Not quite there yet, but on the Way. Hopefully.

A student of mine who read Moo Point #2 asked me the other day, “So yeah, what’s with your iPod? Do you just get to suspend your vow of poverty or something?”  Non-Christians say the darnest things.

That’s question is what I call “a spiritual pothole”. My response is always to close my eyes, drive as fast as I can, and hope I don’t pop a hubcap loose.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately what it means, first of all, to live as a Christian who is on pilgrimage in this world even as he stands in the light of the dawning Age to Come which he professes day after day. My conclusion is that, for a sojourner, I own way too much real estate, and something needs to be done about that.  But all this got me thinking about a guy named Bonaventure.

In their quest to live the way of discipleship shown them by their founder, the early Franciscans of the 13th century found themselves repeatedly falling short of the radical lifestyle that St. Francis had lived.  As the Order grew and spread, for example, there were more and more friaries that needed to be maintained and older brothers who needed to be cared for since they were no longer able to go about begging for their own food as Francis had done. More and more, they found it difficult to live the Gospel ideals of austere simplicity and poverty which had constituted the core of Francis’ total devotion to Christ.  The realities of everyday life pressed on the communities, and it appeared that Franciscanism was on its inevitable way to being watered down.

Into this scene appeared St. Bonaventure, who rescued the future of the Order with his sober and modest interpretation of the Franciscan ideal.  In a sense, he saw Francis as an eschatological figure—a man who manifested in his life all that the Church could and would be when Christ is all in all.  However, he also saw the Order as being only the seed of the tree that Francis had been.  For him, the Franciscans could only be a shadow of their Founder in history, but accepting this fact was not so much a concession of loss as it was a way of negotiating the tension between Francis’ poverty and the utterly real demands of the world in which the sons of Francis lived—demands which imposed inevitable constrictions on the radicality Francis embodied.  Of this negotiation Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure:

Without feeling any infidelity towards the holy Founder, Bonaventure could and had to create institutional structures for his Order, all the while realizing that Francis had not wanted them. It is a too facile and, in the final analysis, an unlikely method to see this as a falsification of true Franciscanism.  In reality, it was precisely the historical accomplishment that…he submitted himself in humble recognition of the limits demanded by reality. Bonaventure recognized that Francis’ own eschatological form of life could not exist as an institution in this world; it could be realized as a break-through of grace in the individual until such time as the God-given hour would arrive at which the world would be transformed into its final form of existence. Everything else is naively visionary. Bonaventure was able to give the Order a form that could be realized in this world because he recognized this fact and had the courage to accept it. His first concern in doing this was to preserve whatever could be preserved of that radically eschatological character. (50-51)

Thus, Bonaventure, in accepting the limits imposed by the practical realities of life, actually made it possible for the Franciscan ideal to survive in the heart of the Order without compromise.  The task of Francis’ spiritual sons and daughters was live that ideal to the fullest extent possible in this world, knowing that its complete realization would only be possible in the Age to Come.

The gap between the ideal and the real has always been a difficult one for me to accept.  In the first days of consecrated life, I found myself agonizing again and again over the precise meaning of “poverty”.  Should I own a car? Should I accept gifts? Ought I to have a retirement fund? Own a house instead of pay rent? When I brought these questions to my spiritual director at that time, she calmly smiled and said words to this effect: “What you’re looking for is a one-size-fits-all rule.  There is no such rule, because each one’s poverty is different. There is only the vow, and there is love, which is the aim of that vow and all your vows.  It would be better for you ask Christ how He wants you to love Him every time you open your wallet to buy something.  Asking that question will keep you young at heart and your vows fresh.  For sure, you will make your mistakes—I have, we all do—but even in making them you will grow in love.  Apart from love, the vows mean nothing. Consecrated life means nothing.”

I’ve lost count of all the mistakes I’ve made—many consciously—these past 6 years. One of them might be this tiny blue iPod, a gift which I accepted without vehement resistance.  And I don’t feel too bad for having accepted it, in fact.  I guess I’ll just have to trust that if it’s not something Christ wants me to have, He’ll find me someone to give it to. And so with everything else.  This is also how I deal with the ache that I sometimes—and only sometimes—feel from owning a car, a small CD collection, a Dell notebook, and a comfortable bed.

