Death
Third in a seven-part series
(Previous posts in this series: Part I, Part II)

Now we turn to the topic which modern man tries so hard to turn from: death. In previous generations, death was an omnipresent reality, as people typically died much younger than they do today and they died more horrifically: from war, from the plague, from common diseases, from childbirth. In our times, we like to think that we have conquered death because many of the ways we used to die are no longer common.

But even today every single human person must face the specter of his own death eventually, yet most of us spend very little time contemplating that event. Even though down deep we know that we will one day pass from this earth, we do everything we can to avoid the subject. Why is this? Because man is afraid of nothing as much as death. Death represents The End: the end of our lives, the end of the relationships we have built over a lifetime, the end of all we have worked and striven for on this earth: all gone in an instant. We are afraid that every single thing we have ever done vanishes into meaningless nothingness.

Yet in the face of this nothingness we hold out hope: hope that perhaps there is something beyond this world. Perhaps all we have done in this life will still have meaning after that life ends. Although every animal on earth dies, only man recognizes that there may be something beyond death. We reach into the great beyond and hope that after this life there is another life, one in which justice and peace reign and death is no more.

But why is there death in the first place? Why does life on this earth have to come to an end? Christianity gives a simple answer: sin. Without sin, there would be no death. St. Paul says, “Therefore, just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Because of our sins death reigns in this world; if there were no sin, there would be no death. Thus, we were not originally created to die – we were created to live eternally; we understand instinctively that death is not part of our nature and we rebel against it.

But as much as we would like to avoid the subject of death and as much as we rebel against it, we must always keep in mind that all of us will one day die. St. Jerome would keep a skull on his work desk to remind him of this grim reality. We too must always be mindful that one day our moment will come and we must ask ourselves: are we ready to face death? Life here on earth is, in many ways, a preparation for death.

In the next post of this series we will take a look at what comes immediately after death: judgement.

Eternity
Second in a seven-part series
(Previous posts in this series: Part I)

The defining characteristic of our life after death is that it is wholly unlike our life before death. On earth we are always and constantly bound by time; after death we are no longer under this constraint and instead we are swimming in eternity. But what is eternity? What exactly does that mean?

One thing eternity is not is a “long time”. Eternity is nothing like a million years or a billion years or any other length of time. In fact, the last thing to compare eternity with is a lengthy duration of time, as it is more like an ongoing “now”. This is something impossible to grasp fully by those of us who are living in time, but we can try to understand it somewhat by analogy.

Think about two different types of hours spent: the first at an extremely boring lecture of no interest to you, and another in the company of a lover discussing your hopes and dreams about life. During these hours, we perceive the first event as never-ending; the seconds seem to pause and the hour feels like a lifetime. But during the hour spent with the lover, the time flies by and the hour passes without notice. It is a sixty-minute “now”.

But now think about your perception of these two hours a year in the future. For the first hour, nothing can be remembered and the hour has compressed into nothingness. The second hour, on the other hand, has expanded in your mind and every detail can be recalled without hesitation. In hindsight, the first is merely a blimp on your radar while the second fills the memory.

Eternity can be seen as the second hour experienced as the first hour was originally experienced: an memory-filling “now” which never ends.

Sheldon Vanauken in A Severe Mercy had a reflection on what eternity would be like. In it, he italicized all the words which suggest time to show how inadequate our language is to express this great mystery. He wrote,

It is a heavenly afternoon. Davy [his wife who had recently passed away] and I have just had a timeless luncheon (I am assuming that God will not waste so joyous an invention as taste). I then say to her that I shall wander down to sit beneath the beech tree and contemplate the valley for awhile, but I shall be back soon. I do so. I contemplate the valley for some hours or some years – the words are meaningless here where foreverness is in the air. At all events, I contemplate it just as long as I feel like doing. Then I get up and start back, but I meet someone, C.S. Lewis, perhaps, and we sit on a bench and maybe have a pint of bitter and talk for an hour or several hours – until we have said all we have to say for now. And then I go gladly back to Davy. She, meanwhile, has played the celestial organ, an organ on which perhaps every note of a song can be heard at the same time: that is, the song not played in time with half of it gone and half yet to be heard. She has played the organ for a few minutes and is just turning to greet me when I come in. Whether I was away for an hour or  a hundred years, whether she has played for ten minutes or thirty, neither of us has waited or could wait for the other. For there simply is no time, no hours, no minutes, no sense of time passing. The ticking has stopped. It is eternity.

