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Posted by on Sep 5, 2007

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

Mother Teresa 1979

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

The Time cover story was not really news to me. I had read about Mother Teresa’s time of spiritual dryness in My Life With the Saints, by Fr. James Martin, S.J. Like most people, I never suspected that Mother Teresa’s spiritual silence and emptiness had lasted so long.

In the secular science of the soul – psychology – the current ideal of human development is one of balance. There is supposed to be an apportioning of time and energy for your internal, personal, and professional life. We are supposed to pay attention to our own personal space, our spouses, families, colleagues, communities, and the environment.

Like most ideals, it is unattainable. If we could achieve a balance in all of these relationships, we would implode under the disappearance of our own uniquely unbalanced personalities. If personal fulfillment and psychological health is not balance, it would seem that some portion of our efforts should be focused on many of these areas. What happens if your life is comprised only of ministry?

Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) led a life beyond balance. She had no secular career, no family, no apparent hobbies. She had an all consuming ministry to those completely abandoned by society. Founding and leading a religious order and expanding the work of the Missionaries of Charity, left little time for sleep, let alone rest and relaxation.

Mother Teresa’s hyper-focus and zeal appears to go against most of the consensus about the development of the spiritual life. Spiritual directors and teachers prescribe adequate sleep, relaxation, and attention to personal and community relationships. The Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 530) comes to mind, since it has been the de facto standard in monastic living. There is a large body of Christian literature, from the earliest times, advising prudence and temperance in the spiritual life.

St. Ignatius Loyola referred to dark periods, when there is little feeling of the presence of God, as periods of desolation or aridity. Early hermits in the Egyptian desert referred to this state as the “noonday devil.”

My first thought was that Mother Teresa’s lack of prudence and temperance had gotten the better of her. Yet, how could I make such an observation without knowing Mother Teresa? So, I decided to talk with someone whose home in Madras Mother Teresa had visited several times. Paul D’Souza is an old friend of ours who met her when he was 3 years old. What struck Paul was that, although the house was full, she always first sought him out and the other small children, before paying attention to any one else. Paul has had his own thoughts on harmony and balance for some time. As a management consultant and healer, Paul has his own theory of Beyond Balance.

When I asked him what he thought might have been the cause of Mother Teresa’s very long dark night of the soul, the reply was unusually sharp for someone with a master’s degree in social work. Paul remembered that Mother Teresa continually reminded her Missionaries that the face of Christ was to be found in every child, in every human person. The arduous work of caring for disabled orphans is a direct service to Christ. “What about balance?” I asked. In tones of not so patient exasperation, Paul said that in his study of leaders, “No one whoever accomplished anything was balanced.” When I pressed him on Mother Teresa as a person, he told me to talk with his mother who had met Mother Teresa several times.

I had a pleasant talk with Christine D’Souza, who is also an old friend. (Our children call her Grandma Christine.) She and her late husband, John, met Mother Teresa in 1968 in Madras, now known as Chenai. As many have recounted elsewhere, Mother Teresa was not demanding or seemingly driven. According to Mrs. D’Souza, she normally sat quietly and spoke in a soft voice while looking at her hands. Mother Teresa “put her cards on the table,” according to Mrs. D’Souza, and allowed her listeners “to pick up what ones they would,” without asking them to make any choice. Mrs. D’Souza recalls, “She had such humility, but with a strength and dignity. She reminded me of the beatitude, ‘Blessed are the meek.'” The only time Mrs. D’Souza recalls her making a request was when they first met and Mother Teresa asked her directly if she and the lay co-workers could meet at the D’Souza’s home.

When I asked Mrs. D’Souza what she thought about Mother Teresa’s decades of spiritual dryness, she responded with the wisdom of age and grace. Mrs. D’Souza said that she couldn’t speak for anyone else. She recounted that in her youth she experienced a closeness to Christ but that this emotional awareness and feeling waned over time. This absence did not keep her from raising a family, being a music educator, and engaging in many other activities in a spirit of faith.