My thoughts turned toward Bonaventure these past few days because I admire his ability to navigate between the ideal and the real, hold on to both, and not wreck the Franciscan ship while doing so. I consider myself a son of Francis, but I also have to accept the fact that I cannot become exactly like him.  He is the eschatological Church embodied, and I am the sojourner with one tent too many, leaving behind a trail of possessions as I slouch toward the Kingdom.  Not quite there yet, but on the Way.  Hopefully.

Moo Point #2 (being an anthology of lesser moo points)

Observations and questions while driving home from work today:

• My Christianity is really, really bourgeois.
• Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests. I have a comfortable bed in a house with hot water and an air-conditioner in just about every room.
• I didn’t sell all my possessions and give the money to the poor, but today I gave ten bucks to someone collecting donations for a charity or some sort.
• I have a vow of poverty, an iPod Nano, a Fossil watch and a pair of Doc Martens.
• What is the difference between celibacy and bachelorhood?
• Not sure if my Christianity is something more than a matter of where I spend my Sunday mornings. If so, how much more?
• I’ve never known real hunger.
• I’m not friends with any homeless people or prostitutes. Or terrorists.

Shame on those Christians

[The Christians'] injunctions are like this. ‘Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone who is a child, let him come boldly.’ By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their God, they show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonourable and stupid, and only slaves, women and children.

Celsus, as quoted in Origen, Against Celsus, III.44

We used to be such losers, but I’m glad we’ve gotten over that.  We’re like, sophisticated, middle-class and stuff.

Scripture and the Magisterium, Part II

In a previous post, I considered Per Erik Persson’s evaluation of the Roman model of the Magisterium. His analysis of the Roman doctrine is as follows:

The church through its teaching ministry has to preserve, defend and further expound that which once for all has been given. It is significant that this revelation, which has been lodged in Scripture and tradition, is regarded as something handed over to the church, a depositum, which the church administers. This depositum is in itself without power and efficacy, a point of view that appears especially in statements about Holy Scripture. Scripture is in itself dead and powerless, and comes alive only as it is expounded by the teaching ministry of the church.

For Persson, once the Magisterium is presented as the definitive interpreter of Scripture and Tradition, Catholics render Scripture and Tradition “without power and efficacy” in themselves, since the faithful can no longer hear these voice apart from the voice of the teaching office. He goes on to say that, for the Roman Catholic,

[l]ife comes from the ministry of the church and from its word, not from the word of Scripture. The words of the Bible as written are dead and powerless, and they become alive only as they are used and activated in the living tradition of the church…Apart from the teaching ministry of the church the Bible is a dead letter and a sealed book.

Does Persson overstate his case? I think so, although his observations are incisive and his argument complex. I can’t say I have a full response to his book, but my ruminations follow.

Il Poverello and Fasting: Two Stories

Well, we’re almost two weeks into the Nativity Fast, and apart from a tasty accident while I was at McDonald’s for breakfast one morning (hey, I was traveling) and a brief suspension of self-restraint at Thanksgiving Dinner, I’m practically a stylite.

For your edification and encouragement during this Fast, I present two stories about a hero of mine, St. Francis of Assisi.

Brother Sylvester, the first priest in his Order, having fallen into an illness of languor brought on by excess in his mortifications, had a wish to eat some grapes. Francis, having been informed of it, hastened to procure him this relief. He took him, as well as he could, into the vineyard of one of his friends which was near the convent, and, having made him sit down near a plant of vine, he blessed it, and ordered him to eat the grapes, and ate some with him. As soon as the sick man had eaten of them, he found himself perfectly cured, and he frequently afterwards related the circumstance to his brethren with tears in his eyes as a proof of the love the holy father bore to his children….

One night, this prudent and charitable Father came to know that one of his children who had fasted too rigidly could not sleep on account of the hunger which oppressed him. Not to leave him in so deplorable a state, he sent for him, offered him some bread, and pressed him to eat of it, eating some himself first to give him confidence. The friar got over the shyness he at first felt, and took the nourishment he so greatly required, being well pleased to have been relieved from the peril his life was in, by the prudence and kindness of the Saint, and to see so edifying an example.

Fr. Candide Chalippe, The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi