No Performance Standard

One of my favorite passages in the Gospels is found in Matthew 19:16-30 where the rich young man comes to Our Lord to ask what he needs to do to in order to be perfect. Pay particular attention to Our Lord’s response to this man. Some translations have it, “Jesus looked at him and loved him…” or “Jesus looked at him with love…” Before our blessed Savior responds to the man’s question, he loves him.

I hope my reader has had the experience of love on a human level. In human love one of our greatest experiences is the sheer delight of being with the beloved. “The lover seeks union with the beloved.” is an old saying but very true. Even in the pernicious relationships that only seem like true love, this desire to be with the other is all-consuming, we want to be united with the object of our desire, even if only physically.

The problem with human love, at least most of the time, is that we cannot perfectly love our beloved nor do we ever really feel perfect love from them. Human love tends to have restrictions and a performance matrix. Consider the first love of an adolescent. Warm feelings of tenderness usually come about from the physical appeal or the personality of the object of our love. And this is a good thing!

But when the object of our love falls short of our expectations, this merely human love can sometimes falter. It’s a little embarrassing to recount, but I remember having a crush on someone in middle school where she came to school on a Monday morning with a large pimple on her forehead. How hideous she was! Although she had several classes with me during the day and we frequently ate lunch with a group of our peers, I couldn’t stand to look at her!

The Divine Love, on the other hand, sees our pimples and still loves us. Even our defects and faults that are not clear to us are known to the Beloved, yet he still loves us. He desires the good for us and even works for that end. He loves us despite ourselves and works for us so that we can attain a likeness to His Son.

I used to think that God’s love for me was akin to my love for others, on a human level. On some deep emotional plane, I could not see that God loved me for who I am, for my personhood, that His love for me was the sustaining motion of my being. Despite my sins and numerous derelictions of duty, my Tender Savior was constantly reaching out his arms to hold me and sustain me.

There’s a kind of pride and inflated ego that operates in the soul of someone who thinks that he has to perform for God. To say that God’s love for us is dependent upon our fidelity to the Gospel is to hold out a performance standard for God’s love. But we’re told over and over in scripture that God’s love is unconditional.

For the rich young man cited above, St. Matthew doesn’t say, “Because of his prior fidelity to the Commandments, Jesus looked at him and loved him…” It doesn’t say, “Jesus, seeing the good works of the rich young man called him to perform more rigorously…"

St. Matthew says very clearly, “Jesus looked on him and loved him.” (Mk 10:21) Not because of what he had done in the past nor because of some estimation of what the man would do in the future, but merely because the rich young man was the object of His love.

If we read to the end of the story, the young man went away sad because he did not want to perform to the higher standard to which Our Lord was calling him, but the Gospel writers do not say that Our Lord stopped loving him. After the man left, he was still loved by God.

It’s true that Our Lord says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) But what the Sacred Text does not say is that if you’d don’t keep his commandments He will stop loving us. God loves even the demons in hell; the problem is that his love burns them because they do not accept it. Their refusal to cooperate with Grace is what makes them burn.

Let’s not make God’s love burn us. Let us pray for receptivity to God’s love, realizing that it is the basis for our conversion. I’m convinced that the chaos caused by scruples of conscience and the emotional pain we feel after we sin are the results of God’s love burning within us and calling us to greater conformity with His holy Will.

After we've accepted God's merciful love, let us share that love with others. Let's drop the performance standards that we set out for people and simply share God's love with them.

Praised be the Holy Name!

On Babies that Cry in Church

After viewing this post from a friend on Facebook, I thought I'd write a poem about my feelings on the matter instead of just writing a paragraph.

Again, comments are welcome and most heartily desired. When I invite you to play in my virtual sandbox, it really makes me happy to have someone to talk to. Thanks.

The choir entered statio.

Two solemn lines of grey

In choral adoratio

Eight times a day they pray.

And every solemn hour

They come to bend their knee

And give the earth some power

To flee death’s tyranny.

In bright of day and dark of night

These consecrated sing.

To bring the others to their light

Their chapel bells they ring.

Once every week they open

Their chapel doors up wide

And bid the faithful enter

To worship at their side.

And every Sunday morning

A family shows up there

Rejoicing, not in mourning,

Their hearts and lives they share.

These faithful love the voices

And chanted monkish tones

They contemplate the choices

These men live in their bones.

And though these children savor

The sacred art they hear

They do add their own flavor

Of worship at the rear.

A humble father holding

His youngest child near

Knows not the world unfolding

But everyone will hear.

From lungs not bigger than a pear

He chants his sacred sounds

For all the people praying there

An earthly cry resounds.

While silent adoration

Engulfs God’s Holy Throne

This child gives donation

From depths before unknown.

In urgent supplication

For some need now supreme

This baby’s incantation

Will shatter pious dream.

An untrained voice commands now

Each ear within this place

Each person contemplates how

His cry goes out to space.

In his shrill declaration

This innocent now screams

Who grants him consolation

To his primordial dreams?

His mother. She takes him out

To give him what he wants.

His absence then creates a drought,

The silence almost taunts.

For his vociferation

Of urgent, primal need

Is but articulation

Common to Adam’s seed.

For in each person born to man,

A mother mediates

A woman gives us what she can

As father hesitates.

So this is our condition,

And in our lives we show,

That there is no perdition

Within the hearts that grow.

Each voice has his own glory

And brings from depths unknown

Supplying to the story

Played out before the Throne.

That practiced adorations

As well as primal screams

Both come from God’s creations

And prosper here our dreams.

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Nemo dat quod non habet

The idea of writing this blog has percolated in my mind since 2011 when I first started it. But as someone once said, "No man gives what he does not have." I've been waiting to give something for a time, but to have something to give is necessary first. Now I think I have something to give. I may be wrong about this. As I frequently tell people, "My filters may be a little off, tell me if I'm perceiving reality clearly." That's what the combox is all about, right?

Here's a poem I wrote back in July of 1985, right before making my first vows in the monastery. The idea of vows for a monk has been compared to the vows exchanged between spouses on their wedding day. But that comparison is really weak, for does the Church allow us to make temporary vows to our spouse? No. So, no matter what a consecrated religious gives up in their first vow, there's always the nagging question in the back of their mind: "I can quit at the expiration of my vows." Or at least there was in my mind. And you know by now that I never made permanent profession.

Perhaps this is at the root of why religious vows are not considered an 8th Sacrament, as some theologians have proposed. As good and meritorious vows are, they are not, in their nature (per se) necessary to living the Christian life. Permanence, on the other hand, is essential to the married covenant.

Enough talk, on to the poetry. I'm not entirely happy with the first line. If I ever find the notebook that I wrote it in way back when, I'll update it later. This is what I remember.

What to Give

Be with me Christ, 'tis now I need you most,

when all the gifts and cares of life do call.

Give me the grace to never leave your post,

but generous, to serve and give to all.

But what to give, save that for which they ask?

And how to serve, save in the way they need?

I bow my head, my hands go to the task,

And give to God the glory of the deed.

Now, what to you, how shall I now repay

this gift, your love which urges me to serve?

I'll give you back the love which every day

You give to me, although I don't deserve.

And, yes, "which" in line 10 introduces a nonrestrictive clause, for all my grammarnazi friends. Do I need a comma after "love"? 

Peace!

Update: I remembered the first line, and fixed it and a couple other mistakes. This is great being able to fix something after it's been published!