An Antidote to Our Troubled Times

“I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, ‘What can get through such snares?’ Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Humility.’” – St. Anthony the Great

While reading Saint Teresa of Avila’s autobiography I found her humility incredibly striking. Here is a piece of her advice to any person wishing to grow closer to Our Lord: “Let us endeavor always to look at the virtues and good qualities that we find in others, and to keep our own great sins before our eyes, so that we may see none of their failings” (92). Particularly in this time of quick judgments of others, each of us desperately need to take St. Teresa’s advice here. In this modern world where people constantly need affirmation, what we really need is humility and forgiveness. If pride is the root of sin, we must never stop seeking humility and ask God to grant us this gift. When evils assail us, we must approach everything with a humble heart, or we will quickly become what we hate. From a favorite collection of poems of mine, The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.” Humility is the antidote to our times, and every era in history.

“Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:44-50)

Luke 7:44-50 RSV-2CE

Our understanding of sin cannot remain abstract. Many Christians are quick to call themselves sinners, but too often it becomes an abstract knowledge. In our heads, we know we sin often, but if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes we do not know it in our hearts or we do not know from where it comes. It is easy to miss the failings, the big and especially the small, if one does not honestly examine oneself often. One very clear way to do this is to examine one’s conscience and go to confession often. Driven by love of God and desire for reconciliation with our Father, one can offer an honest confession, bringing one’s sins out of the dark where the devil shames and deceives, and into the light of truth before God to be forgiven. This is one way our Father brings a person close to Himself and under His care, not shaming her, but forgiving her and offering grace and encouragement to fight the good fight against sin, death, and the devil.

The problem is we are scared to look our sins in the face to see them for what they are—offenses against God, wounding our relationship with Him and our neighbors, and wounding our own souls. But if we do not see our great sins, how can we love God as we ought? Jesus says to the woman, a sinner, who anoints his feet with expensive perfume and washes his feet with her tears and hair, “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Lk. 7:47). We want to identify with the woman in the story who loves much; however, without understanding the magnitude of the sins for which we are forgiven, we cannot approach God with true contrition. More often than not, I think many of us welcome Jesus into our homes, forgetting who He is and who we are before Him. We want Him to be with us, but without ourselves being seen as fools in need of great mercy. We fool ourselves into thinking we are actually good enough to have Jesus by our side, and all this because we fail to see the sins lurking our lives. We let the fear of seeing them keep us in a lukewarm faith. In reality, our sin ought to be enough to bring us to our knees before Jesus, offering Him all we have, kissing His feet and asking for mercy. If we do not see our great sin, how can we offer him great love?

The great thing about confession is we do not only confess our sins, but we are forgiven them. The Pharisees recognize this is no small thing. No one has the authority to forgive sins. Only God can do that. And Jesus, who is God, does do that when the woman comes to Him with a repentant heart. He tells her the truth and what she longs to hear: “Your sins are forgiven… Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Lk. 7:50). Not only does she come to him in repentance, but she goes to Jesus knowing He can forgive Her sins. He does just that, and tells her to go in peace. In forgiveness, God offers us peace. It does us no good to despair over our sin, and we are deceived if we think dwelling obsessively over our sin makes us pious. God calls us out of our sin and offers us the grace to overcome it. One gift He, in His mercy and love, has offered us to aid in our fight against sin is confession. And when we mess up, we know His love is always waiting, beckoning us to receive His love and forgiveness again and again. 

After Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, He comes to the disciples and reveals Himself to them. In the Gospel of John, it is written, “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’” (Jn. 20:21-23). When Jesus breathes on the Apostles, He ordains them to the priesthood, marking them with the gift of the Holy Spirit, giving them the special gift to forgive sins. As the apostolic mission of the Church continues, she ordains men to the priesthood, always passing on the gift of the mystery of the priesthood from bishop to new bishop, who consequently appoints new priests. The line of bishops goes all the way back to the Apostles themselves, and thus, to Christ Himself. As He wills it, He breathes on men and brings them into the priesthood, giving to them the gift of the forgiveness of sins in His stead. Souls are still healed in the very same way they were 2000 years ago. We can have confidence that God is doing His great work of healing in us that He began with His own Son. He offers us His very presence today, in the present. We get to go to a priest and ask for forgiveness as we would go to Jesus Himself. This is not abstract; this is not only in our heart, but this is real, as though we were literally talking to Him ourselves, and hearing Him speak forgiveness over our lives. What a beautiful, beautiful gift. 

Check out these resources on confession:

Fr. Mike Schmitz – Why Confess My Sins to a Priest?

Catholic Answers – Is Confession in Scripture?

Catholic Answers – How to Defend the Sacrament of Confession

Here is a prayer for humility.

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Gillette and Toxic Masculinity

By now pretty much everyone with a phone or computer has seen the latest advertisement by Gillette which targets “toxic masculinity.” As expected, there was an uproar of people either supporting the ad or throwing their over-priced Gillette razors into the toilet. Some people I spoke to found the ad “immensely patronizing” and “very offensive” (and that was from a woman I spoke to regarding the ad). Some men I know just found it stupid. I have heard from both men and women that the ad is encouraging and simply calling men to higher standards.

I for one did not find the ad offensive. The ad portrays men encouraging other men to do the right thing. It denounces the crude and vulgar tendencies men have (especially when they are in groups). My favorite part of the ad was when the one man stopped the other from cat-calling at a lady. We find (I think) these particular acts of virtue to be inspiring and admirable. One man, one person, stepping up to do the right thing. This is why I find describing men behaving badly as “toxic masculinity” to be such a weak description.

Talking about “toxic masculinity” casts the problem in a certain a light, where the “toxicity” arises from excessive “masculinity.” It presents the problem as if the social infraction or injustice arises from men being too manly. But if we are to regard masculinity and femininity to be complementary, then suggesting excessive masculinity is toxic seems rather odd. It treats masculinity as though it were an acquired virtue, where it is possible to be deficient on one side and excessive on the other, and we all ought to strive for the “golden mean” between the two extremes. I do not think masculinity or femininity are what Aristotle would call an acquired habitus. Masculinity and femininity are very abstract words to use; however, John Paul II offers a more concrete approach that considers masculinity and femininity to be all the physical characteristics that imply complementarity between the two sexes. Hence, talking about masculinity as liking barbeque, fishing, and beer is totally superfluous. These associations are socially constructed. What is not socially constructed, however, is that the experience of masculinity and femininity in one’s own body points to the complementarity realized in conjugal union.

The inability of pop culture to distinguish between what is “accidental” and “essential” reaps a myriad of moral consequences. In the case of the trendy phrase “toxic masculinity,” it grounds toxic behavior in manhood, as if being a man is the source of evil behavior. When I first saw the Gillette ad, I thought to myself: “this is very interesting—what they consider ‘toxic masculinity’ is what I consider sin (especially regarding the portrayals of lust).” Sin is portrayed in many forms throughout the ad: pride, lust, anger, &c. So why consider these things the byproduct of excessive masculinity?

It seems the collective consciousness that pervades public discourse can only conceive of “sin” in broad social categories, where individual agency is secondary to all else. This perspective reduces man to his material condition—whether it be his economic circumstances, skin color, or sex. Of course the role of culture in the formation of human personality cannot be completely ignored—all that man is, his ability to reason and make moral decisions, is largely founded in his cultural inheritance. However, talking about culture as its own autonomous order solely determined by nature and materialism is not enough to account for the complexity of human agency. Culture is first formed by man’s religious experience, rooted in the fact that he possesses an immaterial soul. To neglect this dimension is to confuse the very nature of man and how he relates to culture.

This tendency to wrap individuality up in an autonomous social order is nothing new. Romano Guardini, an influential Catholic intellectual and priest of the early twentieth century, predicted many of these developments in his book, The End of the Modern World. In it, he notes how the time of “modern man” is coming to an end and a new man is emerging. He calls this man “Mass Man.” He calls him this because the Mass Man is formed by the “masses”—whether it be the “masses” of human culture or the “mass” amount of technology and industrialization that isolates him from the world. Guardini describes Mass Man as the “Man Without Personality” because the “regimented instincts” of this man “forbid him to appear distinctive, compel him to appear anonymous. Mass Man acts almost as if he felt that to be one’s self was both the source of all injustice and even a sign of peril.” Individual personality and agency are destroyed for Mass Man. Man as an individual is left to be subsumed in the masses which arbitrate the new standards of morality, which today are consent-based sexual ethics, limitless human rights created ex nihilo, and in our case, the social sin of “toxic masculinity.”

The Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen observes this tendency on a more pastoral note in his forward to St. Maximlian Kolbe’s Will to Love. He sees how “for many decades past [in Catholicism], emphasis was put on individual sanctification but with little stress on social justice.” However, now there is a “reaction to the other extreme, when if one carries the banner for racial justice or marches in a protest parade against the building of an atomic reactor, he will find so-called theologians who will deny any guilt to fornicators and those who violate the natural laws of God.” The paradigm shifted from seeing sin primarily as a personal harm against God or neighbor, to sin being primarily a corporate reality where lack of concern for global issues is the primary cause for contrition. Clearly tropes like “toxic masculinity” fall into the latter category as a very broad, corporate sin which is contingent upon your material/social conditions, e.g., being a man.

What is needed now is a return to acknowledging personal, private sins. Pride, lust, and anger are not symptoms of excessive masculinity; rather, they are vices. And what causes these vices is something the latest PC-bandwagon will not address: sin, such as divorce (which leads to fatherless homes), contraception, pornography, and consumerism. These things will always be ignored because they do not mitigate personal responsibility, unlike the broad social categories the media and political elite love to divide us into. It is far too easy to look at the world and demarcate everyone into a group based on ideological persuasion. It is much harder to go and make a good confession for your own sins. It is even harder to do penance in reparation for the sins of others. But both these things are the only solution to a hurting world that has lost its way. So although it is fashionable to talk about the social ails of “toxic masculinity,” it is best we stick to our common Christian parlance, and call sin what it truly is.

~Zachary Nelson

Cover photo: Karol Wojtyla (a.k.a., Pope John Paul II) shaving in the great outdoors.

