tacit acceptance of gay marriage (few things, unfortunately, are tacit with Pope Francis), the comment caused an uproar because he was suggesting that the civil realm should create space for gay couples.

Let us assume that the Holy Father’s “plot” is promotion of the Gospel and true human thriving in this world so as to be residents of the next.  From within that context we would say marriage is a fundamental human good that helps to fulfill human nature.  But not any “union” between two people will do, but only one that is in accord with nature.  In short, as Catholics, we know that only monogamous marriage between a man and a woman leads to authentic happiness.  Any other domestic arrangement leads away from this.  The laws and the practices of the Church herself are reflective of this awareness.  The Church teaches what she does about marriage because she knows that it is a good thing for those involved to act according to nature.

To suggest that this is just a “Church law” or only binding on Catholics with no effect in the civil realm creates a giant plot hole.  No law should be made to protect or promote something that we know will ultimately lead to unhappiness.  By suggesting that there should be some civil law, the Holy Father is really expressing that he doesn’t believe that marriage is a true human good. 

Pope Francis in choosing the name Francis has seen his role as one who would reform the Church.  He has been open about this from the beginning of his pontificate.  Applying our principle of looking along the plot hole (at this and many of his other ones), we can discern what that reform consists in.  The Holy Father is attempting to reform the Church, not according the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of the age. The plot holes reveal the plot.

Plot Holes in the Scientific Realm

Plot holes in the scientific realm are usually more difficult to discern for the layman, but usually become apparent once you check assumptions.  When a scientific theory is full of unsubstantiated claims that are labeled as “assumptions” the plot of the Scientists are unmistakable.

A good example of this is what we is commonly referred to as the Big Bang Theory.  This theory claims that the universe began as a dense ball of primordial matter that exploded and over billions of years organized into the universe that we observe today.  This cosmology is accepted as scientific fact, but once we pull back the curtain we find that it rests on many untested and untestable assumptions.  There is a growing gap between observation and theory and in order to advance the plot, several plot holes needed to be introduced.  According to Big Bang Cosmologists, ~95% of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  The problem is that these hypothetical entities have never been observed and they can’t be measured.  Instead they are theoretical constructs that hold the Big Bang Universe and its accompanying theory together.  You can read more about these two things elsewhere, but the point is that in order to use the theory to explain what we observe in the universe, physicists had to make up an unobservable “force”.  As one physicist observed,

Big bang theory relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities – things that we have never observed. Inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent. Without them, there would be fatal contradictions between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory…the big bang theory can’t survive without these fudge factors.

 Eric Lerner, “Bucking the Big Bang”, New Scientist

The point is that we hold as scientific fact a theory that only explains 5% of what we observe in the universe.

Viewed as plot holes, these assumptions reveal that Big Bang Cosmology is not about the science but about scientism and the ability to explain natural phenomena using only natural causes.  It is an attempt to discredit the Genesis account of creation and theology and create an atheology that is completely devoid of God.  It is essentially the theory of Evolution on a cosmic scale.  The plot holes reveal the plot.

Plot Holes in the Political Realm

 

As is becoming increasingly obvious, the political realm is not devoid of plot holes either.  In fact one could say that the plot holes in this arena of life will be the way in which 2020 is best remembered.  Covid-19 itself is not a plot hole, but the way in which it has been managed has revealed the plot holes in reality.  If we examine them carefully then we can come to see the plot more clearly. 

We will discuss the vaccine some time in the near future, but the manner in which masks, social distancing and closures have been implemented have represented serious plot holes because of their lack of consistency and scientific justification.  I already discussed this with relation to masks, but it also applies to social distancing.  This has never been tried before and it is based on a simulation.  Yes, you read that right, not an experiment, but a simulation.  Drs. Jay Richards and William Briggs cover this in their book Price of Panic in detail, but in short the CDC went with recommendations from this paper in which found that social distancing would “yield local defenses against a highly virulent strain” in the absence of effective treatment. The “science” behind it was simple; you create a model to simulate an environment in which closing schools and implementing social distance measures lower the rate of infection and then you test to see if the rate is in fact lower. Besides proving that you are a good programmer, this also, surprisingly proved that social distancing worked. The fact that it is a simulated environment and not a real one should have no bearing on our decisions, right? This is, after all, Science.  No matter anyway because we now have effective treatment and thus no more need for social distancing, right?

