What is it about concupiscence that makes it so perdurable? Why am I attracted to something which repulses me? Are appetitive powers able to arrest the will so completely? Well, at any rate, Paul put it more succinctly than I am able to: "I am a thing of flesh and blood, sold into the slavery of sin. My own actions bewilder me; what I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate."

But where evil abounds grace is said to abound all the more. And anywise, I've been bought back from sin. Somebody should really let sin know that. Jeez...

I was thinking about bibles for a moment and decided that the perfect bible would have commentary by both Terry Pratchett and Fr. Rutler, and be illustrated by Edward Gorey.

I just read an e-mail sent to me by an acquaintance which excoriates "you Catholics" for seeking to suppress sex and "live like f-----g prayer-bots". 

Hmmm. 

I had no idea "[we] Catholics" did that. If so, I'm not doing a very good job. 

Of course, I'm not doing a stellar job at the actual thing which the Church teaches us to do that ultimately resolves itself into a relatively simple maxim: "imitate Christ". That is what this is all about after all, becoming more Christ-like. That I should decrease and He should increase. You can fairly excoriate me for failing in THAT, but not the other thing, a common and quaint misapprehension.

No, I cannot stop being a sexual creature. Nor can anyone else, though we may express our sexuality badly or well. It depends, really, on who we are and what we have experienced. I longed for intimacy for so long that it led me to, as St. John of Paycheque puts it, look for love in all the wrong places. I did not mistake lust for love or sex for intimacy; I'm not a fool. It was merely a case of next-best-thing. I certainly am not suppressing sexuality. I am just trying to find a way to live express it chastely, in a seemly manner. 

My poverty of spirit becomes more evident after a fall. My need to be obedient does as well. I seem to fall when I become comfortable - not just fall to sexual sin but to any major sin: pride, anger, despair, etc. It all seems to result from comfort or, more accurately, complacency. Acedia is spiritual sloth (my chestnut) and most folks find that prayer gushes forth in a torrent in times of darkness and trial, but dries up arid and wasteful when life is going smoothly. I had put my head down for a few weeks now and was trying to shut the world out. In doing so I buried myself in distractions and put God - and all the troubles that seem to go with Him - to the side. And just as I manage to get my head well and goodly buried, comfortably away from what stresses and scares me, I fall.

Then, of course, I am suddenly and painfully reminded how much I need God... and that I have somewhat, rather unaccountably, misplaced Him. 

Thankfully, He is never far from me. He is closer than I might want, in fact. I can fill a page with pretty words. I can do the same to air and ears, but God is not impressed. He knows my heart and all my secrets. I am a worm and no man. Br. Richard serves as a reminder of what awaits us all, like, as it runs, a thief in the night. Is my moment just about here? Am I to meet my maker stained with mortal sin? Are my last hours to be spent bemoaning my unchastity to an inaudient void? 

Perhaps. Only God knows, and He ain't telling.

I must attend to Compline. God bless.

I have warded my laptop with the K9 security browser. I have put off doing so because K9 is restrictive to the point of absurdity and difficult to customize. But, it is done. Now I cannot view pornography on my laptop, of course, I also found it blocked the Vatican website... for reasons that beggar the imagination. 

Such is life. 

At these moments I think of St. Jerome beating himself with a stone to fend off memories of painted Roman women.  Even sequestered in a desert, the devil of unchastity can find chinks in our armor. 

The Lord is in His holy Temple. 

The Lord, whose Throne is in heaven. 

His eyes look down on the world; 

His gaze tests mortal men.

Blessed Alberione, pray for us and for the repose of the soul of Br. Richard Brunner. Christ Master, Way, Truth, and Life, have mercy on us. Our Lady, Queen of Apostles, pray for us. 

I am not much a blogger, in that I do not rush to blog. Thus this post may be a bit of a gumbo. Of course, this blog is a journal of sorts. So that is expected.

Br. Richard passed away this morning. He had a heart attack late last week and went to the hospital. There he had a triple-bypass but complications arrested him this morning and God called him home. Of all the priests and brothers of the Society of St. Paul that I have come to know in the last year, Br. Richard was not on my list of those I expected to lose. He was not the oldest by far, nor, I had been given to understand, in ill-health. He was a quiet, charming, devoted man, Community Superior (our "super"), and the long-time friend of many, many people who undoubtedly will miss him dearly. 

Heaven has found a decent soul and while the Society has lost a brother, they have gained an intercessor at the Throne of God. I trust that a man as self-effacing as Br. Richard will pass through the heats of purgatory with grace. May he join the company of saints and glory in the Beatific Vision for ever and ever, amen. 

Amen indeed.

But, as I said, this post is a hodgepodge. The reality of a Christian life is one of trial and suffering, grace and freedom. Today was more the former than the latter. I have wrestled with lust and pornography for years. Prior to the internet, this was a petty, trivial problem that rarely reared its head. Since my first computer in 2001, well, its threat has been unremitting. 

Today I "fell" - that is the euphemism we use in a support group I was previously a member of, one dedicated to helping men of all vocations and problems deal with the devil of unchastity in whatever form it may take. Today, for reasons I am not too clear on, I was not as strong as other days (I did not respond to grace) and I viewed a pornography website and indulged in a short bout of self-abuse. As one of the more shameful sins, I find it hard to type, not knowing who will read this or what they may think of me. I know what I think of me and what God does and the gulf between those two is burden enough to bear. The opinions of others I acknowledge but cannot carry.

The Church and Frs. Groeschel, Apostoli, DuBay, and Cantalamesa hold that chastity is a positive virtue. You should read that in the classic understanding of "positive", i.e., as something which itself exists, has its own character; it is a thing, not the lack of a thing. Abstinence is a foregoing, a subtraction of something, meat, conversation, sex, etc. Chastity involves abstinence but is not reduced to it. 

The problem is, I have not figured out yet how to adopt chastity in that manner. I can write about it and discuss it and argue it, but I'm only in the earliest days of figuring out how to live it. 

I have a long way to go. 

Men like Br. Richard have been wrestling with this far longer than I have and, presumably, have found or been given through formation methods to inculcate and grow chastity within themselves as part of their deepening relationship with Christ as a religious. The life he led, a life of prayer, of work, of self-sacrifice, of community, may not have been perfect, but it is the life I want to lead as well. I barely knew Richard and he knew me even less well. He had given his whole life to the Society of St. Paul; I can only imagine the trials and sacrifices of such a life. I can only wonder at the graces. 

These men express joy in their vows. They have discovered their final cause in their consecration. And they remain sinners: culpable, peccable, imperfect, weak, but also Christians: persevering, loved, forgiven, bought for a price and redeemed. 

I am not certain what else to type. 

God bless.

St. James, pray for us. 

I suppose you could chalk it up to Providence or simple serendipity, but of all days to randomly visit the Society, I pick the feast of St. James. 

Well, happy feast day to me. 

A reading today spoke of the Sons of Thunder and their mother's presumption (not to mention their own). The Matthean account is a bit dry, but I can imagine the droll response filling the room, "Can you drink the chalice that I will drink?" Christ of course understanding his challenge in its infinite shades of meaning and, likely, John and James not truly understanding it at all. 

I feel like this quite often in my discernment: presumptuous and ignorant, unable to fully apprehend what I'm asking for, embarrassed but convicted. I suppose that that is a natural part of the Christian life, this living with the awesome knowledge that God, the Author of All Things, desires our company. And for eternity no less. In much, much smaller terms it reminds me of being an adolescent in high school and this handsome, talented young man, a classmate of mine, wanted to be my friend. I was shocked! Me? Chubby, spotted, awkward me?! You are joking, surely. 

But no. And we have been friends ever since. 

How much more humbling is it then with God, for Whom we have no adequate analogy?

