Day 20. The Last Stone to Crumble
Not that I condone fascism. Or any “ism.” “Isms”, in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an “ism.” He should believe in himself. John Lennon said it on his first solo album. “I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” A good point there. After all, he was the walrus.
Ferris Bueller,
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Great plans for the future and the struggle for social acceptance. As we conclude our “soil sampling,” we see that these are two common foundations on which we ground our Sense of Self, our Source of Love and our Hope of Happiness. Still they are not the number one structural support we choose for our lives. There is a stone that everyone chooses to place their pillars on. It is more reliable than looks. It is generally more stable than popularity, and when our dreams don’t materialize, we can always fall back on it. What/who do you suppose it is? God? No -- though we’ll be coming to our Lord shortly. Mom? A best friend? No, it’s much closer to home. Who is at the center of your universe? The nucleus around which all else orbits? Is it not the ego? Is it not “I”?
“I am not self-centered!” you may protest. I can’t say that you are. I can say that I am. Do these thoughts sound familiar? They play over and over in my head.
“You can’t tell me how to live my life. I know what’s best for me.”
“I can handle this on my own. I don’t need any help.”
“I just have to believe in myself, and I can do anything I set my mind to.”
Who is the center of all these thoughts? God? No. I am. I control my destiny. I choose my path. I strive for my own happiness. Just thinking honestly about my own daydreams, I ask, “How many of them center around me?” Sadly, I have to admit that most of them do. I remember when I was in college that I would listen to my favorite loud music in my own room with the door closed. I’d imagine being the lead singer up there on stage. With thousands of screaming fans. How about you? Do you let your ego run rampant with the music blaring behind closed doors? What’s the song that’s playing? “It’s all about me.”
The exalted “I” is the stone of choice grounding our ever-unstable three-legged table. I am my Sense of Self (because I really am a cut above the rest). I am my Source of Love (because I am so clever and charming, etc.). I am my Hope of Happiness (after all, no one else is going to find my happiness for me. I have to define it and go after it for myself).
Maybe you’re different, though. Maybe you really are totally selfless and focused only on doing God’s will for your life. Are you prepared to follow His leading if it jeopardizes your Hope of Happiness? If God says, “celibacy,” will you put aside dreams of future family and respond, “Yes Lord, your will be done?” My own experience is that I prefer to hear what I want to hear from God. I’ll call it “God’s will,” but it’s really my plans with a sticky-sweet, candy Christian coating.
In the Old Testament, God often rebuked the Israelites for carving and worshiping idols. These were images of their own making which they set up in the place of God. Today, we may laugh at such practices and dismiss them as ancient superstitions of primitive people. Worshiping a carved image? How silly! A carefully crafted image of God? Absurd! An image of the divine that suits the tastes of the one who makes it? An image we make for ourselves and pretend that it is God’s image? Wait a minute...
Hopefully you can see that this is neither primitive nor superstitious. Idolatry is no longer just the worship of statues. We’re much more sophisticated now. Idolatry is putting anything in the place of God as the foundation for our lives. And God’s number one competitor for the title of number one in our lives is “I” myself. I will decide what’s right based on what sounds right to me. I will follow my heart and will confidently call whatever I choose ‘God’s will’ for my life. I will think and act and talk in whatever way suits me because it is my life after all. Who puts the “I” in idolatry? I do. So maybe worshiping something I make for myself isn’t so primitive.
Or rather, come to think of it, it’s very primitive. In fact, it’s the most primitive sin there is, the original. Listen carefully to the words of the serpent as he tempts Eve in the garden of Eden: “No, God knows well that the moment you eat of (the fruit of the tree), your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” (Gn. 3:5 NAB, emphasis added) You will be gods. You will decide what’s right for you and what’s wrong for you.
“I’m not trying to tell anybody else how to live their lives.” I often hear, “But nobody should tell me how to live mine either. I know what’s best for me. I’ll find my own path. Don’t impose your dogma on me. I’ll find my own truth.” Sound familiar? It should. It’s the leading popular philosophy and quasi-religion of our day. None of us should assume that we have escaped its influence.
We may think ourselves humble if we don’t have any of the delusions of greatness we’ve examined in recent days. But when I say, “It’s my life and I’ll choose my own way,” haven’t I demonstrated delusions aplenty? Who dares to tell the sovereign God, author of all life, that the life He freely created and entrusted to my care – namely my own – is no longer His to guide and direct? I do. If that isn’t pride, I don’t know what pride is.
Does that mean I don’t matter? Does that mean that my plans are irrelevant? No. But it does mean that I must submit myself, my plans and my way of doing things to God’s plan and God’s way of doing things. Becoming a servant of God seems like a raw deal until we consider the alternative. The reality is that I must serve someone. Being my own master simply isn’t an option.
If I will not serve God, I will serve the devil. At least God is honest enough to tell me what He expects from the start. And, speaking for myself, having followed Him (poorly) this far, I’ve been surprised how much freedom He actually lets me have! With the devil, he’ll let you live in the illusion that you are “in control” of your life – even as he gradually ties your hands up with habitual sins, blinds you to your own self-centeredness and ultimately cuts you off from every source of genuine love. Hell isn’t just a place we go after death. Hell starts happening the day we choose “my way” (which is Satan’s way) over God’s way. That choice sets in motion a slow but certain (though not irreversible) decline into the deepest personal and spiritual isolation.
According to Dante, the center of Hell isn’t fire. It’s ice. Once you’ve frozen out God, is freezing out everyone else far behind?
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Pier Giorgio responds: Our life, in order to be Christian, has to be a continual renunciation, a continual sacrifice. But this is not difficult, if one thinks what these few years passed in suffering are, compared with eternal happiness where joy will have no measure or end, and where we shall have unimaginable peace.
Let us pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, teach me that I must be able to mourn if I will be able to rejoice. Show me how to face my sorrow, and not avoid it or pretend that it does not exist. Help me to enter into any present sorrow, so that my soul can empty itself and be filled with God’s peace.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is our Consoler, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need: (in your own words, ask the Father to enable you to see yourself in his eyes, with his loving gaze).
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
EXAMINE MY HEART
1. What’s My Fame Fantasy?
When I daydream about myself, what great things do I imagine myself doing or being? Write down one or two secret dreams of glory I tell no one (I won’t have to share them with my Discernment Advisor, this is just for me).
BREAK OPEN YOUR BIBLE
2. Is the Devil Real?
Many people doubt there’s a devil. He seems like a medieval boogie-man or a CGI movie monster rather than a real being. The following scripture passages describe Satan. Write down his characteristics in the space provided. Note who is speaking in every case.
a. John 8:44
b. Matthew 13:36-43
c. Luke 10:17-19
d. Luke 13:16
Based on these passages, why do you think the devil WANTS people to think he doesn’t exist? Try to list at least three reasons.
1. …
2. …
3. …
SAINTS SAID IT
3. St. Benedict on Humility:
Hence, brethren, if we wish to reach the greatest height of humility, and speedily to arrive at that heavenly exaltation to which ascent is made in the present life by humility, then, mounting by our actions, we must erect the ladder which appeared to Jacob in his dream, by means of which angels were shown to him ascending and descending (c.f. Gen 28:12). Without a doubt, we understand this ascending and descending to be nothing else but that we descend by pride and ascend by humility. The erected ladder, however, is our life in the present world, which, if the heart is humble, is by the Lord lifted up to heaven. For we say that our body and our soul are the two sides of this ladder; and into these sides the divine calling hath inserted various degrees of humility or discipline which we must mount.
The first degree of humility, then, is that a man always have the fear of God before his eyes (c.f. Ps 36:2), shunning all forgetfulness and that he be ever mindful of all that God has commanded, that he always considers in his mind how those who despise God will burn in hell for their sins, and that life everlasting is prepared for those who fear God. And while he guards himself evermore against sin and vices of thought, word, deed, and self-will, let him also hasten to cut off the desires of the flesh.
Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 7 “On Humility”
St. Benedict compares growth in humility with going up a ladder. What is the first rung of the ladder and what are at least three dimensions of that first step?
What does he mean by “cut off the desires of the flesh?” For help, look up Galatians 5:19-21
4. St. Teresa of Avila on True and False Humility:
It sometimes happened to me – and even now it does although not so much – that…it seemed to me I was so evil that all the wickedness and heresies that had arisen were due to my sins. This was a false humility the devil invented in order to disquiet me and try, if he could, to bring my soul to despair…He is recognized clearly by the disturbance and disquiet with which he begins, by the agitation the soul feels as long as his work lasts, by the darkness and affliction he places in the soul, and by dryness and the disinclination toward prayer or toward any good work. It seems that he smothers the soul and binds up the body so that it profits from nothing.
…True humility doesn’t come to the soul with agitation or disturbance, nor does it darken it or bring it dryness. Rather, true humility consoles and acts in a completely opposite way: quietly, gently, and with light. From another point of view, this pain gives the soul comfort in that the soul sees what a great favor the Lord grants it through the experience of that pain and how well employed it is. It grieves for its offenses against God; yet, on the other hand, His mercy lifts its spirits. It has the light to be confounded about itself, and it praises God for having put up with it so long. In that other humility caused by the devil there is no light for anything good; it seems God lays everything to waste with fire and sword. The devil represents justice to the soul, and although it has faith that there is mercy – because he can’t do so much as to make it lose its faith – it receives no consolation from this faith.
St. Teresa of Avila, Life [1]
What are some characteristics of true and false humility?
Why does the devil tempts us with false humility? What purpose might it serve for him?
Pride
There is no sin like pride,
So silently within to hide.
Just when I have defeated it,
Just then I have repeated it.
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] lead quote - Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Paramount Pictures, 1986
[1] The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. I, The Book of Her Life, tr. By Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., Washington, D.C., ICS Publications, 2nd edition, 1987.p. 256, 257