Once we view these inconsistencies as plot holes related to the plot, we can see that there are powers that be that have chosen not to waste a good crisis and to implement their grand plot—The Great Reset—which we will discuss in the coming weeks. The plot holes reveal the plot.

In conclusion, we might be willing to tolerate plot holes in our movies, but we should never overlook them in real life.  If we do, we may find that we are caught up in someone else’s story for how the world should be. The plot holes reveal the plot.

Our Daily Bread

Bible, Church Fathers, Eucharist, Prayer, Sacraments, Spiritual Life, , ,

Pope Francis recently approved a new translation in French and Italian of the Lord’s Prayer that offers a re-translation of the petition “lead us not into temptation.”  The Holy Father has repeatedly expressed his concern that the phrase as it is translated is misleading, making it seem like it is God that actually leads us into temptation.  Whether or not this is theologically correct or even prudent, I will leave to others to argue.  But this new translation business certainly opens up the question whether there are other phrases in the current translation that need to be amended.  In particular, I have in mind the petition “Give us this day, our daily bread…”

Familiarity can create a blind spot, but if we come to the petition afresh, we must admit that it is awkwardly worded.  In particular, it is the repetition of this day and daily that strikes us as odd.  Why don’t we pray simply “this day for our bread” or, more succinctly, “give us our daily bread”?  Either one would seem to be more in line with conventional usage.  But to see why this wouldn’t work and why the current translation doesn’t quite capture its meaning we should return to the original Greek.

A Faulty Translation?

Obviously, Our Lord did not give the Apostles the prayer in Greek, but the Holy Spirit did when He inspired the sacred authors to include it within the gospels.  So, we can assume that any mis-translation would occur from Greek to (in our case) English.  The word that we translate as daily is epioύsios in Greek. This word is utterly unique to Sacred Scripture and is not found anywhere else in the Greek language prior to its appearance in the gospels.  This created a historical difficulty in defining exactly what it means (let alone translating it).  None of the Fathers agreed upon its exact meaning, although a number of them settled upon the in literal meaning— epi meaning super and oύsios meaning substance—from which we would derive with the English term supersubstantial.  This is hardly a word that is found in the English vernacular, but its meaning is “above material substance”. 

The use of the term supersubstantial led the Fathers of the Church to teach that the petition relates “not so much to the material bread which is the support of the body as the Eucharistic bread which ought to be our daily food” (St. Pius X, Sacra Tridentina).  Why then do we say “daily”?  After all supersubstantial hardly has the same connotation as daily.  Until, that is, we put on a Biblical mindset.  There is one place is Sacred Scripture in which God provides “daily bread”.  It is the giving of the manna in the desert.  This same bread was in a very real sense supersubstantial as it just appeared with the dew fall and spoiled as quickly as it came the next day.  But Our Lord said the manna was but a prefigurement of the True Bread come down from heaven, the true “daily bread” that can only be described as supersubstantial—the Eucharist.

When the emphasis is placed upon the Eucharist the context of the petition is thrown into relief.  We pray to Our Father as His adopted children, brought into the family of the Trinity and united as one family on earth.  We pray that He feed us with the family meal because the Eucharist is only for us, it is Our daily bread.  But there is another sense in which we must deal with the current choice of translation as daily.

Receiving Our Daily Bread

Like the manna in the desert, the petition is meant to remind us that the Eucharist is something that is given to the Church daily, a gift that we both express gratitude for and petition God to continue blessing us with.  For there will come a time, at least according to some of the Fathers of the Church like St. Augustine, in which the persecution will be so bad that the celebration of the Eucharist will cease.  Whether it was to cease completely or not, one can still imagine how difficult it would be to receive the Eucharist during that time.  There are plenty of places in the world where it already is.  We risk, especially in times like our own in which belief in the Real Presence of the Eucharist is in decline, becoming like the Israelites in the desert, taking the manna for granted and grumbling in disbelief.  “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me” (Mt 26:11).

