The truth will set you free

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matt 5:16)

After unveiling, in the previous articles, the vows of poverty and chastity, I now complete the tripod on which the religious life is supported by reflecting on the vow of obedience. The religious is called to be a beacon, a guide to lead others to Heaven by living, in the here and now, the same life that all are called to live eternally in Heaven; he is called to embody the values of the Kingdom and to guide mankind in the dialectics of wealth-detachment, love-sex, and power-freedom-fidelity with his experience in living out the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, respectively.

To know the truth
If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (Jn. 8:31-32)

Stewards, not owners - The Church tells us that our life is not our own, but rather a gift from God; we have done nothing to merit it, nor were we consulted as to whether or not we want to live it. In its totality, life is indeed a gift. With respect to the first part of this life though, the time in which we live on earth, rather than a gift it is more like a loan. The Book of Genesis says that God made man from dust and breathed into his nostrils to give him life. By the same manner that He breathed in and we started to live, one day He will breathe out and we shall die.

The indication that life is a loan is clearly seen in the parable of the talents. All loans must render interest; our lives must be profitable; they must be productive; not necessarily reproductive, but productive. We must leave this world a better place than when we found it; we have to make a difference, be part of the solution and not part of the problem; in other words, our lives should contribute to the solution of a better world, and not contribute to its problem, that is, leave the world in a worse shape than when we found it. As suggested by the parable of the talents, we need to do something with our life, we cannot return it exactly as we have received it.

All good stewards have the "books" in order because no one knows the day nor the hour when the owner, or the government auditor, will come to inspect the accounts. For this reason we need to make regular check-ups of our stewardship.  On this regard, the Church has a sacrament, the sacrament of penance; those who use this sacrament periodically, providing accounts of inputs and outputs, will know whether their finances are growing or are heading for bankruptcy. It is also an indispensable exercise of self-evaluation for personal growth at all levels.

Builders, not architects -- Every one of us comes into this world as part of a big project. We came because God willed it. The circumstances of our birth are irrelevant; they neither increase nor decrease our dignity. We are as much sons and daughters of God irrespective of how we were conceived, be it out of love, from accident, from prostitution, a night of pleasure or even as the result of a rape. Every human life that comes into this world, from conception to its natural death, is precious and viable, and therefore sacred.

God writes straight on crooked lines. Both our righteousness and our sinfulness serve to carry out God’s designs.  For Him there are no illegitimate children nor children of blue blood; to everyone He is the Father; we are all equal in dignity, heirs to the eternal life...

Just as no houses in our cities and villages are built without first being properly designed and planned, no life comes into this world without God having mapped out a project for it; that is, without Him first designing a plan.

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. (Jn. 15:16) -- We are therefore not the designers of our destinies; we are called to be a house built on rock, if we listen to the Word, that is, if we know the plan that relates to our lives, and put it into practice, bringing it into fruition according to the plan designed by God.

Since we are not the owners of our lives we are also not the architects but rather the masons or master-of-works. The architect of everything and everyone, the Creator of all is God; the design, project or plan for our lives is with Him and for us to know what it is we need to periodically consult Him, as we build our lives, our homes.

The builder who does not consult the architect on a regular basis runs the risk of building something not according to the plan. Just as it is always embarrassing when this happens in our cities, houses that were not given the permit to be inhabited, some even to the point of needing to be torn down because they were not built according to the drawing.  A worse embarrassment still is to stand before God with a life lived against His will.

The regular consultation, continuous and constant, that the builder must make with the architect is called prayer. Jesus used to spend the whole night in prayer to know what God’s will was for him. We too must do likewise because it is His will and not ours that we must act upon. It is He who calls us and gives us the vocation and sufficient talents to make our lives viable in a profession or a mission.

