Review for Religious - Issue 49.5 (September/October 1990)
Issue 49.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1990.
R[ vl~ w ~-OR R~-t ~G~OUS (ISSN 0034-639X) ~,, pubhshed b~-monthly at St Louis Unlver,,~ty by the M~s-soun Prov~nce Educational Institute ol the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office
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~ot~s. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David J. Hassel, S.J. Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. September/October 1990 Volume 49 Number 5 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rv:\’~:w v’o~ Rv:w.uaot~s
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New York. NY 10010. PRISMS... At the May meeting of the Advisory Board for REvIEw FOR RELIGtOUS, the members became engrossed in a discussion of the heritages-- Benedictine, Dominican, Salesian, and many others--that consecrated life fosters and should foster in the Church. Sometimes women and men religious forget their special call to be channels of their own spiritual tra-dition and practice. Religious life, signalized in Vatican II documents as belonging to the charismatic structure of the Church, continues to give birth anew to its members by the overshadowing of the Spirit. The particular spiritual in-sights and practices which establish each religious community become permanent gifts not only to the vowed members but also to the whole Church. The Church’s recognition and approval is based on this prem-ise. Religious life plays a critical role in carrying forward the Christian spiritual-life traditions in the Church community. The Church expects in-dividual religious and religious families to give witness to their spiritual traditions. It is no surprise, then, that books and journals dealing with the spiritual life (such as REv=Ew FOR REUCtOUS) are so often the product of people living in this consecrated lifeform. In our times we are being made far more aware of the tradition of the Pauline Body of Christ, with the differing gifts of its members. One of the gifts specially present in religious life is its responsibility to hand on the spiritual-life traditions within the Christian community. Obviously God’s gifts are never merely self-enhancing, and so religious life was never meant to be a caste apart or its own separate church. The gift of religious life within the Church only heightens the ways that Christians feel called to live out their following of Jesus in their own day--not only the members with a particular religious calling,.but also friends, cowork-ers, students, parishioners---in a word, all who are touched in some way by members of a religious community. This journal’s very title could seem to restrict its reading audience to people following a certain consecrated lifeform recognized in the Church. But, as a matter of fact, from its beginnings almost fifty years ago, REvmw FOR REL~CIOUS has invited diocesan priests, bishops, and lay people to find in its pages the roots of our Christian spiritual heritage which nourish us all. The number of subscribers other than religious was small in the beginning, but has grown steadily, especially with the bur- 641 642 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 geoning of ministries and prayer groups in the Church after Vatican II. Articles in REvmw FOR RELm~OtJS will continue to focus on various Christian heritages which religious life helps keep alive in the Church. We hope thereby to provide for all our readers access to roots as well as to budding developments in the living of the Christ-life. The authors in this issue again are representative of our reading audi-ence. For example, Barbara Dent, well-known for her spiritual writings, continues her own experiential reflections on a prayer tradition deep in the Carmelite religious family. Father Richard Lamoureux, a.a., takes an "American" approach to an age-old Augustinian tradition of prayer. The diocesan priest Father Clyde Bonar uses the experiences of St. Fran-cis of Assisi to suffuse with faith the human experience of shame. Dr. James Magee, professor of gerontology, in his article "Planning an In-tercommunity Skilled Nursing Facility," tries to facilitate the working together of religious groups coming from various religious traditions. Perhaps at this time in history we especially need to grow in our ap-preciation of religious life as the purveyor of the Christian spirituality heritage. If we do grow in this way, the Church worldwide will become all the richer in its own life and mission. David L. Fleming, S.J. Moral Issues in Spiritual Direction Shaun McCarty, S.T. Father Shaun McCarty, S.T., teaches in the Washington Theological Union and is a staff member of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. His address is Holy Trinity Mission Seminary
Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. My gracefully aging mother has acquired a certain Wisdom from the ex-perience of her years, yet she still seeks confirmation from her clerical eldest in matters of faith and morals! Vatican II suited her just fine be-cause, she says, "It said a lot of things I always thought!" On my weekly visits, she will often begin with, "Now tell me if I’m to think this way, but .... " And then she will go on to comment on some issue she has been thinking about in the quiet of her "digs" in a condomin-ium for the elderly (which she sometimes thinks may be the only heaven she will get to!). On the issue of Church: "I go to church because I like to, not because I have to. But I can’t see running in and out all the time. Especially when people need you. What good is it to go to church if it does not help you be a better person outside?" On prayer: "God’s not just in church. He is (she is not fully feminist yet!) in my apartment too. And I do not think ! have to say a lot of prayers
God and I just have these talks when I say what is on my mind and he talks to me." On sev-eral occasions she has raised this moral issue: "Now tell me if I am wrong to think this way, but I think a lot of these rules that come from the Church are not God’s. Most are man-made. Now I think God gave us heads to think ourselves. Not just run off and ask the priest what is right or wrong or wait for the Pope to tell us what to do or not do. If you ask me, I just think the reason people do that is because they are too damn lazy to think for themselves! Now is it wrong for me to be think-ing this way?" I ask her: "Now, Morn, don’t you think the Church has 643 644 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 anything to say about what is right or wrong?" She answers: "Of course, but I’m choosy about whom I listen to!" I just smile, shake my head and assure her that she will probably escape ecclesiastical censure! Actually, she gives new meaning, life, and hope for the terms spiritual and moral life! ’Moral is one of those words laden for many with negative undertones ~uch as repressive, punishing, puritan, pharisaical, and the like. Spiri-tual often connotes an a_nemic and pious evasion of down,t0-earth~ d~ ~o-day living. Until we encounter both embodi_e_d_and~i0tegr_~t_ed_i_n~--~l ,rpeople like Mom ,hose lives and choices validate t~]~ch~i’~hg0i~nd prayer! rYOften, too, moral life and spiritual life are separated: the former re- .ferring to what is right and wrong
the latter, to what is good and beetler. 19 the ministry of spiritual direction, which aims primarily-at-’spiri~ual ~rowth, moral issues frequently arise and discrepancies become appa~ ~.nt either within the value system of the dii’ectee, between the dire~tee an~ Church teaching, or between the value systems of the d~rector and the~ dtrectee. What follows wall be an attempt to provide a frame.w~o_rk m which spiritual gu~des~can-tleal’w~th~moral-~ssues’and’grapple with such ~liscrepancies. ~I will first explore the meaning and relationships of some key terms ip.cluding moral and spiritual life, conscience and discernment. Then, I will consider the role of Church as teacher and the role of the spiritual director as guide in the formation of conscience, including some specific ~reas in which the director can be helpful. Finally, I will raise some dif-ficulties that can occur in dealing with moral issues in the ministry of s~iritual direction. ~Moral and Spiritual Life I.n the context of this article, spiritual life means graced growth in the~spirit, that is, in that dimension of human existence by which we are ~.open t~___.transcendent_ rove and drawn by the Spirit into intimate union ~.with God and communion with each other through, with, and in Christ. ~lokalli~ refers t0-th-~t ~i~e~ct of life that has to~do with. human C~h~0~ic~-s ~fi~eely~made~and~lowngl6ehav~ors~freely:embraced~that
-:under:grace, en- ~able one to pursue good, avoid evil, and~ herice, grow hurria-~ly. ,~ As moral theologians point out, unfortunately in the past, there tii~S ~.been and continues to be a split between moral and spiritual theology. Respected Redemptorist theologian, Bernard Haring says: Moral theology for the use of confessors and penitents was almost un- Moral Issues / 645 avoidably guided by the knowledge of dominion and control. Since such a theology, written mostly for controllers, could threaten the freedom of believers in the realm of things solicited by grace, it seemed best to leave out or bypass spirituality .... ~ This resulted in a dual track for Christians: one for an elite who wanted to strive for maximum ideals in "seeking perfection" and the other for those who were satisfied to meet minimum expectations in "sav-ing their souls." Beatitudes were for the former
commandments for the latter. Not only was there a split between classes of Christians, but indi-vidual conscience also was divided into two compartments: one for moral norms, the other for "works of supererogation" (those above and be-yond the call of duty!). ~e dichotomies_are unfortunate. Moral and spiritual life are warp and w~i’~?oi
~ameTf:~l~i-U.~’~’~]i~~fiaor~a~:~on focuses on an~ai-ea key to human, and therefore, spiritual growth--namely, that of choices that define a person more-thah anything else and behaviors that promot~ ~0~ih~.
there is a universal call to holiness. To love God with all our hearts and to love others as Christ loves us is a normative ideal for every Christian. The choice is not between a "spiritual" life or a "moral" life. Whether intentional or not, every Christian is on a spiritual journey and summoned to be challenged by the beatitudes as well as by the com-mandments. Again, B. Haring: It is detrimental to the very fundamental norms of Christian ethics, but especially to the formation of a distinctively Christian consciousness, if the law of growth and the criteria for a deeper understanding of Chris-tian love are relegated to another discipline .... But it should be equally clear that a distinctively Christian formation of conscience does not belong to those who specialize in "knowledge of control"! For it is at the very heart of salvation.2 The bottom line is that love is the highest common denominator of every moral act as well as the source and goal of all spiritual growth. ~Con~_s_cience ~I~n general, as a faculty of moral lif~-,-~ohscience is concerned with .~ ~ ........... ~.-:~ ~. . - ~ . .~- ,h~urfian cbOic6s of good or ewl. An ~nformed conscience is the final ar-biter of moral choice. It refers to that element in the experience of free-dom that makes one aware of responsibility and accountability for one’s decisions and actions. The biblical term for conscience is "heart" in which God’s will is written (Rm 2:15). Theologically speaking, it is "self-consciousness passing moral judgment.’ ,3 In speaking of the dig- 646 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 nity of moral conscience, the Fathers of Vatican II described conscience as "... the most secret core and sanctuary of a man (sic). There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths."4 Conscience may be said to operate at three levels: ~(1) Fundamental level: This refers to th~ hiJFria--ff-~apacity freely t6 ~hoose a life-orientation towards God (the Choi~ce)
_tp. p~_rsue .good(the Wight) and to avoid evil (the Darkness) with an awareness of respp.n__s_i~ ~ility and accountabilii’~At this level, one may be said to have a ge~n- ~ral sense of value.’ A fundamental choice for the Light assumes that to be human is to have basic freedom and to have a radical openness to the mystery of God which, again, defines a person more than anything else. To take this option is to experience metanoia (change of heart) which af-fects the whole person (body, mind, and spirit). It is an invitation to turn over all of one’s energies to God, to put one’s life at the disposal of God, to be a disciple in loving service of others as Christ did and to live under the guidance of the Spirit in subsequent day-to-day decisions. It is in the light of this fundamental level of conscience that important life-decisions such as marriage, priesthood, and vowed life should be made. (2) Reflection/assessment level (individual choices): This level con-cerns day-to-_day choices of varying degrees of importance requiring a process of moral reasoning related to concrete situations.~It calls for re-flection, discussion, and analysis. I think it is what my mother means I~y "using the head that God gave us." Here one is concerned with spe-cific perception of value. At this level, there is room for difference, dis-agreement, error, blindness, distortion, rationalization, confusion, and cultural blindness. Consequently, it is primarily at this level that a per-son needs assistance from more objective sources including Sacred Scrip-ture, one’s faith community, friends, confessor, and spiritual director. It is precisely at this level that conscience needs continually to be formed and informed. For that to happen effectively, a person needs humility so that conscience can "kneel at the altar of truth" to which conscience is always subject. It is at this level that the teaching Church as reposi-tory of the values of a faith-community, has an important but limited role as moral teacher and one distinct from that of spiritual director. More about this later. ~,~.(3)~Action level: This refers.to.the_moral judgment or choice of wh~t one believes to be right that brings with it a moral imperative to act. At C~his lev~e_l, a person exercises responsibility and accountability for actions ~and for the consequences of actions that conscience commands. A sign of responsible moral choice is growth in willing, compassionate concern/ Moral Issues / 647 action as opposed to willful, selfish action/inaction. In other words, genu-ine moral judgments and decisions find their completion and become enfleshed in moral deeds. pis:ernn~en~t i Discernment refers to the prayerful sorting out of interior movements ~expenenCe~d ~n-theprocess of tnakmg judgments and deos~ons to deter-m~ ne’wh~ch are of the Spent consequently resonant w~th the fundamen-taVl level-of c-~fiscie0.~e.-It presupposes a quest Of interior freedom as w~ll ~.ffs-careful attent~0n to the concrete particulars of a situation taking into i~onsideration subjective feelings as well as objective facts. It is possible to speak also of levels of discernment that bear some correlation with the levels of conscience occurring at: (1) the fundamen-tal (or core) level of faith, where a person becomes aware of God-experience in light of which one perceives that way of life where she or he can best express and pursue a fundamental choice of God and the good