Over a century ago, Pope St. Pius X made this connection between the manna the Eucharist in a decree that encouraged the “Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion”.  The saintly Pontiff said that given the correct dispositions for worthy reception, all Christians “should be daily nourished by this heavenly banquet and should derive therefrom more abundant fruit for their sanctification.”  He states unequivocally that it is “the desire of Jesus Christ and of the Church that all the faithful should daily approach the sacred banquet.”  He encourages the Faithful to make use of the Sacrament for the purpose that Christ intended—extending the Incarnation in time in order to enable those who touch Him to receive His healing touch.  That is, “the faithful, being united to God by means of the Sacrament, may thence derive strength to resist their sensual passions, to cleanse themselves from the stains of daily faults, and to avoid these graver sins to which human frailty is liable…Hence the Holy Council calls the Eucharist “the antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sin.”

St. Pius X also declares that the person “who is in the state of grace, and who approaches the Holy Table with a right and devout intention” should approach the Holy Table often.  This “right intention consists in this: that he who approaches the Holy Table should do so, not out of routine, or vain glory, or human respect, but that he wish to please God, to be more closely united with Him by charity, and to have recourse to this divine remedy for his weakness and defects.”

In short then, the Our Father ought to express a desire that Christ “give us always this bread” (John 6:34).  This of course assumes we understand what we are asking for.  One will be surprised how, once they commit to receiving Our Lord frequently, even daily, and prays as such, daily Mass begins to “work out” and they find their schedule opening up.   This is why a re-translation might lead not only to a re-education, but a re-invigoration of desire for the Eucharist.  This will start with the commitment to personally make this supersubstantial bread our daily bread.  If we nourish our bodies daily, then how much more do we need to nourish our souls? 

What About the Jews?

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Pope Francis has been particularly vocal, especially as of late, in condemning anti-Semitism.  This comes on the heels of a concerted effort by the Church since the Second Vatican Council to improve relations with the Jewish people.  Motivated not only by humanitarian reasons, this renewed interest stems from theological convictions.  In particular, the Church’s condemnation of anti-Semitism is undergirded by her understanding of the Jews as the “Chosen People” so that Pope Francis can truthfully say that “engaging in any form of anti-Semitism is a direct contradiction with the Christian faith.”  But because this nuanced understanding of the Jews is commonly mistaken, it is helpful for us to articulate it clearly.

The Chosen People

Since the Church’s understanding of the Jews as the Chosen People forms the foundation of Jewish-Catholic relations, what exactly were they chosen for?  God chose them to be a people “peculiarly His own”  (c.f. Dt 26:18) for no other reason than that the Messiah was to come into the world through them.  So that the world was never without hope of redemption, God told Adam and Eve about His plan of redemption (c.f. Gn 3:15) and then set out to form a people through which the Redeemer would come.  We might be tempted to assume that once the Redeemer comes, the mission of the Chosen People would come to an end.  They would then need to move with the economy of salvation or be left behind with the pagans.  They might even be viewed as somehow worse than the Gentiles because they openly rejected God’s Anointed One , killing Him on the Cross.  It was this line of reasoning, founded upon its roots in the Marcionist heresy of the 2nd Century, that has fueled fire of Christian anti-Semitism throughout history.

In response to any heresy, the tendency is to overcorrect.  Rather than subscribing to a theory of total repudiation, there are those who propose that the Jews are operating under a parallel covenant.   Christianity is for the Gentiles and Judaism for the Jew.  Those who subscribe to this view reason that God is faith and His “chosen-ness”  cannot be undone.  The Jews remain a (as opposed to the) Chosen People and therefore any effort at evangelization is unnecessary and, quite frankly, rude and uncharitable.  In an age of religious relativism, especially in the face of widespread anti-Semitism, we should expect to see, and, in fact do see, a rise in the popularity of this view.  But this viewpoint is just as erroneous as the first.

Still Chosen?

In order to understand the proper Christian stance towards the Jewish people, it is necessary to ask an important, although often overlooked question.  If the Jewish people are no longer God’s Chosen People, then how can we explain the fact that they remain a people.  Given their history of suffering and persecution throughout recent history it is nothing short of miraculous that they are still a recognizable people.  This is because, in a very real sense they remain a People favored by God.  This is for three reasons, summarized by St. Paul in Romans 9 and 11, and can be summarized as past, present and future.

First, the Jewish people remain beloved to God because of the great dignity attached to their spiritual patrimony (c.f. Rom 11:28).  Their beloved patriarchs, from Abraham, to Jacob to Moses to David and from “whom according to the flesh is the Christ” (Rom 9:4) came, were faithful to God and His covenant.  Likewise, God is also faithful to His promise for the “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).  So that while the Old Covenant may have passed away, it remains for God to be faithful to those with whom He made the covenant .