Just as the builder only asks for the instructions of the foundation when he is working on the foundation, and not for the instructions of the roof, because the time has not yet come to build it, prayer should be a continuous and constant process that goes step by step with the building of our lives. The vision of the whole and the ensemble, the design as well as the model of the plan, only God has them and only at the end will we see and be confronted with the final result. Those who never pray will never know what God’s plan is concerning them...

The true disciple of Christ is obedient, just as the Master is obedient to the Father. Whoever loves me follows my commandments; the disciple is the one who hears the word and puts it into practice.  To remain faithful to the message of the Master means therefore to obey the directives of this message.

The truth leads to freedom, freedom leads to the truth
Mastering oneself is the greatest of empires...
How can anyone say that he is free if he is governed by his own desires? Socrates
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. (Jn. 14:6)

Before we can submit to a project drawn by God and be a real contributor in the world; before we can give, heart and soul, to this project in which we give ourselves to the service of a cause, we need to be in full possession of ourselves. No one can give what he doesn't have, thus if we don’t possess ourselves we cannot make ourselves a gift to others.

So that we can be in charge we need to submit to the conflicting forces within us, which do not respond to our reason; we have to become masters of ourselves, winning the civil war that every man has within him.

Upon rebuking a teenager we often hear him say: “I can do whatever I want with my life"; many times those who say this are precisely the ones who have less power to do what they really should want with their lives. There is no freedom for... without the freedom from...We are not free to do whatever we want if we do not possess our innermost selves; or, if we are not free from vices, bad habits, manias and all sort of obsessive, compulsive, eccentric behaviours which have more power to govern our day-to-day lives than our intellect does; these eccentricities being all together quite capable at each moment of deciding what we do.

A man can allow a bad habit to have dominion over him, to the point that he cannot set himself free.  Similarly, he can let a desire to fully overwhelm and control him, so that he has no strength to get away from it. Completely enslaved by self-indulgence, this person can become schizophrenic, loving and hating his bad habits both at the same time. The one who has been caught in this cobweb of addiction, loses completely the power to do what he wants and what he wishes. As Jesus said, no one who sins can say that he is free.

Freedom is for the soul what bread is for the body. But if freedom is a human value, then like all other values, it is not something that we are born with but rather something that we acquire through effort, blood, sweat, and tears but most of all by God’s grace.

A life in Present Perfect
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, (...) it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. (...) For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  (Rom. 7:15-19)

In order for us to possess ourselves we need to know ourselves. In grammatical terms, it is an illusion to think that our lives run in the Simple Present, when 90% of our behaviour is influenced by our past. In reality, the tense of the verb which we live in is more like the Present Perfect which refers to an action that started in the past but still continues into the present.

We live in a present that is often invaded by the unresolved issues of our past. Most of the time, we are not even aware of this past which continues to reappear in our everyday life, and oblivious to our will, it can be triggered by any present event or circumstance. It is as if we were walking through a minefield with the risk of stepping on a bomb at any moment. When we live most of our lives unaware in the present perfect tense, our behavior would seem to be on some sort of autopilot mode, like an aeroplane at cruising altitude.

Know yourself -- The Socratic maxim sounds here in all its exuberance. I can only aspire to be free, to possess myself, in order to give myself up to a cause if I know myself. Knowledge means power; therefore if I know myself then I have power over myself. What I know of myself this I can control because knowledge also implies control; what I don't know of myself controls me and what is alien to my desire makes me behave as if I am on cruise control.

Our truth, our identity, has a historical dimension, it is something that has to be built. For this reason, in the same way that trees need to grow downwards by their roots in order to grow upwards, we also, in order to grow as people, need first to visit our past.

Like the tree that extends its roots into the depth of the soil to find nutrients and to balance its height, we too need to extend our knowledge, to the beginning of our lives, in order to understand completely how we became who we are, and so to be able to become what God calls us to be.

After we take control of our past, and become aware of everything that was good and bad that we did or happened to us, we must escape the temptation to deny whatever they may be and assume the responsibility of our history.

...You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Because we know the truth of our past, and we take responsibility for it, we now have the power to control its influence on our present. This time, no longer walking in a minefield nor led through life as if we were on autopilot, we are free because our behaviour is now decided directly by our reason. In this way we can now possess our time and energy and commit them to a cause of our choice.

                                    Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Chastity: Lights and Shadows

It can also happen that sensibility overflows. The desire for sexual pleasure can one day be stronger than the willpower and the chaste person is seduced. For those who genuinely care about their chastity, this means to experience painfully, over and over again their misery; but also to realize that chastity is in the spirit and not in the flesh. If we are to look carefully deep down into our hearts, we will see that even when we are, sadly, drawn to the experience of carnal love, our heart can be as faithful as ever to the Lord (...) If, deep down, he was not faithful, it would not cause him so much suffering the thought of not being, (...) To err is the master of not erring.  RONDET, M. / RAGUIN, Y

After having, in the course of the last 4 articles, exposed the nature of the virtue of chastity and stressed how paramount this vow is to the Church, to the society and culture in general, I did not want to stay only in the world of ideas and ideals. We, the clergy, frequently speak on this theme in a very generic and idealistic way, giving the impression that it is an easy matter. In this last article on this subject I would like to come down to reality, to the problems and difficulties one faces in living out this vow. I don’t want to ignore, nor hide, nor sweep under the carpet the real experience of taking this vow, lest it invalidates everything I’ve said before.

False chastity
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice. These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out of all that they do. Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth this creature follow them, with its discord. And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied it! Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful of your doggish lust. Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers. Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering? Nietzsche

To live out chastity, as a formal and physical continence, it brings to mind the gospel passages of the coerced obedience the older brother of the prodigal son felt for his father, as well as the one who lacking in commitment in life hid his talent. Nietzsche explains this type of chastity with a skillful subtlety; it is in fact a sexual energy, poorly sublimated, that escapes the conscious control of the individual and is manifested, in the bearings of a pseudo chaste person, in a thousand and one ways.

Since it can no longer have flesh, that is, any physical expression, because it is repressed by the willful continence of the individual, sensuality begs for a crumb of the spirit, in other words, it satisfies itself with substitute manifestations which are oftentimes eccentric; it is like a reversed or negative sublimation

Omnia munda mundis - To the pure person, all things are pure and everything that he touches becomes purified; to the impure, all things are impure therefore everything he touches becomes tainted; that is, the way the impure relate to people suggests right away that their sensuality is not sublimated, but simply repressed, and as such shows up unbeknown to them in their relations with others. It is this to which Nietzsche said in a crude way: the uncontrolled sensuality is like a dog that licks everything that comes its way.

In this text, Nietzsche reveals his depth as a psychoanalyst. In fact, any unsatisfied passion, that is poorly channelled, has a tendency to self-compensate in a thousand and one ways by poisoning the soul. As the result, the pseudo chaste are irritable, neurotic, moody, hard, cold, proud, uncompromising and egocentric. Little by little, in their deeds and behaviour, these are revealed in far too many quirks and eccentricities.

Limits of sublimation
It is clear that the process of substitution, or channelling of energy, cannot continue to infinity, the same also cannot occur in the transformation of heat into mechanical energy in our machines. Sigmund Freud

Freud was referring to the steam engine, the only machine known in his days that operated by a kind of sublimation process that is, changing heat, from the water boiler heated by charcoal, into mechanical power. According to Freud, it is impossible to sublimate the entire heat; that is, to change all the heat generated into mechanical energy; some heat has to follow its natural course. Freud gives yet another example of the farmer who was training his donkey to live without eating and when he thought he had succeeded the donkey died.

The same happens in the metaphor of the dam; a certain amount of water can be channelled to the fields, while others to the production of energy; however there are days when it rains too much, and the floodgates have to be opened to let the water flow freely, through the natural riverbeds to the sea, lest we lose the dam.

Still using the metaphor of the dam; just as it is hard to contain the heavy downpour of water during the rainy season by not opening the dam, chastity is also more difficult to be achieved at younger ages, when the heavy rain of testosterone and progesterone takes place inside the body; it was not for any other reason that St. Francis of Assisi used to roll naked in the snow but to resist temptation...

To commit themselves socially to the structures of civilization, human beings, according to Freud, sacrifice a portion of their individual happiness for the common good. This is essentially an economic decision; we exchange immediate gratification for long-term stability. In other words, we renounce the immediate and full payment of pleasure, for payments done in instalments over a long period of time.

After favourably describing and showing the process of sublimation, Freud alerts us to the fact that excessive repression of Eros produces suffering and neurosis. In general, total celibacy, he said, produces people who are well “behaved”, but without vitality; it does not produce wise thinkers, bold liberators or intrepid reformers. And he adds that the relation and equilibrium between what is possible to sublimate and the necessary sexual activity vary, of course, from individual to individual.

For those who feel that the deficits and failures of the celibacy practice invalidate it entirely, I say like Freud, "No one like I, who presume to fight against the forces of darkness inside of us, can hope to leave unharmed from the fight. (Freud, 1905/1953a). Despite his history of failures and betrayals, the accomplishments and conquests of the celibate in the name of human race are substantial, and I foresee that it will continue to be so. PETER GAY The historian, 1986

True chastity is not a repressed and neurotic continence of someone who detaches himself from life. The truly chaste, as they are committed to life, can even dirty their hands once in a while and learn from their mistakes. A saint is not someone who never gets dirty but someone who always washes himself.

For men it is impossible, but for God all things are possible. (Mt. 19, 26)
“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away.” (Deut. 30, 11)

The Church, also the society and culture, accepts no less than the ideal in that the chaste person has to be fully chaste; however science, on the nature of Eros, says that this is not possible without creating neurosis and other behavioural deficiencies. As there isn’t any sort of institutionalised chastity that is in accordance with what science says, the chaste or the celibate are on their own in the solution of this incongruity.

“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” (Mt. 19:12)

Those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom are not doing so on their own account nor at their own risk.  Because they have chosen to seek first the Kingdom of God they know that all these things will be given to them as well (Mt. 6:33). Those who have chosen to sacrifice their affections for the Kingdom know that they can depend and count on the divine grace which can transform everything that is humanly impossible to perfectly possible. They are assured that their needs will be fully satisfied. “God gives cold depending on the clothes you have”; He does not call anyone to a Mission without first equipping him or her with the necessary talents to accomplish it well. Chastity for God is only possible with God.

True Chastity
In truth, there are people who are chaste in the core of their being: they are meeker of heart, laugh more heartily and more often than others. Laugh also at chastity, and ask: "What is Chastity? Isn't she silly? But this foolishness came to us, we didn't go to her.  We offer shelter and affection to this guest: now she lives with us -- and will stay till she wants." Nietzsche

A chaste person is always someone who is totally devoted or ‘married’ to a human or cultural enterprise, such as art, music, entertainment, sports, science, medicine, education of the young, fighting for justice and peace, adventure, revolution etc. This all-encompassing cause, to which the chaste person devotes himself or herself to, leads naturally to changes in how the person spends most of his or her time and energy, as in the case of parents with young children.

The world population hasn’t stopped increasing; for this reason the world is ever more in need of adopted fathers and mothers than of biological ones; these are people who, having renounced their biological paternity and maternity, dedicate themselves heart and soul to a human cause as was done before by Jesus of Nazareth and so many others after him… Mother Teresa of Calcutta never had biological children and yet no one would deny her maternity.

Any human cause is sufficient justification for the sacrifice of our emotional energy. There are in fact people who started off by dedicating part of their time and energy to a human project and then eventually committed themselves fully and ended up “putting all the meat on the grill”, as a Spanish saying would have it. Mahatma Gandhi was a married man; when he realized that his lifelong project required all his energy he took a vow of chastity with his wife.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC