Here's Something To Think About

It's time for a new series on the blog! As I may have mentioned once, twice, or an odd dozen times, I have recently published a new book: Idol Thoughts: The Captivity of the Mind and Its Liberation in Christ. It is already selling quite well, so I hear, and I have received much positive feedback from its early readers.

So of course being a rapaciously greedy author who wants to rake in all that cold hard royalty cash (and all the professional authors reading this will burst into peals of merry, yet somehow bitter, laughter here. The only reason the cash is hard and cold is because it is actually spare change), I want to promote the book on the blog a bit more.

I do want to get the book out there, of course, and so I want to talk about it a bit, without of course sharing reams and reams of text from it (which would be counter-productive since I, uh, do want people to buy the thing).

So I am going to write a series of twelve blog posts, corresponding to the twelve chapters of the book. This post will match up, roughly, with the first introductory chapter. So what is this wonderful, ground-breaking, enthralling book about? (Humility, of course!)

Idol Thoughts is basically a popular presentation of an very ancient doctrine, coming from the Desert Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries of the Middle East. These guys were the true pioneers of Christian spiritual doctrine and practice, and laid down for the rest of the Church a basic pattern of prayer, fasting, and self-mastery that has been the ascetic way of the Christian every since.

One of them, Evagrius Ponticus, was a man of learning and so wrote systematically about their eremetical life. He developed a doctrine of the eight logismoi, or thoughts, that took human beings away from God, away from true life, away from happiness and sanity. A great deal of the spiritual practices of the desert were about the mastery of these thoughts and the transformation of the mind and heart into the truth of the Gospel.

Evagrius' disciple John Cassian would take this doctrine of the thoughts to Western Europe where he went to establish monastic life, and his writings were foundational in our Roman Catholic spiritual theology. A couple centuries later, Pope St. Gregory the Great would tweak the list a bit, pare it down from eight to seven, and called them the Capital Sins. And so we have the familiar list.

I am resetting the clock in this book to bring back that original list, and the original name of 'thoughts'. Partly it is because I like the older list better. Also, I like the terminology of 'thoughts' better - these things are only sins when we give our wills over to them, but the thoughts run wild in us even before that, and live in us often unrecognized as fixed patterns of belief that color our whole judgment of reality.

I think in our psychological age the doctrine of the thoughts and their effect on our human thriving is an easy sell for people. We all know about the 'stinkin' thinkin' that if you are a recovering alcoholic, say, 'leads to drinkin'! We all know that people can sabotage themselves in a thousand different ways by patterns of negative and self-defeating thoughts, that before our lives go off the rails behavior-wise, so often the real damage has begun in the mind, in the false beliefs and bad judgments we allow to rule in us.

So this ancient doctrine of the logismoi is about due for a resurgence in our therapeutic culture. Now I maintain in the book that these eight thoughts are fundamentally idols, in that each of them proposes a scheme of happiness that is not God, that is an alternative to God. And they are lies, in that real and abiding human happiness comes only from our living communion with God made possible in Jesus Christ.

And so, as I develop in the book, one of the surest ways to fight the thoughts of man and their illusory idolatrous promises is with the Thoughts of God--the words of Scripture and especially of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. So my book, while being about the thoughts, what they are and what they do to us, is also about lectio divina, the ancient practice of praying with Scripture in a structured meditative way. Specifically, for each thought I provide a welter of appropriate Gospel texts to meditate on and provide some simple meditations on a few of them, just to get you started.

It's all about the purification and transformation of the mind and of the inner person, out of which by God's grace we can choose wisely and well how to live in the world. So we will be looking each Wednesday in the weeks ahead at the eight thoughts and what to do about them: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, despondency, acedia, vainglory, and pride. And don't forget to buy my book, y'all.

Idol Thoughts

Hey, I've got a new book out! Idol Thoughts: The Captivity of the Mind and Its Liberation in Christ presents an ancient teaching of the monastic fathers on the eight thoughts that take us away from God, providing a contemporary take on what they are and how to combat them.

This bit of fourth-century spiritual wisdom is the historical origin of the seven capital sins, but organized and discussed a bit differently. I go into each of the thoughts, explain how they work and why they are so attractive to us, and then suggest a path of liberation from their captivating power in our lives.

Specifically, I present the practice of lectio divina-prayer with Scripture-as a powerful remedy for these illusory and enslaving thought patterns, giving specific Gospel texts to use against each of the thoughts.

I intend the book to be a practical, easy to read, and even funny (well, I think it's funny, anyhow) approach to the spiritual life and wisdom of the desert fathers. I hope you will buy it, read it, and enjoy it. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter, introducing the subject:

Success in the City

It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.  