Secondly, the Jews remain as a “motive of credibility” to the truth of the Old Testament.  The people that was founded upon the miraculous redemption of the Exodus remains a people even to this day.  This miraculous endurance lends credibility to the miraculous revelation contained in the Old Testament.  The Jews will always remain distinct from the Gentiles because the revelation upon which their faith is built is true.  It may be incomplete, but that makes it no less true.  Their continued presence in the world today testifies to this very important truth.

Finally, there is the future.  The Jews as a people still have a pivotal role to play in salvation history.  They not only testify to the truth of the Second Coming, but also play a role in signaling that coming.  Although “a hardening has come upon Israel in part,“(Rom 11:25) this hardening will not be forever.  One of the signal events of the End Times is the mass conversion of the Jews.  When the anti-Christ is revealed to be the fraud that he is by the two witnesses (c.f. Rev 11:1-14), the Jews will join the ranks of the true Israel.  This eschatological reality will not only affect the Jews, but will, according to St. Thomas, be a sign to the Gentiles that have fallen away from the Faith.  For them we can properly say that “salvation is from the Jews.”

Cardinal Charles Journet, drawing on Romans 9, makes a very helpful distinction that will help us to adopt the proper stance towards the Jews.  This distinction is between “Israel in the flesh” and Israel in the spirit”.  The goal must always be for all men to be incorporated into “Israel in the spirit” because it is only in belonging to this body that a man can be saved.  In St. Paul’s time, as in our own, the goal was conversion of “Israel in the flesh” to “Israel of the spirit.”  But knowing their eschatological purpose when this doesn’t occur through the plans of Divine Providence, Christians must consider “Israel of the flesh” to be a special people worthy of both our respect and our protection.

Self-Esteem and the Spirit of Penance

Fasting, God's Will, Grace, Human Dignity, Lent, Prayer, Purgatory, , , ,

In his message for Lent, Pope Francis exhorted the faith not to let “this season of grace pass in vain!”  The Holy Father is echoing a sentiment that we have nearly all experienced.  We have all had the experience of letting Lent pass us by and many of us, despite the best of intentions, will suffer the same fate this Lent unless we do something different.  We need not just encouragement but a paradigm shift to see Lent and its purpose differently than ever before.

This paradigm shift begins with an understanding of the history of Lent.  This does not mean that we need to look at how the Church has classically celebrated Lent, but to understand where it comes from.  Like all the events within the Liturgical Calendar, the season of Lent is given to make the specific mysteries of Christ’s life present to us.  The particular mystery attached to Lent is Christ’s forty days in the desert.  Christ was driven by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days of prayer and fasting with one of the purposes being to obtain all the graces for all the Lents of all Christians for all time.  He did this not in any generic way, but in a very specific way because each member of the Faithful individually was there with Him.  As Pope Pius XII reminds us, “In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself” (Mystici Corporis Christi,75).  Lent then is the time where we go to Christ in the desert to lay claim to those graces He had merited for us.  We go not just in spirit but in truth because we are already there.

How We Should “Do” Lent

This understanding not only changes how we view Lent, but also how we do Lent.  Our typical approach is to see it as something primarily done by us.  We come up with a plan to “give up X” or “do this thing X” for Lent and then try to white-knuckle our way through it.  But if what we said above is true, then the proper way to look at it is that Christ is doing Penance through us.  The oft misquoted and equally misunderstood Scholastic maxim that grace perfects nature is apropos here.  Grace does not “build on nature” as if we do a little (or as much as we can) and God will do the rest.  It is all done by Christ—“I live no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).  Lent is no different.

This might sound passive or even quietistic, but it is the very opposite.  All grace requires our free response, but it first requires that we remove those impediments that keep us from adopting the true spirit of Penance that Christ won for us.  We often forget this as our primary role.  And this is why many of us struggle through Lent.  We try to do Penance without having the grace of Penance. 

Therefore our first acts should be to obliterate the obstacles.  These obstacles are not only interior but come from those unquestioned beliefs we have adopted from the spirit of the world.  These obstacles, two in particular, are the focus of this article and the next.  We will not fully receive the graces of Lent until we remove the spirits of self-esteem and luxury.

