Bradford Retreat

I used to think I could not help the Church until I got myself together. I used to think I could not further the mission of the Church until I understood my own mission. I was wrong. The Holy Spirit can work in confusion, in turmoil, when nothing seems to be turning out the way we hoped. Brother Angelo’s simple message for the weekend was drop your masks, the Church as no need of us to ‘look good’. What the Church needs is radical men of prayer. Men who let Christ shine though their mess, their brokenness and their emptiness as a beacon in the midst of the darkness.

The Church as no need of us to look good what the Church needs is Radical men of Prayer

Under the spiritual guidance of the Friars, we explored over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, our deepest desires in the light of some Gospel passages. We asked the Holy Spirit to shed his light on those hidden blind spots of our lives that prevented us from living our vocation to Holiness. A telling moment came when we were asked to list out in detail the specific activities we spend our time on. So many of us recoiled in horror as we tallied up the hours spent in mindless activities, things that were so unrelated to our spiritual life, things that brought us no rest, no desire to re-create and if we were honest with ourselves, no true joy. We promised to ourselves, a line would be drawn this weekend, this was a rallying cry to battle. No more to those things that sap us of our strength, our desire to fight the good fight, to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. We also pledged to further those missions on our hearts. Some of those missions were boldly proclaimed out loud and others were silently whispered in the silent conversations with our Father but all were promises to be honoured or broken.

In summing up the weekend the Friars were clear in their conviction: something is happening in the Church. Men are finally beginning to rise up and shake off the timidity, mediocrity and passivity that for so many years has enveloped our Parishes, our movements, our seminaries. They could see some of the ‘springtime of the Church’ present in us and they left us with the prayer, that God who had begun this good work in us would bring it to completion.

 

Carb-Free Asceticism

The Spectator carried a recent article, ‘Why are modern men obsessed with self-improvement’. It was a summary of the current trend for men to eschew things such as milk, carbs, junk food and beer in attempt to live as the writer described, ‘a more virtuous life’. I thought it an interesting article as it demonstrated the intense human need for asceticism but also the secular view on what the virtues are.

According to the author we are witnessing a new trend as men clamber to purge themselves of the intoxicants that Morden life compels them to consume. Men are grouping together around common objectives, usually related to fitness and diet. This trend is labelled as something new. However, I could not help but think of the parallels with the early desert fathers who took themselves into the desert in search of solitude and silence in their never-ending quest for union with the Triune God.

This desire for self-improvement and ascetism the author thought was the search for virtue. However, I think it is a symptom of the misunderstanding of what the virtuous life is that leads to such conclusion. The virtuous can never be practised in sole reference to oneself or to ascetism. This is a criticism often levelled at Christians. That we equate virtue solely with morality, solely with justice. As a result, we live staid, sterile lives, bereft of joy, love and excitement. Sanctity, seen though this lens is a turgid journey of repression and suppression, as we seek to limit and control the desires that pulsate through our innermost being.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The virtues enable us to touch the face of God, they enable us to enter into holy union, with the infinite, eternal being, who encapsulates all existence. Our ascetism is not an end, ascetism is the means by which we purify our desires not subjugate them. Holiness is not a destruction of our humanity, it is the liberation of it. The virtues are not dry acts of habitual denial, they are the building block of eternity.

Yet, we need asceticism. We desire it. For some reason men particularly need this shared commitment. What does this mean for man then? It means that if he wants to build a community of men, extreme asceticism must be at the centre of the shared communion. The question then becomes, where do we find this and how can we build it?

Trinity, Love and Prayer

I once drove across London to take a girl to Mass, after Mass I drove her to get something to eat and I then I drove her to work. When I got back home slightly knackered after all the driving, I realised I had committed a pretty selfless act. I mention this because this act of altruism was completely out of character. I am not a generous person. I rarely give without counting the cost, if I fight I heed the wounds, if I toil I immediately seek for rest and if I labour I expect a pretty substantial reward. In short, I am selfish. Yet here I was, on a Sunday morning without much effort or thought, in fact without even really realising what I was doing until I had done it, doing something completely for another.

The Trinity is the central mystery of Christian Faith and life (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 234 hereafter referred to as CCC para). For our Jewish brothers our belief in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is simply a variation of Polytheism (the belief of more than one God), a belief that their entire faith is based on repudiating. For Islam much the same can be said. Yet Christians hold that the mystery of the Trinity has not rendered their Monotheism (belief in one God) invalid but rather shone light on the mystery of God in a way that was not accessible to reason alone (CCC 237). The Church has never wavered in this commitment to the Trinity even though it would perhaps have been easier for her to jettison its theological baggage for a safer, more understandable vision of God. Despite this, the Trinity seems so unrecognisable in our world that we find it hard to equate it with a God who desires to reveal himself to mankind.

Why? Why would God choose to hide himself in this manner?

Perhaps though he has not. Perhaps, beyond the theological reasoning and philosophical arguments, all necessary all vital, there is another underlying problem that underpins our bafflement. We do not understand the Trinity because we do not understand love.

Love is to will the Good of another (CCC 1766) but behind this simple sentence is perhaps the greatest complexity of human existence. How much of our so-called love is caught up in our own needs and wants? How many of our relationships are merely subterfuges for acceptance and affirmation? How many of our acts of charity are really calculated attempts to extract praise and adulation with a veneer of altruism? How much of our love for God is actually a desire to manipulate him into doing our will? Is this the reason we cannot pray? Not because of time or commitments but because our love for God is so dependent on what he can give to us. If we do not feel good in prayer then we do not feel obligated to pray and the superficial nature of our love for him is revealed.

Love, the self-gift of one for another most perfectly expressed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is so far from us that we cannot fathom it. Jesus emptied himself in order to show us the depths of the Father’s love for us in order that we might imitate him.  Despite this example we blunder though life looking to take, looking to conquer, looking in short, for ourselves. Our love can be so tainted with our pride that it becomes unrecognisable. Is this the real reason that the Trinity seems to alien to us? When God is love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (CCC 257)?

The problem is, is that if Love is the only thing that changes us, who then can be saved (Luke 18:26)?

Only the Triune God can. For God, all things are possible. Then with his power and his Grace, kissing the beggar with sores becomes not an act of ascetic willpower but an act of effortless compassion. Then a drive across West London on a damp morning in November becomes a thing of beauty rather than drudgery that surfs across a wave of egotism.

Our love for God can be measured by the time we wish to spend with him, in rain or shine, in good times and bad. Let us begin then to pray with seriousness, to begin the prosaic duty of setting aside time to enter into the mystery of the Trinity with resolve, faithfulness and determination that we may be changed and ultimately, saved.

Andrea Pirlo

Those you have even a passing interest in football may be familiar with name Andrea Pirlo

He was a one of kind footballer in the best sense. He exuded an effortless cool in way that only Italians can do. He retired this month and the Guardian had an article on him highlighting his career.

I was struck by two comments in the article, one was by Gattuso who played with him at national and club level,

“When I watch Pirlo play, and see him with the ball at his feet, I ask myself if I could even truly be considered a footballer at all.”

The other was Buffon considered at one time as the best goalkeeper in the world

“When I saw him playing,” said Buffon. “I thought to myself, ‘God exists’.”

It is the reaction to beauty between these two men, both professional footballers, both players who had achieved significant accolade in their professional careers that made me think. For one seeing Pirlo, one of the finest exponents of his trade in all his glory, only served to highlight his own inadequacy. For the other however, there was a different reaction. For Buffon, this experience of beauty liberated him. It pulled him out from the confines of himself and he was able to perceive the divine in the other.

Someone told me recently that I miss all the good because I am so focused on the negative. I miss the beauty of life because I get trapped in my own little ego-centric drama. I miss out on love because I want love expressed in a way that I makes sense to me.

Jesus came to us in order to show us the heart of the Father. The Father willed us into existence so that we could spend eternity with him. Yet how much of our life is spent in a mindless obsession with the things of this world, careers, relationships, money, power, sex. Jesus’s call is to something bigger, something beyond the confines of this illusory world but are we willing to listen to his call?

Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? (Mark 8: 18 NIV)