We are all of us called to be holy, no matter our station in life. We are not all called to martyrdom as was St. James, but there is never a time when a Christian can truly live safely in the world. Not and be committed to the Faith. It may not be a fuller's staff or the stones of an irate mob or a Herodian blade or a public crucifixion, but the dangers of the world, the flesh, and devil are real and they press about the faithful at all times. They demand renunciation; they demand apostasy; they demand lukewarmness. And in things large and small we must refuse. 

When asked earlier this evening to recommend a bible commentary, I suggested (perfectly seriously), The Wind in the Willows. While not the response she was after, I encouraged my interlocutor to give the book a shot. After all, she said that she found the Gospel's "opaque." If that's the case, well, then Raymond Brown is likely to cost her her religion. Better off beginning with Mole and Ratty.

The evangelical counsels are just that: counsels, advice, suggestions. They are not mandates or orders or commandments, though they share in the force and centrality of such. What Christ said you had to do and what He said you should truly consider doing are related but distinct. For the religious however, for those whose life is dedicated part way, as it were, between the marriage bed and the altar, between lay and sacerdotal, the evangelical counsels are the ground floor built upon the foundation of Christ, His teachings, and His Church. Everything in your little house of prayer above that, sits upon them. 

You probably know that. I assumed I did, but like so much else that I held intellectually, the reality was very different upon encountering it in the flesh, in my daily life. For one thing, they are damnably difficult because they give you more than they take away. Does that seem contrary? Let me explain. 

In my (limited) experience the world, the flesh, and the devil are time-consuming, detail-ridden, highly involved, and fascinating, if not enthralling. Thus, when I wasn't actively engaged in a very particular activity, such as when I was at work, the various pleasures of the world, the flesh, and the devil filled up my other hours so quickly and so greedily that time simply disappeared. Minutes became hours and hours blew away as dust before a storm. Entire days, even weeks, were lost, consumed by drinking, pornography, sexual license, impure thoughts, impure talk, ribald and bawdy - if not licentious, salacious, even lewd - company, questionable activities, all while necessary and good things were let slide. An entire decade eaten up thoughtlessly by... nothing at all. For what 'return on investment' do I have from treating my friends badly, going on drunken rages, abusing myself when lonely, ignoring my family, doing a bad job at work, racking up debt, falling into petty criminality, distancing myself from God? 

Nothing. 

The world, the flesh, and devil: they steal your minutes and your hours, and in return they give you... nothing. 

So, if all that - and it is quite a bit - is taken away, excised by the evangelical counsels, what is it that you are apparently given which is greater in quantity, if not quality? 

Why, a life, of course! 

Minutes, hours, and days become a foretaste of eternity! Life is magnified and enriched by time gaining meaning once again. When poverty, chastity, and obedience are given heed, life is suddenly more than a vicious cycle of work and play, each little more than a desperate, sweaty repudiation of the other. The world, the flesh, and devil offered a delirious orgiastic binge around the lip of an open grave - teetering and tottering on the edge of death when life has not even truly been lived. The counsels free you from that.

At least, they have begun to free me. One fetter loosened at time is better than no promise of freedom at all. But now I have more than what I lost. I have every moment of my life, and I suddenly realized that I'm responsible for these fleeting seconds which constitute the gift I am to give to God. For life itself is His gift to me, while what I do with that life is my gift to Him. 

I now have time for reflection and contemplation. I have time to consider my choices and reorder my thinking. I have time to make amends, to seek reconciliation, to be a son, and a friend, and a Christian. I have time for God. 

Poverty means that the world cannot own you. Chastity means that the flesh has no hold on you. Obedience means that the devil cannot deceive you. Why? Because no mere thing, nor creature, nor sensation is greater than the pure truth of the Cross: God loves you and He died for you. Everything which builds upon that is to your good. Everything which falls short of that leads to condemnation. 

Swearing poverty is forswearing greed, materialism, consumerism, all forms of economic or social control, love of money, the need for domination, fear of suffering, regret, despair.