Vanauken himself admits that eternity will not be like that, but it is a valiant attempt to put in temporal language the things of an atemporal world.

Although we were created in time, we were created for eternity. All of us have a sense of the “injustice” of time: we feel as if we do not have enough of it, that it passes too quickly (or too slowly), and that it is a burden that always is present to us. After we die, this burden will cease and we will live where there is no constraint of time and every moment will be an eternal “now” which never ends.

In my next post in this series, I will reflect on the bridge that leads one from time to eternity: death.

The Virtue of Hope
First in a seven-part series

Today is the first day of November, which means today is All Saints Day, tomorrow is All Souls Day, and this month we are called upon by the Church to reflect on the “Last Things”, i.e. those things surrounding our death and what will happen to us after that momentous event. In this series I’d like to reflect on these topics with the purpose of helping all of us in some small way to prepare for the day when we face our Lord and have to face an accounting of our life. The topics I will address will include the traditional “Four Last Things” – death, judgement, hell and heaven, along with eternity and purgatory.*

Before diving directly into topics such as eternity, death and judgement, I’d like to take a moment to turn our attention to the virtue of hope. Unfortunately, hope is often the “forgotten” theological virtue, as charity is the greatest of the three and faith is the entrance into the Christian life. But hope is vitally important, and it is the virtue which must undergird all our thoughts about the afterlife.

Hope is the virtue which points us toward the future and our final end. It is that virtue in which we steadfastly turn toward man’s true fulfillment, which is God. This pointing ourselves toward our ultimate end, God, is what makes hope a theological virtue. It is not merely a human virtue and in fact, if it were merely human in nature, it would be no virtue at all. If we only hoped for created goods, this would be no more than optimism and perhaps even greed. But true hope desires the true fulfillment of every man: God.

The irony of the human condition is that we hope for what we have no power to attain. We were made for God yet we have no ability to reach Him under our own power. As St. Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee” – yet how do we rest in God? It is only by the grace of God that this is possible; no amount of human striving will ever achieve this goal and no amount of effort will win it. What we most hope for is a gift which is completely undeserved on our part. Yet we can hope with complete confidence that God will give us this gift, as His love and mercy know no bounds. Our hope is not baseless optimism, but solid realism, for we know that God wants our salvation even more than we do.

As we turn our thoughts towards the end of our earthly lives, let us always pray for the increase of the virtue of hope so that we can look upon our own deaths as something we can look forward to, not something to dread.

In the next post of this series, I will look at that most mysterious subject of eternity.

* I am very dependent on the reflections of Dr. Regis Martin of the Franciscan University of Steubenville for this series. I highly recommend his book on this subject, The Last Things (Ignatius Press).

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a die-hard baseball fan. This year was very exciting for me, as my beloved Cincinnati Reds made it to the playoffs after 15 years of languishing in obscurity. Unfortunately, their stay in the playoffs was so brief that you missed it if you blinked. But my favorite American League team this year has been the Texas Rangers, who made it to the World Series for the first time in their 60-year history. So I still have a team to root for, albeit not as enthusiastically as I would if the Reds made it.

I did not follow the Rangers because they formally resided in the Washington, D.C., but because of their star player, Josh Hamilton. For those of you unfamiliar with the story of Hamilton (and are still interested enough to be reading this far into the post), he was the “Number 1 Number 1″ draft pick in 1999 (which means he was the first player picked in the first round of the draft) by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He was a prodigious talent and everyone pegged him as “can’t miss.” What got most baseball executives salivating over him was that his incredible talent was matched by an equally strong character. No one had to worry about him hanging out with the wrong crowd or getting involved with drugs or alcohol.

Until he did. A year or so into his career, Hamilton was rehabbing from an injury, had too much down-time on his hands and ended up spiraling downward in dramatic fashion; he started by getting some tattoos and ended by being passed out in a crack house a few months later. His descent was dramatic and almost unbelievable: here was the “good kid” and he was now a crack addict who would most likely be dead before he was thirty.

But God intervened in his life and saved Hamilton from himself. Through the efforts of his father-in-law (a former addict himself) and especially his grandmother, Hamilton was able to quit his habits and gave his life to Christ. He returned to baseball and is now one of the best players in the game.

What I like most about Hamilton is the fact that he is so obviously flawed and weak. After the Rangers won their division, the team engaged in the traditional “champagne shower”. But Hamilton didn’t join the fun, because he knew that he couldn’t have alcohol being poured over him without it leading him to a relapse (after the Rangers won their playoff series, they decided to replace the champagne with Ginger Ale out of respect for Hamilton’s addictions). Here is one of the best players in professional baseball – a man who can hit a baseball a country mile and adored by millions – yet he is so weak that he can’t even be in the presence of alcohol. With Hamilton, you always know that he is just one mistake from a terrible relapse; he must depend on the power of God at every single moment in order just to make it through the day.

This reminds me of St. Paul’s statement, “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). We all are weak and flawed individuals, and we all must depend on the power of God every single moment of the day – we just don’t usually realize it as clearly as Hamilton probably does. Hamilton, due to his dramatic descent into darkness, knows how close he is to the edge and therefore must turn to the Lord for the strength to carry on. We too need to recognize our own weakness and our dependence on God, and in doing so, we too will be strong – in the Lord.

Go Rangers!

This is a cause I am praying for:

Father Ciszek’s cause is moving forward in Rome

SHENANDOAH – It may seem that the cause for canonization of Shenandoah native Father Walter J. Ciszek is at a standstill, but according to a co-postulator of the effort, the investigation is continuing at the Vatican.

Monsignor Anthony D. Muntone, a Shenandoah native and priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown, provided the news Sunday during the 26th annual Father Walter Ciszek Day Mass in St. Casimir Roman Catholic Church, 229 N. Jardin St., Ciszek’s native parish.

Muntone and the Rev. Thomas F. Sable are co-postulators of the cause. Postulators work with the sponsoring diocese to collect the materials necessary and take the case to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

“I know that many, many of you wonder how far is the cause and can we hope that maybe next week or next month to learn that Father Walter has been declared a saint,” Muntone said from the pulpit at the conclusion of Mass. “I wish that I could say ‘Yes’ to those questions, but I can say this afternoon that the cause is moving along, and it’s moving along very nicely, and it’s very encouraging. There are a lot of things working behind the scenes that’s not very visible, and because it’s not visible, we get the impression that nothing is happening, but a whole lot is happening.”

Continue reading…

If you have never read Fr. Ciszek’s He Leadeth Me, I highly recommend buying a copy and getting started ASAP.

Today is the feast of St. Theresa of Avila, the great doctor of prayer. If you are serious about prayer – and you can’t be a Christian without being serious about prayer – and you don’t know where to start, then I recommend to you her classic work The Way of Perfection. This simple book emphasizes the importance of prayer and that perseverance is the most important virtue when it comes to prayer. She writes,

Those who want to journey on this road and continue until they reach the end, which is to drink from this water of life…they must have a great and very resolute determination to persevere until reaching the end, come what may, happen what may, whatever work is involved, whatever criticism arises, whether they arrive or whether they die on the road, or even if they don’t have courage for the trials that are met, or if the whole world collapses. (The Way of Perfection 21.2)

Commenting on this passage in my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew, I wrote,

Perseverance is a prerequisite for being a Christian; without it, we become like the seed that cannot take root in the soil (cf. Mt 13:1-8). Instead, we must strive to plant ourselves deep in the soil of the Word of God, gaining strength to withstand temptation, persecution, and tribulation; and not only to withstand them, but to grow a “hundredfold” in the faith.

The model of perseverance is Jesus, who from the beginning knew the mission of his Father and would not be deterred from it: neither the flattery of the crowds, nor the pressure from his own disciples, nor the threats from the religious and political leaders could change his course. He persevered through every hardship and temptation. It’s a mistake, however, to believe that following the Father was easy for Christ because he was the divine Son of God. The agony Jesus experienced in Gethsemane (cf. Mt 26:36-46) puts to rest any thought that accomplishing the Father’s will was not a struggle for him; it is no less a struggle for each Christian to fulfill the Father’s will for their lives.

The perseverance needed during great trials is born of forbearance in everyday hardships. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23 emphasis added). Every day, we can experience martyrdom through all the slight instances of suffering each day brings: enduring the small offenses of others, denying our personal desires for the sake of the good of family or friends, and serving others in small daily, perhaps unseen, tasks. These actions, the fruit of a persistent life of prayer and devotion, are what make possible the ability to stand strong in the face of overwhelming opposition.

“You have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much” (Mt 25:21), Christ said to the man with five talents. By dying to self in small, everyday affairs, we gain strength to die to self in times of great persecution and strife. When everyone else preaches conformity to the world and its passions, the Christian continues to be founded on the Word of God, Jesus Christ. When worn down by the temptations of this world, we who desire to be saints must turn to Christ and ask for a share in the perseverance the Lord had in following the Father’s will.

If you don’t pray regularly, start today! And persevere!

Today is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the greatest men who ever lived and my all-time favorite saint. My family has a deep devotion to St. Francis and many years ago my wife and I decided to make him the patron of our family. We composed a prayer for this consecration and I thought I would share it today:

Jesus, our Savior, under the patronage of St. Francis of Assisi, we desire to consecrate our family to you. We pray that you will grant us the grace to live lives imbued with the charisms of poverty, humility, and charity so powerfully exemplified by your servant Francis.

Through the intercession of St. Francis, we seek the grace of detachment from material things, and gratitude for the riches of the Father’s blessings. Through the intercession of St. Francis, we seek the grace to love and serve the poor and the suffering. Through the intercession of St. Francis, we seek the grace to live out single-minded, consuming devotion to Christ, bringing the Gospel to the world in our words and actions.

Lord, unite our family in zeal for your kingdom, and bring us all to everlasting happiness with you.

St. Francis, pray for us.

Most informed Catholics are by now quite familiar with Vatican II’s insistence on a “universal call to holiness” (Lumen Gentium Chapter 5). By this, the Council Fathers reminded Catholics that each one of us, no matter our vocation, is called to be holy. After all, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, in which he said that we must “be perfect” and that his followers were to be salt and light in this world (Matthew 5), was directed to all the crowds, not just the apostles. This has always been the teaching of the Church, but it had admittedly been forgotten in many parts of the Church in the years before Vatican II.

However, since Vatican II in some quarters of the Church this universal call to holiness has been tinged with a certain clericalism, which believes that the only way to be holy is to do the tasks that clerics traditionally have done or to work directly for the Church. In other words, the path to holiness for the laity is through ecclesial ministry (One bishop even wrote a book about this!). Obviously there is a need for the laity to perform certain tasks for the Church, and our priest shortage has made this even more true in recent years (I am the head of Evangelization at my parish, so I’m clearly not against the entire concept of lay ecclesial ministry).

But a problem arises when parishes push “involvement” as the most important component of a “vibrant” parish and a holy life. In my mind, a “vibrant” parish is one where the lines for Confession are long, the adoration chapel is packed and parishioners are sharing their faith in their everyday lives. None of these activities, you will note, involves lay ecclesial ministry. The fact remains that God does not call most lay people to volunteer for a parish, but He does call every single person to be holy.