Mrs. D’Souza recalled a few lines of a poem in a pamphlet her husband had given her:

God gives us love.

Something to love He lends to us.

Love reaches ripeness,

and of that on which it throve,

Love is left alone.

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Posted by on Aug 29, 2007

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

St. Augustine: The Once and Future Giant

 

St. Augustine of Hippo by Sandro Botticelli

August 28th. is the feast day of Aurelius Augustinus Bishop of Hippo.

St. Augustine (354 to 430) was one of my boyhood heroes. I read Louis de Wohl’s biography of the saint, The Restless Flame. As a German writer in the 1920’s and 1930’s, de Wohl was immensely successful as a writer of thrillers and he brought this sense of action to his religious historical novels written in English after World War II. I was introduced to Augustine as a man of great learning and action, a man who moved mountains and changed the course of oceans of thought and action.

Later, when I read his Confessions and the City of God in Latin, I met a more complex man, very much at odds with mid-twentieth century psychology. Yes, Augustine was a giant of Western thought, but he was also a major force for movements and institutions that had been blown apart with the end of the modern era when World War II left Christendom in smoke and ashes.

The alliance of empire and church, the oneness of truth that allowed for state violence to save those in rebellious error, the primacy of celibacy, and the utterly fallen nature of humans conceived in original sin are significant positions which post-modern thinkers judge to have been more harmful than helpful.

The development of history as a critical discipline in the 19th century blossomed in the 20th with the tools of science, linguistics, and anthropology. The political, human, and moral catastrophes of saturation bombing, genocide, and nuclear weapons have led to a profound soul searching about what brought us to this point. Needless to say, many of Augustine’s positions came under fire by revisionists.

John J. O’Donnell, in Augustine: A New Biography, presents Augustine as a man of his time, with more warts and wrinkles than a halo. The dreaded heresies Augustine defeated, Donatism and Pelagianism, come in for a revisionist appraisal of their good points. David Hunter, in his review of O’Donnell’s book in America magazine, takes the author to task.

“This Augustine will surprise many readers. The following section headings, although taken from a single chapter, characterize the tone that prevails throughout the whole book: “Augustine the Self-Promoter,” “Augustine the Social Climber,” “Augustine the Troublemaker.” O’Donnell’s Augustine never seems to have outgrown his youthful aggressions and ambitions: “When writing about his first book in the Confessions, he reproached himself for his worldly ambition, even as, with the Confessions, he was carrying out an ecclesiastical version of the same social climbing.” O’Donnell duly documents Augustine’s later associations with powerful Roman generals as evidence of his subject’s lifelong attraction to power.”

O’Donnell has tremendous crediblity as the author of a three volume commentary on the Confessions of St. Augustine. However, his critics excoriate his portrayal of Augustine as less than saintly.

St. Augustine will rise again after this bout of historical criticism because the positive aspects of his legacy, his passionate devotion to Christ, his attempts to build a theology on scripture, the constitution of the human being as being body and soul, and the power of love, will, and memory will all come to the fore once again. From time to time St. Augustine may suffer from our ambivalence, but he is the pivotal ancestor that believers and non-believers in the post-modern world cannot deny.

Take a look at O’Donnell’s profile on the Georgetown University website and select some of the reviews. It’s an eye opener.

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Posted by on Aug 13, 2007

Edith Stein – A Woman For All Seasons

August 9 is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was not only a Carmelite nun who went to her death at Auschwitz but also one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century, Edith Stein.

The broad outlines of her life are well known. The cherished youngest child of a Jewish family, the brilliant atheist student of Edmund Husserl converts to the Catholic faith after reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. She tries unsuccessfully to get an audience with the Pope in order to encourage him to issue an encyclical denouncing anti-Semitism. Edith Stein joins the Carmelites and becomes Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross as the Third Reich begins its restrictions on German Jews. Her order tries to protect her by moving her to the Netherlands. She is once again in danger after that fall of the country to Germany. The Dutch bishops issue a statement denouncing Nazi anti-Semitism. In response the Nazis round up Catholic Jews including Edith Stein and send them to Auschwitz where she was gassed to death within a week of arrival.

