The Freedom of Submission

Kierkegaard says that the most important thing one can do in life is simply to decide.  Yet he also speaks of bearing one's responsibilities and duties in a surrendered way.  This seems a paradox: on the one hand, our great freedom lies in choosing, but on the other, "surrendering to one's duties" sounds a lot like servitude.

But it's not really a paradox.  The great choice of which Kierkegaard speaks is precisely the choice to accept the concrete reality of our situation.  It is the choice to view the reality of our duties and responsibilities as things to which we must adapt ourselves, rather than to try to adapt these realities to conform to our wishes.  If we do not make this choice, and reaffirm it every day, we are destined to live a shallow, empty, meaningless life.

Of course, Western society and twenty-first century technology are built on the premise that we have the right and ought to have the ability to conform reality to our wishes.  To make reality "customizable."  We delude ourselves that this is freedom as we "choose" which aspects of reality to accept and which to reject.  We enshrine "choice" as an end in itself, and in doing so enslave ourselves to the choices that are presented to us - by the government, by the media, by corporations, by technology.

We do this because we are afraid.  We are afraid of duties and responsibilities; we are afraid of limitations; we are afraid of losing our limitless options and closing the door on any opportunities.  The flip side of this fear, this cowardice, is, as Kierkegaard says, pride: we are afraid of the reality in which God has placed us, and so we try, pridefully, to wrestle the right of deciding what is true and what is real from God.

St. Paul understood from the beginning that surrender is impossible to avoid.  The only choice we have is to whom we will surrender: God or man?  Modern society has tried to convince us that surrendering to God is slavery, but the only other option is to enslave ourselves to man.

The Christian knows that surrendering to God is not slavery, but freedom.  Surrendering to God means to surrender to what is true and real.  It means facing up to the otherness of God, of the world, of other people - it means acknowledging the truth that other things and other people have a reality of their own that commands our respect and our submission.  Only when we face this reality can we have true agency, true freedom.  When we are locked into our own little customizable self-contained worlds, we have no power to impact reality.  But when we face up to reality as it is, we find we can interact with it, have an impact on it, relate to it, engage with it.

I find myself thinking of this more and more when it comes to parenthood.  I have two children, both of whom were the result of unplanned (or ambivalently planned) pregnancies.  Now, I have a choice.  I can regret the loss of opportunities that necessarily occur when one has children - the loss of personal freedom, personal space, personal time - and I can try to force these things back into my life by neglecting my children, ignoring their demands on me, refusing to accept them as others who have a claim on me.  But this doesn't lead to freedom: it leads to a vicious cycle of resentment and guilt, and to a sense of powerlessness because no matter what I do I cannot make their otherness go away. 

The alternative is to choose to accept and submit to the reality of parenthood - and when I do that, suddenly a whole new world of possibility opens up to me!  I can confront the otherness of my children and experience the wonder of discovering who they are.  I am not consigned to living a life of regret; I can now look forward with hope.  I commit myself to doing my best in the situation in which I find myself.  I am free to cultivate my character by practicing self-sacrifice and love.  When I see my children in their otherness, when I respect that otherness, I find possibilities for true togetherness, in which it is neither my children's whims nor my own self-centered desires that define our lives.  We are no longer caught up in a battle between "them" and "me."  We are, rather, in this battle together, faced with the necessity of confronting difficulty together, of getting to know each other, of learning to respect each other, of creating a relationship.

I spent my first seven years of motherhood going back and forth between resenting my son for taking away from me the life that I had planned for myself, and feeling guilty for resenting him.  This internal struggle left me impotent and empty.  It took the birth of my daughter to make me see that I had a choice in the matter: I could choose to accept my reality, to find possibility within its confines, and to discover new opportunities to become a better person by recognizing the limits of my own desires as they confront the reality of my children's otherness.

And now I find, to my great surprise, a true joy in motherhood.  This is not to say that every day or every moment is a happy one.  Kierkegaard also says that a "great decision" is one that renews itself each day in the midst of the nitty-grittiness of daily life, and I find this to be true.  Each time my daughter cries or needs a diaper change, each time my son talks back to me or argues with me, each time I have to get up in the middle of the night to tend to a sick child, I have to decide again to accept the reality of motherhood.  This is reality.  Other people have claims on me.  I must go where I do not wish to go, do what I do not wish to do.  

How can I describe the joy that accompanies this submission?  It is not a joy that finds reward in any great "payoff."  I don't seek recompense in the form of recognition from my children (although it's nice when it happens!).  The joy is simply the joy of gratitude.  I am grateful for the difficult moments because I know they are inculcating in me the virtue of patience, of love, of gentleness, of respect.  I am grateful for the happy moments, the moments that are rays of consolation and blessing.  I discovered that when I accept my life as it is, I could be grateful for my life as it is.

Which brings me back to God.  Kierkegaard says that making a decision puts us in touch with eternity.  This is true: to make a decision, and to accept responsibility for its outcomes, puts us on an irrevocable path in which there is no room for regret (although there is plenty of room for remorse).  And making a decision to accept reality as it is touches the eternal in an even more profound way, because it is a decision to accept the will of God, Who created this reality and Who put me in it.  But it is also a decision to accept God's love, because God gives us our reality out of love for us - this reality is the only way we have to relate to Him, to discover Him, to grow in Him.  And when we open our hearts to that love, what other response can we have but grateful thanksgiving?

Fools like God

Feast of St. Justin Martyr

Today's readings both speak about people who act, in the world's eyes, foolishly.  First there is Tobit, who persistently insists on providing proper burial for his kinsmen despite the fact that, in Ninevah, this is a capital offense.  Then, there is God Himself, who repeatedly sends messengers to His people, hoping that they will accept at least one of them.  

Whenever I read this Gospel passage, I wonder: why doesn't God know any better?  I've heard it said that the definition of a fool is someone who does the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.  If so, God must be an idiot.  Repeatedly He sends us messengers, and repeatedly we reject them, persecute them, destroy them.

In the past He sent us prophets.  Now He sends us His only Son.  That Son dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Yet repeatedly we kill the Son within us when we sin, when we are selfish, when we refuse to forgive those who have hurt us, when we we make idols of ourselves.  But God persists.

What makes God act like a fool?  Love.  He loves us, He loves us, He loves us.  We can beat Him, scourge Him, crucify Him, and yet He will continue to turn up at our door, smiling foolishly, a fool in love.  

When we defy the laws of the world in order to follow the laws of God's love, we may be considered foolish.  Tobit disobeyed the unjust laws of Ninevah in order to follow God's law because he loved God and loved his countrymen.  Today's feast is about a similar fool: Justin Martyr, who, like Tobit, committed a capital offense by refusing to sacrifice to the Roman Empire's gods.  

Today, it is, thankfully, not a capital offense to worship God.  But the world does continue to hold up false idols for us, and it also does continue to call us fools for refusing to bow down to them.  God continues to call us out of idolatry and into the true light of His love, but every time we place ourselves - our greed, our self-righteousness, our grudges and our desire for revenge - before God, we kill the Son God has sent to dwell in our hearts and we bow down before the false idol we have made of ourselves.

God, like a fool, will not give up on us.  We, like fools, must be willing to kill the idol of ourselves and follow God.  We have God's word that such foolishness will be rewarded.  We have the hope of Tobit to sustain us.  We have the witness of the Resurrection to empower us.  We have the example of Justin Martyr to guide us.  Let us, with St. Justin, proclaim our foolish yet certain hope of entering God's house when we live a life of love.

Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter: Infectious Holiness

Readings:

Acts 11: 1-18
Psalm 42: 2-3

John 10: 1-10

See also:

Revelation 13: 1-18

St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit

Reflection:

In the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles, the story unfolds in two parts.  First, Peter has a vision in which “unclean” foods are made “clean”; then, Peter goes into the house of a Gentile and the Holy Spirit falls upon his household.  What God says to Peter regarding the food could also be said of the Gentiles: “What God has called clean you are not to call profane.”  The story is not primarily about the fact that Christians no longer had to keep kosher; the story is about God’s cleansing of a people, of extending His promises beyond the Jews and to all nations.  This is how Christ fulfills the law but does not destroy it.  This is not a story of the renunciation of the promises God made to the Jews, but a story of the expansion of that promise to all peoples.

This is also a story about God’s all-encompassing holiness – one might even call it an infectious holiness.  In the Old Testament understanding, the holy had to be kept separated from the profane; if the profane came into contact with the holy, the holy person or object was corrupted and had to be purified.  But Christ inaugurated a new order: the profane, when it comes into contact with the holy, does not render the holy impure, but rather makes the profane holy.  Thus, Peter argues that the early Christians need not worry about breaking bread with the Gentiles; as sharers in Christ’s infectious holiness, they will not be corrupted by the Gentiles’ “impurity” but will rather be bearers of holiness to the Gentiles.

