Tag: Sacrifice

CDXXIII – Rules for Catholics to Grow in Self Mastery (Pt 2)

On revisiting my previous article suggesting Rules for Self Mastery, I found the general theme to be focused on interior mastery, mastery of mind. One of the things I am working on right now is mastery of body. The previous version, if you follow it, will help you to be virtuous, thoughtful, and giving. Here, I hope to suggest rules for self mastery which will help you (and help me) to be mentally, spiritually, and physically tough. Please let me know what you think.

1.) Master the Fundamentals

I. Keep A Routine. Get into the rhythm of life. Have something to occupy every moment of your day. Examine your day and consider how you spend your time. Fill your day with good work and a smaller dose of healthy recreation. And keep this routine.

II. Keep Your Commitments. Do the things you say you will do. Become reliable and dependable. Be careful in what commitments you make, so you can be sure to keep them. Treat your commitments seriously, even (especially) the commitments you make to yourself.

III. Challenge Yourself. When you are making a routine and choosing commitments, Challenge yourself to do things that are outside your comfort zone, that stretch your capabilities, that push you to be more to more people. Make Christ your example, and push yourself prayerfully.

2.) Deny Yourself

IV. Endure Suffering. Suffering is sanctifying. Suffering is purifying. Suffering is growing. Your routine should include some productive suffering. Endure it, persevere, prove to yourself that suffering is not greater than you are.

V. Choose Suffering. Do not look at suffering as something that happens to you; look at suffering as something you choose. If you are working out, choose suffering until your work out is complete. If you are studying, choose to suffer through your studies until you have accomplished your goal. Choose to suffer, and choose it joyfully.

VI. Offer Your Suffering. Suffering is meaningful–if you choose frequent or intense suffering, offer it to God for reparation for your sins, or the sins of others; offer it to God as thanksgiving. Offer it to God to relieve the suffering of another. Suffering can help save you and can help save others.

3.) Humble Yourself

VII. You Deserve Suffering. Do not avoid suffering because you think it is beneath you. Do not avoid suffering because you feel you do not deserve it. Call to mind your many sins, and remind yourself that you do deserve to suffer. God willing, you can do some share of suffering now to shorten your wait in Purgatory before achieving the Beatific Vision. Consider suffering in this life as a foreshortening of purgative suffering in the next. You are not exempt–you will suffer the exact amount you are supposed to. Choose to endure it now, rather than then.

VIII. To Suffer Is Glorious. Suffering is an imitation of Christ, and that is a glorious thing. To be called to suffer, even in small ways, is to be called to the Cross by Christ Himself. Do not fear it, do not avoid it–embrace it, and see it as glorious. Christ endured everything that we might gain Heaven. Can you not endure this little suffering to gain a better future?

IX. To Suffer Is Helpful. Suffering makes us grow. It can make us stronger, tougher, better, more disciplined. Choose a routine, choose commitments, choose challenges which give you more opportunities to become stronger, tougher, better, and more disciplined. Know that while you suffer, you grow both spiritually and physically.

4.) Stay Grounded

X. God Sustains You Through Suffering And Through Consolation. Whatever you are enduring–be it good times or bad, suffering or joy–it comes from God. God sustains you through everything. Do not despair when suffering finds you. God is with you, and is doing the heavy lifting of your suffering. Give thanks to God when you are suffering, because it means He is closer to you. Give thanks to God when you are experiencing consolation, because it means He has blessed you.

AMDG

CCCLXXXVIII – Connecting Three Disconnected Films

November 5th, 2022

Am I a good man?

I’ve been reflecting on this after watching three movies. Code 8, The Foreigner, and All Quiet On the Western Front. There’s no real common theme between the three, mostly just three movies that caught my interest while I am waiting before the wedding. But the thought that they gave me was this question–am I a good man?

The question itself has a long history in my life. Before I understood religion, it was a source of existential dread. Because if I wanted to answer “Yes” then my next question was “why”–and why a man is good is harder to answer without resting on something concrete.

These movies prompted the question for a couple reasons. Let me start by describing the movies briefly. To hell with spoilers.

Code 8 is set in a world with people with superpowers, and the world discriminates against them. A day laborer with a terminally ill mother joins up with a drug lord to make some money to pay for medical bills. The protagonist meets a cast of characters and things naturally go awry in a plot-driving fashion. In the end, they do one last mission and everything goes wrong, and nobody gets what they want. The hero’s mother dies, the friend loses the object of ambitions, and only the tertiary character who chose not to do anything evil to attain something ostensibly good gets what they want. This movie is essentially an extended parable in “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The Foreigner is about a humble restauranteur from China who lost his family escaping the Vietnam war, and he loses his only daughter to a bombing by the IRA. He goes on a mission of revenge, trying to track down the people responsible for killing his daughter. In the end he finds the bombers, kills them, and returns to his restaurant.

All Quiet on the Western Front is about World War 1 and is an anti-war parable which accomplishes its aim by being as brutal and gritty as possible. Everybody dies.

This is something of a nihilistic trio of movies. Death, pursuit of a terminal, personal goal, trying ones darndest to do the right thing.

So why does this make me ask myself if I am a good man? I don’t know exactly–a fair amount of memento mori. A fair amount of “what am I doing with my life”. In Code 8 and The Foreigner, the protagonists had special skills that helped them work towards their mission. In Western Front, they had no special skills and received their education in the purgatorial grinder of trench warfare. Is being good a skill, or is being good a purgatorial grinder? If it is a skill, do I want to be “good” at being good? If it is a purgatorial grinder, have I been through enough to be able to call myself a veteran of being “good”?

Jackie Chan–the protagonist in The Foreigner–once explained why he thinks he is so relatable and popular as a movie star is because he actually gets hit. He’s not a superman, he suffers in his movies. I watched for that in The Foreigner. Every fist fight he was in, he took a hit–if not first, then early. Nothing was easy or given to him. It made him likeable because we could root for him not just because he was the good guy, but because there was a chance he might not win. This strikes me as an example of humility. He doesn’t think of himself as so good he can’t get hit–he thinks of himself as being so good he ought to be hit more.

[…]Wondering if being good means I won’t suffer, or if it means I ought to suffer more. If I am suffering, is it because I am a bad man or because I am a good man who is persevering?

Is a good man a man who does the right thing every time, or is a good man who tries every time to do the right thing?

More food for thought than anything.[…]

I will chalk this somewhat existentialist contemplation to holy horror–[…]

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

AMDG

(t) – The Test

Then going out he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he arrived at the place he said to them, “Pray that you may not undergo the test.” – Luke 22:39-40

It is easy to talk about suffering, and much harder to suffer. You may view other people’s suffering as a just rebuke of what surely must be a sinful life. You may view your own suffering as an unjust chastisement. It is impossible to know–what we do know is that Christ tells us we must pick up our crosses and follow Him.

This is the test, it comes in two varieties, and sometimes we can choose which one we want to take: We can choose to endure a lifetime of little sufferings, or we can choose the Martyrs Crown and take all our sufferings at once, in glorious devotion to God?

Both involve suffering. Most people think that the lifetime of little sufferings is the easier path. Personally, I think the Martyrs might be the lucky ones: They know Heaven is their reward, and they didn’t have to wait to find out.

AMDG

CCXXVI – Rules for Catholics to Grow in Self Mastery

1.) Master the Fundamentals

I. Pray Often. No matter how much you pray, you can pray more. Make it a habit. Make it important. Pray like your life depends on it. Understand that your life does, in fact, depend on it.

II. Fast Regularly. Or practice self mortification, as appropriate or as advised by your spiritual director. Deny yourself little things, consistently. Train yourself to sacrifice, and train your mind to remember the purpose is Holy.

III. Avail yourself of the Sacraments. Go to Mass. Go to Confession. Be involved in your parish. Worry about your soul, and the souls which are daily around you.

2.) Invite God into your Life

IV. Acknowledge God in your Successes. All good things come from God. It is a privilege to experience success in this earthly life–we could all very well be tested the way Job was tested, we are blessed to experience anything else.

V. Invite God into your Failures. God can help us. We don’t have to go it alone. God knows the help we need better than we do. Ask God for help, and quiet your heart to hear his answer.

VI. Protect your Peace. Never let the daily highs and lows of life divert you away from the narrow path. You will be tempted by good things: Train yourself to decline them. You will be discouraged by bad things: Train yourself to see God working in them.

3.) Give your Life to God

VII. Find some way to work for the Church and do it. Forget yourself in the service of others. Train yourself to give sacrificially of your time and effort. Self Mastery is to ignore your own inclinations until you forget your own inclinations.

VIII. Detach from mere Things. Give sacrificially of your money and possessions in the service of God. Accumulate your treasure in Heaven, give away your treasure on Earth. Things are just things, souls are eternal.

IX. Ask your Priest what he needs. Support your priest, and offer your services to him. He will know best what problems exist in the community, or what problems exist in the parish. Find a way to help.

4.) Point to God through your Life

X. Treat your faith like it is important, and encourage those around you to do the same. Sometimes your example will be enough. Lead people to Christ, through your every thought, word, and deed. Practice your faith joyfully, never apologize for it, be willing to suffer socially for it. Stick out. People will notice, and ask you why you seem different.

AMDG

XLVII – Thoughts on a Homily: Palm Sunday

I haven’t written thoughts on a homily in a while. Tonight was Palm Sunday, and I was out of my element for a couple reasons. First, I went late in the day. Normally I am an early riser, I like to get Mass first thing. Second, I went to a different parish than usual. So because the time and location were different, I was in a receptive mindset: This was not routine, so I was especially alert.

The Homily directly addressed my Questions and Answers. Only the Holy Spirit could be so specific. What follows is my recollection of the relevant parts of the Homily.

It All Leads To This

Lent. The Penitential season is designed for us to focus our lives, shed the distractions of this world and bring our minds, bodies, and souls closer to God. But regardless of how Lent has gone, this week is Holy Week, the most important week of the Liturgical Year, because it is the week we follow Christ through his ultimate miracle and his final covenant. It is the week of Christ’s passion.

And this reminds us of WHY we are here. WHY we are Christians. Our Meaning. Our Telos.

God stepped out of eternity to become fully Man and fully God. To offer a perfect sacrifice to pay an infinite debt. To do this, God himself had to be killed at our hands.

And we, too, will die. The Palms we receive today are the ashes which will adorn our heads next year. From Dust we came, to Dust we shall return. We will die.

But God will give us new life. Everything of this world will pass away, and our new life will be everlasting in the Glory of God. Our purpose is to prepare ourselves–rather, to let God work on us, to prepare us to enter into Glory in the perpetual light of his face. This is His promise of his new and eternal covenant. Why shouldn’t we be joyful? Why should we selfishly keep this for ourselves? God calls all peoples to him because he created all of us.

Our Telos is partly of this world, partly the next. Prepare ourselves, and bring others with us.

The one thing that sticks prominently in my mind is this: We will all die. Our purpose is not of this world. We must not let this world consume us.

St. Athanasius, Pray for us.

AMDG

XLV – Word Study: Sacrifice

During this lenten season, it seems appropriate to consider the meaning of Sacrifice. Let us begin with the basics:

Sacrifice has two dictionary entries.

1- Sacrifice (n.) an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine supernatural figure.

2- Sacrifice (v.) to offer or kill as a religious sacrifice; to give up something for the sake of other considerations.

I will add a third based on colloquial usage:

3- Sacrifice (v.) to forego some personal convenience; or endure some hardship

You will see how these ideas are interrelated. Offering an animal as a sacrifice can be restated as sacrificing an animal. These ideas have filtered through the generations to take on a more personal and mundane definition of, essentially, inconvenience or endurance.

Let us dive into the Etymology.

The contemporary definition dates to the 14th century. It derives from 12th century Old French ‘Sacrifise’, with essentially the same meaning. This in turn is derived from Latin sacrificum or sacrificus, ‘performing priestly functions or sacrifices.’ This is a derivation of sacra, “Sacred Rites”; itself a conjugation of sacer which was combined with facere “to make, to do”. The Latin finds itself derived from Proto-Indo-European, ‘*dhe-‘, “To set, put” and ‘*sak-‘ “to sanctify”.

Reading through this might seem confusing. Essentially it looks like we are tracing the roots of a word all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European roots where it meant the same thing. However, context must be considered.

In the ancient civilizations, ritual sacrifice was a method of convening with the gods. Look no further than Homer’s epics, the Illiad and Odyssey. There was a ritual component which was noted every occasion a sacrifice was offered, which was frequently. After reading them, the repeated phrase stands out: “A double fold, sliced clean, and topped with strips of flesh.” The gods were invoked only through sacrificing an animal. This was the tradition of the Hebrews, and can be seen in the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 22:7-13. It goes without saying, but emphasis mine:

7 Isaac said to his father: My father. And he answered: What wilt thou, son? Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust?

8 And Abraham said: God will provide himself a victim for an holocaust, my son. So they went on together.

9 And they came to the place which God had shewn him, where he built an altar, and laid the wood in order upon it: and when he had bound Isaac his son, he laid him on the altar upon the pile of wood.

10 And he put forth his hand and took the sword, to sacrifice his son.

11 And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.

12 And he said to him: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou any thing to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake.

13 Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw behind his back a ram amongst the briers sticking fast by the horns, which he took and offered for a holocaust instead of his son.

The early Jews spoke the language of Sacrifice, and that is how God formed his covenant with them. Then God offered his perfect sacrifice in the form of Christ, a lasting and eternal covenant with us. We no longer need to sacrifice animals because God offered his only begotten son; God offered himself as sacrifice.

So consider not just the language but the practical reality. God, who holds all things in existence, received a ram as an offering from Abraham. Both Abraham and the ram are held in existence by God. God to whom they owe all things. What was Abraham giving up by killing a ram he found in the brambles and offering it to God? Abraham suffered only the hardship of making the journey (to say nothing of the radical trust in God to almost sacrifice his own son). No: Abraham was returning to God that which was already Gods. God made all creatures for us. A sacrifice in it’s original context was taking God had given us, and giving it back. That is why it is Holy in the first place.

This idea is the root of all the definitions of Sacrifice. We aren’t just giving something up for a while, and then taking it back. We are giving back to God something that was his gift to us.

Remember this during the final days of Lent. Our lenten sacrifices, penances, repentances, are not just about us and shedding our material chains. The most important part is that we are rendering unto God that which is Gods.

AMDG