Edith Stein resonates deeply within the major human questions facing faith and society today. Her life and work dealt with the foundations of human self-awareness, the ability to know, and empathy. Relations between Christians and Jews, the identity of Jewish Christians, the response of the Catholic Church to the holocaust were personal issues for Edith Stein and are major social and religious challenges today.

At the turn of the century, while Freud was trying to understand neurosis in women, Edith Stein was among a vanguard of scholars interested in the nature of human understanding and consciousness. Today we would say that she was interested in neuroscience and psychiatry. Psychology was still a sub-discipline of philosophy. This focus on the nature of experience and awareness is called the study of phenomenology. One of her major contributions was the notion that we become aware of ourselves by experiencing the awareness and feelings of others. This is, of course, a great oversimplification. However, she rescued the ego from an encapsulated shell and posited that our sense of identity and awareness is the product of the experience of the other. The “I” is not something I create but is created in the process of interaction based on feeling what the other feels, knows, and senses.

The term in German is broader than our sense of empathy. It is an experience of oneness or solidarity, we might say. This solidarity with her Jewish identity did not leave Edith Stein and it was her wish that her baptism would not spare her from the fate of her fellow Jews. Her courage derived from a faith in the cross and hope in the resurrection for all people even those who put her and her family to death. The realization of the self in selfless service – from philosophy to a life that might have been called tragic if it had not been suffused with so much meaning.

If you have an interest in philosophy, I recommend Marianne Sawicki, Ph.D.’s Personal Connections: The Phenomenology of Edith Stein.

American Catholic has an easy to read summary St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

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Posted by on Aug 3, 2007

Theology in Harry Potter?

So how can I follow posts on heavy topics such as the meaning of human suffering (Richard Rohr, OFM) and the consciousness of God in all things (Ignatius of Loyola) with Harry Potter? A lot of Christians would say the whole series is anti-Christian, pro-witchcraft, and neo-pagan, although some naysayers have had a change of heart. When we look at the basic themes, there is a similarity. Rohr’s focus on the discovery of God “at the bottom,” when everything has gone wrong, finds its echo in the story. The presence and activity of God in our daily lives, as taught by Ignatius Loyola, and our being led by the Spirit, finds an analog here as well.

Lev Grossman in his July 21, 2007 Time Magazine pre-publication review of the seventh and final volume of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, summarizes the “cosmology of the Potterverse”.

Though thematically speaking it’s a sidelight, it’s one of the key differences between Rowling and her great literary forebears. Rowling has been careful to build Harry up from boy to man, student to leader, but she has been equally attentive to the task of breaking Dumbledore down, from a divine father-figure to a mere human. Her insistence on this point is a reflection of the cosmology of the Potterverse: there are no higher powers in residence there. The attic and the basement are empty. There may be an afterlife, and ghosts, but there is certainly no God, and no devil. There are also no immortal, all-wise elves, as in Tolkien, nor are there any mystical Maiar, which is what Gandalf was (what, you thought he was human? Genealogically speaking, he’s closer to a balrog than he is to a man.) There is certainly no benevolent, paternal Aslan to turn up late in the book and fight the Big Bad. The essential problem in Rowling’s books is how to love in the face of death, and her characters must arrive at the solution all on their own, hand-to-hand, at street level, with bleeding knuckles and gritted teeth, and then sweep up the rubble afterwards.

According to Grossman, there is no God in the universe of Harry Potter. To quote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Well that about wraps it up for God.” Or does it?

Earlier in his review, Grossman reviews the primary theme of the series:

Deathly Hallows is of course not merely the tying up of plot-threads, it’s the final iteration of Rowling’s abiding thematic concern: the overwhelming importance of continuing to love in the face of death. On this point, at least, we’re not waiting for a new wrinkle. Dumbledore has been schooling us on this subject since Goblet of Fire, if not longer — when in doubt Rowling tends to err on the side of quashing ambiguity, both telling and showing when one would probably do. So we have known for a while that Voldemort cannot love, that he has been spiritually ruined by his parents’ deaths, and he will kill anyone to stave off his own death. Harry, though also an orphan, has found the courage to love. “Do not pity the dead, Harry,” a wise man tells Harry in Deathly Hallows. “Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

Grossman does not give the ending – or even much of the story – away. So after reading his review, my hopes for a theology of Harry Potter appeared to meet the fate of most of my bright ideas. Nevertheless, I mentioned it to my in house Potter expert, my 14 year old Rosie. Her answer was prefaced by that sort of perplexed look she inherited from her mother prior to asking me to get down – very carefully – from my cloud. Her question was obvious. “How can there be a theology if there is no God in the series?”

Although my intellectual backhand has never been very good, I can sometimes get it to return the ball over the net. “Well,” I said, trying to sound neither too defensive nor too academically pompous “some German theologians published a paper on the theology of Harry Potter some years ago, so…” The flash in her eyes indicated that I was getting into the forbidden “lecture zone,” so I knew I had 5 milliseconds to change the topic before I got the dreaded wrinkling of the eyebrows, signifying an impending system lockout heralded by the morning comics coming up to somehow mask the rolling of the eyes that burned through the newsprint anyway.

Deciding that a diplomatic back channel through a third party might give me a chance to make my argument, I pivoted by gaze to my wife Kathy, whose eyes came up from her morning toast with her best “to the rescue” look of quizicality. I made my case.

In “Harry Potter and the Art of Theology 2” Wandinger, Drexler, and Peter (2005) present their analysis of an implicit theology.

J. K. Rowling’s novels are read as containing an implicit theology that is essentially Christian. We argue this case here for a theology of sacrifice and the novels’ allusion to a Messianic calling of their main character.

I pointed out that the basic themes were all there, even if they were buried beneath the post-modern, post-Christian rubble of a 21st century deconstructed worldview.

A few days later, after we had read the final book, I sat down at the table and Rosie said, “Do you always look so smug when you are right?” She continued “a sacrifice — he goes willingly to save others – a resurrection of sorts.” Flabbergasted and delighted, the only thing that I could think to say was the obvious. “I inherited it from my children.”

Post Script:

Behold A Phoenix, a blog about the Christian values in the Harry Potter series takes on Grossman’s atheistic interpretation and counters it with Rowling’s views as quoted in a Vancouver interview. The author declares that she is a Christian and that her admission would probably be more disturbing to the Christian right than to athiests. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows appears to reflect very central Christian themes of faith, love, and hope in the face of death and trust in the resurrection. Will Rowling be the new C.S. Lewis?

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Posted by on Jul 30, 2007

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

The Spiritual Theology of St. Ignatius Loyola

“Man is created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul… Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.” – The Spiritual Exercises

 

Ignatius Loyola, by Francisco Zurbaran

 

July 31 is the feast day of one of the most influential people in the history of Christianity, Inigo de Loyola. Born in 1491, he was baptized Inigo and, almost 40 years later, added Ignacio. According to Hugo Rahner, S.J. in Ignatius the Theologian, the choice of the name Ignatius was based on Inigo’s understanding of the Bishop and martyr of Antioch as a model of selfless love and an advocate for the apostolic teaching authority. A substantial library has developed over five centuries about his conversion, spiritual teaching, and prudent practicality. Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus, a religious order of men also known as the Jesuits. As one of the Catholic Church’s largest and most influential orders, the Society has spread Ignatian influence throughout Christianity in its world wide network of schools and missions.

Although he was born on the eve of the Renaissance and the modern era, Ignatius was a product of the late Middle Ages. Surprisingly, his approach to the following of Christ was to propel Catholic Christianity into an amazing revival and laid the foundations for many Protestants and Catholics to confront the secular challenges of the Post Modern era.

Examination of Consciousness

Perhaps the best way to begin to understand the life and legacy of Ignatius Loyola is his distinctive method of prayer – his way of relating to God – the Examen.

It is not an examination of conscience in the sense of finding fault with oneself. Rather it is a method of heightening one’s consciousness about the ways we encounter God and freeing ourselves to move more deeply and consciously into that encounter.

The key themes of Ignatian spirituality are contained in The Examen: (1) finding God in all things, (2) “indifference”- in terms of a Zen-like detachment and trusting openness, (3) discernment – am I truly being led by the Spirit and, if so, where? (4) being “actively available” to serve God in others, to be a “contemplative in action.”

The Examen consists of five points, moments, or movements of the soul, mind, and heart:

1. Recall that you are in the Presence of God.

Much is said about Ignatius’ military background as a young minor Spanish noble and the orderly mentality he is supposed to have brought to the founding and development of the Society of Jesus. As an experienced man who came to conversion after a serious battle injury, however, Ignatius, in his path as a pilgrim to the Holy Land and to life, became more and more imbued with the overwhelming presence of God.

2. Look at your day with Gratitude.

The God of Ignatius is a loving God of gifts. God is not an aloof military officer or stern judge. In the imagination of Ignatius, God is somewhat analogous to a liege lord in the medieval sense, but without the human limitations. All that is good and wondrous about us and around us is only a veiled manifestation of the overflowing of that Ultimate Goodness. The response to this goodness is a profound gratitude.

3. Ask for help from the Holy Spirit

In keeping with ancient Christian tradition and belief, all true knowledge of God, and even faith, is the work of the Holy Spirit. What nature hints at, the Spirit reveals. Ignatius’ trust in God is shown in terms of his openness to the Spirit which drives out all fear.

4. Review your Day

The Examen was recommended as a midday activity, although it can be done a second time at the end of the day. The review is not an mental or written checklist. The aim is to be open to what the Spirit reveals about the occurrences of our daily lives and their deeper meaning. If you are in the process of reforming your life, the awareness may focus on basic do’s and don’ts of avoiding sin and acting out of love alone. For those further along the path, the challenge is more subtle. What have I seen? What have I heard? What have I touched? What did I miss? What did I encounter?

5. Reconcile and Resolve

This an act of renewed consciousness. If I messed up, now is the time to understand why and to make amends. Maybe an apology is in order. Maybe reducing stress or increasing awareness is in order. This is not a time to beat up on yourself. Ignatius commands gentleness and compassion. On the other hand, if I responded in a good or better way, it is important to feel how it came about so that I can continue to be open to the Spirit the next time as well.

Conclude with the Lord’s Prayer

We seldom realize that the mode of relating to God, as given to his followers by Christ, is his own prayer. This identification with the actual physical and mystical person of Jesus is central to the spirituality of St. Ignatius. Jesus came to do the will of the Father and that is our calling as well.

So how much time are we supposed to take with this beautiful method of prayer?

A. One hour. B. 30 minutes. C. 15 minutes. D. As Long As it Takes.

The answer: C. 15 minutes. You are supposed to be out and about doing God’s work which the Spirit is pointing out to you. Time’s a wasting! Then again, St. Ignatius would allow you some leeway, as long you worked it out with your spiritual director and weren’t dodging your responsibilities.

A Guided Meditation

Phyllis Zagano leads the everyday person on a beautifully guided walk through The Examen for everyday people at “American Catholic.”

For More Information

For a good overview of the life of St. Ignatius Loyola, with an excellent bibliography, see, “The World of Ignatius of Loyola”. The Ignatian Spirituality Center in the Seattle, Washington area presents a very contemporary and brief description on its home page. A summary of Ignatian Spirituality from the 1930’s by Fr. Pinard De La Boullaye, S.J. is concise and reasonably accessible.

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Posted by on Jul 29, 2007

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

“Utterly Humbled by The Mystery” – The Spiritual Theology of Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM

Richard Rohr OFM
Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest who was ordained in 1970. He is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is an internationally recognized retreat master and spiritual director. Fr. Rohr’s spirituality is summarized in his December 18, 2006 essay for the National Public Radio feature, This I Believe entitled: Utterly Humbled by The Mystery. His profound views have a tremendous application to everyday life.