The Problem of Self-Esteem

Who could possibly have a problem with self-esteem?  To ask the question is to reveal that we have been infected with the spirit of the world.  For the spirit of the world always sends us mixed messages, locking us firmly in no-man’s land.  It takes some truth and twists it just enough that it blinds us to the implications of that truth.  It usually starts by baptizing it with a new name.  Then the new term, piggybacking on the old term, is given value by fiat.  “Self-esteem” is a prime example of this.

Self-esteem or “confidence in one’s own worth” is a psychological replacement for a theological term, dignity.  That a human being has worth is unquestionable.  But what has to be questioned is why a person has worth, that is, why a person should have any confidence in their worth.  The world would have us believe that the currency of “self-esteem” is valuable simply by fiat.  But it is not.  It is valuable currency because it rests upon the God-standard.  Human persons only have value because they are made in the image of God and because God has made Himself into the image of a man in Jesus Christ.  Our confidence lies in both of these things—our inherent God-imagedness and our offer of God-likedness in Christ.  The first can never be taken away, while the second must be achieved.   

The problem with self-esteem is that it overemphasizes the first and totally ignores the second.  The odd thing is that many in the Church have tried to “re-theologize” self-esteem through the language of “Temple of the Holy Spirit”.  This term is thrown around as an attempt to convince someone of their own worth.  But that is not how either Scripture or Tradition has understood it.  When St. Paul uses the term it is meant as a corrective to live up to the supreme gift of redemption (which includes the Divine Indwelling).  Tradition has taught that only those in a state of grace, that is those who have kept themselves unstained by serious sin, that are Temples of the Holy Spirit.  The language also betrays itself because a Temple, while it is the earthly home of Divinity, is also, and one might say primarily, the place of sacrifice.  In other words, you cannot say someone is a Temple of the Holy Spirit while not also calling them to make the necessary sacrifices within that same Temple. 

This leads us now to why the spirit of self-esteem is an obstacle to the spirit of Lent.  It always causes us to overvalue ourselves and destroys our spirit of sacrifice and penance.  If you don’t believe me, then let me propose a hypothetical.  Suppose, to use a seemingly trivial example, you are waiting for a parking space in a crowded shopping center and someone steals the space from you.  Now suppose you told me about it and I said “you deserved it.”  What would be your response?

I would bet that you would be angry with me and maybe even accuse me of being unjust.  But in truth, I would infallibly be right no matter what the situation was.  How do I know this?  Because God in His Providence thought you did.  Otherwise He wouldn’t have allowed it to happen.  This seems crazy until we follow out the line of reasoning.

Returning to our hypothetical, did God know the person was going to steal the space and did He allow it to happen?  Without question, but the important question is why.  And the answer ought to be “so that I could willingly accept it as penance for something I did wrong.”  In other words, you may not have deserved it this time, but you never got what you deserved last time.  The only thing that stops us from seeing this is our self-esteem.  “The space was mine and he had no right to take it.”  True, but that is not the point.  The point is that he did you a favor.  He gave you an opportunity to undo the harm you did to yourself when you sinned previously.  You offended God and all you have to endure is finding another space?  Yes, because your measly sacrifice when united to Christ in the desert becomes powerful.  Or you could just get stuck in how poorly treated you were and “pay down to the last penny” later (c.f. Mt 5:26).  Purgatory now is always better than Purgatory later.

So free from the false myth of self-esteem were the saints that they could even practice this for the big things. Not that they became doormats per se, but because they “humbly regarded the other person has more important than yourself” (Phil 2:3) that the only reason they put a stop to it is because of the harm the other person was doing to himself. In other words they would speak up not because of self-esteem but because of charity. In the spiritual life why we do what we do matters just as much as what we do.

The extreme cases obviously are far harder said than done, so we ought to just start developing the wisdom for the less extreme cases; not just because they are easier but because they are far more common.  This Lent let go of your self-esteem and see if there isn’t real growth in the spirit of Penance.  After all, these are the best kinds of Penance because they are not self-chosen, but come from the Provident hand of God.  When you meet with some slight during Lent, even if it seems like a big deal, say “I deserve this” and thank God for forming a spirit of Penance in you.

Next time, we will examine the second worldly obstacle: luxury.