When our Lord told the story about a father who had two sons, he didn’t mean to imply that these were the father’s only children. Rather he condensed the story to address the needs of his immediate audience. In truth, the father had quite a large expanding family, and sadly many of his children over the years had also drifted away from home. You see, things had not always been idyllically peaceful at home.

It was always the father’s desire, however, that they all come home, for he knew that it was only at home that they could find true happiness, united as one in the family.

As in the case of his two eldest sons, his initial tactic for beckoning his separated children was to wait patiently, lovingly, and prayerfully for them to come to their senses and return. And his second son did just that. His eldest son, however, had made no effort whatsoever to retrieve any of his siblings, as we also know.

In time, the father decided to take action. He wrote letters to his separated children, insisting they come home, for away from home they would never find true happiness. A few responded, but most didn’t.

He eventually convinced his two eldest sons and the few who had returned to go out and bring the others home. This worked for some, but again, not for most. Unfortunately, the elder sons, and those who had already returned, sometimes were too harsh in how they commanded their separated siblings to come home, warning them that unless they did it would be impossible for them to find happiness. As before, a few responded, but most didn’t.

In time, the separated children had families of their own and formed homes of their own far away from their father and their siblings’ families, who with him believed that their separated siblings and their families were lost to happiness. In time, some of the siblings’ children and grand-children no longer knew about their grandfather and their need to return home. Yet, there was always an inexplicable restlessness.

Then a powerful arch enemy invaded the region, causing turmoil, devastation, poverty, and hunger. This forced the father and his remaining children and families living with him to band together with his separated children and their families as a united defense against their common enemy. In time, their combined strength pushed back the enemy, allowing them all to live, at least temporarily, at peace.

In the process, the father discovered something he had not expected. His separated sons and daughters, and their expanding families, were inexplicably happy. They didn’t enjoy all the blessings of being at home with him, yet they were happy, some even happier than some who had remained home with him.

This sent him to his knees. And he remembered, that he had been called to speak the truth to his children with love. He had indeed spoken the truth, but he had not always done so with love.

So, now that he and his separated children were at least on speaking terms, he began to talk less about their need to come home. Instead, he chose to focus whatever time he had with them on celebrating the happiness that they shared together. In doing so, he discovered something else: that whatever happiness his children and their families had, even apart from him, was mysteriously from him, for they were flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. Full happiness subsisted in his home, but whatever happiness they were experiencing apart from home originated from their continuing connections with home. And he was exceedingly glad.

Over time, as he set aside his demand that they return home and instead loved them, they surprisingly, one by one, began to return.

But, as in the portion of the story Jesus told, the elder brothers were not all happy with their father’s change of thinking, for they had given up so much either to remain or return. Some thought he had gone crazy; others thought he had compromised, rejecting what had always been true.

And the father said to them, “Sons, daughters, grand children. You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It is fitting to make merry and be glad, for these your siblings and their families were lost but now they have been found. Yes, they are not fully home, yet, but I have come to understand their separation in a different, more positive way, and whatever happiness they have, though it may not be full or complete, yet comes from the same source as ours and ultimately will draw them home. We must entrust their full return to God, but in the mean time, we must stand beside them in the faith, hope, and love that we share, always pointing them to the fullness that we have received with joy.”

(It’s been almost a year since my last post! A lot of water has gone over the proverbial dam, and every time I thought about adding another post, I got caught in the back wash. So, to re-enter the stream, I’m including the full, but updated & edited, text of the article I referenced in my last post. A condensed version of this article was previously posted on The Distributist Review. This is a long article (sorry), but I would still like to hear your reflections on this, especially given how our economy, culture, and politics have “progressed” over this past year. In Him, Marcus)

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Economics, Distributism, and Limits Theory II

From our back porch, relaxing, sipping my drink of choice, many things pass through these old brain cells of mine, but lately they all seem to coalesce around the concerns of our present economic culture—and more specifically, how my family and I are to live our lives and our faith in this modern industrial progressivist culture.

And a brain synapse sparked, and I remembered something from a calculus class many, many years ago, something called Limits Theory. Now I’ve certainly forgotten far more than I ever learned, but I remembered a graph associated with an old conundrum called Zeno’s paradox. If you are standing 5 feet from a wall, and start walking toward it, with each step equal to half the remaining distance to the wall, how many steps and how long will it take to reach the wall? The answer in both cases is infinite, in other words, never. You’ll get increasing closer and closer, but you will only ever reach one half the distance that is left to the wall.

There are several ways to visualize this conundrum, but one way is with the graph to the right. Each dot and the vertical increase of one unit represents each step half way horizontally towards the wall. (Now all you mathematicians and economists out there take a breather—I’m doing the best I can.)

What amazes me is how this graph seems to depict everything in our present modern human condition. Take, for example, the history of travel. If the horizontal left-to-right axis of this graph represents time, then each dot represents the great advancements in travel throughout the history of mankind. For many centuries, humanity travelled on foot, then came the use of critters, then the wheel, then carriages, chariots, wagons, and these improvements carried humanity for centuries, until the industrial age brought the bicycle, and steam ships, trains, and the automobile, and then the airplane, and space travel, and the Segway Personal Transporter, and on and on.

What is significant, illustrated by the graph, is that the acceleration of these advancements has reached such a break-neck speed that we really have no way of projecting where travel will be in fifty, twenty-five, five, or even one year from now, nor can we identify the trajectory or goal of this progress in transportation. We are living on the vertical accelerating slope of a travel revolution that has no foreseeable destination.

Take, for another example, the history of communications. Humanity went for centuries with only verbal or hand communications and scratching out symbols on rocks. Long distance communication required either yelling louder and waving more emphatically, or sending out messengers (“apostles”), or passing around dried mud cuneiforms. Then someone invented papyrus and paper and chalk and ink and quills and binding, but still for centuries communication was limited to screaming, messengers, and hand-copying.

But then moveable type and printing and mass publishing and then fountain pens and typewriters and telegraph and telephones and loud speakers and radio and television and computers and cellphones and internet, etc., etc., etc., and you get my drift. Again, note the acceleration of these advancements, or should I say changes, in how we communicate. Now, with every single day bringing some new communications advancement and product, it hardly pays to buy anything, because by tomorrow it will be obsolete. Again we have no way of identifying or predicting the trajectory or goal of this progress in communications, for we are living on the vertical accelerating slope of a communications revolution that has no foreseeable destination.

This same historical accelerating phenomenon is true of nearly every aspect of our lives: trade, information, markets, clothing styles, goods and services, and particularly change itself. There was a time when people lived their entire lives with little changes in any of these things: from the time they were born until death they never saw changes in clothing, communication, travel, cuisine, even politics.

Yet today we live on the vertical slope of change in everything, and like the man on the graph to the left, the anxiety of trying to live in this accelerating, goalless culture of presumed progress is also accelerating, which explains why this graph also depicts the acceleration of crime and drugs, divorce and broken lives, even the increase in the previously unimagined acceptance of immoral lifestyles.

Significantly, this graph also depicts the rise in our national, global, as well as personal, debt, and interestingly also depicts the historic rise in persecution and martyrdoms of those who try to stand for what has always been known as right, true, and beautiful. It even depicts the increasing challenges to our religious freedom in this our “land of the free and home of the brave.”

This entire scenario reminds me of a quote about industrialism:

The tempo of the industrial life is fast, but that is not the worst of it; it is accelerating. The ideal is not merely some set form of industrialism, with so many stable industries, but industrial progress, or an incessant extension of industrialization. It never proposes a specific goal; it initiates the infinities series. We have not merely capitalized certain industries; we have capitalized the laboratories and inventors, and undertaken to employ all the labor-saving devices that come out of them. But a fresh labor-saving device introduced into an industry does not emancipate the laborers in that industry so much as it evicts them. …

Of course no single labor-saving process is fatal; it brings on a period of unemployed labor and unemployed capital, but soon a new industry is devised which will put them both to work again, and a new commodity is thrown upon the market. …

All might yet be well, and stability and comfort might again obtain, but for this: partly because of industrial ambitions and partly because the repressed creative impulse must break out somewhere, there will be a stream of further labor-saving devices in all industries, and the cycle will have to be repeated over and over. The result is an increasing disadjustment and instability.

This quote comes from the “Introduction: A Statement of Principles” to the book, I’ll Take My Stand: the South and the Agrarian Tradition by Twelve Southerners (Harper & Brothers: New York, pg. xxvi-xxvii). What is particularly intriguing about this quote, as well as the entire collection of essays, is that they were published in 1930 (!), the year after the stock market crash, but more importantly 83-years ago—essentially at the elbow of the above graphs, before our world became so completely sold-out to our modern industrial progressivist culture.

This is the beauty of the wisdom of the great Distributists, like Chesterton and Belloc, and later Monsignor Luigi Ligutti (Rural Roads to Security) because they give us a glimpse into what life was like just as the curve was accelerating upwards, outside of and before this soup in which most of us have always lived.

So now 83 years later, as we ride the crest of this wave of progress, how do we respond? Some today are so enamored by, dare I say addicted to, the ever increasing enticements of our modern industrial progressivist culture that their answer is to turn the graph on its side and view this accelerating, ever changing and ever precarious, economic culture as the inevitable trajectory of human ingenuity, and, therefore, a thrilling blessing that must be freely embraced. They see no reason to question any of the demands of this culture; rather they preach that we are to trust our futures to the trajectory of progress! Our sad present plight is that none of the political parties vying for control of our government have anything to offer, except alternative ways to ride the accelerating economic wave!

The Twelve Southern agrarian authors quoted earlier, however, offered a different conclusion:

If a community, or a section, or a race, or an age, is groaning under industrialism, and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find the way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if the whole Community, section, race, or age thinks it cannot be done, then it has simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence. (ibid, xxx)

Have we lost our political genius and doomed ourselves, and our children, to economic impotence?

As I sit on my back porch, finishing my drink of choice, seven (the biblical number of perfection) alternative steps come to mind.

First, we should turn our focus onto that which is eternally stable and established. When you’re riding the ever-changing wave of economic progress, you can be dangerously comforted by the sight of the thousands of others mindlessly riding along beside you, coaxing you along, assuring you that there is no fear ahead, surely economic growth and human ingenuity will prevail in the end, and, of course, God blesses the “faithful”! But in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his followers to turn their focus away from the anxieties of their lives and onto “the birds of the air” and “the lilies of the field.”

To me, at the core of Distributist theory is making every effort to tie our lives and that of our families, as much as possible, to that which is stable and never changing; to that which has been there from the beginning and will always be there. Certainly, as baptized Christians, we are no longer citizens of this world, but merely sojourners, pilgrims here, passing through (Jn 17:14,16). Jesus, however, did not take us immediately out of this world, but left us here to be witnesses to the truth (Jn 17:15). And this world, which is our God-given waystation on our journey toward our permanent heaven, was created good and for our enjoyment, as well as our sustenance. When we pause to look into the night sky at a star, we should consider that, regardless of the accelerating changes around us, this star has not changed since it was created in love by our Father God, and that it was in that precise location for every person who has ever lived. As St. Bonaventure encouraged in his great treatise on the Journey of the Mind to God, we begin our journey toward intimacy with God by recognizing the vestiges of His creative love in the unchanging world around us.

This first step gives us a solid hand-hold for the steps that follow.

Second, we need to examine and subsequently reduce the incessant voices in our lives. Who are we reading? To whom are we listening? What books, magazines, television shows, news broadcasts, web blogs, internet pundits, and radio commentators fill our every waking moment? Are they pulling us closer to God and independence, or enticing us to sell our souls along the accelerating path of economic progress and wealth? Are they encouraging us to trust our futures to the “certain” earnings of our investments, or are they helping us see that the more we can detach ourselves from these vaporous promises, the freer we can become to enjoy the blessings of the present moment.

I remember a Bill Cosby comedy routine when he described the crisis he caused in his family when he listened to the radio broadcast of “The Chicken Heart that Ate Up New York City.” His parents had left him home alone in his crib (a different time, a different world). Against his father’s specific orders, he snuck out of his crib and turned on the scary radio program, “Lights Out.” Once he had become totally terrified by the loud thumping chicken heart, which the narrator said was coming down his street and was now standing outside his door, young Bill spread Jello everywhere to slip up that monster! When his parents returned, hearing the loud thumping of the radio chicken heart, his father screamed, slipped, and nearly killed himself. When he asked his son what the @#$%& was going on, young Bill screamed in terror, “The chicken heart’s coming to eat us up!” His father’s solution? He turned the radio off! And in the sudden still silence of their home, Bill admitted sheepishly, “I never thought of that.”

How many of the many voices in our lives do we just merely need to turn off, to make a true progress towards the stability and peace that God promises? Dorothy Day said it well 73 years ago in her Journal: “‘Turn off your radio, put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week and spend time reading.’ Life would go on; other people would continue to ‘eat, sleep, love, worship, marry, have children, and somehow live in the midst of war, in the midst of anguish.’ Herself, she would pray, work, and read novels” (quoted in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” by Paul Elite, pg. 117).

Oh, and that means silencing those earbuds as we walk through nature so we can hear the beautiful unchanging symphony of the crickets and birds!

Third, consider making what some might consider radical changes in your financial entanglements. Nothing ties us as individuals, as a family, and as a nation to the accelerating grip of our changing economic culture than our debts and our investments. The more we can get out of debt and, as the good Distributists have been telling us for years, situated securely on our own piece of land with our own home, no matter how small and meager, the more we can become detached from the effects of any craziness that might occur in our nation or world. Even if all the markets rebound, and our friends wag their fingers that we were foolish not to have placed all our eggs in the basket of progress, they actually have only moved one minute step half-way towards an unreachable goal of “increasing disadjustment and instability.” (Does anyone really have a workable solution to our national debt of 17 trillion dollars, increasing at the unfathomable rate of more than a trillion a year?)

One of the previously mentioned Southern agrarians wrote in his essay, “The Philosophy of Progress,” again in 1930:

One outstanding fact in industry at present is that, with the great increase in production and in new commodities, and with consumption coerced to the limit, there is a steady decrease in employment. Improvement in technology … “can mean only one thing. An equivalent tonnage of goods can be produced by a declining number of workers, and men must lose their jobs by the thousands—presently by the millions.” (ibid, 149)

He was writing at the elbow of the curve, but we, now 83 years later, have only “progressed” further along the trajectory of his warnings. He had no idea, though, how prophetic he was, for a couple of paragraphs later he commented, “Another world war, which the international struggle for markets suggests as not an unlikely prospect, would afford temporary ‘relief’” (ibid, 150). World War II, coming eleven years later, did indeed provide some “temporary relief,” but the industrialization that ensued has never wained, nor has the escalating national debt or the oscillating unemployment. What major “relief” is around the bend in our future?

The more we can detach ourselves, adopting what our Lord called a “poverty of spirit,” from the attachments to the world bombarding us from every side, the more we can grow in the next step.

Four, learn to practice personal subsidiarity. In his introduction to Flee To The Fields: The Faith and Works of the Catholic Land Movement (IHS Press: Norfolk, VA; 2003), Dr.  Tobias Lanz gave the following helpful definition of social subsidiarity, “the cornerstone of Catholic social teaching”:

[S]ocial subsidiarity … holds that an individual should rely on the most basic levels of social and technical complexity to achieve his goals. Higher levels are called upon only when the lower echelon is insufficient to the task. Thus, by relying on the household, family, community, and nature’s bounty to provide as many basic needs as possible, people could free themselves from economic dependence and the political control of the plutocrats, and thereby regain a modicum of human dignity and freedom. (p. 8)

Applying this in personal practice, we can examine how we spend our money, where we place our investments, where we shop, and from where we purchase our goods, beginning first close to home and only then working outward.

Our little central Ohio village, once a thriving canal town and then farm community, now sits in many ways like a ghost town. Nine out of ten stores sit vacant. Why? Because first the strip malls came, selling transported American goods at cheaper prices, which were supplanted by the super and mega stores, which were selling imported international goods at even cheaper prices, which have now been supplanted by the internet stores, which not only sell but originate from all around the globe, selling everything at even cheaper prices. How can anyone consider opening a small local store in our little backwoods village when anything they might want to grow, make, or sell can be purchased cheaper not just from a local mall but from the convenience of anyone’s home desktop computer? Yet, the more we can focus our lives locally, from our families into our communities supporting the efforts of our neighbors, the more we can contribute to the security of our local economies.

Five, seek to live more simply. This has been the constant message of the Church and the Saints, as well as spiritual writers, throughout the ages, ever since our Lord made this the center-piece of His New Law, His Sermon on the Mount. So to that extent, I really don’t need to reiterate this, except maybe to emphasize that this is always a relative move—relative to one’s present state of life and to where we are at the present moment: Are our goals or objectives, our labor, our plans, our investments, our dreams all leading away from or toward a life of simplicity? Or are they in complicity with our culture driven by self-promotion, consumption, accumulation, and hoarding?

Early on, the apostle Paul warned his congregations to beware of the constant call away from the pure simplistic gospel of Christ: “But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve by his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor 11:3, KJV). Indeed, the voices of temptation bombarding us from every direction are very subtle, and it is particularly interesting to note just how accurately the above graph depicts the age-long battle of the enemy against simplicity. It has always been gradual and subtle, relying on the means and technologies of each age, but today the call away from simplicity toward progress is at such an accelerating pace that the mere suggestion of choosing a simpler life is a dangerous clarion cry of treason against our American right of upward mobility and the pursuit of happiness.

Andrew Nelson Lytle, in his contribution to I’ll Take My Stand, made this challenge to agrarians, in 1930, to return to a simpler life:

To avoid the dire consequences and to maintain a farming life in an industrial imperialism, there seems to be only one thing left for the farmer to do, and particularly for the small farmer. Until he and the agrarian West and all the conservative communities throughout the United States can unite on some common political action, he must deny himself the articles the industrialists offer for sale. It is not so impossible as it may seem at first, for, after all, the necessities they machine-facture were once manufactured on the land, and as for the bric-a-brac, let it rot on their hands. Do what we did after the war [the Civil War] and the Reconstruction: return to our looms, our handcrafts, our reproducing stock. Throw out the radio and take down the fiddle from the wall. Forsake the movies for the play-parties and the square dances. And turn away from the liberal capons who fill the pulpits as preachers. Seek a priesthood that may manifest the will and intelligence to renounce science and search out the Word in the authorities” (ibid, 244).

Every step we make, even small ones, to simplify our lives, is an effort to get in step with our Lord. Every step in rebellion against the marketeers who claim that happiness comes only with the accumulation of unnecessary stuff and against the politicians who warn that the salvation of our economy and the “world as we know it” depends upon this, is a step of freedom from the frantic clutches of today’s modern industrial progressivist culture.

Six. Steps one through five are all in line with the teachings of our Lord and His Church, and, admittedly, each requires willful sacrifice empowered by grace, but step Six is only for “those to whom this has been given.” This is what Jesus said about those of His followers called to the celibate life (cf, Mt 19:11f). The same is true, though, for those called to live a self-sufficient life on the land. I was hesitant to include this in the list, because indeed not all are called to this, maybe only a few, but there was a time, back down and along the steep curve of that graph, when the majority of people in this world were self-sufficient or at least trying to be. They admittedly led a simpler life with no thoughts or interest in upward mobility. As Lytle also wrote, “A farm is not a place to grow wealthy; it is a place to grow corn” (ibid, 205). It is a place to slowly over time become free. Lytle continued his challenge to those called to an agrarian life:

Any man who grows his own food, kills his own meat, takes wool from his lambs and cotton from his stalks and makes them into clothes, plants corn and hay for his stock, shoes them at the crossroads blacksmith shop, draws milk and butter from his cows, eggs from his pullets, water from the ground, and fuel from the woodlot, can live in an industrial world without a great deal of cash. Let him diversify, but diversify so that he may live rather than he may grow rich. (ibid, 244)

Rt. Rev. Msgr. Luigi Ligutti made much the same claims, more specifically from a Catholic Distributist perspective, exactly ten years later in his important book, Rural Roads to Security: America’s Third Struggle for Freedom (Bruce Publ. Co, Milwaukee; 1940). There is far too much good stuff to quote here, so let one quote suffice:

To have economic independence a man must be in a position to leave one job and go to another; he must have enough savings of some kind to exist for a considerable time without accepting the first job offered. Thus the peasant, for all his poverty and the exploitation which he suffers, is relative to his own needs still the freest man in central Europe. The fact that he can exist by his own labor on his own piece of land gives him an independence which every dictatorial regime, except the Russian perhaps, has been forced to respect.

But the industrial worker who has a choice between working in one factory and not working at all, the white collar intellectuals who compete savagely for the relatively few private positions and posts in the bureaucracy—these are the people who live too precariously to exercise their liberties or to defend them. They have no savings. They have only their labor to sell, and there are very few buyers of their labor. …

The more I see of Europe the more deeply convinced do I become that the preservation of freedom in America, or anywhere else, depends upon maintaining and restoring for the great majority of individuals the economic means to remain independent individuals. The greatest evil of the modern world is the reduction of the people to a proletarian level by destroying their savings, by depriving them of private property, by making them the helpless employees of private monopoly or of government monopoly. At that point they are no longer citizens. They are a mob.” (pg. 20)

In his book, Msgr. Ligutti offered many hopeful and practical suggestions on helping the poor gain dignity by becoming self-supporting homesteaders on their own small pieces of land, but his book was quickly shelved and forgotten, because, in the next year, came Pearl Harbor, and the “relief” prophesied by that earlier Southern agrarian.

But the hope and practical solutions of Msgr. Ligutti still hold true, and given the fulfillment of so many of the Distributist warnings of the 30s and 40s—and to an accelerated extent that none of them could have imagined—I extend the challenge to any of you “to whom this has been given” to follow your vocation to self-sufficient simplicity.

And finally, seven: given all the changes suggested above, we can do that which is most important: Make more time to talk with and listen to God. By focusing on that which is more stable, and not forever moving and elusive; by shutting our minds to the thousands of conflicting, clamoring voices around us; by freeing ourselves from the clutching control and anxieties of debt and unsure investments; by investing our lives in the immediate world around us—the specific world into which God has planted us; by choosing to make steps, even if small ones, toward a life of gospel simplicity, and, to those “to whom this has been given,” a life of self-sufficiency on one’s own piece of land, the freer we can each become to commune with God in prayer; to hear His voice in liturgy; to receive His grace and forgiveness—His very self—in the sacraments; and the more effectively we can become the persons whom He created in His Image.

As Saint Paul promised: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6-7).

As I prepare to retire from our back porch for the night, I think it’s important to conclude this with a disclaimer; in fact, the same one that Saint Paul gave: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil 3:12). I am certainly far from completing any of these seven steps, particularly the last, but my wife and I together have come to believe that these are important goals for us as a family. So pray for us, and we will pray for you.

It’s that time of year, and one of the favorites for our family. Now almost every day one or all of us are out fighting through the briar patches for wild raspberries. We also call these delicious morsels “Grace-berries” because they just appear like magic on our land! We did nothing to cause them to happen — especially nothing to deserve them! In fact, the less we do to clear away the brambles, the seemingly more plumb and luscious they become every year!

 

The Analogy of Faith

Now, one could use this analogy as an encouragement for sloth. But thank God for our Church, which gives us guidelines and boundaries for our musings, whether it’s interpreting the true meaning of Scripture or gleaning lessons from berry picking.

Among other things, the Catechism teaches that we are to “be attentive to the analogy of faith” which means “the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation” (CCC, 114).

The problem with sola Scriptura, and all other forms of non-Catholic Christianity, is that individuals believe they have the freedom and “Spirit guided” ability to glean whatever “truth” they can find in whatever source God seemingly drops into their lives. Such is one of the causes of the present “soup” in which we find ourselves (cf. blog posts below).

 

Grace

The Catechism teaches that Grace is “the free and undeserved gift that God gives us to respond to our vocation to become his adopted children” (CCC, pg.  881). His grace is freely given, and undeserved, yet for a purpose which requires our response, our acceptance, and our willful actualization. Grace can be squandered — as can our freely given, undeserved wild raspberries, which, likewise, are given for a purpose and require our response, acceptance, and willful actualization.

Some years we were unable to pick any berries. They all turned lusciously black and juicy, but, other than those enjoyed by our welcome guests, the birds, and our less than welcome guests, the bugs, they rotted, hardened, and remained as visual reminders of squandered grace.

Now we’ve learned from experience that picking the berries as soon as they turn black allows the plant’s nutrition to flow more freely to the remaining berries, initiating more growth. Sometimes it seems like just turning around causes more berries to turn ripe! As long as it’s berry season, we can return to the same plants day after day and find new ripe “Grace-berries”.

Growing by grace in holiness is like that: acting on grace to eradicate sin and vice initiates the growth of virtue; ignoring or failing to act on grace opens the door to vice and squelches virtue.  Jesus seems to have had a similar analogy in mind when He taught His disciples about the necessity of abiding in Him — and this we do through receiving and acting on the graces we receive through the sacraments:

Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. … Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15:2, 4-6)

 

“Suffering Produces Endurance” (Rom 5:3) as well as Welts!

As I worked my way through the briars last night, I remembered that I had written about this experience before, and that the lessons I learned then still hold true:

First, invariably the largest, most luscious berries are deep within the brambles, and those prickly picker branches hurt! The way they attack, you’d think there were little demons in those bushes. The minute I stretch deep into a bush to pluck two or three of the little fruits, two or three pickers literally wrap themselves around my back, locking me in until rescuers arrive. I’m no biblical scholar, but I’m sure that God must have added the prickly pickers after the fall of Adam and Eve.

Those little thorns are reminiscent of St. Paul’s teaching in Romans that, though we’re heirs of Christ, this privilege comes “if only we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him” (Rom 8:17). As it is with harvesting bramble berries, so it is in our spiritual lives as well: The greatest blessings always come with suffering, or as Jesus said in the previous quote, through being “pruned.”

 

Bring Forth Fruit with Patience (Lk 8:15)

Second, the greatest blessings always require patience, as it says in Psalm 37: “Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; … those who wait for the Lord shall possess the land” (Ps 37: 7, 9). Those who pick berries in a hurry, who just want to get it done so they can move on to something else, will invariably have three times the number of picker pricks and a third the number of good berries. Or more likely, no berries at all, since they usually get spilled while running home. (Just ask my youngest son.)

If we relax and take the time to delight carefully in the God-given privilege and beauty found in picking each berry (or any other task He gives us), the overall experience is always more rewarding. This too is the advice of the psalmist: “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps 37:4).

 

Thorns in the Flesh

Third, we must never be so sure that we’ve picked the bushes clean. Whenever my family and I begin picking, we generally pick the easy-to-reach berries first. Then with these collected, we could easily declare that our work is done. But from experience we know there’s more. So we fight the good fight into and through the shoulder-high bramble patch, only to discover dozens of new luscious berries taunting us in plain view. From the other direction, they were hidden behind leaves, but now from a new angle they are blatantly manifest.

So it is with sin and bad habits. We must not stop after we’ve cleansed ourselves of the easily obvious sins, but dig deeper and look at ourselves from a fresh angle — from the perspective of our suffering Savior as St. Paul did (see Phil 3:7–16) — and then we’ll see that none of us have yet reached perfection.

 

Stumbling Blocks

Finally, as I worked my way back in and through those dense bushes last night, my foot hit something hard, and nearly sent me cartwheeling down the hill into the creek. When I pushed the weeds and thorns aside to see what it was, I found an old overgrown granite foundation stone that I had discovered years before and which I had long intended to get help to move. Instead, I put it off and had forgotten all about it.

Sin is that way, of course, and the more we put it off, the more overgrown it becomes, until it becomes just another part of our lives, our character. To truly eradicate it, so that it doesn’t become a stumbling block for everything else in our lives, we need help, and for this, Jesus gave us His Church, to whom He gave the power of this eradication:

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)

The grace we need to change our lives comes to us through His Church, through His Sacraments, and this requires that we fight through the briars of doubt and discouragement, and self-sufficiency, and go to where this grace is readily available for the healing of our souls.

I will lift up the chalice of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. (Ps 116: 13)

Sitting here on my back porch, sipping my beverage of choice, I’ve lately been thinking a lot about our finances. What does life on this farm (or more accurately this house in the woods), in the context of Scripture and the entire teaching of our Faith, teach about planning our financial futures?

Before I begin: First, I need to admit that I’m not a financial guy, and if at any point in this reflection I sound a bit “preachy,” please know that I am preaching mostly at myself! I have a long way to go in this, and as a seasoned old preacher once reminded me, “Whenever ya point, ya got three fingers a-pointing back atcha!”

Lately I’ve been reading through Sirach in my morning devotions. Anything there about our finances?

 

Frogs in the Proverbial Soup Pot

Across the way there is a spring fed stock tank. It was built there for the thirst of livestock, but it has also become the home for a school of goldfish and a mess of frogs.

Never in the history of mankind has life as frogs in the proverbial soup pot been tougher. The volume of voices inundating us with advice on how to live our lives—and particularly how to plan our financial futures—is excruciatingly contradictory. Imagine yourself a frog swimming in a large pot with a thousand other frogs all croaking at the same time: that’s the volume of advice coming at us from all sides through the media. “But with the confidence of their croaking, they must know more than me about financial matters! So I’ll just keep swimming along in this pot with everybody else.”

But maybe the Lord is calling us along a different path—maybe even to shock everyone, especially our portfolio managers—and not just swim against the stream, but to jump out of that pot!

Before some of us end up facing a Chapter Eleven (or Seven or Thirteen) bankruptcy, maybe we can learn something from the wisdom in Chapter Eleven of Sirach:

 

[7] Do not find fault before you investigate;

          first consider, and then reprove.

    [8] Do not answer before you have heard,

          nor interrupt a speaker in the midst of his words.

   [9] Do not argue about a matter which does not concern you,

          nor sit with sinners when they judge a case.

 

I suppose this is a good place to begin, because I’m sure any non-Catholics reading this―if you are like I was when I was an Evangelical Protestant minister—would be arguing, “But Sirach ain’t inspired Scripture!” But, as the writer of Sirach advises, “Do not find fault before you investigate…do not answer before you have heard.” As I mentioned in an earlier post, as far as we can tell from historical documents, the first official definition of the Canon of Holy Scripture—which became the standard for all Bibles for over a thousand years before the list was changed by the 16th century Reformers—was declared and recorded by the bishops gathered under Pope Damasus I in the Council of Rome in AD 382. This Canon included all the books presently in Catholic Bibles, and lists, as a part of the Divine Scriptures, “Solomon three books,” which includes Sirach. So maybe we ought to at least “first consider … nor interrupt a speaker in the midst of his words.”

 

Busy, Busy, Busy!

   [10] My son, do not busy yourself with many matters;

          if you multiply activities you will not go unpunished;

   and if you pursue you will not overtake,

          and by fleeing you will not escape.

 

We live in a frenzied world, and a culture driven by the false assumption of “progress” and the all-powerful saving grace of “human ingenuity.”

From an early age, like tadpoles trying to find our place amongst the older frogs crowding around us, we have been prepared for a place upon the treadmill of upward mobility. Along this path the words of Jesus make little sense:

 

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life … but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.

Mt 6:25-34

 

But we will all answer to our Creator for the “many matters” with which we have “busied” ourselves. When our Lord told the apostle John to write those letters to the seven churches, He warned, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:29). To five of those churches, He said “I know your works,” to another, “I know where you dwell,” and to another, “I know your tribulations” (Rev 2:2f). But in every case He gave promises of future and eternal blessings to those who “conquer.”

By grace we are empowered to resist the incessant croaking of the voices around us temping us to “multiply” our “activities” to such decibels that we can no longer hear the beckoning of God. How can we “pray without ceasing” when we are doing everything else “without ceasing”? But God does know our lives and our tribulations, and promises to help us conquer—if we are willing to trust Him, even if following Him means jumping out of the pot of “progress and upward mobility.”

 

Goin’ with the Flow

Once in the pot, though, it’s hard to get out, especially when “expert” frog advisers warn you not only to stay in but to keep pressing forward—“And if you do flee,” they warn, “you will regret it when the markets and the economy rebound!” The goal of financial and family security based on the anticipation of escalating wages, compounded interest, and accumulated wealth, especially in our present staggering economy, is forever elusive (Per that commercial we’ve all seen on tv, “Is a ‘gazillian’ even enough?”) because at the core there is a fine line between whether one has put his trust in God or in the anticipated trajectory of wealth.

 

[11] There is a man who works, and toils, and presses on, but is so much the more in want.

 

It’s not merely that we are never satisfied, but the path of upward mobility places us alongside others also toiling and pressing on, pulling us forward. And that other “still small voice” tells us that we now deserve and really need to have what they have: “You’ve earned it!” But in the process we either forget or never learn that happiness is to be found not only in the products of our labor, but in labor itself. If labor is nothing more than the necessary evil we must endure to produce the sources of our happiness, than we may forever remain “so much the more in want,” in this life as well as the next.

 

Whatever you do to the Least of These

[12a] There is another who is slow and needs help, who lacks strength and abounds in poverty;

 

Isn’t it true that those who are convinced in and possessed by the upward security of financial capitalism often look askance at those who are content with a simpler, “less sophisticated” lifestyle? “Look at that hayseed! So slow! Just can’t handle the pace! Man, does he need help! He just lacks the moral and mental strength to break free from the poverty of his ignorance!” And Sirach even adds later how the world gathers round and coddles the rich and influential, but ignores and shuns the poor and humble:

 

Humility is an abomination to a proud man;

          likewise a poor man is an abomination to a rich one.

   When a rich man totters, he is steadied by friends,

          but when a humble man falls, he is even pushed away by friends.

   If a rich man slips, his helpers are many;

          he speaks unseemly words, and they justify him.

   If a humble man slips, they even reproach him;

          he speaks sensibly, and receives no attention.

   When the rich man speaks all are silent,

          and they extol to the clouds what he says.

   When the poor man speaks they say, “Who is this fellow?”

          And should he stumble, they even push him down.

Sirach 13:20-23

 

So who do we listen to, and whose advice do we shun? Do we mostly trust and follow the rich and successful, the confident and charismatic, the attractive and winsome? And in the process do we merely patronize the poor and the humble, the simple and less ambitious? I wonder whether we would listen to the advice of a financial analyst if he fit the following description:

 

He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him,

          and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men;

          a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

And as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,

          and we esteemed him not.

Isaiah 53:2b-3

 

Happy is as Happy Does

   [12b] but the eyes of the Lord look upon him for his good; he lifts him out of his low estate

   [13] and raises up his head, so that many are amazed at him.

 

Unlike the eyes of those swimming around us in this soup pot, God sees us through different eyes. He sees our heart, our motives, our conscience, as well as our ignorance, and in the end evaluates our needs by the yardstick of goodness. And He responds in ways that “pass all understanding” (cf. Phil 4:6-7), especially to those along the path of upward security who envy the peace of those who have chosen the road less traveled.

 

[14] Good things and bad [“prosperity and adversity,” KJV], life and death, poverty and wealth, come from the Lord.

 

The soup in which we frogs are swimming assumes that there are always natural causes for all of life. If we’re healthy or we get cancer, it must be a function of our diet or exercise; if we get rich or end up poor, it was because of how hard we worked or how well we invested; if our life is a failure or a success, it all comes back to something we did or didn’t do. We’re even arrogant enough to believe that if the climate changes, we did it! But there is no evidence that anyone has ever altered the moment of death apart from the moment, from all eternity, planned by God.

Certainly our actions have an effect on our lives and the lives of others, as well as the world around us, so those we are called before God to be good stewards of the gifts He has given us! However, it may be that there is far less connection than we suspect between what we eat or how we live and the good or bad events of life. It may be more a matter of God using whatever means is necessary to get our attention away from our false gods and back to Him.

 

[17] The gift of the Lord endures for those who are godly, and what he approves will have lasting success.

 

It’s interesting that those who focus their lives on attaining eternal salvation in the next life may be as imbalanced as those who focus on building financial security for the rest of this life. As Father Nicholas Grou wrote more than 200 years ago in his “Marks of a True Disciple,” our focus must not be on whether, as a result of our efforts, even our faith, we will be saved, for in essence this is a self-centered quest; rather our focus is to be, first, on giving glory to God; second, on growing by grace in holiness; and then, thirdly, trusting in hope our eternal destiny to the mercy of our Heavenly Father.

Reaffirming all that our Lord said in His Sermon on the Mount, the Apostle John wrote, “we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another…” (1 Jn 3:22-23). In other words, whatever peace and security we may want for our future comes as a “gift of the Lord” to those who focus their lives on Him and others—giving glory to God, growing in holiness, and loving others—not ourselves.

 

Rich is as Rich Is

   [18] There is a man who is rich through his diligence and self-denial, and this is the reward allotted to him:

   [19] when he says, “I have found rest, and now I shall enjoy my goods!”,  he does not know how much time will pass until he leaves them to others and dies.

 

There is, indeed, much necessary self-denial if one is to dedicate every effort along the upward path of mobility to financial security. There are some money managers—maybe some who are handling our own investments—who spend every waking moment in their high-rise offices, sacrificing family and friends, taking little time for leisure, all to focus every ounce of “diligence” on making the best investments. And, indeed, many of these men and women amass great wealth, but when they reach retirement, wallowing back in the security of hard-won 401k investments, the flower of health long past and no lasting family, they may find that what time they have left to enjoy the fruit of their “necessarily evil” labor is fleeting.

 

   [20] Stand by your covenant and attend to it, and grow old in your work.

 

This verse may sound like one must not swerve from the course he has taken, even if he’s but a frog in a pot of mythically progressive soup. But what is truly being called for is that we cut through the blinding crust of our assumptions and commitments to rediscover the one true underlying covenant of our being: that we were created in love in the Image of our Creator God, who established a Covenant with His people, which has been fulfilled in Christ, and into which through baptism we have been adopted. As John wrote, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 Jn 3:1). It is in this Covenant that we must joyfully “stand … and attend to”—and not merely enduring our present work for the hope of future happiness, but growing “old in” our work, seeking His face in the simplicity of the present moment.

 

Happy is what Happy Trusts

   [21] Do not wonder at the works of a sinner, but trust in the Lord and keep at your toil; for it is easy in the sight of the Lord to enrich a poor man quickly and suddenly.

   [22] The blessing of the Lord is the reward of the godly, and quickly God causes his blessing to flourish.

 

The success stories and motivational Power-Point presentations of those who are apparently succeeding in the soup of financial capitalism can certainly be distracting. It can make one’s heart question, second guess, even “condemn us” for turning from the well-worn path of financial security. But remember that every human being is a “sinner” and can be wrong about the future; every successful investor can be wrong in the evaluations and explanations of how “what they did was the key to their success, as well as yours!” But everything comes from God, who rewards the “godly,” and the only trustworthy plan is to build your portfolio on this strategy: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Prov 3:5-6).

 

   [23] Do not say, “What do I need, and what prosperity could be mine in the future?”

   [24] Do not say, “I have enough, and what calamity could happen to me in the future?”

   [25] In the day of prosperity, adversity is forgotten, and in the day of adversity, prosperity is not remembered.

 

No one except God knows tomorrow; not even the most astute financial analyst and his carefully developed computer models of anticipated stock performance. Verse 23 reminds me of hearing my banker explain, with cocky assurance, how the portfolio of my investments was on track to provide all our future needs—one month before everything crashed in 2008! And what about those who at the same time had just decided their portfolios had reached sufficient security for them to retire—only to discover a month later that their net worth had been cut in half! It was Steinbeck’s superb book, “The Grapes of Wrath,” that beautifully illustrates how when one has lost everything, it’s hard to remember the days of contentment.

 

   [26] For it is easy in the sight of the Lord to reward a man on the day of death according to his conduct.

   [27] The misery of an hour makes one forget luxury, and at the close of a man’s life his deeds will be revealed.

   [28] Call no one happy before his death; a man will be known through his children.

 

How will we “be known through” our children? What will we have left them? Will they remember us as people who sacrificed everything to gamble on some fleeting financially secure future of things and wealth, or people who were willing to sacrifice everything else except to love God and to love them, to enjoy being with them, to “have no anxiety about tomorrow,” to “not complain of want” but “to be content… in whatever state I am” (Phil 4:11), and to find ways to honor God in everything we did?

Remember that no one can read anyone else’s mind; no one—even the best counselor or confessor—knows the truth of our inner most thoughts. So when we look at someone else’s life and determine that they must be “happy,” we may be very, very wrong, for in the end it may be only those closest to us—and after we’re gone that will only be our children—who truly have an inkling of whether in this life we ever experienced true happiness. As Isaiah the prophet wrote in Isaiah 55, using interestingly the context of farming:

 

   Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;

   Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

   For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.

   For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

   For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:6-11

 

For men will be Lovers of Money

And may I add, again as I sit sipping in the safe security of this back porch, two more verses from later in Sirach:

 

   Do not revel in great luxury, lest you become impoverished by its expense.

   Do not become a beggar by feasting with borrowed money, when you have nothing in your purse.

Sirach 18:32-33

 

Boy ain’t this descriptive of our present financial soup, especially the unfathomable trajectory of our present national debt!! We have dug a bottomless pit of debt because as a nation we have reveled in countless luxuries—blessings upon blessings which we gradually have taken for granted as rights! As a nation, we have “progressed” beyond the simplicity of the responsibly contented to the upward mobility of the irresponsibly greedy, and even though we have long since bypassed our budget and resources, we continue to demand the luxuries of our Americanism which, of course, “is ours by right!”

As a result, we, as a nation and as individuals, have been oblivious to advice like that given in these verses: “Do not become a beggar by feasting with borrowed money, when you have nothing in your purse!” Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!

The more we can by grace extricate ourselves and our families from the encumbrances of this soup (this world) in which we live, the freer we can be to live without anxiety and for the glory of God.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.

1 John 2:15-17

A final word from Fr. Thomas Dubay:

Poverty of fact and of spirit contributes to the radical self-emptying that is a condition for this fullness of prayer and joy: “Having nothing, possessing all things” (2 Cor 6:10). God forces himself on no one. If I cling to things, he lets me have my things. If I am empty of things, he fills me with himself.

(from “Happy Are the Poor” (Ignatius Press), pg. 164)

As I said in the beginning, I have a long way to go. May the Lord help us empty ourselves of anything that keeps us from Him.

Because of my work with the Coming Home Network and my 15-years of interviewing converts on the Journey Home program, I’m often asked what are the most common reasons that Protestant ministers “come home” to the Catholic Church? Simply: authoritative truth.

This was the core of my own journey to the Church, from being a Protestant pastor responsible not only for my own soul, but for proclaiming the truth to my congregation and family. I won’t review my journey now, but the issue that began my journey was, “How can I be certain that what I believe, preach, and teach from Sacred Scripture is true, and not merely my Evangelical Presbyterian slant, or my personal opinion?”

For example, take the following verse:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15:4-6)

So, how does one abide in Christ? What does it mean? What does it mean to bear fruit? To have Him abide in us?! Or how about another verse:

The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Mt 13:45-46)

Russell Herman Conwell (1843-1925; Baptist Minister) was the creator of “Acres of Diamonds,” a phenomenally successful lecture based on this verse that he personally delivered over 6000 times, creating over $4,000,000 in earnings. He founded Temple University and Conwell School of Theology, which later was combined with Gordon Divinity School to become Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which was where Scott Hahn and I were Calvinist classmates.

But whose interpretation of “the kingdom of heaven” is correct? Conwell’s particular Baptist interpretation, or that of other Protestants, or even that of other Baptists, or what about the interpretations of Catholics, Orthodox, or other Christians. The “Pearl of Great Price,” based on this text, has a radically different perspective than Rev. Conwell’s, and is a key book of the Mormons!

How does one determine whose opinion is authoritatively and trustingly true?

What opened my heart to the Catholic Church was discovering that my Evangelical Protestant method of determining truth did not work, leading only to a cacophony of conflicting opinions, dividing Christians from other Christians.

But once I was inside the gates of the Church, I was sadly stymied by the unexpected breadth of opinions and sad divisions amongst Catholics. To some these divisions seem no different than the divisions amongst Protestants, and for some I’ve known, this caused them to leave the Church and return to the more comfortable confusion of their past. For others, who are not happy with the bishops, this has meant defining a Catholicism on their own terms.

How are we, then, to determine what is true when we are surrounded, not just by so many other opinions in the world, but by so many seemingly faithful Christians with conflicting sometimes contradictory opinions and lifestyles?

 

Lessons from Life on the Farm

To answer that, let me digress a bit to talk about life on our farm.

I am, probably by the unanimous opinion of all my neighbors, the worst of farmers. If I ever write a book on farming, it will be about the twelve key things not to do!

But I have gained a tremendous amount of spiritual insight (if not just humility) from our experiences on the farm. And Jesus told us all to look to nature and to the farm for spiritual analogies. For example, He said, “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Mt 6:26) And when He wanted to defend His authority to heal on the sabbath, He said, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?” (Lk 14:5)

Throughout His teachings, Jesus encouraged us to look around at the nature of God’s creation for analogies, illustrations of truth, spiritual truth. Great spiritual writers throughout the ages have done likewise. For example, St. Bonaventure, in his “Journey of the Mind to God,” gave six steps towards intimacy with God. The first step involved looking at the vestiges (or visible evidence) of God in His creation, recognizing the beauty, order, variety, etc., as signs of His creative love. Consider, for example, that every Prothonotary Warbler has the exact same colorings and the same song!

How does Darwinian evolution and natural selection explain why and how every individual species of bird around the world has the same song?! In pious and humble reflection, this leads one to gratefully appreciate the creative love of God, who from the beginning of time established His symphony of song in nature. Do you hear it? Do you stand in awe? Or do you merely jump into your car, and behind closed windows speed off to work or the soccer field?

In a reflection from his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Benedict XVI made the following invitation to parents, encouraging them to teach their children to value nature. He said: “I would like to recommend that during this time of vacation, you revivify your spirits by contemplating the splendors of Creation. Parents, teach your children to see nature, respect and protect it as a magnificent gift that presents to us the grandeur of the Creator!” Alluding to the Gospel, in which Jesus proclaims the parable of the sower, Pope Benedict added that with parables, “Jesus used the language of nature to explain to his disciples the mysteries of the Kingdom. May the images he uses become familiar to us,” he said. “Let us remember that the divine reality is hidden in our daily lives like the seed in the soil. May it bear fruit in us!”

When I heard this from Pope Benedict, I felt like he was giving me a high five, because this was the very reason that Marilyn and I had moved our family from the city out to acreage on her family’s century old farm. Not to farm, mind you (!), but to help our boys appreciate the beauty and simplicity of God’s creation.

And by God’s mercy, I have learned many lessons from our life on the farm. Here’s a few:

(1) As far as we can tell, until the early 1800s, no human being had ever lived on our land. Up until then, it had been nothing more than a dense Forrest of enormous virgin trees (Note: read Conrad Richter’s “The Trees”). Then around 1825 a young pioneer by the name of Morgan bought the land for $5 from the new state of Ohio, and without any modern machinery, he cleared the land to farm and raise sheep to support his family. For the past 200 years, the Morgans and then the Shaws, my wife’s family, kept that land. They were faithful stewards of this land, keeping it cleared and useful for farming, and when we moved onto 25-acres of it, we accepted that responsibility of stewardship.

What I have found amazing is how quickly this land will return to its native state if not cared for. One section of our land, which had not been managed for 30 years, had completely returned to scrub forest. We hired a man to clear the acreage down to bare dirt, pushing all the junk trees and brambles into a pile for burning. I had hoped to replant with pasture grass, but my busyness got in the way, and within a year that bare land had completely grown back with over the shoulder high grasses and weeds.

This natural example of Entropy (the natural movement in nature of order to disorder) is, also, an example of Spiritual Entropy.

There’s an old joke about some tourists passing a beautifully tended Scottish garden. They say to the Scottish gardener, “My has God blessed you with an abundant crop!” And the gardener responds, “You should have seen it when He had it all alone!”

Without the willful input of energy and effort, our spiritual lives will quickly move from order to disorder!.

(2) After becoming situated on our land, I studied it, and with an eye for being a good steward—without any farming background, mind you—the question arose: What is the best use of this particular land? It isn’t flat, like the farm land around my childhood home in northwest Ohio; rather, it’s mostly rolling hills and woods. I asked others and read shelves of books, and got lots of opinions. Many had their own set solutions, without even a glance at our land.

The key point here: each of us is different, with a unique purpose, and we are each called to be a good steward of our lives by prayerfully discerning our specific purpose.

Our personal vocations involve three layers: First, our vocation as a Christian witness due to our baptism; second, our state of life, whether single or married, priest, religious, or lay; and finally, our individual personal vocation to service within the Body of Christ.

When I was trying to sift through all the opinions of what I needed to do with our land, I needed to carefully listen to an authoritative voice, someone I could trust, whom I was confident understood the unique characteristics of our land and also knew what he was talking about! Same is true with our personal vocational discernment: we need to listen to the advice of a trustworthy spiritual advisor.

(3) It turns out the best use of our land, besides maybe lumber and the grazing of a riding lawn mower, is the grazing of sheep or cattle. For this the fields needed good perimeter fences, which were present but in desperate need of repair. In fact the southern fence line was a sieve. Nearly a quarter mile consisted of hilly terrain and a meandering creek, fallen or rotten trees, briars, poison ivy, and a deteriorating woven fence that had been patched dozens of times with strands of rusted barb wire. But after several years of hand clearing, brush hogging, bulldozing, and a completely new high tensile electric fence, the field was reclaimed and ready to bounce back any wandering livestock or hungry predators. After adding a dozen sheep, the rejuvenated pasture was a beautiful sight.

But as I said, I’m the worst farmer ever, so after a season and a host of reasons, our flock had dwindled down to six, and in the end these went to the auction barn. For a year the field sat, until this spring when we were ready to add six feeder calves. The fence lines, however, had become so overgrown that we couldn’t turn on the electric—they could not be used for their intended purpose.

So, my sons and I spent a weekend clearing and string trimming, repairing one section where a tree full of bees had fallen and temporarily knocked down the wires. When evening came, once again I saw a clear fence line, which actually was better than it had ever been.

Boundaries are important, and must be constantly tended. By grace we generally do not regress all the way back to our original state, that is, if we regularly experience contrition, repentance, and utilize the sacramental graces of the confessional. However, we can digress, and lose it all (cf. Heb 6:4f), so we must never presume upon our past or present relationship with God. “Abiding in Him” at least means a continuing daily relationship with Him, in prayer, in self-denial, and in active love.

(4) In examining closely the land upon which the Lord has called us to live, we have discovered gems, diamonds if you will, that others might call nothing more than pesky brambles. Every year so far, our greatest crop—our most precious natural resource—has been hundreds of wild black raspberry and blackberry bushes. Last year we picked dozens of quarts, and even then we could not keep up with the “crop” as it ripened. Remember the section of land I said we had stripped bare? It grew back infested with wild berries!

But God certainly did not make these luscious berries easy to pick! These acres of diamonds are also acres of thorns! And likewise, the gifts that God has given each of us to enjoy, develop, and use for His glory require discipline and sacrifice, and often involve suffering, for as Scripture teaches, “we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:16-17).

 

Trustworthy Lessons from the Farm?

Now, I’ve just used examples from nature and our life on the farm to illustrate spiritual lessons: but how can you or I know whether these interpretive lessons are true and trustworthy? The bookstores and internet are overflowing with books and blogs by authors that use examples from nature to prove all kinds of things, from Christian truth, to Hinduism, Buddhism, New Age, even to atheism; from investments strategies to leadership principles to political platforms to dietary assumptions to parenting ideals to new moral codes. Nature has been used to justify some of the most radically contradictory ideals, from extreme isolationist pacifism to radical social Darwinism; even to denying the viability of the family and marriage and monogamous relationships.

So, yes, there is truth to be found and lessons to be learned by studying nature, but how can we be certain that what we’ve gleaned is trustworthy, and ought to be passed down to our children? How can we be certain that someone isn’t just using examples from nature to justify some hidden personal agenda?

Once again, how can we determine authoritative, trustworthy truth?

As a Protestant, I would have answered the Bible alone: read the Bible, everyday, pray it, memorize it, know it, and with the help of the Holy Spirit you will know what is true and necessary for salvation. The problem is, this does not necessarily work, nor is there any evidence that this was the reason the bishops who gathered in council at Rome in AD 392 first established the Canon of Scripture. Reliance on the Bible alone does not eliminate confusion; it leads to thousands of conflicting opinions, as I illustrated earlier.

As an Evangelical Presbyterian, I might have added that the answer was Theology, the Queen of Sciences: one must read Scripture correctly, through a proper lens of theology. But which theology? Luther’s? Calvin’s? Zwingli’s? Wesley’s? Menno Simon’s? Joseph Smith’s? Joseph Campbell’s? The founders of Pentecostal or the Health and Wealth gospel? All of these, and their followers, read the Bible through their own unique lenses of theology, leading to division and confusion.

Then I discovered Saint Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 3:14-15, “I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” The Church is the foundation of truth, and my wife Marilyn and I have never doubted our decision to come home to this Church established by Christ in his apostles, centered around the authority of Peter.

Yet, as I mentioned earlier, within the Church there is great variety of opinion and practice, and a myriad of Catholic leaders, speakers, talk-show hosts (!), media, resources, websites, and even blogs!! Where can we turn to make sure we can know which are authoritatively true? Are we again left to ourselves to order our thinking and our consciences?

It is here that I more fully and humbly came to realize and appreciate the truth that every good Catholic knows, or at least should know, and in fact which draws nearly every convert to make his or her journey home. At first mention of this, many non-Catholic Christians will cringe back in horror and disgust, disclaiming, “Wait, how does that help? Isn’t that just as subjective and intangible as the Bible alone, or theology, or a Church full of many opinions?” And my answer to that is no, not at all—if one trust’s that Jesus established the Church, established her Magisterium upon the rock of Peter, and then guided and protected them by the promised Holy Spirit.

What is that one trustworthy foundation upon which we can sift through the myriad of opinions, confidently build our lives, correctly order our thinking, and form our consciences? Well, consider the trajectory of the following quotes from Jesus, the NT Scriptures, as well as the writings of the Early Church Fathers:

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:26)

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you. (1 Corinthians 11:2)

Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-3)

So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. (2 Thessalonians 2:15)

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:1-2)

The Church, having, received this preaching and this faith, although she is disseminated throughout the whole world, yet guarded it, as if she occupied but one house. She likewise believes these things just as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down, as if she possessed but one mouth. For, while the languages of the world are diverse, nevertheless, the authority of the Tradition is one and the same. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1, 10, 2, c. AD 190)

If there should be a dispute over some kind of question, ought we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches in which the Apostles were familiar, and draw from them what is clear and certain in regard to that question? What if the Apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches? (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3,4,1 c. A.D. 190)

 

What is that one trustworthy foundation?

That one trustworthy foundation is that identified by Saint Paul in his quote above: “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. (2 Thessalonians 2:15) In other words, that divinely inspired combination of Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church (i.e., “us” in the quote), commonly called the “Three Legged Stool of the Church”.

“But how does this help us? How can we know this? Do we need to read all the Early Church Fathers, all the Magisterial writings and conciliar documents beginning with Nicea, all papal pronouncements, etc., etc.?!”

No, trusting the Church’s Magisterium, believing in humility that she knows better than we do what is essentially true for us to believe and upon which to form our consciences, we need to accept the gift that she has given us for this purpose at this time in the life of the Church, and this gift is the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

This is crucial and important. This is how we can know how to interpret Scripture; to know which theology, philosophy, or morality is trustworthy; to know how to understand, and interpret, and to enjoy nature; and this is how we can know what it means to abide in Christ.

This great gift of the Catechism helps us discover how to fight against spiritual entropy, to set correct boundaries to our lives, to discover our true purpose in life, and to hone the gifts and accept with joy whatever sufferings come our way.

For the stewardship of the spiritual fields of our lives, the Church has given us the Catechism. Read it, know it, pray it, live it.