Swearing chastity is to ward off the lures of excess, of sensualism, of hedonism, of abuse and misuse of the good, it is to give back dignity to yourself and to others, it is to never make an object of a creature, never to reduce a man or woman to a mere action or sensation, it is to comprehend gratitude and love.

Swearing obedience is to take the first breath of a mature life, it is to banish illusion, deception, and obfuscation, it means accepting truth and recognizing lies, it entails humility, self-abnegation, love for others afore that of self, and a generous regard for the mystery and paradox of God. 

If you have all this and the Eucharist too, what hope does the Adversary have? 

Only sin, and our fallen human nature. So cleave to the truths of God and give ear to His counsels. Listen, listen, for all true religion begins in listening. As my mother would say, "Life wouldn't be so hard on you, Michael, if you just shut up once in a while."

Fr. Jeffrey has a nice little video on YouTube about the Society of St. Paul, if anyone would care to give it a watch. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fct7266fFCQ 

If, for some reason, the link doesn't work, you can type 'society of st paul' into YouTube's search bar or 'Society of St. Paul, Mission U.S.A.' for the video.

It is easy to talk about being spiritual and drawing closer to God yet difficult to actually do. Especially if you are fallible. And boy howdy, am I fallible. I do not know about you, but most of my mistakes seem to center on pride. Just about an hour ago I got a parking ticket. This after I had already been ticketed on Tuesday. Apparently, I am not particularly conversant with alternate-side parking. 

But that's not what I told my mother Tuesday afternoon. I was angry and embarrassed about that first ticket and waved away her concerns of "becoming more familiar with what the signs say" by telling her that, yes, yes, I'd figured it out. They wouldn't ticket me again. Oh no. Not me. I was wise to their game.

Uh huh. 

Humilitatem... 

So here I am, back in the New York City metropolitan area (Jersey City stares straight at the Village from across the Hudson) and my return is heralded by a total of $84.00 dollars in parking fines that I can ill afford. Can't afford at all in fact as I'm unemployed. And the first thing I could think of to assuage my wounded pride? Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. 

Well, shit. 

How can I talk about being obedient to God when I can't even be obedient to alternate-side parking? It is hardly fair to denigrate the meter-maid for my mistake. And sure, it may be a racket on the part of Jersey City, but hey, such is life. If I'd been humble enough to listen to my mother (Fourth Commandment) and figured this out Tuesday afternoon, I would likely not be so exasperated now. But pride got in the way. 

And I'm writing about this in order to highlight what it means for me to progress through discernment - it is not solely focused in some narrow area of incense and chanting, but rather affects my whole life. I am not, after all, simply taking a portion of me into formation. All of me is going. Including the bits that hand-wave concerns out of a prideful and childish desire not to revisit hurt or embarrassment. 

But the wise welcome admonition. The wise embrace correction. It is the fool that flees or denies or hides from criticism. And I've played the fool long enough.

However, I think my new role may take a great deal of getting use to.

The entire process of discernment is damnably, damnably complicated. Anything bound up with religion is immediately more difficult, mainly, at least for me, because I am suddenly dealing with factors that I cannot simply yell at or throttle or browbeat or threaten or cow. How frustrating! I cannot even fire off an angry letter or e-mail! Enveloping man is this intricate, invisible panoply at work interfering with and interacting with all the material, visible things of creation, themselves impossibly complex and interdependent, ranging from the sub-molecular to the macrocosmic, from the lifeless to the ensouled, from unthinking to free-willed. This entire improbable cosmos spins and dances to a rhythm utterly beyond comprehension, all at the behest of God, Mystery of Mysteries.

None of which has a convenient complaint department or an Inbox.

This hampers my decision making just slightly. Job interview? You are either hired or not. Ask out a girl? You have a date or not. Pray to know God’s Will? Well… Hahaha, patience is a virtue.

The labors of Hercules produced an eponymous adjectival form, but so might the sufferings of Job and while I find the holy man more edifying than the demi-god, I appreciate the applicability of both. We are after all sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters to each other by faith, sharers in a common heritage and a common lot. We, each of us in our own degree, know something of suffering and challenge, striving and failure, happiness and despair.

