The Knitting Theologian

Growing up, I don’t remember hearing the term “mortification” in connection with Lent. Of course we kids “gave up” something for Lent, and I remember thinking that it was just something you were supposed to do. The way I heard the term “mortification” back then was in a sense of personal embarrassment, as in “I was so mortified when I discovered I’d gone through the whole day at school with a hole in the back of my pants!”

As an adult, when I encountered the term “mortification” in spiritual reading, I usually skipped right over it. That was for religious freaks, or people with a martyr complex. Not for me! I was fine! God didn’t need me to do any of that old-fashioned mortification stuff. In my mind, “that old-fashioned mortification stuff” consisted of things like wearing a hair shirt (pretty difficult to find at, say, Target) or whipping yourself with a knotted cord (I couldn’t even poke my own finger for a blood sample in high school biology).

Well, interesting things happen in a midlife conversion process. This Lent, I am exploring the idea of mortification in a broader way. I have come to see how attached to the things of this world I am, and I have done enough spiritual reading to know that the saints and the great theologians just about unanimously endorse some form of mortification as a way to detach from the things of this world and set our hearts on eternity.

This morning, while working in the book In Conversation with God, I found a discussion on the difference between passive and active mortifications, and some information that hit me right where it hurt:

As well as those mortifications known as “passive” – mortifications which present themselves to us without our looking for them – the mortifications that we propose to ourselves (and seek out) are called active mortifications. Amongst these, the mortifications which refer to the control of our internal senses are especially important for our interior progress and for enabling us to achieve purity of heart. These are: mortification of the imagination – avoiding that interior monologue in which fantasy runs wild, by trying to turn it into a dialogue with God, present in our soul in grace. We try to put a restraining check on that tendency of ours to go over and over some little happening in the course of which we have come off badly. No doubt we have felt slighted, and have made much of an injury to our self-esteem, caused to us quite unintentionally. If we don’t apply the brake in time, our conceit and pride will cause us to overbalance until we lose our peace and presence of God. Mortification of the memory – avoiding useless recollections which make us waste time and which could lead us into more serious temptations. Mortification of the intelligence – so as to put it squarely to the business of concentrating on our duty at this moment and, also, on many occasions of surrendering our own judgment so as to live humility and charity with others in a better way. (Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God: Daily Meditations, Volume Two: Lent and Eastertide, New York: Scepter Publishers, 2007, p. 18)

No hair shirt or whip here—but just as difficult, if not more difficult, a task. I don’t actually know whether I can manage to avoid any one of these for more than five minutes. But today I am going to try.

1. Lenten resolutions made? Check.
2. All articles of temptation out of the house? Check. (Although it was a squeaker tonight, but hey, it’s Fat Tuesday!)
3. Spiritual disposition at the ready? Check.  (For your own amusement or edification, check out this article about whether you are an Advent person or a Lent person. Full disclosure? I know I am a Lent person.)

Pray

1. Pray Evening Prayer each evening. I have been praying Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours for years, but this Lent I commit to adding Evening Prayer. Note that I will have to stretch the definition of “evening,” since I sometimes don’t get home until close to 9:00 PM. Or later.
2. Attend Stations of the Cross at my parish each Friday evening at 7:00.
3. Work with Fr. Benedict Groeschel’s Lenten meditations in The King,  Crucified and Risen.

Fast

1. Fast from alcohol, chocolate, cookies, snacks, afternoon lattes. Place money saved in Rice Bowl. (Note to self: assemble Rice Bowl, a one-minute origami project.)
2. Fast from food entirely (liquid only) on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays in Lent.
3. Fast every weekday (one main meal and two smaller meals, sufficient to maintain strength). Also fast from obsessing about fasting.

Give

1. Give money saved from lattes ($2.50), alcohol, snacks and so on to Rice Bowl (see # 1 under Fast).
2. Give away unnecessary stuff (like those boxes I haven’t unpacked since I moved back in November).
3. Don’t shop on Sunday. (Yeah, I know this is symbolic. I mean, the stores aren’t going to stop being open on Sunday just because I don’t shop. But still.)

Scanning my Twitter feed this morning, I followed a link to an article about a parish in New York that reopened and refurbished the confessionals, made more times available for confession, and is now seeing a resurgence in the number of people who choose to participate in the sacrament of confession.

A large part of my recent (and ongoing) “reversion” to my Catholic faith is the sacrament of reconciliation. (That’s the new name. When I was a kid, we called it “confession,” and really that term still works better for me.) I am committed to confessing at least once a month, but I find myself there more often. And it seems that the more I go, the more grace I find, and then the more I understand about sin and penitence, which in turn brings me back to the sacrament again and again.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting at coffee & doughnuts with a guy in the RCIA program who will be entering the church at the Easter Vigil. He had just recently made his first confession, and was feeling just a little let down. He had confessed to our priest associate, a wonderful man in his early 80s who has a somewhat unfortunate habit of rushing. Confessing to him results in what I call the “speed absolution,” and although I’m certain it’s valid, it can leave you wondering whether that’s all there is.

In fact, when I straightened out my life last fall so that I could receive the sacraments again, I happened to draw Fr. Speedy myself and I knew the exact feeling that RCIA Guy was sharing with me. I then told RCIA Guy about how I figure out when our pastor is hearing confessions so that I can confess to him instead, and I realized that I have all the times that confession is available memorized now. “I wouldn’t know this if I didn’t need the sacrament so much myself,” is what I told RCIA Guy, and it’s true.

I cannot emphasize enough what a wonderful sacrament confession is. I do confess face to face, although the reconciliation room at our parish is set up to accommodate both face to face and anonymous confessions. Further, I confess to my pastor, who knows perfectly well who I am because of how active I am at my parish. However, I feel certain that when I am confessing, I am speaking to Jesus through him. And it seems that the more willing I am to humble myself by revealing my failings openly, the more grace God pours down on me.

At our parish mission in January, one of the sisters talked about how sometimes we don’t want to confess our sins because we think they are unforgiveable. We think that God cannot possibly forgive us for this or that sin. But when we do that, we are limiting God. We are saying we don’t really believe that God’s mercy is truly infinite. And of course we are hurting ourselves, keeping ourselves away from this boundless, overflowing, source of grace and peace. That idea struck me, and I’ve been carrying it with me into the confessional ever since.

God loves me. God wants to give me his grace. God wants to forgive me, and he wants me to experience the healing of that forgiveness. And so I go to confession, with my hands full of my failings, my shame, and I give them to God, and then he pours out his grace on me. It never fails.

Ash Wednesday is a week away, but I’ve been thinking about Lenten observation for a few weeks already. I already know, for example, that I will give up alcohol. (The Knitting Theologian likes her wine.)

I am contemplating giving up caffeine, as many of my friends have urged me to do, but I’m worried about doing without it. (The Knitting Theologian might like coffee even better than wine.)

For the rest of it—prayer, fasting, almsgiving—I’m still thinking.

Today I pulled a book off my shelf that I used last year during Lent. It’s a resource that pulls together Lenten customs, practices, and prayers into one place, and I recommend it highly. It’s called “The Essential Lenten Handbook,” by Redemptorist Pastoral Publications and published by Ligouri Publications.

I also found a set of online resources yesterday from Loyola Press that I haven’t really gone through yet. I did sign up for the online Lenten retreat for women, though, which, by the way, is free.

How are you planning to observe Lent?

And quickly, now, because I really need to be getting ready for work, here’s a link to a funny article (on InsideCatholic.com) about the state of music in the Catholic church.

After confessing that he actually likes 70s-era classics like “Sons of God” and “Shout from the Highest Mountain,” the writer asks:

Is it just me, or is anybody else ready to go screaming into the night next time they hear “On Eagle’s Wings?”

Dude. It’s not just you. “On Eagle’s Wings” is number one on my mental list of church songs I don’t care if I ever sing again. I know people love the text, but somewhere out there must be a better, more singable expression of it.

I can’t say I like “Sons of God,” since I think the refrain strips the beauty of the Eucharist away entirely, somewhat like a child’s coloring book would strip away the beauty of Michaelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling:

Eat his BOD-y, drink his BLOOD,
And we’ll sing a song of love

But I will concede that it is, at least, singable, in a camp song sort of way.

I meditate on the Gospel just about every morning. When I started practicing mental prayer more than a year ago, I used a book called Sacred Space that is published by the Jesuit Communication Center in Ireland. That book almost always focused on a selection from the daily readings and very often from the Gospels.

At the beginning of this year, though, after our parish mission by the Apostles of the Interior Life, I decided I wanted to spend more time with the Gospel itself, and so I decided to use it in mental prayer every morning.

Today’s Gospel has always been difficult for me to hear. It’s the story of the Syrophoenician woman who approaches Jesus asking him to heal her daughter, who is possessed by a demon. I have always had trouble with the conversation that ensues between Jesus and this woman:

She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this saying, you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” (Mark 7:26-29)

There are lots of ways to meditate on Gospel passages. One of them, which I don’t actually use all that often, is to enter into the scene in my imagination and see what happens. What I usually start with is a request: “OK, God, show me what You want me to see in this passage,” and then I turn the words I’m focused on over in my mind. This morning, though, the Holy Spirit inspired me to use my imagination instead. I became that woman. Here’s what happened.

I am a Greek, a gentile, a woman of Syrophoenicia. In this place where I live I am not recognized as someone of any worth whatsoever. I am, in truth, a dog. I know this. It doesn’t occur to me to think of myself any differently. This existence, being ignored and pushed, cursed at and abused, is all I know.

But I am a mother, and I have a young daughter, who I love. And these days I grieve, because my daughter is possessed by a demon. She has become a foreigner in my house, shrieking and spitting. My sunny daughter, whose smile brightened every morning, is gone, replaced by this hostile, angry stranger.

I am desperate. I have looked for a cure for her, but nothing I have tried so far has worked. I have heard so many false promises of cures and yet the demon continues to stare at me out of my daughter’s eyes. I have heard talk of this man, Jesus, a Jew, in the market place. People say he can cure the sick, that he can even drive out demons. And although I cannot imagine why a Jew with this kind of power would care enough to drive a demon out of my daughter, I resolve to go to this man and to ask. I can always ask.

I find the house where he is, and I go in the back way, unseen. I find him in the house, and I throw myself at his feet. I don’t dare to look at him as I beg him to drive the demon out of my daughter. When he speaks to me, at first I hear only the words he says, which are what I expected to hear from any Jew: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

But then I realize something else. I realize the way he says the words. He sounds different. He sounds regretful, maybe. Perhaps even kind. And this tone in his voice gives me courage to raise my head and look at him.

It is his gaze on me that makes all the difference. The compassion in that gaze is endless. I can feel it pouring over me. I know that this man understands how I suffer for my daughter, understands the extent of my grief and pain, as I speak out from the depths of my desperation: “But, Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

If anything, the compassionate gaze intensifies. I can feel it wrapping around me like a cloak against the chill of the night. And now he looks kind, too, and he says the words that change my life: “For saying that, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”

Normally I think it might be hard to believe this good news. But for me, looking at this man, I don’t question it at all. I look at his compassion and kindness, his awareness of suffering, and I believe him. I trust in him completely. As I get to my feet and leave him, with a few words of thanks, I know what to expect when I get home; exactly what I do see: my beloved, sunny daughter, lying on her bed, restored to herself.

I often need to be reminded of Jesus’ compassion. I fall, over and over again, and I persuade myself that what I’ve done is so bad that I don’t deserve to even ask for Jesus’ compassion. (Watch out for that—it’s really pride in disguise.) Desperation drives me to reconciliation, and then Jesus comes to me and washes me in his compassion and I once again know, with complete trust, that I am healed.

Here (found on Inside Catholic.com) is an interesting reflection on how our use of language has affected our ability—the author would say inability—to pray.

It may seem strange to assert that Catholics have forgotten how to pray. Surely we still beseech the Lord in times of distress. We attend Mass, we say the rosary. More than that, simply because we are human, by the grace of God the Spirit works within us, with unutterable groans and longings. We pray sometimes without knowing we are praying, “O Lord, help me!”

And yet the same march of vandalism that has stripped our churches of their art, and our schools of their traditional symbols of devotion to God and country, has impoverished our language of prayer, too.

As a writer, a singer, a sometime poet, and a devotee of the Liturgy of the Hours, I would not say that I am insensible to the effects of language. But this article exposes the odd, dead quality in the prayers that I often hear, and worse, that I say myself as I work to become more comfortable praying extemporaneously. It is worth thinking about.

This is always the shape of spiritual progress. We are led out of that kind of order which is built up on sin. That does not necessarily mean a situation of evident outrageous sin, but a situation whose fundamental principle is self-assertion, self-creation, which is therefore sinful at the root, however virtuous its branches may appear.

And one is led out into the desert, into the place of “What’s this?”, the place where we are fed and tended in a way that eludes our comprehension, precisely so that we may learn to live by faith, by trust in the living God. And so learn not to be God ourselves. (Father Simon Tugwell, O.P., quoted in Magnificat Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 13, February 2008, p. 106).

This is what I am learning during my desert time. And gradually I am finding peace and joy in the midst of the desert. The more I turn everything over to God, the better it is.

Learning to submit, to give up control, is frightening. But there is something very worthwhile on the other side of that fear.

I never thought about it this way until this morning, that I could (and might have to choose) to *receive* the grace that the Lord gives us. St. Augustine, who is probably my favorite saint and one of the people I really hope I get to meet in heaven, said in a quote I ran across this morning:

The Lord is always ready to give; let us choose to receive with open, expansive hearts.

I keep wishing for peace and joy and not finding it, but maybe that’s because I throw all these obstacles in the way, yes? Certainly I think I don’t deserve it, which I think St. Augustine would say is one of the hallmarks of grace—that is, precisely that we don’t deserve it and yet it is given.