Desert Father Stories

Reflection – This will be my last desert father posting for the time being. I have more stories yet, and people have been giving me lots of positive feedback on them, but that’s enough for now; time to move on to another angle next week.

This one is a good place to end the series for now. One of the themes that comes up in the collections of desert father literature, and it’s very disarming and refreshingly honest that it does so, is the frank acknowledgment that the fathers were prone to one particular line of temptation above all, that there was one pitfall awaiting the monks of the desert that many fell into.

That pitfall, that trap, was the trap of vainglory. That is, comparing themselves to other men, and seeing themselves as superior because of the extreme austerity of life they had adopted. The movement into the desert was spurred to a great degree by a perception of the corrupt and godless way of life of the great cities of late antiquity, many of the fathers did in fact attain great levels of self-mastery and virtue and depth of prayer, and so vainglory—the temptation to consider oneself in relation to others and place oneself above them in rank—was an obvious danger to them.

It is a mark of the greatness of the fathers that they did not try to conceal this struggle from their followers and those chronicling their exploits, but took pains to point out that this was one of the more protracted and difficult struggles in the spiritual life. Later on, when much that is given in pithy stories and sayings in the desert father corpus was explicated at greater length in treatises on the spiritual life, it would be explained that vainglory is especially hard to eradicate because unlike the other sins which accompany our human weakness (gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth) vainglory attends our success and our strength.

Right at the moment when we’ve actually managed to do something worthwhile, the little worm of vainglory start whispering in our ear, “Well, aren’t you something special! You really made it! And of course you’re way better than those jerks over there…” Very insidious, very persistent, and something most of us have to contend with at least a little bit.

As soon as we are comparing ourselves to others and placing ourselves on the plus side of the ledger, vainglory is upon us to rob us of the merit of whatever good we are doing. And of course it has a trajectory—sin never stands still. From the interior conviction of our own superiority comes the expectation that others will acknowledge that superiority (it’s only right!), the effort to make sure our virtues and achievements are known and recognized, preferably in public, and the shock, hurt, and rage when others do not come across with the praise and honor we think we are owed.

From this hurt and anger then, we descend if unchecked into despairing of our efforts to be good, since it didn’t get us the result we somehow decided we wanted (the praise and honor of our neighbor). And from that, all the passions and appetites of the flesh come roaring back and the next thing we know we’re back at the bottom of the ladder struggling with basic virtue and obedience to the commandments. Such is the pitfall of vainglory and it is a formidable one, one that has claimed many a soul that was on its way to sainthood.

The remedy is found in stories such as this one. Anthony is told there is a man in the city (!) who is his equal, not by prodigious fasting and long prayers, but by generosity to the poor and a simple prayer life taken from Scripture. Another story similar to this has one of the fathers being told that two sisters living together in the city (!) were his equal because they had lived together many years and never exchanged a harsh word between them.

In other words, the best remedy of vainglory is to know that there are many people doing as well or better than us, morally and spiritually, under much more difficult circumstances and with far fewer advantages and helps. To continually look with marvel and awe at the good lives of other people, and look very little indeed at whatever good we might manage to achieve on a good day.

Vainglory besets us, and the fathers are clear that it is one of the longest and most protracted spiritual struggles there is. The desire to see ourselves as superior to ‘those people over there’, or worse yet ‘this person who is right next to me, with whom I live’ is a deep one in us, a terrible distortion in us of a godly desire for the true spiritual greatness we are indeed called to, our royal dignity, our sharing in the divine life.

But the more we can train ourselves to rejoice in the dignity, beauty, and divine grace we see in our brothers and sisters, and the more eagerly we desire to see all these goods in all men and women, and especially in those who do not seem to us to be on that path, the more we are constantly choosing to reject vainglory and live in the true spirit of Christ, of humility and abundant charity and mercy towards all.

The Most Helpful Thing

Abba Anthony also said, "Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalize our brother, we have sinned against Christ."

One day Abba Anthony received a letter from the Emperor Constantius, asking him to come to Constantinople, and he was wondering if he ought to go. So he said to Abba Paul, his disciple, "Ought I to go?" He replied, "If you go, you will be called Anthony, but if you stay here, you will be called Abba Anthony."  

Desert Father Stories

Reflection – One of the criticisms of the desert fathers that has been made over the centuries is that theirs is a way of life essentially self-centered. They are focused entirely on the salvation of their own souls and care nothing for their neighbours. Why don’t they spend their lives feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, if they want to be so close to God? Isn’t that what Jesus did? Isn’t that what he told us to do?

It is a superficially strong argument. And of course there are indeed thousands if not millions of Christians over the millennia who have indeed become very holy, very close to God precisely by lives of active charity and generous unstinting service to their fellow man. That is beyond dispute.