Because God alone has the power to make things holy, and because Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, it is only through Christ that we can be made holy.  He is the only “gate” by which we can pass from our life of captivity to sin and into the freedom of love.  Only by coming into contact with Christ’s “infectious holiness” can we become free and pure.  How do we attain this contact? By following Him where He goes: through death to resurrection.  We come into contact with Christ by participating in the Paschal Mystery.  In Christ’s passion, suffering and death have themselves been made holy because Christ endured them; Christ’s contact with suffering has made suffering a means of salvation, and if we suffer well with Christ, our suffering can make us holy too.

The sacrament of baptism efficaciously symbolizes this death and rebirth; thus, passing through the gate is a metaphor for baptism.  But suffering is hard; we do not want to do it.  Suffering requires us to renounce the things we love most in this world –our material possessions, the people we care about, our health, our sanity, our preconceived notions about God, our understandings of justice and goodness.  None of us want to sacrifice these things; that’s why it’s so tempting to follow false shepherds, who come climbing over the fence illegitimately promising freedom.  The book of Revelation testifies to these false shepherds, who come with displays of power and promises of wealth and security.  But they are promising something they do not have the power to provide. The only way to freedom is through Christ, and to attain that freedom we must detach ourselves from what we hold most dear in order to attach ourselves more firmly to Christ.

Such detachment is inevitable, whether we choose it or not.  Suffering has a way of finding us all.  Death will ultimately claim our loved ones.  Disasters and war can claim our material possessions.  Disease and old age can claim the health of our minds and bodies.  If there’s a lesson to be learned from the post-modern era, it’s that the more we run away from suffering and try to shield ourselves from it, the more suffering tracks us down and knocks us off our feet.  Christ teaches us that we defeat suffering not by running away from it, but by confronting it, transforming it with the holiness that He has shared with us, and turning it into a source of new life and resurrection. 

As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit can give us the strength, courage, and grace to face this challenge.  And if we can face up to it, we can become bearers of holiness, of light and grace, to the whole world. 

Fourth Sunday of Easter: Seeking the Source of Goodness

Readings:

Acts 4:8-12

Psalm 118
1 John 3: 1-2

John 10: 11-18

Reflection:

Today Peter exhorts those who have seen the “good deeds” of the Apostles to recognize the source of the goodness: Christ Jesus, in whose name the healings have occurred.  It’s rather remarkable that Peter does not wish to take credit for the healings himself.  He does not set himself up as the amazing miracle-worker; rather, he humbly points to Christ.

It takes being “full of the Holy Spirit” to act with such humility – to recognize goodness, even our own, as coming from Christ.  When we behave badly, we always try to justify ourselves and blame someone else: “I didn’t mean to!” or “So-and-so made me!”  But when we behave well, we’re happy to take credit.  Similarly, when bad things happen to us we always want to know why: who’s to blame, what went wrong.  But when good comes our way, we accept it as if it is our due and often forget to seek its Source.

Recognizing goodness in the world as coming from God is a sign of wisdom: we are able to know the spiritual realities that lie within the things that happen to us and the things that we do.  We are able to see beyond the goods of this world to the true Source of Goodness: Christ Himself.  The world, as John’s letter tells us, does not have this wisdom, but we have it as children of God.  As his flock, we recognize the Source of Goodness, our true shepherd.

How lucky we are to have this wisdom!  Christ contrasts Himself as the Good Shepherd with the “hired man” who works for pay.  Worldly wisdom, which satisfies itself with goods and does not seek the Source of Goodness, tempts us to follow such treacherous shepherds – false shepherds and substitute shepherds, such as the desire for wealth, or acknowledgment, or admiration.  But Christ warns us that when we try to substitute these goods for the Source of Goodness, we will ultimately be betrayed.  In the time of crisis, those false shepherds will abandon us, and we will not know where to turn.  We must seek and cling to the Source of Goodness, the Good Shepherd, Christ Himself, if we are to be safe.

And what does the Good Shepherd teach us about goodness?  That in order to be good we have to be willing to sacrifice goods for the sake of others.  The Good Shepherd is good because He lays down His life – which is a good! – for His sheep.  This self-giving love is the source of all goodness in the world, and if we want to be good we have to participate in that love.  The choice is ours: we can spend our lives seeking goods, snatching them up greedily and hoarding them like misers – or we can spend our lives seeking the Source of Goodness, Who urges us to joyfully share our goods with others out of gratitude and love and the desire to draw all into His goodness.  One path leads to soul-withering selfishness; the other leads to a life-giving expansion of the soul.