Letting Go… Letting God

In a November 2005 address to medical students at Yale University, Fr. Rohr’s talk Sadness describes pain and suffering, The Way of Tears, as the way our consciousness can be transformed and bring us to “liminal space … the point at which we realize we can’t fix it and therefore the ego has to give up control.” Paradoxically, his approach to human sadness is more like an inoculation. Life is full of happy and pleasant things, “a way of light”. As we know there are many sad and difficult things, “a way of darkness.” Fr. Rohr says that St. Francis embraced pain so that it could not become an enemy; that it could not surprise him. In Fr. Rohr’s view this embrace is shown in St. Francis’ love of poverty, the poor, and the disenfranchised.

Clarity – A Comfortable Untruth

Far from being a love or desire for pain, this embrace is a way to transcend it. He actually distances himself from the focus on pain of those who have “given a marveled fascination to suffering.”The way of light, according to Fr. Rohr, has come to dominate the last 300 years since the Enlightenment. Christians have wanted clarity, closure, solutions – a comfortable untruth which can teach us very little and leave us untransformed.

What Kind of God Has to be Bought Off?

Fr. Rohr traces our problem with suffering back to the 13th century at the University of Paris. There was a controversy between the Dominican and Franciscan approaches to the meaning of Jesus and our salvation. “Is Jesus Necessary?” According to Fr. Rohr, the Dominican position held that “Jesus had to offer this sacrifice, pay this atonement.” Fr. Rohr wonders about what kind of God “has to be bought off to love us?” This is the standard view of atonement which we see in Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ.

Into the Lovability and Generosity of God

According to Fr. Rohr, the Franciscan view was advanced by John Duns Scotus (John Duns the Scot) — that there was nothing to be fixed. Christ was among us and died and rose again not to atone for us but to be the image of the invisible God as described in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians. From this point of view, Jesus “brought us into the lovability and generosity of God.” Fr. Rohr speculates that the Cross is the “deepest icon because humanity needed an image that God was on our side, that God was given to us, that God was for us and not against, and benevolently involved with the universe: That is, of course, supposed to be the transformative meaning of this image of the crucified Jesus.”

Where Life Is

Fr. Rohr decries the view that “engineers” Jesus into solving a problem. It leaves us with what Fr. Rohr calls a “terrible atonement” theology” that we have been “stuck with” for 700 to 800 years. “Jesus came to identify with the pain of the world and enter into it with that cosmic sympathy and to invite us into that identification with sadness. We are invited, like Francis, to proactively move right into it and say this is were life is at; this is where you understand, not at the top of things but at the bottom of things.”

For More on Fr. Rohr

There is much more to explore in the spiritual theology of Fr. Rohr, which we will try to do in later posts to this blog. Take a moment though and review the links and spend a little time at Fr. Rohr’s sites Male Spirituality and the Center for Action and Contemplation

Additional materials from Fr. Rohr are available at:Credence Communications and American Catholic

Pace e Bene

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Posted by on Jul 25, 2007

Welcome to Theologika – A Space for All Things Theological

 

“… Every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.”

– Matthew 13: 52.


Welcome to Theologika, a storeroom – or treasure in some translations – of all things theological, the new as well as the old.

Theologika tries to bridge the gap between the general public and experts in theology, philosophy, religious studies, and the social and behavioral sciences by providing a public meeting place for “scribes instructed in the kingdom of heaven” to meet with people of good will – believers or not.

Theologika is meant to be a haven from the sound and fury in our lives and on the internet regarding questions of Christian belief and lifestyle. It is a place of thoughtful and prayerful retreat to learn calmly what trusted thought leaders have had to say from the earliest days of Christianity to the present.

Our goal is to help you find the best information from trusted authorities across the centuries and the globe. The focus of the site is Catholic and catholic. The upper case “C” refers to the Roman Catholic tradition and the lower case “c” refers to the broadest universal dimensions of the Christian movement and its interaction with all human institutions and learning.

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