Day 76. Filled with the Fullness of God
Virginity does not suppress sexuality but rather raises it to a new level of expression….The Christian virgin appreciates her sexuality and she does not try to forget, suppress, or destroy it. She rechannels her sexual drives … to a wider freedom for universal affection and profound prayer-love.
Thomas Dubay S.M., And You Are Christ’s
At the conclusion of the previous stage of our novena, we reflected on the consecration of the first temple in Jerusalem. In a scene echoing the dedication of the original desert tabernacle, the glory of God fills the sanctuary and the inner hall. The priests are expelled. No one can occupy the structure – the Lord’s presence overflows the building. The temple – debir, hekal, ulam – is completely filled with the fullness of the Lord himself.
I’d like to take up this image again and remember the way we applied it to the now-familiar Temple of our Relationships. Is it possible that for some people the Lord’s glory fills the human body, the human person, in such a way that God’s own Divine presence becomes satisfying and completely fulfilling? So that all other intimate relationships must flee the sanctuary? Can Jesus be for us a complete answer to the question, “whom shall I love?”
You may expect that I’ll finally start laying out your options: priesthood? religious life? Monk? Nun? Contemplative? Missionary? The days are winding down and we are, it seems, no closer to a clear answer. There will be time for discussing specifics later, but we approach the question of vocation, as always, by the route of relationship rather than roles.
Can Jesus be enough for me? This question must weigh heavily on the mind of anyone who is seriously looking at a celibate vocation. Thus celibacy – vowed, lifelong virginity – is the first order of business. Sneered at by society, decried as sexual repression by the modern world, celibacy is in fact the wellspring of joy in a life completely and exclusively dedicated to Jesus. We spoke, at the very beginning of the novena, about silence. We said that silence is not the absence of noise but the presence of God. When we are silent we make room for a greater receptivity to the voice and the presence of God. Similarly, celibacy is not the absence of sex but the presence of a deeper union with Christ and a greater availability to his initiatives in my life.
I am his.
And, delightfully, he is mine.
But a life without sexual intimacy is a frightening proposal for a young person these days. We fear loneliness more than almost anything else (except maybe boredom). Isn’t celibacy a one-way ticket to life-long isolation? We may have met older nuns or priests who seem terribly lonely and disconnected. “Will I end up like that?” one wonders.
Marriage, by contrast, seems like an insurance policy against loneliness. “At least with marriage, I’ll have somebody to hold on to for my whole life. That will keep me from experiencing the emptiness and disconnection I still feel far too often.”
Honesty please. How many married couples do you know who find in their partners total satisfaction? And on the other hand, if you know many priests or religious, how many of them are really lonely? Ask them. Celibacy is a sacrifice, no doubt, but I find few celibates – committed to prayer and actively engaged in service – who are terribly lonely. Ironically more often the problem they face is an over-abundance. They know and care for more people than they can adequately attend to. That’s a nice problem to have!
We can no longer espouse the romantic myths that surround marriage like brightly colored wrapping paper. We will also have to set aside our anti-celibacy bias. Fear of loneliness is a real concern, to be sure, but it is a concern in any vocation – and as we learned in our reflections on the temple, it has more to do with our lack of openness to intimacy than with a failure to find “the right one.”
Loneliness, like boredom, leads us to a deeper insight. Both remind us that we are infinite and that no merely human relationship is really going to satisfy us in the long run. Those who are in love will loudly disagree and protest that their love will endure. I don’t doubt the sincerity of their conviction, only the clarity of their vision. Romantic love, unless it yields to committed love, is anything but lasting. If embraced by lovers as “true love,” it fogs the mind and enchants the will for as long as it chooses to remain. Once it departs, the very lovers who yesterday protested their unending fidelity will today start looking for the exits. We’ve seen it. We need not play along.
Even if you’ve never been in love, you have still, I believe, experienced this disappointment when in various situations the pay-off fails to live up to expectations. Think back to a time when you had achieved some hard-sought-after goal or won a great prize. After the initial joy of the accomplishment wore off, what were you left with? Didn’t something deep within you experience a certain disappointment: “Is that all there is?”
This experience of dissatisfaction could be an initial sign of what becomes, in some, a celibate vocation. “Whom have I in heaven but you?” the psalmist writes to God, “And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you” (Ps. 73:25 NRSV). For one who has been touched by God, the world that was once so exciting and inviting can become somewhat bland. The young woman or man still does the same things that used to bring such comfort, but now there is not the same satisfaction.
Our hunger for achievements, pleasures, recognition, affection and power all point us to a deeper, more fundamental hunger: the hunger for satisfying, enduring intimacy with our Creator – what scripture calls “knowing and being known” or seeing God “face to face.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Once we are touched by the All-Satisfying Love of Jesus, we lose interest in the many lesser things where we used to seek comfort.
Do you know what I’m talking about? Maybe so. Then again, maybe you don’t. Either way, we have finally arrived at the subject of discernment.
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”
Pier Giorgio responds: I offer you my best wishes – or, rather, only one wish, but the only wish that a true friend can express for a dear friend: may the peace of the Lord be with you always! For if you possess peace every day, you will be truly rich.
Let us Pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, despite your daily struggles, you found peace by fostering your own well being in work, study and play; in prayer alone and with others; in silence and in song, in laughter and in serious conversation with friends. Guide me to that inner peace which will enable me to share peace with others.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is our peace, 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 for the Lord to give you greater gratitude for the graces and gifts you have received from him.)
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
WORLD VIEWS
1. The Good Die Young. The Bad Die Lonely
The rock song “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel has endured because of its catchy tune and clever lyrics. The song is about a young man trying to coax his would-be girlfriend “Virginia” out of the convent and into bed with him. His words are still heard today in various forms by friends who believe they are doing us good by discouraging our pursuit of a celibate vocation.
The Song…
Well they gave you a chapel and told you to pray.
Built you a temple and locked you away.
Aw, but they never told you the price that you’d pay
For things that you might have done.
The Message
The Church (“They…”) is portrayed as authoritarian (“told you”/“locked you away”) and generally hostile to Virginia’s freedom and happiness. This conveniently shifts the focus off the motives of the young man who wants sex with Virginia (early in the song he says, “I might as well be the one” to end her virginity). He wants to use her rather than love her, but he pretends to have her best interests in mind. He urges her to consider what she’s missing out on, “…things that you might have done.” Like Judas in the story of the woman who breaks open her jar at the feet of Jesus, he plays the part of a concerned bystander but he’s really a thief (Jn. 12:4-6).
My own experience
Are there friends in my own life who tell me I’m missing out if I don’t date? Are they making it sound like I can’t really discern a vocation unless I first get in a really intense relationship with a “good Catholic guy/girl”? Is it possible that their motives are not merely for my own well-being? Might they be uncomfortable with someone so close to them offering everything to Christ? Thoughts…
The Song…
They say there’s a heaven for those who will wait.
Some say it’s better but I say it ain’t.
I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
The sinners are much more fun.
The Message
The singer is urging Virginia to embrace his own careless, self-centered way of living that focuses on fun rather than on her ultimate destiny and deepest fulfillment. If Virginia follows his advice, she’ll find herself with a young man who has no great concern for her except insofar as she remains sexually interesting to him. That young man will grow up to be very lonely because no one wants to be used like that and his lack of close friendships will make that increasingly clear to him. Virginia, meanwhile, will have the rest of her life to regret having sold her treasure for trash.
My own experience
Have I been told by friends that I’m too fun to be the “priest” or “nun” type? Do they object that I have too much life ahead of me to throw it away like this? Have some said it would be a real shame or “such a waste” if I became a priest or religious? Have they said I’d make too good a husband or wife or father or mother? Honestly, how much do these things weigh on my heart or confuse my discernment?
Drawing conclusions
Clearly the boy in the song has selfish motives. This is not so clear when we get advice from close friends. For the most part, they honestly believe they’re helping us. Still it’s good to consider the underlying assumptions that are the basis for their advice. As I consider the friends who are most opposed to the idea of me becoming a nun, monk, sister, brother or priest, what are some basic beliefs I detect in their attitudes?