Zachary Nelson is the husband of Ciara Nelson and is pursuing his M.A. in theology at the University of Scranton. He loves history, philosophy, theology, and classics. He rarely blogs at coheresco.wordpress.com. 

The Incarnation and Choosing to be Thankful

Maybe it is that Thanksgiving came and Advent is coming, but I have been realizing just how ungrateful I have been and, in light of that, how much more I must remember Christ’s incarnation.

I often want to perfectly curate my situation and my daily schedule to what I think I need in this season of my life, but in fact it is only me trying to get what I want from my life right now. God has given me the life I have in this moment and I must submit to all of it–its particular work and people, and when these things do not change, I must be obedient and faithful to what God has given me to do. Not everything I do will feel rewarding or particularly invigorating, but the fact of the matter is I have been given certain things in my life to do that God actually wants me to do–joyfully and with thanksgiving and love–because they join me to Christ and more fully enable me to love.

God gives us the grace to live holy lives in each moment, and to reject certain moments or to live those moments with contempt is to reject His will and to hate what He has given me to strengthen and to teach me. He reveals Himself to us in every moment, in every season, and when I am ungrateful, I reject the ways in which He reveals Himself to me in my life in this moment.

Every time I complain, I forget Christ. I forget that He suffered in the flesh, and that He, too, participated in the work of the day and the keeping and running of a home. He grew up in a home and He worked as a carpenter. He participated in daily life and He loved perfectly. For only three years at the end of his life on earth did he begin his public ministry. For three years Jesus taught us what it is to love God and one another and He demonstrated it in His life and His love towards others. He taught and He loved–we see it in His public ministry, but He was already doing this perfectly in his quiet, hidden life at home and in His work.

Jesus lived a life of obedience to the will of the Father in every situation, in every season of His life. He was obedient and showed great humility in becoming even a child in the womb of a poor young woman. He grew and He loved and He worked and He lived the life of a faithful Jew in a faithful Jewish family. He taught the people and He fed the hungry and He healed the sick, and when it was time He faced death, though He asked for another way if it be the Father’s will, yet was obedient to death on a cross and the great suffering that led up to that death. He rose again and told Thomas to put his hand in His wound, in His very risen body.

In dwelling on what I want to happen now in my life, I forget all I have already been given, and I forget the incarnation of Christ who, humbling Himself, became a baby in the womb of His mother and grew and became a man. God is not unfamiliar with life and death on earth; he is not unfamiliar with humanity. He knows what it means to have a body and a soul, and to labor to sustain life–both His own and those in His care. In each season of His life, Jesus was faithful and obedient to His Father. He was not rushing for what was not yet to come, and He did not hesitate or hide from what was to come in an effort to have what was gone. Jesus embraced what was given Him and loved in the midst of every moment, even and especially in the midst of His sufferings.

Let us embrace what God has given us to do, no matter what the task, for in being given these things, God grants us humility and grace–the humility to know our weakness and to confess our sin, and the grace to, by his power, overcome sin and be strengthened by our weakness. We can offer our suffering, no matter how small or how seemingly petty, to God, and ask Him to use our suffering to join us to His Son. I am really trying to get better at this, and whenever I am tempted to complain about something, I must remember Jesus and offer myself and all I do for love of Him, remembering that what I do joins me to Him in His incarnation. My life partakes in the Life of God.

Oh my Jesus, I offer this for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the immaculate heart of Mary.

The Particularity of Love

Confession can be quite intimidating. Left to our own devices, we would avoid anything of the sort altogether. We do not like to think about our faults, let alone give ourselves ample time to think about our sins, and least of all to confess all our sins to another person. We do not want to do any of these things, and yet, these are the very things that breathe life into our souls. Why? Because preparation for confession and confession itself both prepare us to meet Christ and bring us to Christ Himself, the only person who can offer us forgiveness for our sins, the only person who can offer us new life.

Not only is confession good for us, but it offers us a profound understanding of just how incredibly personal God’s love is for us. Confession is about as personal as any experience can get. It is incredibly humbling to confess my sins out loud with my own voice with the knowledge that another person is listening with his own two ears. This particular person, this priest, will respond with his voice, asking if I am sorry, offering hope in the way of penance–something I can do to combat my sin and work against it–and say my sin is forgiven.

After I confess, I can attend mass and witness the same priest offer prayers for me and speak on behalf of Christ to me. I can go to the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, with great thanksgiving and in awe of the love God has for me, for this same priest who heard my confession now offers me the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ given up for me. The particularity of the priest reveals to me ever more clearly the particularity of the love of Jesus for me. The priest, in the stead of Christ, hears my sins, forgives my sins, and subsequently gives himself up for me out of love. Through the priest, Jesus looks on me with love and brings me to the Table to be with him, that I might be with him evermore.

What a beautiful thing it is that Jesus knows our every sin and still desires reconciliation with us. He knows our sins, and He still draws us near to Him. He knows us; yet, He looks on us with love. What a gift it is that God offers us priests who offer us Himself in this way. Let us pray for our priests and for more shepherds who will bear the love of Christ to His flock.