Waiting upon the pleasure of God could well be seen as ‘Jobian’. Even as sifting the empty hours does at times bear an unpleasant resemblance to the work in the Augean stables, a structure which is evidently uphill from me, given what seems to so often have rolled down.

I have been praying a great deal for the humility necessary to be obedient. Anyone who knows me is well aware of my not inconsiderable self-regard. This is not vanity so much as an armor of pride, scrounged piecemeal over many hard years. It has seen much use. But religious profession requires that great Gospel virtue of docility; I must be receptive to instruction; I must be open to being taught. And this has been a problem in the last eight months (if not the last thirty six years). I have been willfully blind and hard-headed about this. I kept insisting that I was needed to speak, to do, to accomplish and that this was, to some evident extent, the will of God.

It is a wonder I did not swallow my own tongue when the full audacity of it hit me.

Small favors, I suppose.

I can’t approach formation thinking that I’ve been called to do something for God, as if somehow I'm the Chosen One. No. I’ve been called to be (or become) something for God. Namely, a saint. And while the world may indeed be a saint making machine, a religious order is a school of saintly instruction.

If the Society of St. Paul is a school, then I am a pupil. And I must not fight that reality, because it will do me no good. In fact, it will do me an evil. There is nothing so empty and absurd as a prideful religious. I must embrace this opportunity to sit, childlike, rapt in my learning, caught up, not in thoughts of self, but in the words of Christ and mindful of those who stand in His place.

Shit, fire, and molasses.

Discerning God's will may have proved easier if I had stumbled across this little revelation on humility prior to beginning my discernment. Of course, it may have meant nothing to me then, given that I likely benefited (in the Jobian sense) from beating my head against the wall of my own pride for a time. There is nothing like a little humiliation to get the humility moving, eh? It is just not cut and dry. Vocation is not synonymous with career. It is about more than doing. It is about being. And sometimes it takes more than a little suffering to figure that out.

Especially for me. 

Many thanks to John May, Jim Cottrell, Elisabeth and Sam, Naomi, Lori, Uncle Joshua, Mom, the Cursillistas, and all the saints and angels who so graciously allowed me to hang myself with my own tongue, and then kindly cut me down. If you had not listened, I would still be talking. Thank you and God bless you.

St. Jude, pray for us.

Well, you (dear reader) can thank Jean Rose for this blog. She suggested I keep a journal detailing my continuing discernment and entry into religious formation. And it is likely that I will do so with distressing honesty. Why bother elsewise?

I am a man of unclean lips, from a people of unclean lips. Obviously, I am a sinner. I suppose that's a given. I am a convert as the blog title suggests. I came to faith fortuitously, through no effort of my own, in the spring of 2005. One moment I am a disagreeable, fatalistic, stiff-neck default-agnostic unconcerned with religion and the next moment... well, I am a disagreeable, fatalistic, stiff-neck man with the doubtful beginnings of religious faith. 

It was an act of God. I am as convinced of that now, after nine years of reflection and trial, as I was suddenly, inexplicably, in that strange, unquiet moment as I watched the news coverage of then pope John Paul II's illness and death, when something reached out and struck me.

I am still amazed that God bothered. Bad enough that I was created when so many others could have been, but that I should be given faith...? It beggars the imagination. It certainly does something very disconcerting to pride. Something sharp and stinging.

I originally conceived of my shabby little epiphany as an anxiety attack, minor stroke, dyspepsia even. A physiological or perhaps purely mental disturbance. After all, I had previously had a 'cardiac event' that the doctors weren't well able to diagnose. I was certainly under significant stress at the time. I was (and, really, still am) a rough, choleric man, irascible and opinionated. But, given the changes impelled in me from that moment onward, I find such simplistic explanations unsatisfying.

In time, as my perspective broadened and a work was noticeably being wrought within me, I realized that the only explanation that satisfied all the involved criteria was, on the whole, to blame God. 

Initially, I think I would have preferred the stroke.