(2) the reflection/assessment level of day-to-day choices of vary-ing degrees of significance and permanence made with a sufficient de-gree of interior freedom and in resonance with one’s fundamental expe-rience of God
(3) the action level whereby a discerned judgment or de-cision is brought to completion by translating it into a concrete behavior that, if it is truly discerned, will bear the fruits of the Spirit. Relationship of DiScernment and Conscience Discernment is critical in the process of what lawyer-priest, R.P. Stake, calls the "evangelization of conscience" which entails the power of the Gospel to reveal to an individual the fact and the seriousness of one’s sins.5 What discernment brings to the evangelization of conscience in:~ cludes: (l) a sharper focus on the subjective and unique factors at work,] for this person in this .situation (especially important at a time of accel-erating moral complexity and waning adequacy of objective moral norms and extrinsic moral authority)
(2) a situating of decision-making within ff ~?a biblical tradition of both Old and New Testaments, especially in the letters of John and Paul
~(3) a rooting and contextualizing of the decision-r~ aklng process in a person’s prayer and experience of Go~l
(4) a more ihtentional attempt to examine motivations to see from where they are ~commg and to where they are ’l~ading so as to create the conditions for greater interior freedom in making choices
~(-5) a nuancing of choicest-- not just of the good over the bad, the genuinely good over the supposed good, but also choices among goods
~(6) in contrast to an excessive de- 6411 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 pendence on laws and authority as sources of moral judgment, discern-ment is conducive to ~clearEr focusing of responsibility four,the decision ~. 3. -- a~nd its cons~equ_e_n-ces on_ the pers_on making the de_.c~!s~on
(~7) ~n contrast to an individualistic and isolated process, a situating of the decision~ making process within the context of a person’s faith commUfiity
(,8)~ contrast to a more exclusively rational and deductive approach (~s is often the case in the exercise of prudence ), ] serious~consideration of human affectivit~ as an important locus of grace~in human choice. , In testing the spirits oy measunng them against one s tunoamen-tal God-experience, moral judgments are more likely to be integrated with conscience as well as reinforcing of conscience at the level of one’s fundamental choice¯ In short, discernment makes for a more prayerful, thorough, personalized, interiorized, and human process of conscience formation¯ Hopefully the discussion thus far makes clear that discernment is not dispensation from moral law, but rather an invaluable help in observing it. Rather than an "occasional exercise," discernment presupposes the cultivation of a "prayerful mode" and commitment to contemplative practice that can clarify one’s vision and solidify one’s dedication to truth¯ It is interesting to note that moral theologians today are showing a marked interest in a discernment approach to moral choice.6 ~,Role of the Church in Formation of Conscience ~The Church (understood as the e~n~ir’~Z~P~’o~le~f~G~d)~ qt preserves and hands down a faith-community’s values, is an impor-tant, but limited agent in the evangelization of conscience¯ The teaching ~’Church is not a substitute for conscience
nor is its proper role one o~ ~Grand Inquisitor"
nor yet is it the ultimate arbiter of morality¯ Con-science is. But the Church is a privileged moral teacher and recognized ~leader that plays a significant role in thg~ilJp_mination of conscience. It d~es not create morality. Rather it helps people to discover God’s de-sires for humankind which are written on the "fleshy tablets" of the hu- ~man heart¯ Not only does the Church embrace historically and cross-culturally an experience far wider than that of a single individual or cul-ture, but believers hold that the Church has special guidance from the Holy Spirit. Though the Church cannot be expected to address all the val-ues in every moral situation, it can provide norms against which people can measure their own moral judgment. Such norms protect values. Val-ues may be protected in different ways in different eras and/or cultures. Above all, the Church is eminently equipped to help form mature Chris-tian consciences that will enable people to accept responsibility for "us- Moral Issues / 6t19 ing the heads God gave them" in arriving at sound moral decisions. ~Role of-Sp~tual Director in Formation of Conscience ¯ ,Since:mOraVand~spiritual~life:should not’be d~vided~ the~d~rector ob7- ~o~s.~y ~ concerned w~th the moral choices of the directee. In the pro-cess of disce~ment, choices should be consonant with a fundamental choice of the Light and with the person’s value system. Though neithe~ ~a represeatative 6fthe-teaching Church as such nor a moral judge of oth- .ers -Consc~ence~ ~n the role of spiritual dire&or, nevertheless ihe-dir~’ t~r dbe~ have a responsibility to assist in the ongoing evangelization of conscience by way of enabling individuals to find their own way.- The director also needs to pay attention to his or her own blocks, biases, and unfreedoms that can arise from conflicts between the director’s value sys-tem and that of the directee. The director’s moral code is not normative ,for the directee. ~ spiritual director acts best as moral guide by being a witness to ~,(trut~hd pers0ndleXample Of integrity~- In addition, the director can help form consciences by appropriate interventions, pat~’e nt wa~t~ng," " compas-sionate understanding, and by maintaining a non-judgmental attitude, -~hde at the same t~me offering honest challenge. The most helpful in-tervention is attentive listening. All spiritual growth, including the evangelization of conscience, happens incrementally. This calls for pa-tience and attentiveness to the readiness of the directee in a~iving at her or his own judgments. It should be noted that self-denigration is one of the most basic moral issues with which many in direction need to deal~ Real or supposed moral lapse especially can deepen it, and this calls for compassionate understanding. Yet, good people are prone to subtle ways of rationalizing and, at times, need honest challenge. It is one thing to experience ambiguity in moral issues
it is another to refuse to wrestle with it] It is comfo~ing to remember that when difficulties arise, the same Holy Spirit who illumines discerning hea~s is also leading persons to moral integrity~ What specifically can a spiritual guide do to enable the formation of conscience? At the fundamental level of conscience, it can be assumed that the person coming for direction has made a fundamental choice of God and the pursuit of good. It would be important in making discerned moral choices that persons continue to refer back to the deepest level of their God-experience. In reference to a major life-decision affecting a per-son’s deepest commitments (for example, to enter or to leave marriage, priesthood, vowed life), a director might ask: Has the directee spent shf-ficient time in serious prayer? Made a careful examen of motives? Asked 650 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 others for feedback? It is at the reflection/assessment level of conscience that most guid-ance is sought. :S~6’~ " a "ec o be ~i~fulz ~ (1 ) In assessing moral maturity: What is the quality of the moral rea-soning process of the directee in reference to this choice? Does the per-son have a sufficiently informed conscience? Where are the blind spots? To what extent is the directee open to outside input? Is she or he making efforts to inform conscience by some reference to moral norms? (for ex-ample, Scripture, norms of his or her faith community?) Has the directee already made up his or her mind and now is unwilling to be "confused with the facts"? Does the directee rely on authority and law for some directives she or he likes, but on a subjective process of "discernment" for others she or he does not? Who will be affected and how by this moral choice? (2) In clarifying values: What values seem important to the directee (as they become visible in choices acted upon as well as spoken of!) and in what priority are they held? Does the person have sufficient clarity con-cerning these priorities? What values does the directee perceive in refer-ence to the specific moral issue with which she or he is now struggling? Is there any struggle? In "grey" areas is the directee willing to strug-gle? Has the director grappled with the same issue and know where she or he stands at present? Is the director clear about his or her own value system? What unfreedoms in the director might significantly hinder fa-cilitating the directee’s discernment? (3) In establishing a prayerful mode: Is the directee bringing the is-sue to prayer/discernment: sufficiently in touch with her or his experi-ence of God? seeking inner freedom? gathering sufficient data? attentive to affective responses as options are explored and data gathered? In re-flecting on and in assessing options, does the directee feel any incongru-ence or resistance within towards one or the other option? In deciding on the action level of conscience: Does the directee trans-late moral judgments into deeds? Is she or he open to accountability? Will-ing to take responsibility for his or her actions? What are the conse-quences of the directee’s moral decision for others? For self? ~Difficulties Facing Directors in Dealing with Conscience ,Since consciences differ as people do, it .is tO be expe~.cot_eod_~that diffi- ~’ulties can arise indealing with moral issues. These include: ~(1) Difference in moral conviction: When there is a difference of moral conviction on an issue with a directee (for example, divorce, Moral Issues / 651 greed, tax fraud, contraception, sexual activity, and so forth), what is the moral responsibility of the spiritual director? Although a guide in the process of moral choice rather than a teacher of morality, a spiritual di-rector must make a judgment as to whether she or he feels so strongly about an issue as to be unable to help the person deal with it. The direc-tor might pose the question: Will my own strong conviction constitute a major interference in the direction process? What would be appropri-ate to share with the directees at this time concerning my difference of conviction? (For example, a director might be absolutely unwilling to help a person "discern" an abortion.) ~(2) Inadequate social moral consciousness of the directee: What can a director do to help a person broaden the horizons of a conscience lack-ing in social consciousness or with little sense of social sin? On the one hand, the director needs to respect the value system of the directee and to respect readiness for change. On the other hand, the working alliance between the two should also have provided for appropriate challenge as a help to growth. If social consciousness seems to need broadening, a director might: (a) suggest readings to provoke thought
(b) be attentive to possible points of entry for discussion arising from life experience re-ported by a directee that can be occasions of broadening social aware-ness-- for example, a chance brush with a beggar or a personal experi-ence of discrimination
(c) suggest firsthand exposure to situations of so-cial concern--for example, volunteering time at a shelter for the home-less
(d) at times of periodic assessment (for which a good working alli-ance will also make provision), an honest and direct, yet gentle challenge may be in order. ~)(3) Distress after moral lapse: Without unduly mitigating a healthy sense of guilt that helps a person to recognize culpability and move to repentance, a compassionate director can help minimize the debilitating preoccupation that often accompanies guilt. If a person is overly dis-traught over a moral lapse, a director can help by getting the directee to contextualize it, that is, to see it in relationship to his other fundamental option and to the rest of his or her moral life. Does it reverse the funda-mental optioh? Erode it? Not substantially affect it? In addition to sin, where has grace been experienced? How might the experience of moral lapse and its aftermath (for example, a lessening of spiritual pride) been an occasion of grace? Conclusion In dealing with moral issues in spiritual direction, we have explored the meaning and relationship of moral and spiritual life and seen that the 652 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 two should not be divided. Moral life has as one of its concerns a key aspect of spiritual life--namely, decision-making and its relationship to character formation. Discernment is not an alternative to, but an enrich-ment of moral decision-making. Both Church as moral teacher and spiri-tual director as moral guide play significant, but different and limited roles in the formation of conscience--the final arbiter of moral judgment which, in turn, must always remain open to ongoing formation. Finally, we considered some ways for a spiritual director to deal with difficulties that arise in dealing with moral issues. Hvopefully, both Church and spiritual director will provide teachi~g~ find guidance that will enable folks, as-Mom says, "to use the heads God !~ga,~ethem to think for themselves!" That might give both the terms moral and spiritual life better press! You know, as I think of it, my mother was and continues to be my first (and probably my best!) profes-sor of moral and spiritual theology! Exercise Can you think of a situation in which your moral judgment differed from that of a directee? One in which the directee’s was in conflict with Church teaching? What did you judge as your own moral responsibility towards the di-rectee? How did this affect your ability to discern as spiritual director? How did you try to discern what you should share with the directee? What aided your discernment? NOTES ~ See B. Haring, Free and Faithful in Christ, Vol. I (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 2-3. 2 Ibid, p. 253. 3 K. Rahner & H. Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary (Herder & Herder, 1968), p. 95. 4 "Gaudium et spes," (n. 16) The Documents of Vatican II, W.M. Abbott, ed. (New York: Guild Press), p. 213. 5 R.P. Stake, "Grounding the ’Priest-Penitent Privilege’ in American Law," Con-fidentiality in the United States (Washington, D.C.: CLSA, 1988), p. 151. 6 For example, see Tracing the Spirit, J.E. Hug, ed. (New York: Paul ist, 1983), pp. 379ff. Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? Timothy Brown, S.J. and Harriet A. Learson Father Timothy Brown, S.J., is assistant professor of law in the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. Harriet Lear-son, M.B.A., M.A., is a senior management consultant, Right Associates, in Phila-delphia, Pennsylvania, and is a practicing spiritual director. Correspondence may be addressed to Loyola College