Religion is for older people and later in life, after you’ve had your fun.
[ ] Sounds very familiar [ ] Don’t know anybody who thinks this way [ ] Not sure
My reply is…
Living without sex isn’t living at all. It’s repressed and joyless.
[ ] Sounds very familiar [ ] Don’t know anybody who thinks this way [ ] Not sure
My reply is…
Marriage and family is where true and lasting happiness is found. Any other path is lonely and empty.
[ ] Sounds very familiar [ ] Don’t know anybody who thinks this way [ ] Not sure
My reply is…
You should have had at least one good, Catholic boyfriend/girlfriend before you can really take a look at a celibate vocation.
[ ] Sounds very familiar [ ] Don’t know anybody who thinks this way [ ] Not sure
My reply is…
Stark Contrast
Jesus describes a path to happiness so different from the world. I write my own thoughts after reading and reflecting on the quote below.
Jesus proclaims that life finds its center, its meaning and its fulfillment when it is given up.
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life, #51
My thoughts…
A QUOTE TO NOTE
2. The Worldling and the Saint
People who live for this world only (a.k.a. “worldlings”) don’t “get” holiness. They don’t understand a heart that hungers for things that are eternal. They don’t believe God is personal and that we can have a personal relationship with Christ. They think saints are boring, but what they don’t realize is that they themselves are boring. Holiness, by contrast, is attractive and alive. Most of us don’t know this because we’ve met so few who pursue God alone. Once we do, it makes a deep impression. Here’s the way one spiritual writer describes the difference.
The worldling will not face his colossal inner blah. He multiplies experiences in an unending and desperate attempt to numb his spirit. It hurts so much not to have attained the very reason for his existence, an immersion in God, that he uses things as a narcotic. The worldling pursues prestige or comfort or wealth or sexual encounters not because they basically satisfy him (if they did, once would be enough) but because they dull his inner aching. Always and eventually he is face to face with his personal failure. But the sight of it is so revolting and painful, he dives once again into the aspirin sea of frantic pursuits.
The saints know better. Having tasted the best, they know how to assess the least. Having drunk at the Fountain, they spend little time with the trickles. They know both from the word of the Lord and from their own experiences of it that indeed the poor are happy.
Thomas Dubay, SM,; Happy Are You Poor, The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom, 2003, 1981, San Francisco, Ignatius Press. p. 157-158
In emptiness we find fulfillment. How is this true?
In filling ourselves we starve to death. How is this true?
If I am stuck for an answer, I consider this observation from a noted spiritual writer.
It is one of the paradoxes of human experience that those who have handed over their happiness to God, and who are prepared to be unhappy for the rest of their lives as victims bearing witness to His love, are in fact the happiest of all.
Dom Hubert Van Zeller, The Inner Search, Sheed and Ward Inc. 1997
SAINTS SAID IT
3. God’s Passionate Love
We hear in all the objections to a celibate vocation the underlying concern that God’s love can’t satisfy our hearts. The truth is God’s love alone satisfies our hearts. Here’s how St. John of the Cross describes this mysterious awakening…
For this present kind is an enkindling of spiritual love in the soul, which, in the midst of these dark confines, feels itself to be keenly and sharply wounded in strong Divine love, and to have a certain realization and foretaste of God, although it understands nothing definitely, for, as we say, the understanding is in darkness.
The spirit feels itself here to be deeply and passionately in love, for this spiritual enkindling produces the passion of love. And, inasmuch as this love is infused, it is passive rather than active, and thus it begets in the soul a strong passion of love.
Book II, Ch. XI, Par. 1,2 , p. 132
St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul; Translated by E. Allison Peers, from the critical edition of P. Silverio de Santa Teresa, C.D., Image Books, A Division of Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1959
Have I ever experienced love like this? Does my heart tell me that it’s possible?
As I conclude I gather up all my anxieties about the things I might be missing out on by pursuing Christ alone. I confess these honestly to Jesus, one at a time, asking him to ease my fears and reassure me that he will lead me into his perfect will and provide for the deepest needs of my heart.
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.”