What we have forgotten is the second component of the “universal call to holiness”. Not only does “universal” mean all people are called to be holy, but it also means that all honorable walks of life are means of growing in holiness. In other words, no matter what you “do” for a living – be it as a housewife, a garbage collector or the CEO of a large corporation – your work can be used to sanctify your life. One does not need to be a Eucharistic minister or a lector or a parish music minister to be doing “Christian” activities. Every activity – as long as it is moral – can be a means to grow in holiness if it is offered up to God for His glory.

St. Josemaría Escrivá, that great saint of “ordinary” life, like to say that each person has an altar on which they offer sacrifice to the Lord. For the priest, it is the Eucharistic altar. For the lay person, however, it is the work desk, the kitchen counter-top or the workbench: wherever we do our work we offer our “first fruits” to the Lord.

Let us today, and everyday, offer our ordinary tasks and work to the Lord and know that they are the means which God has given us to grow in holiness.

Fr. Thomas Dubay, SM has passed on to his reward.

Fr. Dubay is most known for his work Fire Within, which is a classic of spirituality and which I would recommend to anyone who is serious about deepening their life of prayer. However, it is not even my favorite Dubay book. That would be Happy Are You Poor, in which Fr. Dubay argues (persuasively, in my mind) that every Christian should live a life of poverty. And if you think you know what he means by that, I challenge you to read the book to actually find out.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

When reading the lives of saints, perhaps nothing is so startling to the modern reader than the practices of corporal mortification that these holy men and women engaged in. In our pleasure-driven world, the idea that someone would willingly choose to inflict pain on themselves is incomprehensible.  And the practice of mortification is universal among the saints – even John Henry Cardinal Newman, who is known as an intellectual, used the discipline on a regular basis.

Based on this reality, those of us who desire to become saints today might wonder where does mortification fit into our lives? Are we to engage in some of these seemingly extreme measures? Catholic tradition has always recommended the advice (and approval) from a spiritual director before engaging in corporal mortification, and most people today don’t have spiritual directors. So what can we do? Fortunately, there are plenty of mortifications that we Catholics can practice that are true mortifications and can be done by anyone without a spiritual director. Catholic Phoenix gives us five great examples:

Wake like a hero. Get up the first time the alarm goes off. Don’t hit the snooze button, instead practice what members of Opus Dei call “the heroic moment.” Roll out of bed, kiss the floor, and say one word: serviam. That’s Latin for “I will serve.” It’s exactly the opposite of what Lucifer said before being cast into hell.

Be on time. To everything. Here I open myself up to “tu quoque”s galore, but it is still good advice. Punctuality shows respect for others and yourself. It’s a perfect mortamin because it’s a small thing, but hard to do.

Be cheerful even when you don’t feel like it. Every one you meet is engaged in a great struggle, not just you. Suck it up and be friendly. You might feel like an old shoe, but your attitude doesn’t need to smell like one. Smiles are free, they’re easy, and they go a long way towards boosting morale—maybe even your own.

Order a smaller size drink. This is a ridiculously simple mortification, but a surprisingly hard one to do. For whatever reason, Americans feel entitled to jumbo-sized beverages—they don’t even have small drinks at McDonald’s anymore—but this is the perfect covert act of self-denial. If anyone notices, they’ll probably chalk it up to the economy.

Eat fish on Friday. Admit it: you want to be a Catholic who eats fish on Friday—it’s so not cool, that it is cool. Besides, nobody will notice, I promise—there are too many trendy diets for people to keep track of. Call it the “purposefully alternating proteins and legumes” diet (the p.a.p.a.l. diet, wink, wink) and your co-workers will beg you for the details. Also, contrary to popular belief, Catholics have not been excused from the requirement to abstain from meat on Fridays—it’s just that now one is allowed to substitute another suitable act of mortification.

And if anyone feels that these mortifications are not serious enough, I challenge you to actually try them on a consistent basis for at least a month or two. You will find they are not as easy as they appear – and that they do involve dying to self, which is what mortification is for.

Finally, when doing any type of mortification, follow the advice of St. Josemaría Escrivá: “Choose mortifications that don’t mortify others” (The Way 179). If your mortifications cause you to be grumpy and uncharitable to others, then they are not means to salvation for you or for others.

We all know that modern life can be antithetical to a deep spiritual life. We are distracted in a million and one ways, our culture despises and fights against true spirituality, and the daily demands of modern living can crush our efforts to grow in holiness. What do the saints and spiritual masters recommend as the response to such difficulties?

Retreat!

A spiritual retreat, that is. One of the bedrocks of a true Catholic spirituality – whether Franciscan, Ignatian, Carmelite or anything in-between – is that every person needs to take a spiritual retreat on a regular basis in order to recharge their spiritual batteries. The format of the retreat varies – it can be self-directed or directed by a priest, one weekend or a whole week or month, made with others or in solitude. In all cases though, the length usually needs to be at least a weekend to be fruitful. A retreat is a time in which we can look at the “big picture”: How are we progressing in the spiritual life? Are we sticking to our promises in prayer and works of charity? Are we putting Christ first in our lives every day? Such questions are very difficult to access objectively and seriously in just a few minutes and between emails. They are questions we need to spend time and deep prayer in answering.

I can attest to the value of such a retreat. For the past eight years, I have made sure to take a weekend retreat (usually at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, VA) in order to get away from the routine and draw closer to the Lord. These times of intense prayer and meditation have always been fruitful, and have often been the source of insights that would not have been possible without escaping from the daily grind. Our minds need time in order to refocus; I know that the one commonality of all my retreats is that I need Friday evening to simply “detox.” My mind is racing in a million and one directions and I cannot relax. But by the next morning I find that my daily worries subside and I am able to focus on the “one thing necessary.”

Almost anyone can make a retreat – nursing mothers are a noteworthy exception – and everyone should make one on a regular basis (most spiritual directors recommend annual retreats). We need to be trained to fight the spiritual battle we are called to fight, and retreats are a great way to receive that training. One of the best strategies for winning the war in the spiritual life, therefore, is to retreat!

“Mysticism” is one of those words that immediately brings to mind otherworldly images as well as otherworldly people: St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, for example. These mystics seem to live outside the “real” world and deal in realities far beyond us mortal men. But the fact is that every person is called to mysticism and mysticism is an embracing of the true “real” world: the world of God.

Father Luigi Borriello, a Carmelite priest, breaks down mysticism in a recent interview with Zenit (with my emphasis added):

ZENIT: Mystics are famous for being from another world, but you say this is not so.

Father Borriello: Mystics are men and women of this world.

Today there is a tendency to trivialize mysticism, as if it were something of another world, and that it has nothing to do with us. But it isn’t so. Moreover, the mystics’ experience fits in the Church and is related to faith, not foreign to it.

Mystical experience cannot be separated from faith; it can only take place in it. Mystical experience calls for a mystical theology, a reflection whose basis is mysticism itself.

Today there is a persistence of the mystical event. It is part of the post-modern society. This universal mystical richness is rediscovered in Western and Eastern religiosity. And Eastern mysticism has exercised great fascination in the West.

Also in the present climate of crisis, of confusion and syncretism, there is a temptation to confuse the authentic nature of mysticism with New Age or Next Age realities.

Religion and mysticism are different realities, and it is necessary to make distinctions.

ZENIT: In fact, many seek in the East what Christian mysticism already contains.

Father Borriello: Indeed. It’s a paradox.

Many Christians don’t know the wealth of their own mystical tradition and they turn to the East, seeking what is in the interior of that tradition.

Moreover, it is important to recall that there is a mystagogy in all mystical experience: You can also experience this as the other does.

Although the mystic is reserved, what he says is for others.

In this sense we must say to ourselves that we are all called to sanctity and to mysticism. And the mystical experience is a call to witness.

ZENIT: Christian mysticism always recognizes the “You” of God.

Father Borriello: Yes, it isn’t dissolution; it is encounter.

Christian mysticism is characterized by the Incarnation, which is always a gift; it isn’t something that the human being gains.

In it, the “You,” the duality of a God who gives himself and the man who receives, though there is fusion, always recognizes the other.

We are speaking of duality in unity, as a spiritual marriage. The two always recognize one another; they are not confused; they keep their own identity.

ZENIT: Would it be appropriate to desire a mystical experience?

Father Borriello: It is not a question of asking for it but of receiving it when it comes, if it comes.

Experience is a category that is used in all the disciplines. I prefer to speak of mystical experience; it is something that God gives to man who receives it passively, and, in fact, makes an effort on receiving it.

It is what John of the Cross calls “the night.”There is a collaboration in the acceptance, but the initiative is always God’s, who makes himself known. And the greatest revelation takes place in Jesus Christ.

Hence, mystical experience is always Christ-centered and Trinitarian. And it is revealed only gratuitously, without our merits.

Every follower of Christ wants to draw closer to their Lord throughout their lifetime. And our Lord in his great mercy has given us many means to do so: the sacraments, prayer, works of service, etc. These all help us to become more like Christ and thus draw closer to him. But I would argue that there is another aspect of growth in the spiritual life that is just as important, and it all revolves around one word.

That word is “no”.

Christ told his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24, emphasis added). If you wish to come after Christ, then you must deny yourself – you must say “no” to your passions and your own desires and instead follow the path that Christ lays out before you. At baptism we are cleansed of the stain of original sin, but the effects of original sin still remain in us. We are a fallen race and that means we are a selfish race. Our desires are disordered and are not in conformity with God’s desires. Thus, we must say “no” to our own desires throughout our lives. These “no’s” can be to major sins:

• “No” to murder
• “No” to adultery
• “No” to stealing
• “No” to pornography

But we also must get in the habit of saying “no” to our little desires as well:

• “No” to the extra helping at dinner
• “No” to taking the most comfortable seat in the room
• “No” to giving our own opinion in every conversation
• “No” to watching TV every night
• “No” to wasting time on the Internet
• “No” to sleeping in

For most of us, it is the little “no’s” that are most important, as we are not directly tempted to the major sins. But giving in to the little “no’s” can lead to a selfish lifestyle, which is contrary to the Gospel (and can weaken our resolve against the major sins). Refusing to say no to our little desires on a regular basis leads to greater attachment to the things of this world, which weakens our attachment to our Lord.

In the spiritual classic “The Way”, St. Josemaría Escrivá writes simply, “Get used to saying No” (Point 5). This is advice we all should follow if we wish to grow in the spiritual life.

The central command of the Christian Faith, from which all else revolves, is to love. In fact, Christianity makes the bold statement that “God is Love” (1 John 4:16). If we want to be like God, we must love. Yet, what does it mean to love another person?

A critical aspect of love is how we view our beloved, such as a spouse, our children, or our close friends. Dietrich von Hildebrand said that when we truly love someone, we give them three “credits:”

Faith
When we love someone, we firmly believe in the beauty of that person, even in areas we have not yet discovered. We do not take a critical point of view towards the beloved, but instead believe that they are beautiful in many and various ways. We are convinced that the more we know about the person, the more we will love them.

Hope
Whenever one deals with another person, there are events and actions that are open to interpretation. When we love someone, we always assume the highest interpretation, assuming the best, until we have definitive proof that our interpretation is false. We never assume the worst about those we love.

Solidarity
Of course, every person has faults, including those we love. When we discover these faults in a beloved, we mourn and grieve over them, because we feel that they betray the true beauty of that person. We continue to affirm that it is good that our beloved exists, and we desire nothing more than that they overcome their faults.

Anyone who has loved another person can easily see how they have applied these three credits to their beloved. Who assumes the worst about their spouse, or believes that their child is not beautiful, or doesn’t grieve over a close friend’s faults?

But Christ does not just ask us to love our beloved, he commands that we “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44). In other words, we must apply those three “credits” to our enemies. We must believe in the intrinsic beauty of our enemies, assume the highest interpretations of their actions, and grieve over any faults they may have. We do this for our spouses, our children, and our friends. Do we do it for our enemies?

One of the fundamental doctrines of the Enlightenment is that mankind is improving through time. As the centuries progress, man also progresses – intellectually, morally and even biologically. We are on our way to becoming a race of “super-men” who will dwarf previous generations in every way. Even though this belief cooled somewhat in the wake of the horrific 20th century, it is still an underlying presupposition of the Western world. Yet Scripture and Tradition tell us that before the End of Time and the Second Coming of Christ, great evils will occur, the world will face terrible cataclysms and the Church will be mercilessly persecuted.

So which is it? Is mankind getting better or worse over time? I think we need to break down our analysis into three separate categories: technological, theological and moral.

Technological
I think there is no question that technology has advanced incredibly over the years. Man has learned to manipulate nature in ways unimaginable in previous generations. If a man from the 10th century were to visit modern-day America, he would think we were all magicians with incredible powers (and he might also wonder why we talk into tiny boxes pressed to our ears all day). God gave man a wondrous intellect and he has used that power to achieve some unbelievable things.

Theological
This one is not so clear-cut. As a strong defender of the belief that the Church’s understanding of revelation over time develops, one might assume that I believe that mankind is progressing theologically. And in one sense, I do. Two thousand years after Christ the Church has had the opportunity to reflect on the deposit of faith given to us by our Lord and understand it better. So in that sense we have progressed. But it would be a mistake to think therefore that we 21st century Christians are “better” followers of Christ than those in the 1st or 5th century. The sources of holiness – primarily the sacraments – have not changed over time and they will not change until the End of Time. The graces we can receive through Baptism or the Eucharist are no different from the graces the first Christians received through these mysteries. Whereas the means to holiness for mankind made an infinite leap with the coming of Christ, it has not changed since his Ascension. So in one sense we have progressed theologically, but in another we have not.

Moral
This is the category which I believe we can unequivocally say that mankind has not progressed. The great promise of the Enlightenment was that once people became smarter they would also become good. History has shown this to be an empty promise. The last century mankind completed was the bloodiest of all time, with horrific wars, ethnic holocausts and the slaughter of millions of unborn children. Yes, in many ways society has improved as well; for example, the discrimination against African-Americans here in the United States has lessened dramatically in the past 100 years. But I cannot see how anyone can say that on a whole mankind has morally progressed. What seems to happen is that the victims of our moral failures shift from one group to another over time. But there are always victims of our immorality. This should not surprise us, as the doctrine of Original Sin tells us that all men are born in sin, and as every society consists of sinful men, it too will be sinful.

So, by my count, it appears to be a tie: 1.5 for progressing, and 1.5 against. But let us look more closely at these categories. The fact that we are progressing technologically but not progressing morally is potentially a terrible thing. Is it really progress that we can now obliterate an entire city with one bomb, but at the same time we have not become more moral? One hundred years ago, getting an abortion was a lot of work, now it is practically a trip to the drug store. So it is clear that, unlike Enlightenment thinkers, one should not equate technological and intellectual progress with moral progress. We might be smarter, but that only means that we can be more effective doing evil. It seems like the apocalyptic evils mentioned in Scripture are becoming less and less fantastical.

All of this is not reason for pessimism, however. We do not know the hour of the final days: it may be next week; it may be in 4,000 years. But we do know this: God continues to shower His grace upon us, and we will always be able to grow in holiness and thus personally progress in the spiritual life.