Baltimore, Maryland 21210- 2699. In today’s service-oriented society, one can hardly avoid the media’s al-most daily reports about the issue of malpractice. Doctors, lawyers, psy-chologists, psychiatrists, and human service professionals are becoming increasingly liable and vulnerable to public scrutiny regarding their prac-tices, philosophies, and ethics. In an editorial in the Jesuit publication Human Development Father James Gill, S.J., a Jesuit psychiatrist, raised the question of licensing spiritual directors. He comments: Haven’t we reached a point in the Church’s history when a group of well-trained and experienced spiritual directors can come together and deter-mine what type and amount of preparation would entitle a candidate to be licensed as a spiritual director? For the self-confidence of the direc-tors, no less than the well-being of their directees, a board of examiners and a certifying process comparable to those maintained by clinical psy-chologists, nurses, and physicians should be created. These profession-als have, in conscience, set high standards for their performance for the sake of their clients. We who are given access to the deepest recesses of souls should hardly be less conscientious. I There has been an outpouring of lawsuits against Churches and clergy as a result of alleged malpractice in recent years. The term that 653 654 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 has been coined is clergy malpractice which covers a wide variety of torts and crimes including child abuse, paternity suits, and intentional inflic-tion of emotional distress. The constitutional questions, under both state and federal Constitutions, oftentimes deny a cause of action because of the First Amendment issue of separation of Church and State. A number of cases have come to the attention of the media in the area of clergy mal-practice. One of the most noteworthy comes from California, Nally vs. Grace Community Church.2 In this case, parents whose son committed suicide brought an action against a church and church-related counselors, alleging negligent coun-seling and outrageous conduct which ultimately led to the death of their son.3 I. Constitutional Issues in Nally Vs. Grace Community Church Kenneth Nally committed suicide after having become part of a re-ligious organization that his parents alleged suggested to his son that, if you kill yourself, you will go to heaven. His parents brought suit against the Grace Community Church of the Valley, a fundamentalist sect, lo-cated in Southern California. The parents sued the church and four pas-tors for malpractice, negligence, and outrageous conduct. They con-tended that the church’s evangelical fundamentalist teachings "in-culcated in their son the belief that he had betrayed Christ’s love and trust, and otherwise exacerbated Ken’s preexisting feelings of guilt, anxi-ety, and deep depression with the knowledge that these acts would in~ crease the tendencies of Ken to attempt to take his own life."4 The church countered that the young man had been examined by five physi-cians and a psychiatrist after an earlier suicide attempt and that the coun-selors had arranged or encouraged many of these visits. A trial judge dis-missed the case after the close of the plaintiff’s case, 5 and the case was appealed. The appellate court reversed the trial court’s nonsuit of the negli-gence and outrageous conduct allegations against the Grace Community Church and several of its pastoral counselors. They held that the Church’s counselors negligently failed to refer this suicidal youth to those authorized and best suited to prevent his death.6 Associate Justice Johnson writing for the majority began the opinion by clearing up the confusion regarding the issue of clergy malpractice: The court.., does not view the causes of action discussed in our opin-ion to involve ’clergy malpractice.’ Instead, we see them more accu-rately characterized as ’negligent failure to prevent suicide,’ and ’inten- Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? tional or reckless infliction of emotional injury causing suicide’- which negligence and intentional or reckless acts happens to have been committed by church-affiliated counselors. In our view this case has lit-tle or nothing to say about the liability of clergymen for the negligent performance of their ordinary ministerial duties or even their counsel-ing duties except when they enter into a counseling relationship with sui-cidal individuals.7 The church appealed the ruling by the California Court of Appeals for the Second District. After eight years of litigation after the suicide of Kenneth Nally, the Supreme Court of California in a 5-2 opinion held that the "legal duty of care" imposed by the State on licensed praction-ers did not apply to the clergy.8 Chief Justice Lucas writes: "Neither the legislature nor the courts have ever imposed a legal ob-ligation on persons to take affirmative steps to prevent the suicide of one who is not under the care of a physician in a hospital. Imposing such a duty on nontherapist counselors could have a deleterious effect on coun-seling in general and deter those most in need of help from seeking treat-ment out of fear that the private disclosures could subject them to invol-untary commitment to psychiatric facilities.."9 The California court notes the California legislature’s recognition that "access to the clergy for coun-seling should be free from state imposed counseling standards." to Two other Justices agreed that the case should be dismissed but said the defendants did have a legal duty of care but that the evidence showed the pastors never breached it or contributed to the man’s death. The Court unanimously dismissed the case. II. Spiritual DirectionmA Definition Whether spiritual directors should be licensed to prevent the kind of tragedy described in the Nally case is a question that is presently being debated by many in the field. Spiritual direction has a very broad con-notation. It can be defined as an interpersonal situation in which one per-son assists another person to growth in the spirit, in the life of faith (prayer), hope (difficulties), sufferings (trials), and love (the person’s life in the Christian community). 1~ Spiritual direction may better be defined by what it is not, rather than by what it is. Spiritual direction is not pri-marily information even though it may be the occasion for sharing ideas. It is not primarily therapeutic even though there are times when issues of mental and psychological need get discussed. It is not seen as primar-ily advisory although in many situations good advice is imparted. Spiri-tual direction is viewed as primarily the opportunity to get clarification and discernment. How this gets accomplished is by discussing the prayer 656 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 life and spiritual life of the directee so as to shed some light on what is happening in the life of faith, hope, and love in relation to God. In spiritual direction, the directee tries to describe to a spiritual di-rector his or her prayer experiences. The subject matter of that discus-sion constitutes such areas as when prayer happens, how often, how, what actually happens in the prayer period, other daily life issues such as anxiety over family, job, day-to-day depressions, joys, consolations and desolations, issues of tolerance, patience, and possible manipulation of others. The director’s role is to help the person to objectify those per-sonal experiences, to assist by asking appropriate questions in order to gain some clarity on the directee’s personal issues. The spiritual direc-tor is interested in helping the directee in the life of prayer so that the relationship with God and the men and women with whom they live and work can become strengthened and enhanced. III. Basic Skills Required of a Spiritual Director At the Jesuit Spiritual Center in Wernersville, Pennsylvania a com-petency profile was developed in an effort at concretizing and articulat-ing the requisite personal qualities, knowledge, skills, and graces to do spiritual direction. Here are some of the standards that were established in that study: 1. Personal Characteristics/Qualities A. Living a vital spiritual life B. Being a recipient oneself of spiritual direction C. Docility to the Spirit D. Kindness E. Gentleness F. Psychological Maturity G. Initiative H. Having a broadly lived human experience J. Stability K. Respect for confidentiality L. Sociability M. Detachment N. Productivity 2. Knowledge A. Lived experience in the Christian tradition B. Christian Doctrine/tradition C. Sacred Scripture D. Christian mystical/ascetical traditions E. The Spiritual Exercises Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 657 F. Ecclesiology G. Grace H. Christology J. Vatican II K. Justice L. A psychological matrix (theory & language) M. Jungian Psychology 3. Skills/Abilities A. Intrapersonal (affective awareness) B. Discernment C. Listening D. Clarifying E. Diagnosing F. Prescribing G. Judgment H. Common sense J. Interpersonal Skills K. One-on-one L. Group M. Trustworthiness 4. Graces A. Spiritual freedom B. An ongoing call to this work by others C. Called by grace to this work D. Seeing the Gospel happening~2 IV. Ministerial Malpractice Malpractice refers to professional misconduct or the failure of one rendering services in the practice of a profession to exercise the degree of skill and learning normally applied by members of that profession in similar circumstances.~3 The traditional elements necessary to state a cause of action in negligence have beenstated by Prosser as: 1) a duty, or obligation, recognized by the law, requir-ing the actor to conform to a certain standard of conduct for the protection of others against unreasonable risks
2) a failure on his part to conform to the standard re-quired
3) a reasonably close causal connection between the con-duct and the resulting injury
and 4) actual loss or damages resulting to the interests of an-other. 14 Review for Religious, September-October 1990 The problem that the courts would face in trying to construe a duty, and then defining that duty in the area of spiritual direction, is in attempt-ing to define what falls within the parameters of the spiritual as opposed to psychological counseling. How would a court make some kind of de-termination as to whether a directee’s problem is, in fact, a spiritual or psychological one. The reason that distinction is so necessary is to safe-guard and protect members of the clergy involved in spiritual direction. Father John English, S.J. has written that the distinction between spiri: tual and psychological counseling is oftentimes a fine one. He comments that "although it may be helpful for the director to distinguish between psychological and spiritual counseling, these realities are not distinct within the person being counseled. And the concern is always with the total person." ~5 There are occasions when a director can see that the real need in direction is no longer to facilitate growth in relationship with God but instead to move the person into a psychological counseling setting so that other issues in the directee’s life can better be addressed. What are some of the occasions when someone should be referred to therapy? One spiritual director, Mercy Sister Maureen Conroy, R.S.M. regards three situations as clearly signals to refer. They are: 1) when a person experiences serious psychological and emotional disorders, including depression, severe neuro-sis, suicidal tendencies, psychosis
2) when more time needs to be spent exploring a present life issue, such as a marital problem
and 3) when specific therapeutic skills are needed to explore the conscious and unconscious effects of past life expe-riences, such as sexual abuse or emotional neglect in child-hood. 16 The Supreme Court of California in the Nally case addressed the is-sue of referral of seriously ill directees. Regarding the duty as to "whether the court should impose a duty on defendant and other ’nonth-erapist counselors’ (that is, persons other than licensed psychotherapists who counsel others concerning their emotional and spiritual problems) to refer to licensed mental health professionals once suicide becomes a foreseeable risk," the court said no.~7 In determining the existence of a duty of care in any given case, a number of factors were considered, including: "the foreseeability of harm to the injured party, the degree of certainty that he suffered injury, the closeness of the connection be-tween defendants’ conduct and the injury suffered, the moral blame at-tached to (defendants), the policy of preventing future harm, the extent Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 659 of the burden to the defendants and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach, and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk in-volved. ’ ’ 18 The court cautiously noted the inappropriateness of imposing a duty to refer in areas involving spiritual counseling because of the very na-ture of the relationship. So many times those relationships are informal, spur of the moment, and gratuitous. The foreseeability of harm may not always be recognized in a one hour session with a disturbed directee. The court concluded by saying that "imposing a duty on defendants or other nontherapist counselors to... insure their counselees [are also] under the care of psychotherapists, psychiatric facilities, or others authorized and equipped to forestall imminent suicide could have a deleterious ef-fect on counseling in general." 19 The California legislature has exempted the clergy from any kind of licensing requirement applicable to "mar-riage, family, child and domestic counselors, and from the operation of statutes regulating psychologists.’ ,20 The court took note that the reason why the legislature has exempted clergy from licensing is in order to ex-plicitly "recognize that access to the clergy for counseling should be free from state imposed counseling standards, and that the secular state is not equipped to ascertain the competence of counseling when performed by those affiliated with religious organizations.’’2~ V. The Difficulty of Devising Workable Standards For Determining Negligence Along with the difficulty the court recognized with arriving at some kind of workable standard of competency to be established in religious counseling situations, the Nally court also noted the added problem of identifying to whom the duty of duc care should be applied. It would be an immense task to define what exactly constitutes a spiritual direction relationship. Who qualifies as aspiritual director (only the ordained? mem-bers of religious orders?) as well as trying to resolve the issue of relig-ious diversity demonstrates difficulty in determining in what context the interaction is framed. There are all kinds of First Amendment issues in-volved as well. The court expressed the dilemma writing: "Because of the differing theological views espoused by the myriad of religions in our state, and practiced by Church members, it would certainly be impracti-cal and quite possibly unconstitutional to impose a duty of care on pas-toral counselors. Such a duty would necessarily be intertwined with the religious philosophy of the particular denomination or ecclesiastical teach-ings of the religious entity.’ ,22 66{I / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 Establishing some kind of criteria of competency that a court could apply would always involve a state intrusion into the realm of religious doctrine and practice. The state would be put in the position of asking whether a particular religious practice was indeed being employed, a par-ticular teachin~g applied correctly, a particular style of spirituality or dis-cernment used properly. All these determinations entail a great deal of state entanglement in sectarian matters. In 1971 the Supreme Court in Lemon vs. Kurtzman,23 adopted a three prong test to decide whether a government activity violates the Estab-lishment Clause of the First Amendment. The test requires that: 1) The purpose of the action be clearly secular
