Contra TV and All Such Vain Imaginings

True Confessions time.... My Lenten discipline includes cutting back on the amount of time I spend watching TV, that "vain amusement" which often helps clear my head after a very church-filled day.

Unlike some more of my more seriously counter-cultural friends I cannot find it in my heart to give up cable or TV entirely. However, during Lent I AM limiting myself to no more than 1 hour per day, except Saturday evening/ Sunday when I buy into the good theology/ wimpy excuse that "every Sunday is an Easter" and thus Lenten disciplines are not in force. So much for the monastic injunction, "let your life be a continual Lent." At least observing the Sabbath enables me to watch an entire movie at one sitting.

One big plus of this particular Lenten discipline is that the extra time can spent in more profitable pursuits, like praying ..... and reading.

One should always read the footnotes, which I did last night as I was finishing Michael Casey's book Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, (pp. 136-37). Another confession..... I usually read any book's copious chapter endnotes after I finish the body of the text because I am just too lazy to keep flipping back and forth.

The treasure contained in Casey's endnotes is comprised of two quotes, one from Thomas Merton, specifically about TV and the other from John Henry Cardinal Newman, who, if he were alive today, would likely be saying about TV what he said in the 19th century about "works of fiction."

Thomas Merton....

"The life of the television-watcher is a kind of caricature of contemplation. Passivity, uncriticial absorption, receptivity, inertia. Not only that, but a gradual, progressive yielding to the mystic attraction until one is spellbound in a state of complete union. The trouble with this caricature is that it is really the exact opposite of contemplation... [Contemplation] is the summit of a life of spiritual freedom. The other, the ersatz, is the nadir of intellectual and emotional slavery."

"Inner Experience: Problems of the Contemplative Life (VII)," CSQ 19 (1984), pp. 269-270.

and Cardinal Newman on overstimulation of the emotions.....

"God has made us feel in order that we may go on to act in consquence of feeling; if then we allow our feelings to be excited without acting upon them, we do mischief to the moral system within us, just as we might spoil a watch or other piece of mechanism, by playing with the wheels of it. We weaken its springs, and they cease to act truly. Accordingly, when we have got into the habit of amusing ourselves with these works of fiction, we come at length to feel the excitement without the slightest thought or tendency to act upon it."

Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. II, Longmans, Green & Co. , London, 1891, pp. 371-372.

Thank you, Michael Casey, for your insight and thank you, God, for giving me this Lenten breathing space to love and enjoy You.

The Big Three

Works of charity, prayer and fasting are spiritual weapons to combat evil, Benedict XVI said during Mass on Ash Wednesday. In his homily, delivered in the Basilica of St. Sabina on Rome's Aventine Hill, the Holy Father presented these "useful instruments" as the condition "to live authentic community renewal."

"They are the three fundamental practices, also appreciated by the Jewish tradition, because they contribute to purify man before God," the Pope said. "These external gestures, which should be done to please God and not to win the approval and praise of people, are pleasing to him if they express the heartfelt determination to serve him alone, with simplicity and generosity."

Fasting, to which the Church invites us during this time, is not born from motivations of a physical or aesthetic order, but springs from the need the person feels for interior purification, to be detoxified from the contamination of sin and evil."

Benedict XVI said that fasting educates in "those healthy self-denials that free the believer from his 'I,' and make him more attentive and ready to listen to God and to serve his brothers."

"For this reason, fasting and the Lenten practices" of prayer and works of charity, in particular almsgiving, "are considered by the Christian tradition spiritual 'weapons' to combat evil, evil passions and vices," the Pope said.

from Zenit News Service

Lent: A Symphony in Two Movements

He is no perfect preacher, who either, from devotion to contemplation, neglects works that ought to be done, or, from urgency in business, puts aside the duties of contemplation.

Gregory the Great,
Moralia Book VI, 56.

As I approach this Ash Wednesday I ask myself, how will I observe this Lent? Part of me wants to add something to my daily regimen, ... some devotion, practice of mercy, or activity. My Archbishop Harry Flynn recently recommended this in his column in the local diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Spirit. Very good advice.

But there is another part of me, the contemplative part, which struggles in another direction, toward simplification, ....quiet, .... stillness. That part of me cringes at adding yet another activity to the day. In fact, the overall tendenz of my life recently indicates that taking an activity away would probably be more in order. This is not "giving up something for Lent," although that could be a part of it. The core issue is creating a space in life for God to be active and present to and through me.


The interim solution (a Type A one!) is to recognize that a true Lent involves both an addition and a subtraction, ....a descent into the earthiness of existence and also an ascent to heavenly contemplation. And this action parallels the great kenotic, down and up and dizzying "swoop" of Christology, hymned so well in Philippians 2:5-11 (NAB):


Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.


As so often happens in Catholic faith, the true way is not "either/or," it's "both/and." It's about quiet and activity, humble service and lofty contemplation, descending and being raised with our Lord.

I also like what St Leo the Great wrote about Lent ( Sermo 6,1-2):


"During these days which remind us more vividly of the mystery of humanity's salvation and of the paschal celebration soon to come, we are bidden to purify ourselves more carefully by way of preparation.


In the paschal celebration the whole Church experiences the forgiveness of sins. For, though baptism is the chief instrument in humanity's renewal, there is also a daily renewal from the corruption inherent in mortality, and everyone, however advanced, is called to be a better person.


All of us must strive for ever greater purity against the day of our salvation. To this end we follow with care and devotion the apostolic custom of a forty-day fast in which we abstain not simply from bodily food but primarily from all evildoing.

For such a holy fast there can be no better companion than almsgiving. But we must note that "almsgiving" or "mercy" here includes the many pious actions which make possible a familial equality among the faithful, whatever be the disparities between them in worldly wealth. For in the love of God and humanity one is always free to will the good."