Whose will YOU be?

Jesus said to them, When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. " (Mk 12:26)

I was sitting in O'Shaughnessey Auditorium at the University of St Thomas. It was Valentine's Day, 2004 (gotta love that irony!). I was listening to Christopher West speak on the Theology of the Body.

He began to talk about how we are all created for God. In the context of his talk, I learned how consecrated celibacy fits into a larger theological context. I am sure that I had heard some of this before, but for some reason the pieces "fell into place" that day.

Don't be afraid of celibacy.

It's where we will all end up, when we stand before the throne of the eternal Father.

The brave women and men who consecrate themselves to God now are providing a proleptic look at the final intention of God for us all, that we love Him more than any other created being.

Ironically enough, this insight not only elevates the consecrated life and puts it in a meaningful context. It also offers a helpful context for marriage.

Marriage, like consecrated celibate life, is designed as a way-station, a help, a training ground for the final Love Affair of our existence, with the God who IS Love. What G.K. Chesterton said about promiscuity could just as well be applied to the married state: “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God."

It has become abundantly clear to me now that our search for human affection and connection is important, not to be dismissed. Our seemingly adolescent pre-occupation as a society with romantic love really does have a "theological" significance.

And nothing but true life in God here and hereafter provides the answer to our deep need to belong fully to Someone.

Whose will YOU be?


Asked and answered in a stellar manner by Saint Anselm (1033-1109), Monk, Bishop, Doctor of the Church.

From his Proslogion 25-26

"Why do you stray so far in search of good things for your soul and your body?
Love the one and only Good in whom are all good things. That is enough… There on high, all that anyone can love and desire is to be found.

Do you love beauty?
“The saints will shine like the sun.” (Mt 13:43)

Do you love the agility or the strength of a free body from which all obstacles have been removed?
“They shall be like the angels of God”

… Or a long and healthy life?
There on high, eternal good health awaits you, for “the just live forever.” (Wis 5:15)…

Do you want to be satiated?
You shall be when God shows you his face in his glory (Ps 17:15).

To be made drunk?
“They have their fill of the prime gifts of your house.” (Ps 36:9)

Or do you love a melodious song? T
here on high, the choirs of angels sing God’s praise without end.

Are you seeking very pure delights?
God will give you to drink from his delightful streams (Ps 36:9).

Do you love wisdom?
God’s wisdom will become manifest in person.

Friendship?
They shall love God more than themselves, they shall love one another as much as themselves, and God will love them more than they can ever love…

Do you love harmony?
They will all have one single will, for they will have no will other than God’s…

Honors and wealth?
God will set his good and faithful servants over many goods (Mt 25:21); even more, “they shall be called sons of God,” (Mt 5:9) and they shall really be that, for where the Son of God is, there also shall be the “heirs of God, heirs with Christ.” (Rom 8:17)

A Biological Basis for Love?

I am not sure I really need this information to support my theology, but it IS interesting to note a recent article by Robert Wright. He contends that the urge to love, to care for "the other," has a biological basis with evolutionary consequences. In other words, there is a structural imperative in our physical being that enables, even encourages, the urge to get outside and beyond ourselves.

I immediately thought of Pope John Paul II's theology of the body, with its emphasis upon relationship as a turning toward "the other." Also important is Benedict XVI's consistent emphasis on the selfless love of God which we humans are to emulate. These are theological facts of life which we often forget; hence, the Magisterium's consistent prodding reminders that we are made in order to love God and one another.

Here's the article. Enjoy.

ROBERT WRIGHT: Why Darwinism Isn’t Depressing

Scientists have discovered that love is truth.Granted, no scientist has put it quite like that. In fact, when scientists talk about love — the neurochemistry, the evolutionary origins — they make it sound unlovely.More broadly, our growing grasp of the biology behind our thoughts and feelings has some people downhearted.

One commentator recently acknowledged the ascendancy of the Darwinian paradigm with a sigh: “Evolution doesn’t really lead to anything outside itself.”Cheer up! Despair is a plausible response to news that our loftiest feelings boil down to genetic self-interest, but genetic self-interest actually turns out to be our salvation. The selfishness of our genes gave us the illuminating power of love and put us on the path to a kind of transcendence.Before hiking to the peak, let’s pause for some sobering concessions.

Yes, love is physically mediated, a product of biochemistry. (Why this would surprise anyone familiar with alcohol and coffee is something that has long baffled scientists.) And, yes, the biochemistry was built by natural selection. Like it or not, we are survival machines.But survival machines are unfairly maligned. The name suggests, well, machines devoted to their survival. In truth, though, natural selection builds machines devoted ultimately to the survival of their genes, not themselves.Hence love.

A love-impelled grandparent sacrifices her life to save a child’s life. Too bad for the grandparent, but mission accomplished for the love genes: they’ve kept copies of themselves alive in a vibrant vehicle that was otherwise doomed, and all they’ve lost is a vehicle that, frankly, didn’t have the world’s most auspicious odometer anyway. Love of offspring (and siblings) is your genes’ way of getting you to serve their agenda.Feel manipulated? Don’t worry — we get the last laugh.Genes are just dopey little particles, devoid of consciousness. We, in contrast, can perceive the world. And how!

Thanks to love, we see beyond our selves and into the selves around us.A thought experiment: Suppose you are a parent and you (a) watch someone else’s toddler misbehave and then (b) watch your own toddler do the same. Your predicted reactions, respectively, are: (a) “What a brat!” and (b) “That’s what happens when she skips her nap.”Now (b) is often a correct explanation, whereas (a) — the “brat” reaction — isn’t even an explanation. Thus does love lead to truth. So, too, when a parent sees her child show off and senses that the grandstanding is grounded in insecurity. That’s an often valid explanation — unlike, say, “My neighbor’s kid is such a showoff”— and brings insight into human nature.Yes, yes, love can warp your perception, too. Still, there is an apprehension of the other — an empathetic understanding — that is at least humanly possible, and it would never have gotten off the ground had love not emerged on this planet as a direct result of Darwinian logic.

Some people, on hearing this, remain stubbornly ungrateful. They hate the arbitrariness of it all. You mean I love my child just because she’s got my genes? So my “appreciation” of her “specialness” is an illusion?Exactly! If you’d married someone else, there would be a different child you considered special — and if you then spotted the child that is now yours on the street, you’d consider her a brat. (And, frankly ... but I digress.)O.K., so your child isn’t special. This doesn’t have to mean she’s not worthy of your love. It could mean instead that other people’s kids are worthy of your love. But it has to mean one or the other. And — especially given that love can bring truth — isn’t it better to expand love’s scope than to narrow it?I’m a realist.

I don’t expect you to get all mushy about the kid next door. But if you carry into your everyday encounters an awareness that empathetic understanding makes sense, that’s progress.Transcending the arbitrary narrowness of our empathy isn’t guaranteed by nature. (Why do you think they call it transcendence?) But nature has given us the tools — not just the empathy, but the brains to figure out how evolution works, and thus to see that the narrowness is arbitrary.So evolution has led to something outside itself — to the brink of a larger, more widely illuminating love, maybe even to a glimpse of moral truth. What’s not to like?

Robert Wright, author of “The Moral Animal,” is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and runs the Web site Bloggingheads.tv.

Thoughts About Sex

Continuing on in the book "Thoughts Matter" the second specific area of concern addressed by the Desert Fathers is thoughts about sex.

My own journey along this path has taken a number of different turns over the years.... through superheated teenage years, searching twenties, settling thirties, and life defining forties. My most recent stage began about 4 years ago when I read a definition of chastity on a website. It described chastity as "the use and control of sexual desire by faith and right reason." That definition struck me as odd at the time.

I realized for the first time that chastity is not some mental belt of negation which I put on because I am a Christian. Instead, that definition alllowed me to begin seeing chastity as a positive good, based on and flowing out of specific virtues of the Christian life. I went from just saying 'no" to sex to saying "yes" to a much larger framework of virtuous desires and patterns, all based on the intense desire for God.

A second awakening occured as a result of attending a conference on John Paul II's "Theology of the Body." I heard Christopher West talk about the concepts of chastity in marriage and in the vocation to religous life. It took a while for me to internalize my acceptance of that concept. But once I began to experience the spiritual power of chastity for myself, it became much more clear to me and infinitely more attractive.

Which leads me to Meg Funk, and the Desert Fathers.... They described this harnassing of sexual energy in much the same way as I have experienced it... a no to the lesser in order to say yes to the Greater. Along wth that decision comes great energy and freedom.

Here Cassian's ideas proves helpful. The state of no sex, he says (according to Meg Funk), has all the benefits of sex and more. "The mind attains a subtle purity and will experience an increase of devotion that is difficult to describe or narrate." He's right, and I won't attempt to describe it further here. Go read Meg Funk or Cassian himself to find out more

I will say, though, that if you haven't yet discovered the joy of this gift yet, I'd urge you to try it. I started the pursuit of chastity three years ago as a Lenten project. And it's been a continuing and growing journey ever since, a journey I have yet to regret setting out on.

Desire of all nations, come!

I am often asked why I became Roman Catholic. One part of my conversion was falling in love with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I had always loved the physicality of faith and as a Lutheran Pastor I had relished it. Light the candles, put on the alb and stole. Swing the incense and use the holy water, but not too much or too often, lest someone accuse you of being a “Papist.”

I had all of the “playschool” Catholic accoutrement. I used the outward trappings, and also prayed a daily office. Fiirst it was the Episcopalian (BCP) then Lutheran (LBW) and finally in the later years the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. But even that was never enough.

Slowly, over a period of years, I conceived an intense desire to spend time with Jesus as He was present in the Eucharist. I began to visit the local Catholic Church, being careful to park in the adjacent public library parking lot so as to not arouse parishioner suspicions. I spent some lovely afternoons praying quietly with our Lord. I pondered what to do with this underground, if not illicit, love affair.

I had more or less always conceived of myself as an Evangelical Catholic, a code name for “High Church” Lutherans. Then I did eventually become Roman Catholic in 1998. But it wasn’t until Valentine’s Day 2003 that I understood the visceral connection between the physicality of the Eucharist and my own spirituality.

I “happened to” attend a conference on “Theology of the Body” led by Christopher West. I can’t quite explain here how John Paul II’s Theology of the Body connects- it’s way too complicated. Suffice it to say that I realized that my love affair with the Eucharist is really part of a larger physical connection with Divine Self-Giving Love. A true Desire… a physical desire met by God’s physical, “real” embodied provision of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of His Son given for us.

This human clay aches for an affirmation of our physicality and its true goodness. The Eucharist is God’s ringing affirmation of that embodiment. So, our Advent waiting places within each of us the Desire of all. The Feast of the Nativity marks the beginning of its fulfillment. Our daily worship at God’s Altar applies that self-giving love to our hungry souls and bodies.

O King of the Gentiles and the Desired of all,
you are the cornerstone that binds two into one.
Come, and save poor humanity,
whom you fashioned out of clay.