2) The primary effect of the action must neither advance nor inhibit religion
and 3) the activity may not result in excessive government en-tanglement with the religion.2a Any kind of judicial enforcement of some kind of standard of com-petency for spiritual directors would fail the Lemon vs. Kurtzman test on all three points. The effect of the government overseeing the practices of spiritual directors would more than likely inhibit some of the freedom required to explore, discern, and clarify issues in spiritual direction. The potential for excessive church-state entanglement in the area of enforce-ment of guidelines for direction is limitless. Any standard of care applied in determining qualified licensed prac-tioners in the field of spiritual direction would involve some sort of check as to whether the practice was in step with the religious criteria set forth in the religious teachings of the sect. At best it could be argued that some minimum standard of.training and competence to protect the public from religious fanatics, charlatans, or frauds might be established, but any full-fledged licensing would stifle First Amendment freedom and inhibit re-ligious practice. VI. Difficulties in Establishing a Standard of Care for Spiritual Di-rectors Looking at the Competency Profile of the Jesuit Spiritual Center, one wonders how a court would be able to determine what constitutes com-petency when the spiritual qualification requirements of directors include such characteristics as: 1) Living a vital spiritual life--a life of charity
2) Habitual experience of individual prayer
3) A life of Charity .toward all peop!e coupled with an awareness of the w~der needs of the human family
Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 661 4) An evermore intense interior experience
5) An ever-growing delicacy of conscience
6) Kindness--having and showing a benevolent readi-ness to intend the good of others
7) Giftedness--honoring another’s perceptions, judg-ments, and person
a non-defensiveness of spirit, pa-tience, and sympathy
8) Psychological maturity--free from crippling emo-tional, mental, or volitional habits of a neurotic nature
9) Sociability--the ability to interact with a variety of per-sonalities
10) Knowledge--lived experience in the Christian tradi-tion
1 1) Skills and abilities--interpersonal awareness of one’s interior mental and emotional states
12) Discernment--the experiential knowledge of self in the congruence of the object of choice with one’s funda-mental religious orientation
13) Judgment--the ability to form wise opinions, esti-mates, and conclusions from circumstances presented to the director
14) Graces-spiritual freedom --without undue influence of disordered affections and attachments
15) An inner suppleness of character.25 Looking over this list of characteristics needed to be a competent spiri-tual director one could see the difficulty that a court of law would have in trying to render a determination of standards which would meet licens-ing requirements. Courts are not in any position to evaluate the content of the prescribed qualifications. Aside from the obvious First Amend-ment problems found in making judgments on what grace, kindness, char-ity, and other criteria operative within the practice of spiritual direction are, licensing could discourage and diminish the gifts of both the direc-tor and directee. It is the view of the authors that licensing, evolving in the current secula¢ context, goes against the very grain of what spiritual direction is all about and could do a real disservice to those who enter into a direction relationship fearing lawsuits. It could also have a chill-ing effect on directees as well. There is something unique, healing, and very human about spiritual direction as a growth process if we view it as art, science, and discipline. 662 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 VII. Some Final Observations In reviewing the current legal opinions regarding malpractice in the area of spiritual and pastoral counseling, the authors present several ob-servations. --Licensing spiritual directors is clearly a prophetic question as pro-posed by Gill and is coming increasingly into its own time. The issues surrounding licensing are complex, profound in their implications, dis-turbing, and hopeful as we look at the work of defining the criteria for training, developing, and evaluating competent directors. --Defining what competencies are needed in a spiritual director in different schools of spirituality, religious groups and sects, and what con-tent needs to be included in their training programs producing such pro-fessionals is a challenge that is only beginning to be publicly addressed, discussed, or attempted. --In light of the current legal findings and opinions, spiritual direc-tors need to demand and seek training that is concerned with addressing issues of competency as defined by the required knowledges, skills/ abilities, and personal characteristics/qualities reflecting their spiritual tra-dition towards achieving competency in the training of spiritual direc-tors. --First steps would be for practitioners in the field to come together in a spirit of open inquiry, genuine unselfish concern, and humble aware-ness of the enormity of the task to be accomplished. Developing semi-nars and forming associations or professional forums could provide prac-titioners the milieu to discuss, study, and outline priorities and action steps towards the establishment of professional criteria and guidelines for training, developing, and evaluating spiritual directors. NOTES Gill, "License Spiritual Directors?" 6 Human Development 2 (Summer, 1985). Nally vs. Grace Community Church, 204 Cal. Rptr. 303 (Cal. App. 3 Dist. 1984). Ibid, at p. 303. 4 Ibid, at p. 303. 5 Ibid, at p. 303. Nally vs. Grace Community Church, 253 Cal. Rptr. 97, 1988. lbid, at p. 219. 8 lbid, at p. 105. 9 Ibid, at p. 105. ¯~o Ibid, at p. 105. Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, Competency Profile. ~2 Restatement (Second) of Torts 299A (1977). t3 Ibid. ~4 W. Prosser, Law of Torts (1966). 15 j. English, Spiritual Freedom (1975). 16 M. Conroy, Growth in Love and Freedom (1987). 17 Nally vs. Grace Community Church, 253 Cal. Rptr. 97 at p. 106. Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 663 18 Ibid, at p. 106. 19 Ibid, at p. 103. 20 Ibid, at p. 108. 21 Ibid, at p. 108. 22 Ibid, at p. 109. 23 Lemon vs. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602. 24Ibid, at p. 60. 25Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, Competency. The Risk You take a risk when you invite the Lord Whether to dine or talk the afternoon Away, for always the unexpected soon Turns up: a woman breaks her precious nard, A sinner does the task you should assume, A leper who is cleansed must show his proof: Suddenly you see a hole in your roof And a cripple clutters up your living room. There’s no telling what to expect when He Walks in your door. The table set for tea Must often be enlarged and decorum Thrown to the wind. It’s His voice that calls them And it’s no use to bolt and bar the door: His kingdom knows no bounds-~of roof, or wall, or floor. Marcella M. Holloway, C.S.J. 6321 Clemens Avenue St. Louis, Missouri 63130 Prayer as Desire: An American ViewI Richard E. Lamoureux, a.a. Father Richard E. Lamoureux, a.a., has been provincial for the Augustinians of the Assumption. His address is Assumptionist Center
Brighton, Mas-sachusetts 02135. The contemporary American artist Andrew Wyeth teaches us a good deal about prayer. Many of his paintings, depicting everyday objects--a bowl of fruit, a cookie jar, a cooling blueberry pie--invite a quiet, simple gaze. But it is not just Wyeth’s spare, silent scenes that lead us in the direction of prayer. So many of his portraits are unconventional inas-much as they present the subject turning away from the viewer, appar-ently looking for something in the distance. Forrest Wall, shown in the Man from Maine (1951), turns his back to us and peers out a window partially visible on the right. Elizabeth James, in Chambered Nautilus (1956), does the same from her sick bed. What may be Wyeth’s most famous painting depicts Christina Olsen (Christina’s WorM, 1948) sit-ting in the field below her home, straining with all her might in the di-rection of the house as if she might return there on the strength of her desire despite the palsied legs that restrict her to the ground. Two of his most beautiful paintings are portraits of Jimmy Lynch. One (The Swinger, 1969) shows him on a porch swing looking off into the dis-tance
the other (Afternoon Flight, 1970) catches him similarly absorbed. What is it on the horizon that draws his gaze?2 This most American artist explores a dimension of our existence that I would consider to be a central ingredient in prayer. In what follows, I want to explain how longing or desire is at the heart of prayer and how desire has fared in our recent American experience. Finally, I will sug-gest a way to address the particular challenge that faces us as American 664 Prayer as Desire / 665 women and men of prayer. No one has explained better than Saint Augustine how desire is re-lated to prayer. Sometime at the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine received a letter from Proba, a Roman woman whose husband had just died.3 Her purpose in writing was to ask a simple question: can you tell me something about prayer that would be helpful? In his response, Augustine writes unexpectedly at great length about widowhood and then tries to explain how it relates to prayer. For example, he says to Proba: What characteristic of widows is singled out if not their poverty and deso-lation? Therefore, insofar as every soul understands that it is poor and desolate in this world, as long as it is absent from the Lord, it surely commends its widowhood, so to speak, to God its defender, with con-tinual and most earnest prayer (p. 400). Augustine very simply reminds Proba that her widowhood, that is, her experience of loss and especially her desire for presence once again, is a precious opportunity to learn about prayer. If you would want to pray, Augustine seems to be saying, begin with the experience of desire or longing. Augustine, then, defines prayer primarily as desire. Words and pi-ous activities, which we normally think of as prayer, are useful only to the extent that they intensify our desire for God. They are necessary, he writes, so that we may be roused and may take note of what we are asking, but we are not to believe that the Lord has need of them .... Therefore, when we say "Hallowed be thy name," we rouse ourselves to desire that his name, which is always holy, should be held holy among men and women also . . . (p. 391). Desire then is synonymous with prayer. In relating the two in that way, Augustine teaches us three very important lessons about prayer. First, prayer is really very simple. It is as natural for human beings as desire is. And desire, as we all know, is a universal human experience. It is as natural for a person to pray as it is for a person to desire. And a person who desires is a person who can pray. Second, by defining prayer in terms of desire rather than in terms of methods or formulas or actions, Augustine more clearly situates it as a function of the human heart. There is little that is more personal to us or that we are more hesitant to divulge than our desires. And Augustine would have us understand that it is precisely in that most intimate and personal place that prayer is born and grows. 666 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 Finally, by relating prayer to desire, Augustine helps us to under-stand that we can grow in prayer, for taking our desires seriously is a stimulus to such growth. He develops this idea in his letter to Proba and most especially in the Confessions. To Proba he writes: God wishes our desire to be exercised in prayer that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give (1 Co 2:9) .... Therefore, it is said to us: "Be enlarged, bear not the yoke with unbelievers" (2Co 6:13, 14), (p. 389). Desire helps to enlarge the heart. Augustine would claim that by fan-ning the flame of desire, we will become more able to recognize God’s gift when it is offered and to appreciate it to the extent that it deserves. In the Confessions Augustine explains even more clearly how tak-ing our desires seriously is a stimulus to growth in prayer and can lead to deeper faith and intimacy with God. These desires are a complex re-ality ["Who can unravel that complex twistedness?" (II, 10)4] But rather than shy away from the complexity, Augustine sets out on a long journey precisely to get to the bottom of those desires. He goes all the way back to his earliest desire for the milk from his mother’s breast, then recalls the games of his youth, and also the longing for wisdom when he read Cicero. With anguish, he remembers the burning desires that char-acterized his early relations and the resistance he put up to other desires lurking in his heart. "My soul turned and turned again, on back and sides and belly, and the bed was always hard" (VI,16). Augustine’s long journey through the labyrinth of his soul was marked by a painful experience of desires at war with each other, but even more so by a confidence that the battle waged in all honesty and with his friends would lead to a liberation of his deepest desire, one that he came to understand could only be satisfied by God. "Behold thou art close at hand to deliver us from the wretchedness, of error and estab-lish us in thy way, and console us with thy word: ’Run, I shall bear you up and bring you and carry you to the end’ " (VI, 16). Augustine took all of his desires seriously, even those that troubled him and brought him to tears, because he believed that all of them were in some way, at times in some distorted ways, a path to the deepest craving of the human heart. He seemed sure of God’s love and also confident that deep within his own heart was an enormous love for God: "Thou hast made us for thy-self..." (Confessions I, 1). Those are convictions we all find hard to come by, but they are crucial for growth along the way of prayer. To summarize then and to make the point clearly: for Augustine prayer is not more complicated than giving free rein and full expression Prayer as Desire / 66"/ to the sometimes confused desire for God that God has placed in our hearts. As he writes in his commentary’ on the first letter of St. John: "Love and do what you will." Or perhaps I can say: "Desire and do what you will." Now, that may sound simple, but there are a few complicating fac-tors, some of which Augustine was aware of. Many of the complicating factors, however, are particular to our own time and culture