But this little pair of desert father sayings, again from the great Abba Anthony, help answer the objection made to the way of life of the desert, which is of course the pattern of all monastic life and in a certain sense of all consecrated life. Even those consecrated people who are engaged in the active apostolate have a little wee current of the desert fathers running somewhere through their lives of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

That is, the fathers of the desert communicate to us that the most helpful thing we can do for another person, the most lavish act of service we can perform for another human being, the most profound act of charity and Christian compassion, is to win this person for Jesus Christ. This is not to dismiss or disparage in any way whatsoever the corporal works of mercy. But those corporal works are, in fact, ordered properly only when they are in fact ordered towards winning souls for Christ.

And souls are won for Christ, not by all sorts of doing and talking and human activity, but in a very deep way of prayer and fasting and our own inner purification and union with Jesus. ‘Acquire interior peace, and a multitude will find salvation near you,’ a more modern ‘desert father’ of Russia said, St. Seraphim of Sarov.

That has been the lived experience of the Church for 2000 years—that the real and deepest good for human beings has been accomplished by men and women who allow God to take possession of their deepest being, that grace flows through such men and women like a vast, swift-moving river, that hearts are changed and souls are saved and the earth is renewed as in the spring-time by such men and women and the Spirit of the Living God flowing through them.

This is what is meant in the second story—if Anthony goes to Constantinople (where he can really be useful to the emperor!) he will remain Anthony. Not a bad thing, actually, and it’s not like he would have been committing some grave sin to do so. But if he stays in the desert, stays in this mysterious and seemingly useless life of prayer and fasting and total oblation to God, he will be ‘Abba’ Anthony. A spiritual father, a man whose life will beget life in others, who will bring forth new souls made new in Christ.

And we see this over and over again in the life of the Church. ‘Abba’ Anthony is still bringing forth souls for Christ; his spiritual fecundity has spilled over the bonds of time and history and into eternity, and there are still countless thousands of men and women won for Christ by the teachings and way of life laid down by him and those who came after him. And we can see the same thing happening with Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Dominic whose feast day is today, and so many others, Catherine de Hueck Doherty among them (in my opinion).

And yet, when it comes down to us, we have to struggle through it. Is my life worth anything? Is what I’m doing going to make the slightest bit of difference in the world? Is my faithfulness to Christ, my poor efforts to pray and fast and do what the Lord wills for me—is it worth it? Can I become ‘Abba Denis’ (the sound of which makes me snort in derision, just a little). Can you become Abba or Amma (insert your name here)? And if you do, what good will it do?

This is the great struggle, the great question all of us face, even if our lives are filled with works of active charity that have some obvious immediate good effect. And we have to struggle through it with God’s help—no shortcut, no way around it but through it. But souls hang in the balance, our brothers and sisters who are far from Christ can only be brought near to Him by the ministry of Christian souls set on fire for God by God—all the depths and heights of this desert life are for them, ultimately.

So it is anything but self-centered to walk this path of radical holiness, radical belonging to God. It is all about becoming a living flame of love in the world, without which many will die of the cold. So let’s try, just a little, today, to let God burn in us as he did in those great men and women of the desert. The world is suffering from ‘global chilling’, you know, and needs that fire, that warmth, more than ever.

Serenity Not!

Abba Anthony said to Abbe Poemen, "This is the Great Work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God and to expect temptation to his last breath."

He also said, "Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." He even added, "Without temptation, no one can be saved."

Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony, "What ought I to do?" and the old man said to him, "Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach."

Desert Father Stories

Reflection – Well, just a few more days of these desert father stories and then we’ll move on to something else (although I must say, based on the traffic stats I’m seeing since I started these stories, my readers like them as much as I do).

These are three separate sayings that all bring out more this spirit of humility I wrote about yesterday. I think that lurking in the minds and hearts of many of us is a certain picture of the spiritual life and what it should be that is really nothing more or less than an idol. Namely, the idea that spiritual life should eventually settle down into some nice little cozy affair—‘me and Jesus sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g’ sort of thing.

We are willing to acknowledge that our life in its earliest stages will have some degree of struggle and temptations and difficulty, but we all harbor this idea that it’s all supposed to get really easy at some point. And when it doesn’t, especially, we are tempted to cynicism or doubt: it doesn’t work! Prayer doesn’t work, the sacraments don’t work, Jesus doesn’t work.

Well, they don’t work to our specifications, it turns out. But that’s idolatry, to expect God to perform to our expectations and ideas. He doesn’t, he never has, and he never will on earth or in heaven. Spiritual life is not about finding some safe harbor in the world, not about attaining some kind of bogus ‘serenity’ that floats us above the sullied and frantic earth and its smelly people. It is about being set on fire by the love of God until we are all love, all compassion for the earth and its smelly people, and for our own smelly selves, too.

And so we have these little sayings from the great Abba Anthony about expecting temptation until the end, renouncing all efforts at self-justification before God, and putting no faith in one’s own righteousness. This is our work, the work of a Christian. God’s work is to pour His Spirit into our hearts so that we are aflame with love; our work is to keep ourselves very small and humble and poor, so that we don’t get in the way of that work.

It may sound a bit heavy and hard, and to some degree it is. But by the same token, so is a life spent in pursuit of riches or pleasures, a life spent building up the ego constantly. Choose your heaviness, working for food that does not last or food that endures to eternal life, but work we must, no matter what.

And then there is this luminous little phrase, ‘do not worry about the past’. That’s a great little thing—don’t worry about what has been. A monk—that is, a Christian whose heart is set on God and the things of God—lives radically in the present moment. What is happening now, and where is it taking us into the future? What is the call to love, now? What is the action of God, now? What is the work to be done, now? All of this is the proper concern of man. The past, once we have repented of what is amiss in it and done whatever restitution needs doing to whoever we have injured there, is to be a closed door for us, opened only by God at the day of the particular judgment.

And control of tongue and stomach—basic spiritual advice there, of course. The more we can watch what goes into our mouths and comes out of them, and make sure that there’s not too much moving in either direction, so to speak, the better off we all are.

And so we continue to sit at the feet of these monks, and let them teach us what they know about the spiritual life, which (it turns out) is quite a lot.

Living Like You're Drowning, or The Path to a Peaceful Contented Life

Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus "If a monk is a fighter, can he begin again every day?" The old man said "If a monk is a true fighter, he can begin again every moment."

Abba Anthony said, "I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?" Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility.'"

Desert Father Stories

Reflection – These are two of my all-time favorite desert father stories, genuine touchstones in my own personal spiritual life and in the spiritual direction I give others.

They are also related at a deep level. The word ‘fighter’ is, of course, in Greek ascetic, and this is the great monastic ideal, to have enrolled oneself in the great combat, the great struggle for liberty of mind and heart in the communion of Christ, to achieve a state of constant prayer and perfect charity and inner peace.

In this ascesis, this battle, two things are needed, shown in these two short sayings. First, the willingness to start again each day, or even each moment if you are really good at this stuff. In other words, the poison that kills our spiritual life is not, principally, sins of the flesh or the passions, sins of selfishness and thoughts of fear or greed or vanity. Those are all harmful and damaging and if left unchecked will indeed kill us.

But the sin that deals a death-blow, almost instantaneously, to our spiritual life is the sin of complacency, of smugness, of an assurance that ‘we’ve got this now, thanks Jesus, and we’ll just keep on fine from here on. We’ll ask for help if we need it, but we’re good to go!’

Spiritual death, right there. This is simply not our true position in this life or in the next. And we are all susceptible to this kind of calamitous spiritual mistake. It is so easy to think that spiritual progress means going from a place of weakness to strength, of dependence to independence, that we should grow in virtue and psychological integration so that we can attain the happy state of being where we no longer need God, or at least don’t need Him… well, quite so much.

Every moment, on the contrary, we are to begin again as if we are the rawest of sinners just come from the brothel or the crack house, down on our knees begging God’s mercy and imploring His help as if we are drowning men and women, calling on the food and drink of His grace as if we are starving men and women, begging the light of his guidance and truth as if we are deeply and utterly lost men and women.

To live like this at every moment, to keep ourselves so deeply and truly humble, deeply and truly in the truth that this is, in fact, our current situation here on earth—we are those drowning, starving, lost people—and even in heaven where we will be none of those things it will only be because there we will be all receptivity, all open and perfectly turned to the being of God who pours His being upon our non-being for eternity.

So this being a true fighter and beginning again each moment is, in fact, the humility that is the only path through all the snares and pitfalls and real spiritual dangers of this world. It is so important to know about these spiritual dangers. It is when we drop our guard, relax our vigilance, get stupid and careless, that we fall right into them. This guarded vigilance, this profound care for our own soul, what the fathers call nepsis, is not a state of anxiety or fearfulness, a low-level spiritual panic attack and pervasive gloom at all times. That would be a silly and unsustainable way to live. We are called to live in a spirit of joy and peace, trust and childlike confidence in our Savior and King.

So no, nepsis is really is the attitude of mind and heart captured by, lived out in, the constant recitation of the Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is the ‘beginning again’ each moment, and the deep and radical humility that perpetually lifts us out of the pits and snares of the world.

It’s really not complicated (thank God!) but it does take a fighting spirit, a steely determination and a radical choice for Christ to live that way. It ain’t easy, in other words. But it’s more than worth it, and in fact is the true and only path to joy and beauty and wonder and awe and gratitude and deep abiding happiness in this world and in the world to come.

‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’