they are the shadow side of the cultural qualities we cultivate in the United States. One of the recent most popular movies, Dead Poets Society, is a se-rious indictment of American culture. It tells the story of a private pre-paratory school in the United States in 1959, where faculty and student body alike hold in highest esteem the pursuit of successful careers and high social status. Along comes an eccentric poetry teacher, effectively portrayed by Robin Williams. He succeeds in opening a few sleepy, even blind eyes, urges his students to ("carpe diem") "seize the moment," and awakens them to the excitement of poetry. Dull, distracted boys be-come spirited young men full of powerful desires. They found their own secret society where dead poets--and dead students-~come back to life. The movie was successful, I suppose, because it touched a sensitive chord in our American hearts. Though we are reluctant to admit this, the movie helped us see that we might be dull people, men and women with-out longing, without desire. But you might object: "Doesn’t every human being desire some-thing?" As I reflected on the movie, I came to understand that for a va-riety of reasons and in different ways desire has been drained from our hearts. I could see it happening in four or five different ways. At other times and in other contexts, I might present the following items in a much more positive vein, as qualities that are proper to us as Americans. But in the context of this discussion on desire, what might be consid-ered the merits of our particular American way of living and looking at things becomes a liability. 1) In our day, in this country, by hard work, ingenuity, abundant natu-ral resources and a little bit of luck, we have attained a level of material satisfaction that enables us to meet most of our needs. We acknowledge that there are unsatisfied needs in us, but we are also confident that the only kinds of needs we have are needs that we can eventually satisfy our-selves. And if it takes too long to satisfy them, we energetically look for and usually find other remedies
there are many "quick fixes" we can turn to. But then if all the needs are satisfied, what is there left to de-sire? I am not simply condemning American materialism, nor am I re- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 ferring here to the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure and sensual satisfac-tion. Instead, I am suggesting ’that the level of material security we en-joy may be having a subtle, debilitating effect on our capacity to long for less material goods. When the Israelites complained to Jeremiah that it would be preferable to return to Egypt rather than remain in exile, he urged them to stay where they were for Yahweh was with them. Instead, however, they returned to Egypt "where at least they would not hun-ger" (Jr 42:1~4). It is not pleasant to be hungry, but can we live without desire? We can call this sort of person "the comfortable self," and the "comfortable sell’’ has few desires. 2) Today especially we seek to be creative and responsible members of the human race. We are inclined to set aside as somewhat irrelevant and escapist distractions those vague interior Iongings that apparently can never be satisfied: there is too much in the world to do and no time to lose. We tend to set aside the simple and less gifted i~mong us and have little patience for wasted time and effort. In Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe would say that our ambition is to be a "Master of the Universe," and we are convinced we just might succeed. The "creative, functional sell’’has little time or. need for vague longings and can realize his desires by rolling up his sleeves. 3) Psychology has helped us uncover, identify, and explain many of our desires. But Freud would also have us demystify these desires, re-duce them to understandable drives, and either "manage" them so they do not interfere or banish them completely. The "psychological sell" runs the risk of reducing desires to insignificance by denying them the possibility of any transcendent origin, significance, or purpose. 4) Dead Poets Society points an accusing finger at a society drained of desire and life. But I think the movie suffers from the sickness it is trying to identify. Note the poets that are quoted in the movie: they are almost exclusively what we call the romantic poets. Other sections of the poetry anthology used by the students are ripped out. No mention of Shakespeare or Homer, Milton or Hopkins. Why should we read poetry, according to this movie? For the excitement of it, I gather. The movie seems to say: it does not really matter what you give your life to as long as you feel passionately enough to give your life. I admire the passion, but it is a self-destructive passion, self-preoccupied, narcissistic. Really, in the end, no passion at all. The desires of the "romantic sell’’ self-destruct in a beautiful, but tragically brief burst of flame. 5) Finally, a word about the "tolerant sell’’ and what that, in its most recent form, has done to desire. In many ways I consider this to Prayer as Desire / 669 be the most serious attack on desire in our day, and I will discuss it at greater length.5 The founders of our country, acutely aware of the reasons for which Europeans came to these shores and the political struggle that led to in-dependence, enshrined the principles of freedom and equality at the heart of our Constitution. They did so in revolt against oppression in the coun-tries they came from, to assure that in this new regime each person would be free to profess and practice the religion of one’s choosing or none at all. In order to assure that no one religion would be given ascendancy and that all religions would be considered equally valid. Such liberty and equality imply a prior commitment to tolerance. As Locke had earlier suggested,6 not only does tolerance forestall religious wars and oppression, it would seem to be synonymous with Christian char-ity. We should hesitate to tamper with a doctrine such as that of toler-ance, which has brought us many blessings, but there may be some side effects that need to be taken into account. If tolerance leads us to assert that all religions are equally valid, then it seems inevitable that at some point one will begin to wonder whether it is worth embracing this par-ticular religion rather than another.., or any at all. Tolerance as the paradigmatic American virtue in religious matters erodes conviction and desire
it all too often leads to indifference and loss of confidence.7 Let me explain with a non-religious example. For one person, work-ing hard to provide housing for the homeless is an important "value"-- to use that word as we are accustomed to using it today. For another per-son, earning a million dollars a year and dining at a 4-star restaurant five nights a week is a "value" she or he would hold to with as much, per-haps even more vigor. In a society where tolerance is the paramount vir-tue and where there can be no criteria for ranking so-called "values," our social worker has no right to consider his "value" more important than that of the millionaire. I think that is the conclusion we have to draw, and my guess is that our "tolerant" selves would be reluctant to draw any other. In that case, I could easily imagine the social worker, returning home after a frustrating fifteen-hour day, and exclaiming in quiet desperation: "why bother?" If all "values" are equal, our social worker will begin to doubt the real worth of what she or he is doing and be drained of passion or desire for the cause being promoted. Tolerance is a great American virtue. It protects us from oppression and even allows us to be critical of the regime. But the brand of toler-ance practiced today also exacts a high price. It can drain our soul of all 670 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 passion. Without passion or desire, the "tolerant self’ will find it very difficult to pray. The comfortable self, the creative self, the psychological self, the ro-mantic self, the tolerant self--so many ways in which desire has been disarmed. It has been disarmed or short-circuited. What keeps desire alive has been eliminated. Etymologically, the word "desire" with its reference to "sidera," the stars, suggests that without an object that tran-scends the self, desire that is not created by the self, or under its con-trol, or in any way dependent upon the self, desire quickly evaporates. I think the social and political consequences of diluted or disarmed de-sire have been considerable, but in the context of this discussion I want to draw attention to the consequences for our faith and our prayer as well. So, how do we recover desire? The question is an old one. It already appears in the Gospel. But, as I have tried to explain above, our American context leads us to pose it in a particularly acute way. It should not come as a surprise that since we Americans are closest to the problem that it is we Americans who have also hit upon a solution. I think that Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step program, begun in this country some fifty years ago, may be helping us rediscover desire and could be more helpful to those wanting to pray than any crash course on meditation.8 This may come as a surprising suggestion. But consider some of the more traditional methods used to foster growth in prayer. Among the early desert fathers and mothers, one popular and effective method (known in the Russian Orthodox tradition today as "starchestvo") is a practice whereby the novice reveals to his spiritual master all of his in-terior thoughts and feelings and humbly seeks help in discerning what God calls him to through these apparently confused experiences.9 Augustine himself sought to grow in prayer by telling story after story of how he pursued one way then another in search of happiness and peace. Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century devised a system of spiritual exercises, whereby the one seeking to grow spiritually reveals the promptings of his heart to a spiritual guide who helps him interpret and discern the desires that will lead to growth. Ignatius even urged that his followers, members of his Society, regularly "manifest their con-science" to their superiors, much like the monks in the desert, in order to gain enlightenment. Those are the traditional methods of spiritual growth, but for some reason today for many they are not working, or we are not inclined to take them seriously. But many are taking the 12 steps seriously. One of Prayer as Desire / 671 the insights on which the 12-step method is based is the importance of recounting, at a meeting or to a sponsor, the story of one’s desires-- desires for alcohol, for sex, for food, desires that have run out of con-trol, but also a desire, perhaps only a small spark at the outset, but a de-sire for sobriety. It is in the telling and the retelling of the story that the desires are sorted out, that the healthiest sparks are fanned into stronger flames, and that one begins to come to deeper serenity and happiness. Why does the 12-step program work? Because I begin to name desires rather than blindly accede to them, proudly condemn them, or run from them in fear. Because I acknowl-edge that a power greater than I alone guides human affairs, inspires hu-man desires, and fulfills the deepest among these: the desires I can sat-isfy will not bring peace to a restless heart. Because I acknowledge that in addition to that power other people are necessary to test my desires and help me keep the best alive. Because I know that helping others will intensify my own desire at the same time as it helps another. I cannot explain adequately in this context the effectiveness of the 12-step program. I am grateful to those friends and confreres who have given me some understanding of the 12 steps and for their own witness to the program’s power. They could better make the point I want to make. Beneath the program is an understanding of life deeply consonant with the Gospel and, I would maintain, profoundly nourishing for one’s life of prayer. Remember Augustine’s words to Proba: Insofar as every soul understands that it is poor and desolate in this world as long as it is absent from the Lord, it surely commends its wid-owhood, so to speak, to God its defender, with continual and most ear-nest prayer (p. 400). Prayer is impossible if you start from a distorted understanding of the Gospel. As Americans, our comfortable self may be too sated to seek a Savior, our creative self may lead us to think we can save ourselves, our psychological self may convince us that the desire for a Savior is escapism, our romantic self may consider the desire an end in itself, our tolerant self may think open-ness and tolerance are identical with love. The Gospel, the writings of Augustine, and the 12-step program re-flect both more skepticism and more confidence about human nature than any of these false selves. They are not so afraid or angry with their hu-manness that they deny or disregard their desires, but they do not accept 672 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 that responding to the most pressing desires will necessarily lead to the greatest happiness. They are deeply confident that their deepest desires can be satisfied, but have surrendered the illusion that they can or must explain or satisfy those desires on their own. They, like St. Paul, refuse to judge and condemn themselves, and certainly not others, but they cou-rageously and unambiguously name the desire that has led them to dis-aster and they can say: "My name is Richard or John or Dorothy, and I am an alcoholic!" Many are seeking new ways to pray, and a 12-step meeting is hardly an ancient method. But if I were to suggest the practices of sacramental confession or spiritual direction as ways to grow in prayer, many would not take note. Something has happened to our traditional practices or our use of them that has made them seemingly ineffective. What I am sug-gesting is that the 12-step program with its emphasis on confession/ story telling, community, and commitment to service--is a contempo-rary method that I feel convinced can teach us how to pray. I cannot help but believe that God is attentive to the simple prayer of a recovering al-coholic, a wounded person full of desire, who speaks with the words of the psalmist: God, you are my God, for you I long. For you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory, for your love is better than life. My lips will speak your praise, so I will bless you all my life. NOTES ~ A first version of this paper was presented as the keynote address for a Conference at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, entitled "Prayer--A Psychologi-cal Perspective." I am grateful to the organizers of the Conference, Dr. George Scar-lett and Rev. Edgar Bourque, A.A., for their invitation to address the Conference. 2 These paintings are reproduced in Davis McCord and Frederick A. Sweet, Andrew Wyeth (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1970). 3 Quotations from Augustine’s letter are taken from The Fathers of the Church-- Saint Augustine: Letters Vol. II (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc. 1953). 4 Quotations from the Confessions are taken from the translation by Frank J. Sheed in The Confessions of St. Augustine (London: Sheed & Ward, 1984, original edition 1944). 5 Although many have discussed this notion, the most thorough and cogent discus-sion recently is in the book by Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). 6 See John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed, by James H. Tully (Indian- Prayer as Desire / 1573 apolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983). 7 In J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, (New York: Fox, Duffiealad and Company, 1904, reprinted from the original 1782 edition), pp. 64-65, we read an eighteenth-century account of religion in America. After describ-ing in letter no. 3 the variety of creeds cultivated in the country, the author contin-ues: "Each of these people instruct their children as well as they can, but these in-structions are feeble compared to those which are given to the youth of the poorest class in Europe. Their children will therefore grow up less zealous and more indif-ferent in matters of religion than their parents. The foolish vanity, or rather the fury of making Proselytes, is unknown here
they have no time, the seasons call for all their attention, and thus in a few years, this mixed neighborhood will exhibit a strange religious medley, that will be neither pure Catholicism nor pure Calvinism. A very perceptible indifference even in the first generation will become apparent." 8 A good deal of Alcoholics Anonymous literature deals with prayer and spiritual-ity. The eleventh step explicitly encourages the practice of prayer and meditation ("We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us, and the power to carry that out.") But the program can have even broader implications for the spiritual life. See "Origins of A.A. Spirituality" by Dr. Ernie Kurtz, The Blue Book, Vol. XXXVIII, Proceedings from the 38th Annual Symposium-June 16- 20, 1986 (January, 1987). Catholic writers and lecturers are beginning to discuss the spiritual potential of the program. See, for example, the recently released confer-ences of Father Richard Rohr, "Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps" (Saint Anthony Messenger Press Audiocassettes, 1989). 9 See B, Pennington, O.C.S.O., O Holy Mountain.t (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984), p. 92. The Emptiness Within Barbara Dent Barbara Dent, mother and grandmother, has been for eighteen years a Secular Carmelite. One of her most recent books has been The Gifts of Lay Ministry (Ave Maria Press, 1989). Her address is Postinia: 7A Cromwell Place
Pukekohe, New Zealand. Ours is an age of space-consciousness and space exploration. These have induced an awareness of a limitless beyond that can be terrifying. We know that in space universe extends beyond universe in an infinitude of expanding galaxies. The immensity is beyond our comprehension. Ours is also an age of inner exploration of our own human psyche. Depth psychology probes level on level of inner awareness, submerged awareness, and non-awareness. These probings link up with that aspect of spirituality which mystically intuits the indwelling of the Trinity, the homeliness of God in us that Jesus spoke of and promised to his faithful followers the night before he died. Just as there is endless mystery in the outer universe, so there is also in the inner one. God dwells in us--if we long for him and prepare our spiritual house to receive him. Not only that, but he permeates our inner being further and further as we open ourselves to receive him. "How rich are the depths of God!" exclaimed St. Paul. And it is these very depths that merge with our own through the divine penetra-tion and the graces it brings. This is by no means always a consoling experience. On the contrary it can seem to hurl us into an abyss of unmeaning which is caused by our incapacity to understand divine meaning and purpose in all their in-finite inclusiveness. Only faith can cope with the apparent absurdity, and too often in this state we experience ourselves as lamentably lacking in faith. 674 The Emptiness Within / 675 In this article I examine and comment on this negative aspect of di-vine and human intermingling by using the concept of "the inner Void." Normally, we human beings fill our days and nights with the busi-ness of living, working, playing, and social interchange. This is the way it has to be if society is to continue and be dynamic. For committed Chris-tians this day-to-day living and doing is permeated with another dimen-sion- that of being-in-Christ. The more fully they relate mundane ac-tivities to loving and serving the Lord, the more Christocentric their lives become. The more they cleave to him, the more the Trinity enters into their inner selves through the purity of their intentions, so that they truly become temples of the Holy Spirit. A pure intention is one that is centered on what Jesus stressed must be our fundamental option--"God’s will, not mine, because I love him with my whole being." Strangely, the intensity of such a single-minded love can lead not to a blissful sense of fulfillment, but to its opposite-- an experience of crucifying inner emptiness, a void of unappeasable long-ing crying out for a God who appears not to care or even answer. How much longer will you forget me, Yahweh? Forever? How much longer will you hide your face from me? How much longer must I en-dure grief in my soul, and sorrow in my heart by day and by night? (Ps 13:1-2). The ache for God, disguised as it may be in a multitude of ways, yet seems to be endemic to the human heart. In Christ’s followers it can be-come so insistent that it rules their lives. After many years of loving, faith-ful service to this object of their desire, a paradoxical inner state is likely to develop. The searcher for the pearl of great price and the glorious lib-erty of the sons and daughters of God, though consumed with an intol-erable yearning for God, now experiences him as absent just when he is loved and longed for most. This is usually a sign of the call to a much deeper relationship with him, one that has a different quality from any that preceded it. We are drawn by the Spirit into this state of being when all created things have lost their power to compel or fulfill us. We have learned, often in bitterness and pain, that none of them can supply anything but a temporary and partial satisfaction. Behind and through them we have kept glimpsing their Creator, and now he fills our vision and summons us to come closer. We have begun floating in our inner Void, sure at last that only his love can fill it. 676 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 Aware that he is calling and drawing us, we want with all our will to respond, yet we remain thwarted. Yearn and strive as we may, we can neither reach nor receive him. Empty and grieving, we experience him as the absentee God, yet we have never in our lives been more free of sin and fuller of love than we now are. Why has this Void opened at the very time when we are possessed by love-longing for God? To anyone familiar with the inner depth reality of the subconscious and unconscious, the answer will make sense. The roots of our attachments to what God has created, and the causes of our persistence in letting them come between us and him, are still bur-ied deep within us. They fasten us down to where we are so that we are unable to soar in freedom to him. Though we have done all in our power, with the help of grace, to love and serve him, and though deliberate sin of any kind has long been eliminated from our living, the roots of sinful tendencies remain there hidden away, so that we are not even conscious of them. We cannot locate or name them, let alone wrench them out or dissolve them away. In our impotence and humiliation we gradually re-alize only God can do this through his own mighty love and the grace he pours into us through his Spirit. Only his action can gradually dilate our hearts so that they are able to receive more and more of what he offers. Only his grace can pene-trate into our subconscious to reveal what is concealed there. Only it can in various ways impel upwards into consciousness what is hidden. Only his Spirit of Wisdom knows and can reveal to us in ways we can accept what must be made conscious and purified if we are to enter into full un-ion with the Trinity. By invading our depths, the Spirit is not violating our free will, for God knows our longing for him is such that at last we are prepared to let him have his way with us, no matter how much it hurts. "Oh God, my God, for you my heart yearns, like a dry, weary land without water" (Ps 63:1 ). God’s answer to our yearnings is to fill our Void with himself. This process is purgatorial. After death we pass outside time and space into eternity and infinity. If at this transition we are not already filled with God, our Void goes with us. No one has returned to tell us how God deals with it then, but traditionally the Church has taught the doctrines of purgatory (a cleansing process through which grace fits us to receive and behold God), and hell, where our Void remains just that forever. All those, known and unknown, who have become saints before they died, The Emptiness Within / 677 have had their Voids filled with God in this life. Some have left records of what their experience was like, and these indicate something at least of what they endured under the Spirit’s ruthless but perfectly loving ac-tion. St. John of the Cross’s testimony is probably the most authoritative, instructive, and detailed, After stressing that this state of purification is one of darkness and pure faith, he elaborates as below. "The Divine assails the soul in order to renew it and thus to make it Divine
and, stripping it of the habitual affections and attachments of the old man, to which it is very closely united, knit together and con-formed, destroys and consumes its spiritual substance, and absorbs it in deep and profound darkness. As a result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a cruel spiritual death, even as if it had been swallowed by a beast (as Jonas was)... (and) in this sepulcher of dark death it must needs abide until the spiritual resurrection which it hopes for. "... But what the sorrowful soul feels most in this condition is its clear perception, as it thinks, that God has abandoned it, and, in his ab-horrence of it, has flung it into darkness. It is a grave and piteous grief for it to believe that God has forsaken it .... For indeed when this pur-gative contemplation is most severe, the soul feels very keenly the shadow of death and the lamentations of death and the pains of hell, which consist in its feeling itself to be without God, and chastised and cast out, and unworthy of him
and it feels that he is wroth with it" (Dark Night II, Ch. VI, 1 & 2). The intensity and pain of this inner experience of the Void will vary according to the strength and depths of our sin-roots, the greatness of our love and longing for God, our perseverance and abandonment during the process, the degree of holiness (or wedding garment splendor and soar-ing freedom) God intends for each sufferer. This purpose of his is, of course, hidden in the mystery of his endless love, of which the Void it-self is but one aspect. If the Void is endured until the process of cleansing and freeing is completed, we have been through and emerged from our own personal purgatory. We are united with the Trinity in what has been called "trans-forming union" ("I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me") or "the spiritual marriage." "Alleluia! The reign of the Lord our God the Almighty has begun. Let us be glad and joyful and give praise to God, because this is the time for the marriage of the Lamb. His bride is ready, and she has been able Review for Religious, September-October 1990 to dress herself in dazzling white linen, because her linen is made of the good deeds of the saints" (Rv 19:7-8). Our Void has been emptied of self and filled with Christ. What are some of the hallmarks of this emptying and filling of the Void, in the here and now? Here is a commentary on a few of the main ones. 1. Helpless Waiting In the Void we have no alternative but to wait. I think of Mary be-tween the annunciation and the birth of Jesus. She knew she had con-ceived and that the Christ of God was growing and developing within her, but the process was and had to remain hidden and secret. What she did not know was exactly what and who the child would prove to be. God was at work in her, and she was co-operating pas-sively, through her fiat, by letting it happen and trusting him about the outcome of his labors. She was "full of grace" and so the whole pro-cess was under the Spirit’s complete control. Her personal contribution was to stay still and see what eventuated. Once the Void opens in us, we too, must wait while Christ is formed in us in his fullness. We continue to live and love as Christians, to serve God and neighbor in our work, personal relationships, duties and offer-ings, all aimed at renewing the temporal order and purifying our lives from self-love and self-seeking. We have been doing these things for a long time and had assumed we would be persevering in them in much the same way till death. We do persevere, but not "in the same way." For now the Void is there, and we begin to enter a new dimension and level of being. Gradually grace enlightens us so that we understand something of what still needs to be done in our inner depths to open us to God so he can penetrate further. At the same time we are shown how it is beyond our own capacity and resources to bring about such a self-exposure. A chasm of helplessness and poverty gapes within us. We realize that in our frozen immobility we are still able to act in one specific way. We can let God act, and stay passive ourselves. We can let him do the un-veiling and the choosing, for us and in us in his own way and time. Our role is to surrender and wait. And wait. And wait .... Waiting is a difficult art to learn and practice in our frenetically ac-tive and materialistic age. Neither our environment, education nor life aims and circumstances have prepared us for it. Though we try, we go The Emptiness Within on failing, because we cannot help interfering with God in spite of our best intentions. Humbled, we learn that only grace can enable us to learn this painful art. Under its influence, we slowly begin to relax and be still, and our Void gently opens wider in faith, trust, and hope. We realize how im-portant patience is, how lost we are if God does not help us, how he does not and cannot do so unless we deliberately exercise our free will and let him. Here the active and the passive merge. As we go on waiting, our helplessness deepens into a sense of im-potence. We are rather like quadriplegics who must depend on others for most of their needs. If they are not to be consumed with self-pity and rage, they must turn the necessary waiting that forms an indelible part of their lives into an art. We ourselves are not waiting for other people to help us, but for God. "I waited and waited for Yahweh. Now at last he has stooped to me and heard my cry for help" (Ps 40:1). 2. Longing for God Thirst for God consumes us in this state. "As a doe longs for run-ning streams, so longs my soul for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, the God of my life" (Ps 42:1-2). We are like "a dry, weary land without water" (Ps 63:1). When two lovers are parted, they long ardently and painfully for each other’s presence. In the Void we experience God as an absentee God, even as one who spurns us. We are hopelessly in love with him-- we would not have been invited by the Spirit into this level of being were it not so--yet he seems to be denying himself to us, to be teasing us cru-elly on purpose. We know he is there, believethis is so, and in some indescribable, formless way even experience him as indeed with us, enfolding us, and yet we never seem to reach or catch sight of him. In his absence we have faith he is present, but this is no comfort. It is like being alone in a completely dark room, yet having an intui-tive awareness of another Presence with us in the same enclosed space. We cannot see or touch him or even hear his breathing. Yet, shiveringly, we are completely certain Someone is with us. Perhaps because of this strange certainty, our longing that is never appeased intensifies until it possesses us. This absentee yet ever-present God and Lover we experience as capricious, so that our longing is a form of bitter suffering, and often we have to struggle against feelings of re- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 sentment and hopelessness. We challenge him, "It is you, God, who are my shelter. Why do you abandon me?" (Ps 43:2). There is no answer, no comfort. The silence is absolute, our hunger unappeased. In the end, we become dumb. Our patience in waiting has deepened as our longing intensified. We understand the time for consum-mation is not. yet, for we are not ready. We see that our longing is a grace, given to us so we will more readily submit to an even more radi-cal emptying out. We have not yet reached that total nakedness o.f un-selfed love which will indicate our readiness to be clothed in Christ. We have yet to long for this for his sake, his honor and glory, the fulfilling of his incarnational aims, instead of for our own self-gratifica-tion, and our pleasure in our own "holiness." At last we understand that our motives need radical purification, for they are laced together every-where by tenuous, yet tough strands of self-love and self-will. All holiness is God’s. Of ourselves we have none until we have put on Christ and can glory in his glory, and love with his love. Our longing is being purified till this is what we truly want above all else. 3. Loss of Meaning and Purpose Whether it is a cause or a result of the Void is hard to say, but one of the hallmarks of this state is loss of meaning and purpose on one level, and final regaining of it on another. The loss shows itself in our life situ-ation in doubts and disillusionments about our personal relationships, and our aims, activities, and ambitions to do with worldly matters. What preoccupied us and fed our drive in our work now seems taw-dry and not worth all this effort. We question its reality and its right to absorb so much of our energy, to demand and receive our concentrated attention. Has it the right to fasten us so securely to the daily grind when God’s insistent call to another level of being is there in the background all the time, distracting us? Of what use is "getting to the top"? Winning that big increase in salary? Being treated with respect and deference as the one who "has it all at her fingertips," the indispensable manager and organizer? There are times when we ardently want to "throw it all away" be-cause it seems so fatuous. Yet we know we cannot opt out, for we have a spouse to be faithful to, offspring to put through university, the mort-gage to pay off, obligations to associates to fulfill, our own lifelong am-bition to bring to its triumphant peak, a whole life pattern to round off harmoniously. Somehow we have to learn to live with our growing awareness of it all as a mindless treadmill "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The Emptiness Within In the face of the Void, it lacks reality, but, nonetheless, must be at-tended to. The true reality is an indefinable something located in our inner emp-tiness. It is drawing us till we want to let go of everything else and reck-lessly jump into that abyss to meet its embrace. At this point some people have a breakdown so that circumstances force them to take a long rest from their life-in-the world obligations and ambitions. Others keep on mechanically, but their heart is no longer in it, and they feel nothing but relief when someone else replaces them or the time comes for them to retire. This disillusionment and lack of drive registers as a humiliating disaster, yet it may well be a special grace open-ing the way for us to concentrate on "the one thing necessary." Alarmingly, the problem increases, rather than diminishes, once we free ourselves enough for such concentration. It is like a slap in the face to discover that we cannot find "mean-ing" in the things of God either, though we dumbly and idiotically know the meaning is there somewhere, expressed in ancient Babylonian hiero-glyphics no doubt! (And no one taught us at school or in the boardroom how to interpret these!) Faced with the Void and its implications, we find ourselves unable to understand God’s meaning and purpose in our own lives or those of others. His actions seem arbitrary and often absurd. In fact, a general senselessness defying the rational mind pervades the whole Void. We slither aimlessly about, till we remember the lesson about staying still and waiting. When we apply this perseveringly, we are able to accept that it is no wonder we cannot understand the divine meaning and purpose when it is infinite and eternal while we ourselves remain time and space im-prisoned. It is also perfect love and omniscient wisdom, while we are full of "lacklove" and distorted vision. During the years spent in the Void we slowly learn to rest in peace in God’s incomprehensible will, to trust its apparent irrationality, to have faith in its aim to express his beneficent care of us in and through our life circumstances even when they appear to be nothing but "a tale told by an idiot," to hope doggedly in a future blessed by fulfillment in bliss-ful union with him. Our concept of life’s meaning and purpose has changed radically as grace permeated those levels where our basic semi- and unconscious re-bellion and misapplied self-will lay hidden but potent. 4. The Darkness of Entombment Review for Religious, September-October 1990 In the Void we are in the process of dying with Christ and being bur-ied with him so that our life may be his life and we be hidden with him in God, our glory part of his (see Col 2:12, 3:2-4). When Jesus hung upon the cross, he was in a kind of void between earth and heaven: the vacant space left by total immolation for the sake of others
the blank of utmost loneliness and dereliction expressed through his cry of abandonment and desolation
the kenosis of the God- Man brought about by the complete surrender of his awareness of his God-ness, coupled with his immersion in his representative Man-ness--his slav-ery as sin-taker for us when he himself was sinless. In various degrees and ways we, his lovers and beloveds, are invited by him to enter into his crucifixion and kenosis with him so we may even-tually share his resurrection glory. We have to die to self by hanging there with and in him through the sufferings--physical, mental, psycho-logical, emotional, and spiritual that God permits to come to us, and that our own and others’ sins and sinfulness bring upon us. After the crucifixion comes the interlude of the entombment before the resurrection can occur. The sense of entombment is an essential as-pect of the Void. If we think of Jesus’ corpse lying still,, cold, and alone on the stone slab, we shall understand some of the basic elements of the spiritual state of those called to die with him in order to rise with him. There is the darkness of this stone cavern behind its stone door. No chink of light anywhere. It makes us feel our intellect has been blinded and we shall never understand anything about God again. Though we carry on with our daily lives more or less satisfactorily, we suffer a kind of sense-deprivation of the spirit, (Only those who have experienced this state of being will find meaning in this paradox.) One form of torture of prisoners is to lock them into a pitch dark cell where there is complete sense deprivation so that time ceases to have meaning, as does everything else. Entombed with Jesus, we are in a similar state because all the satis-factions and enjoyments that come to a human being through his senses of hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste no longer have power either to distract or fulfill us. We have become one-purposed in our longing for God, and the senses cannot tempt us away from it with their promise of surface, ephemeral delights. Since we have renounced the lesser good for the greater, the Spirit obliges by paradoxically taking away their irrelevant enticements--in a spiritual sense. To express it otherwise, our senses and our bodies and The Emptiness Within/ all our material being continue to function adequately for the purposes of everyday life. However, in relation to the spiritual life, we have be-come numb and dumb to their joys, attractions and any urge to seek deep meaning and fulfillment through them. We have been brought to that State where we float in the Void of blind faith that none of our senses can affirm as a reality. We gaze upon God without seeing him. We hear his Word without understanding it. We taste his supportive love without any sweetness or consolation--as if our taste buds had been anesthetized. He is weaning us from all such reassurances by imprisoning us in this Void of sense deprivation. He means us to learn how to enter, unencum-bered, into the central mystery of his Being, spirit to Spirit. He has led us into the depths of the Night of Faith. In it, usually for years after painful years, we learn to lie down with the dead Jesus in the tomb. We learn to lie there patiently and wait in our nakedness. We learn what being still really means as we contemplate the Savior’s unbreathing body--not with bodily eyes, but with spiritual ones of unquestioning faith and a love stripped of self-seeking. We are seeds fallen into the ground and undergoing the hidden meta-morphosis from which we shall at last emerge, essentially changed per-sons, into spiritual resurrection. 5. Loneliness The inner Void is a crucifyingly lonely space of nothingness. We shall probably find there is no one who can understand our state, except one who is also in it, or one who has endured it and emerged. The one in it may be able to offer sympathy and sharing. The one emerged can give reassurance, understanding, encouragement, guidance, support, and hope for the future. This is so only if she or he has some understanding of what the lonely one is passing through or has emerged from. Such un-derstanding is rare. The Void can have many guises, including those of mental, emo-tional, or physical breakdown. It is often mingled with factors associ-ated with these. It adapts itself to whatever needs to be purified in the particular sufferer, since it is always under the control of the Spirit. It is not easy, and almost impossible, to discover a fellow sufferer who is enduring the same searching trial in the same ways. A qualified, learned, compassionate spiritual guide who has had both personal experience of the Void and of supporting others immersed in it is a very special blessing from God--one that is seldom given. An es-sential part of learning to live at peace in the Void’s faith dimension is Review for Religious, September-October 1990 that of being able to trust oneself blindly to the hidden guidance and con-trol of the Spirit coming directly instead of through an intermediary. The purification process includes enduring it alone with God--and an absen-tee God at that. The only sure and never-failing companion is Jesus in his passion, especially in Gethsemane and in his cry of dereliction on the cross. We can find here, in union with him, the strength and purpose to endure, to hang helpless and in agony in absurdity, giving oneself up out of love for his redemptive work, staying with, and in him gladly, for love of him, sharing his loneliness and comforting his desolation. This is anything but mere sentimentality, as anyone who has really done it knows. It is a genuine, self-obliterating response of "Yes" to his questions, "Will you drink of the cup I must drink of? . . . Will you watch one hour with me? . . . Will you take up your cross and follow ¯ me? . . . Will you give yourself with me for others? . . . Will you love my Father’s will wholeheartedly as I do to the end? . . . Will you fol-low me wherever I lead? . . . Will you go down into the darkness and die with me and then wait with me in my tomb till resurrection morning comes? . . . Will you dare Sheol with me? o . ." If we agree to share his loneliness, we shall indeed be lonely, and in that desolation share the essential loneliness of all abandoned, help-less, despised, outcast, comfortless human beings whom he represented on the cross, as well as those lost in the black loneliness of habitual, sev-ering sin, or those immured in purgatory in this life or the next. We may have friends who love and try to comfort us, but this will do little to ease what is a loneliness of our very essence crying out for God. Only if they have been through it themselves will they be able to apply balm. In the ultimate there is only one who can fill the Void of loneliness with genuine fulfillment and it is God himself. He is busy preparing in us a place fit to receive him. All we can do is wait in faith, hope, and love that feel like unbelief, despair, and a numb indifference that will never be able to love again. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!" 6. Awareness of Sin The Void strips away inessentials, leaving the emptiness of nothing to cling to but God--and in.bare, stubborn faith. Because the motes in our own eyes (our absorption in the secondar-ies of created things instead of the one primary necessity of God) have The Emptiness Within now been removed, at least partly, by grace, we see much better. One of the things we see with our new sight and in startling clarity is the re-ality of sin. Not so much actual sins--these are fairly obvious to discern and we have long ago trained ourselves to watch and guard against them in our own lives. No--what we now see with the eyes of our spirit enlightened by the Spirit is innate sinfulness. We become aware of its substratum in ourselves (those tangled "roots" I mentioned earlier), and in other hu-man beings we have to do with. We helplessly observe it issuing from us and them in all kinds of meannesses, envies, prevarications, self-delusions, self-loves, rationalizations. Squirming and humiliated, we face, with the help of grace, that, "This is me . . . that is the person I loved and revered so much .... " If we do not take care, this pitiless insight will cause discouragement and fear in ourselves, and a judg-mental, condemnatory, disillusioned attitude towards others--even cyni-cism. The taste of this racial and personal basic sinfulness is bitter indeed. We want to spit it out and rush to grab something, sweet to gourmandize on and hide that vile flavor. We have been living all the time with a des-picable traitor within us, and till now we have never even glimpsed him. His cronies are present in all other members of the human race, and from them emanate the sorrows, sins, evils and disasters of living on this planet that has been tipped off its axis. Some of the penitential psalms now have for us as never before a co-gent, humbling, and intensely personal message. Paraphrasing a little, we cry with St. Paul, "Who will rescue me from this enemy within?" and reply with him, "Nothing else but the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." We know now that we really do need a personal Savior, that we would be lost without Jesus, that an essential part of our Void experi-ence is acknowledging our personal, basic sinfulness for which the only cure is the grace that Jesus gives. We cry, "Lord, you came to save me-- because I needed you so much. I need you even more now you have shown me the truth about myself. Only show me what you want of me, and I will do it. I will do anything at all for you, my Lord and my Sav-ior, because you have rescued me in my great need." This time we really mean it, because we are so much closer to Truth itself. We have been given the grace of a genuine horror of sin because of what it did to Jesus, and still does to him suffering in his members. We long to help heal the wound of sin in his Body. We offer our per- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 sonal wound of sin to him, humbly pleading for the grace of healing. As never before we understand the cleansing power and action of grace, sac-ramentally and otherwise. We hunger for it, seek it, open ourselves wide to receive it. We become beggars for it. We learn what spiritual poverty really means, and again lie down with Jesus in the tomb, content to be naked, trusting in his Body and Blood to heal us of our grievous wound. We are learning what it means to be dead to self and alive to Christ and his members. In the inner Void the self becomes so tiny in the Allness of God. We do not lose our individuality, but we long for it to be absorbed in Christ, so that we become exactly that aspect of his extended incarnation and continuous passion destined for us by the Father. We pray for deliverance from all evil--for ourselves, and for every other human being. We pray fervently, for at last we have "seen" what naked sin and evil are, and what they bring about--the death of the Loved One. 7. We enter a state of Heroic Abandonment and Endurance. Our Void has opened up enough for us to receive the grace we must have to enable us to lie down in the Lord in a state of advanced inner stillness, trust, and hope. The Void’s darkness begins to take on the faint glow of incipient dawn, the intense silence is broken by the first tenta-tive twitterings of birds as something soundlessly rolls away our tomb’s stone door. The sense of being stifled eases and we draw deep breaths of sweet, cold, dew-drenched air. There is deep within us an awareness of wounds having been healed, of a terrifying emptiness having been filled with Someone, of Love himself annihilating loneliness forever, of a still, si-lent, crystalline joy, and blessedness welling up from deep, deep down, crying in exultation, "Abba! Alleluia! Amen!" Then we see a Person is walking like a king towards the light grow-ing and glowing every second in the tomb’s open doorway. It is as if the light emanates from him, as if he is The Light. Wondering and worship-ping, we rise from our stone slab, gather about us the new white gar-ment we find there and follow the Light into the new day. There is no void of inner emptiness anymore. Christ risen and triumphant fills it with himself. Shame: A Barometer of Faith Clyde A. Bonar Father Clyde A. Bonar is a priest of the diocese of Orlando, Florida. He holds ad-vanced degrees in formative spirituality from Duquesne University and in political science from George Washington University. He has served as parochial vicar and administrator of various parishes. His address is St. Joseph of the Forest Catholic Church
Silver Springs, Florida 32688. Aristotle called shame "a feeling or emotion .... a kind of fear of dis-grace."~ Interestingly, what one values and what one distains can pro-vide a source for these feelings of disgrace. This allows shame to become a barometer of faith. For the faithfilled person, lapses in living one’s faith, for example, can be causes for shame. Conversely, one who scorns religion may find shameful any personal exhibition of faith in an Eter-nal Being. In this paper I shall examine the generic core of "shame" and re-late the experiences of shame in the life of Francis of Assisi (ca. 1182- 1226). Francis’ well-known incidents with the lepers caused that saint feelings of shame. Notably, why Francis felt shame about the lepers dif-fered in the earlier and the later parts of his life. Because of that, Fran-cis becomes illustrative of how shame can be a barometer of one’s faith. On Shame The Generic Core The core of the shame experience is a sense of exposure and visibil-ity. 2 First, shame is intimately linked to the need to cover that which might unwantedly be exposed. Experiences of shame involve the expo-sure of the peculiarly sensitive, intimate, and vulnerable aspects of the self.3 Something is to be hidden, dodged, or covered up
even, or per- 687 61~1~ / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 haps especially, from oneself. Feelings of shame included "I am weak" and "I am inadequate." The particularities of what must be covered to prevent exposure may vary widely and are individually determinate. For example, while a physical deformity caused Philip in Of Human Bondage4 to feel shame when his clubfoot was exposed, a deeper shame burned "in secret" as Dimmes-dale in Scarlet Letter saw Hester Prynne bear in public the blame for their joint carnal indiscretion .5 Socrates warns of the disgraceful shame of ap-pearing inept in the presence "of some really wise man.’ ,6 Personally, for example, I have felt shame for the way I treated a traveling compan-ion during a three-day trip. Second, there is an intimate connection between shame and visibil-ity. 7 When Yahweh called to Adam after he and Eve had eaten the for-bidden fruit, Adam said: "Because I was naked . . . I hid" (Gn 3:11). In his phenomenology of shame, Jean-Paul Sartre claims that shame arises from the look of the Other. "Shame... is the recognition of the fact that I am indeed that object which the Other is looking at and judg-ing." 8 When another looks at him, Sartre comments: What I apprehend immediately.., is that I am vulnerable, that I have a body which can be hurt, that I occupy a place and that I cannot in any case escape from the space in which I am without defense--in short, that I am seen.9 Everyday expressions repeat this connection between visibility and shame. We speak of being "shamefaced" or "hiding my face in shame" when others know our failures, inadequacies, or losses of con-trol. A Happy Blush Two other aspects of shame need to be kept in mind as we proceed: that the feeling of shame comes unexpected. That first and physiologi-cal manifestation of shame, the blush, highlights the involuntary and sud-den characteristic of shame. Helen Lynd is perceptive on this aspect of shame: Shame interrupts any unquestioning, unaware sense of oneself .... More than other emotions, shame involves a quality of the unexpected: if in any way we feel it coming we are powerless to avert it .... What-ever part voluntary action may have in the experience of shame is swal-lowed up in the sense of something that overwhelms us .... We are taken by surprise, caught off guard, or off base, caught unawares, made a fool of. ~0 Shame / 689 In his illustration of the voyeur at the keyhole, Jean-Paul Sartre confirms the "immediate shudder" of being unexpectedly caught: "All of a sud-den I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone is looking at me!’’~ Importantly, this self-consciousness contains a revealing capacity. Again, it is Sartre who captures this: "Shame is by nature recognition. I recognize that I am as the Other sees me." ~2 Shame carries the weight of "I cannot have done this. But I have done it and cannot undo it, be-cause this is 1.’’13 The thing that is exposed is what I am. To "recognize" one’s self is to be open to reformation, and there is the delight. Adrian van Kaam writes that "reformation implies a re-appraisal of formative and deformative dispositions, judgments, memo-ries, imaginations, and anticipations." ~4 If experiences of shame can be fully faced, if we allow ourselves to realize their import, they can inform the self and become a revelation of one’s self. The question is exactly what personal disposition is revealed by the quick reddening of the blush, the sudden feeling of shame, this which involuntarily and unexpectedly just happens. Writing back in 1839 on The Physiology or Mechanism of Blushing, Thomas Burgess reported that the blush reflects "the various internal emotions of the moral feel-ings [so that one could] know whenever we transgressed or violated those rules which should be held sacred." He continued to point out that, given this "spiritual" nature of the "blush," it is "solely a moral stimulus that will excite a true blush.’’15 That is~ it is our value system that is re-vealed by shame. For example, if I hold dispositions mostly congenial with the particular individual God designed me to be, a blush will reveal that there are also some uncongenial and not-reformed dispositions. Or, by contrast, if my fundamental orientation is that talk of God is mean-ingless I may blush at some scruples within my disposition constellation that would be more in agreement with faith in an Eternal Being. Among The Lepers The immediate question is what should not be exposed, what should be covered from visibility. Francis’ experience with the lepers proves in-structive. In his "Testament" he wrote: The Lord granted to me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance in this way: While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweet-ness of soul and body.~6 This too brief statement includes all the elements of experiences of 690 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 shame. Fallen Nature of Humanity By his words "While I was in sin" Francis refers to his youthful years. In his parents’ home he enjoyed the easy life his successful father could provide. He was a most likable lad, clever, charming, smooth-talking, and insanely generous. Francis had a gift for business and seemed born to be a merchant like his father. The son enjoyed dressing with a studied elegance and entertaining at a good inn with the best of everything. Friends flocked around Francis when he appeared and played the troubadour with his Provencal songs. 17 One would say that Francis was reflecting the fallen nature of hu-manity common since the first sin of Adam, living in ignorance of the true transcendent nature of humanity. ~8 Caught in the competitive trade of the cloth merchant, his father taught Francis to live by that competi-tion. Escape in the exigencies and the excitement of being the business-man became a way of life, with questions of transcendence relegated to minor, occasional thoughts. Responsibility for being a faithfilled Chris-tian example for others was evaded, for the other was also typically the customer, who was to be sold something even if that meant a little de-ception and an excess of charm. Immersion in the sensual joys of life was a natural corollary in a society of, according to Pope Innocent III, "obscene songs, dances, and fornications." 19 Still, why was Francis affected by the lepers as he was? Other youths, his peers in cultural refinement and the easy life, would merely hold their noses when they smelled the horrible stench of the lazaretto where the lepers were confined, and unashamedly turn their horses a dif-ferent direction. But for Francis the human misery breathing death right into his face was incredibly disagreeable. And, the young clothier would experience shame when a wretched beggar would intrude.2° A clue to Francis at this early point in his life, while he was still "in sin," lies, I opine, in the phenomenology of shame. As we saw above, shame is an experience of the whole self: in moments of shameful expo-sure it is the self that stands revealed.2~ Existentialists state this force-fully: in the consciousness of shame, there is "a shameful apprehension of something and this something is me. I am ashamed of what I am .... Through shame I have discovered an aspect of my being."22 The self that was standing revealed for Francis’was, in the terms of Adrian van Kaam, his foundational life form. The image of God deep within Francis was being exposed. Thomas Burgess, cited above, might say it was the internal moral feelings of Francis which were being ex- posed. As early as twelve years old Francis was struck in some special way by the elevation of the consecrated host during Mass. In the mud-dle of being dominated by his sensual and functional dimensions and his sociohistorical situations, the inchoate thunderbolt of the transcendent was there. But within the flamboyance and egotism of the sensuous and romantic party giver he appeared to be, Francis would feel shame when his more basic faith in God would protrude. His lifestyle hid from visi-bility the transcendent, as he took greater pleasure in identifying him-self as a prince of the world and knight of Assisi. As God’s chosen who would become God’s anointed, the young Francis would feel shame where others had no such self-consciousness. According to our paradigm of shame, what Francis’s apparent life form, or way of being in his environment, sought to cover during these early years of his life was his foundational life form. When his "vul-nerability" or "inadequacy" was exposed, that is, his sensitivity to the sufferings of lepers and beggars, he felt shame at the "flaw," which was his deeper felt love of God, becoming visible through the cover of how he presented himself to others. Attuned to His God Francis was twenty-four when he stood in front of the episcopal pal-ace at Santa Maria Maggiore and stripped off his clothes in hot haste and threw them at his father’s feet. God had seized him: the sinner faded to give way to the saint. But watching his second naked birth, the crowd fell silent, for this "erstwhile dandy" was seen to be wearing a hair shirt. "It was a hideous penitential device of horsehair for killing the instinct of sensuality and chastising the flesh day and night."23 The peni-tential hair shirt was a symbol for what had been happening for some time in Francis--the transformation from dissonance to consonance with the Eternal, a change from running away from God to running toward God. For our present emphasis, we might remember the words of Francis: "Bernardone is no longer my father," but Our Father who art in heaven. The words indicated his change. For Francis, shame is no longer from having love of God exposed within a life lived as a merchant, but henceforth the shame was in having any failure to love God exposed within a life of excited faith. Now, when Francis embraced the leper, as we quoted above in the words of Francis, "that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul." The contrast is sharp between the experiences of shame for Francis before and after his transformation. Upon encountering the so distaste- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 ful leper, "He slipped off his horse and ran to kiss the man .... Filled with wonder and joy, he began devoutly to sing God’s praises." He be-gan to render humble service to the lepers and "with great compassion kissed their hands and their mouths." Further, the lover of complete humility went to the lepers and lived with them. He washed their feet, bandaged their ulcers, drew the pus from their wounds and washed out the diseased matter
he even kissed their ulcer-ous wounds out of his remarkable devotion.24 Francis took the bold step of overcoming the conventional perception of what is attractive and what is repulsive by reaching out to love what re-pelled him. And the change in the source of shame was seen in other aspects of his life. When his pre-transformation apparent life form had dominated, Francis’s selfish pride would tell him to feel deep humiliat
Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus