A Catholic man of medieval persuasions often finds himself being told that one cannot go on living in the past. If this man is anything like I understand him to be, he has no conception of how to answer such an assertion. Imagine entering a confessional and after opening up your soul to the priest, he recommends giving up the faith and living a secular life in peace with your sins because you will always sin. Or imagine a terrible architect who, after building a bridge that collapsed, went on building inadequate bridges in recognition of the unalterable fact of his ineptitude.
To the first man, we would be forced to say, “Do not listen to that priest for your soul depends on it! Almost certainly you will sin again. Almost certainly you will break your baptismal vow, your vow in the confessional, and your vow before the altar. But you might not! And there is nothing else to aim for.” To the second man, we would gladly exclaim, “Stop what you are doing! In making peace with your incompetence, you have only unleashed it to destroy the whole world.” We have here two lessons that are difficult to learn and even more difficult to practice. First, every Catholic is a utopian insofar as he attempts not to sin. Second, every man must be at war with himself; to make peace with oneself is to spread death.
We do not strive for mediocrity, but for perfection, though usually we find we have only achieved mediocrity. We strive for that which only our Creator and His Mother can touch. Every Catholic attempts to do what he cannot do in this life – to be perfect. In this way the war he wages against himself cannot succeed in this world, but only in the next. Yet, we do not tell him to stop trying. We do not tell him to admit defeat and carry on. We do not tell him to rid himself of his lofty aspirations and utopian fancies. No, for every day the Church encourages and strengthens him. Every day choirs of angels and a host of saints defend and pray for him. Every day the sacrifice of the cross is renewed in his body. Every day the Church encourages him on to his utopia. Further up and further in, go, you who are filled with sin and defilement! Do you not see the perfection of the human heart that is attainable? Do you not see the wounds of Christ crucified in Padre Pio? Do you not see the scars of Christ in St. Anthony, battered by demons in the desert? Do you not see the heart of Christ in the Blessed Virgin? You have before you manifold images, manifold utopias. You will never attain Mary’s charity. You could never expect to love like Padre Pio or St. Anthony loved. Yet, onward and upward, go! Do not seek what is plausible, for that you will certainly lose. Seek the implausible, for that is what is being given.
There are millions of plausible things God could have given us in Christ: land, eggs, cows, houses, pleasure, happiness, virtues, and so on. But, He gave us the one thing that we could never have expected. He gave us the one thing that we would have been mad — utopian — to hope for. He gave us grace, a participation in His life. And with this grace, an unthinkable gift, we strive for the next unthinkable gift: glory.
But what has this to do with the Catholic with medievalist sympathies? I have attempted to demonstrate that the Catholic is called, at least in some sense, to utopianism. He is called to hope in the hopeless. The medievalist is of a similar disposition: he is waging a quixotic, idealistic war. We need an image of the perfection we will never reach on earth if we are to strive towards it. We need an image of the paragon of our own perfection in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is not enough for us to imitate Christ; we are so weak that we need to imitate imitations of Christ. And if we need saints in the spiritual life, we need tall towers and moats in the temporal life. If we need the Immaculate Heart for our soul, we need Christendom for our bodies. We need not only the image of the Heavenly Jerusalem before our eyes but also the earthly Rome. We may never be able to see a society of kings and knights and priests and peasants – Christendom – in our lifetime, but there is nothing else to aim for. We don’t sin and change our aims. Likewise, we don’t wreck Christian civilization and change our ideal. Moreover, you cannot have Christ’s divinity without also having His humanity, and therefore, you cannot desire Christ without desiring also Christendom.
They say it is impractical, and I say, “Good. So is the cross.” They say it is nearly impossible, and I say, “Indeed. And so is your greatest desire.” They say it is irrelevant, and Chesterton says, “It is not earth that judges fairyland, but fairyland that judges earth.” Kings, knights, and priests are not an escape from the world. They are not judged by this world, but judge this world. King Arthur judges every modernism in the polity. His knights judge modernism in culture and society. And the Chalice that his Round Table pursues judges modernism in religion and philosophy. The fact that these men are dead does not make them ghosts of the past, but judges of the present. Likewise, the fact that Christendom lies in the tomb means only that, for now, the polity exists in heaven, and not on earth. The mystery of incarnation, however, makes its return always possible, for Christendom existed on earth by participation in the divine polity. If we believe in the Incarnation, then we believe that we may participate in it, not only in our souls, but in our families, culture, and civilization.
St. Joseph of Arimathea did not flee to a new ideal when Christ died, and so we must not flee to a new ideal now that Christendom has died. We must bury Christian civilization as he buried Christ, and though there is no immediate benefit to the burial and we walk in the desert by faith, we will enable the resurrection of Christendom as he enabled the resurrection of Christ. Perhaps we will see something like Christendom resurrect before the end of days, but if we do not, we will surely see it on the end of days. For when the veil is lifted and the Groom is revealed, the impractical, impossible, and irrelevant will be shining before our faces. Those who hoped in reasonable causes will be disappointed, but those who hoped in the hopeless will rejoice with a happiness like unto which the God who knows and loves Himself is happy. If we do not pine for golden ages, how will we recognize the Golden Age when it comes?
“If I have spoken to you earthly things, and you believe not; how will you believe, if I speak to you heavenly things?” (Jn. 3:12)
Originally published on Nov. 19, 2014.
Lovely. Thank you.
Carl, this is sheer genius. Your writing is art and your subject matter divine.
Excellent article. You’ve captured both my thoughts and Hope!
Carl your little essay is really the prayer of a seeker. May you find what you seek in your own heart and the heart of others.
And imagine a cardinal, bishop or priest asking you to accept Vatican Council II interpreted with an irrationality….
The Magisterium made a mistake at Vatican Council II when it accomodated the Marchetti 1949 error
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2015/03/the-magisterium-made-mistake-at-vatican.html
Surely you are one of the enlightened ones!!!
Vatican II was not a work of God nor guided by the Holy Trinity. It was conceived and executed by the enemy in the 100 years he was permitted by our Lord to destroy His Church. He did not succeed, but she is badly injured and is in need if healing by the divine physician. Satan will now turn his rage on the children of the Woman Clothed with the Sun, us, since the apostasy that began immediately after Vatican II (and continues today) heralded the threshold of the last days.
The article was an excellent reflection. But one thing it doesn”t say is that the hope to achieve perfection can only be fulfilled by staying on the path to perfection – to continue strive for holiness. To give up is to lose. If one sincerely strives for perfection, in the end Christ Himself will reach out and pull your weary and filthy self across the finish line. And, yes, you may have to take a long, very hot shower to wash off the mud that clings to you. Yet, rejoice! You will be a guest at the wedding feast of the lamb and His bride.
For some reason, this post reminded of a W. Churchill quote from one of his speeches that I read recently.
I can imagine that once the enemy has gotten us to stop worrying and stop fighting, he will then declare, (after Churchill) “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
If this was meant to inspire then its done exactly the opposite
Well, maybe there’s something wrong with you.
Another thought: Yes, Padre Pio was given good parents, and some are not. He was given to live in a more Catholic world and many are not. He was given the priesthood and most are not.
But there’s a catch. He was given a life of intense pain and suffering. Most are not. We are only expected to make lemonade with the lemons WE are given. Isn’t that enough without being envious of the graces given to others? That’s a very dangerous form of envy and can only be deadened by many, many, many prayers of Thanksgiving for what we do have.
Well said re spiritual envy. It is a very dangerous trap to fall into.
easy for you to say Deacon.
Too right its easy for me to say. I hate suffering, pain and mortification and I’m really crap at fasting – in fact I’m a pretty sorry excuse for a Catholic. So I am quite relieved that I am not one of His favourites….
And I haven’t suffered?
You say that almost as if you’ve suffered enough? I’m sure God know’s of your suffering and will remove the thorn from your side when He is ready, not you.
“For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful. ” – 2 Cor 12:10
don’t you dare to presume to judge me, I’ve spent the last 6 and a half years in hell
Padre Pio spent a life time in “hell” since the gates of that place didn’t prevail against his faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and he didn’t let his own struggles…of which there were MANY…stop him from praising God and doing his work.
He saved a lot of souls from hell while you sit there contemplating your own ultimate residence there.
You know…..sometimes I wonder why I couldn’t have been born in different circumstances and maybe life would have been nicer….more comfortable….maybe I could have had a Catholic life handed to me on a silver plate….a different time? a different country? a different family? ….but then I wouldn’t be me, would I? And God created me to be me….and He created me to live in this time, in this place, in these circumstances because that’s what He wanted for me. God doesn’t trick us. Other people trick us…and sometimes we trick ourselves…and we all have lessons to learn and God gives us what we need. The things we suffer have a purpose….they are blessings in disguise although sometimes it takes a lifetime to understand it. I find it helpful to link my Rosary to my thoughts….for example….the crowning with thorns I offer up with it my most painful humiliations. It gives it context and purpose. My life isn’t what I hoped or expected either….actually it’s pretty much all turned to dust….but maybe sometimes we need to lose what we thought it was all about in order to see what it’s really all about. A candle shines brightest in the dark. Bitterness doesn’t bring peace. I hope that helps.
You sound as if you are still in pain and we do sympathies with you. It’s probably not a good idea right now to point out to you the great love God has for those He sends great pain.
But when you can take a bit of thought you will see that it is indeed a great gift. Would He send you pain you can’t handle? No. Would He love you so much that He wants you to suffer here, rather than later and be separated from Him for a longer time in Purgatory? Yes.
By the way, didn’t God love Padre Pio? How’s nail wounds in hands, feet, side, giving 50+ years of blood-dripping pain…is this the way God shows His love? YES
Please take the gift of pain you have been given and be thankful for it. This does not mean that we don’t appreciate what you are going through, or what you have been through. We just hope you can see it in a way that Padre Pio would love you for.
We all do. And we get to choose how we deal with that. My response to you, in fact, was curt, because I was at that very moment trying to deal with a serious betrayal perpetrated by a family member. I’ve been angry pretty much non-stop for two days.
But I wasn’t being unserious. If you have the intellectual capacity to recognize that a thing *should* bring consolation but doesn’t, you have the capacity to recognize that what’s broken lies in you.
I’m broken too. I get it.
Why is it that you’ve been depressed by in this? I’m genuinely curious…
because it confirms what I’ve thought for a long time, that God doesn’t love me as much as say Pardre Pio; he gave Pio a wonderful Catholic home in an age of if not Faith, then widespread religious practise, two wonderful Catholic parents, a religious vocation etc etc.
He gave me two non-practising parents who divorced, left me open to the horrors of the world , and wouldn’t let me enter religious life. I feel like a child being forced to watch his father’ s favourites dine on sweetmeats by the fire whilst I’m told by his stewards to be grateful for the leftovers they throw into the sty afterwood.
And He doesn’t love Padre Pio as much as He loves His own Mother.
So what? Is it not enough that He send His Son to die for you on the Cross? Is that not love enough for you?
defiant12314, I totally understand your discouragement. But that is definitely a diabolical temptation. You are meant to be a saint!! All the circumstances in your life have been expressly permitted for your sanctity, and for the glory of God. The pain, family and vocational circumstances, the setbacks, the loss and inferiority you feel are all obstacles where God will work through and show His power, power made manifest by his transformation of weakness and unlikely instruments into saints. Mother Angelica’s parents were divorced. Moses was a stutterer and murderer. Blessed Matt Talbot was a drunk. Blessed Bartolo Longo was a satanist. St Bakhita was an abused and kidnapped slave. Many saints were rejected from religious life. Padre Pio was suppressed and maligned mercilessly by his own scandalous Archbishop and the list goes on…. (NB Padre Pio’s charisms and miracles where not a gift for him as proofs of God’s love for him, they were gifts to be used for others… and I don’t envy his stigmata!!). So what’s your story? God made YOU. There is no one else like YOU. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity. (Ephesians 1:4).
So do not be discouraged! Do not doubt His love for you.
I leave you with this:
God knows me and calls me by my name.…
God has created me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me
which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission—I never may know it in this life,
but I shall be told it in the next.
Somehow I am necessary for His purposes…
I have a part in this great work;
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection
between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good,
I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth
in my own place, while not intending it,
if I do but keep His commandments
and serve Him in my calling.
Therefore I will trust Him.
Whatever, wherever I am,
I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
necessary causes of some great end,
which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life,
He may shorten it;
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends,
He may throw me among strangers,
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—
still He knows what He is about.…
Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—
I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used. -St John Henry Newman
I’ll answer when doctors grow a heart and replace the mechanical organ that currently pumps blood around your body
And in the meantime you can put aside your self pity and learn to accept that it was not God who tricked you.
Give me a break.
You missed your vocation?
Are you kidding me?
Who’s stopping you now?
Do you seriously think you are special? Do you seriously think your set of life problems are worse than others? You want to know my problems?
Or how about Padre Pio?
Think he got up every morning and enjoyed grabbing his cup of coffee with hands bearing the stigmata?
Good grief, man, if you actually HAD a calling you would have heeded it or maybe YOU just denied it and even so, why not pursue it now? Can’t be a priest? Be a monk! Or would you rather sit back and continue the lifelong whining about your mommy and daddy and how God is a bully.
My suggestion is you start acting like a man and follow God’s leading, respect whatever you can about your parents, at the very least for the life they gave you and start being appreciative of what God has done for you in Jesus Christ before you die and rot in hell where you will have eternity to fuss about your parents.
Leave the bellyaching behind and get on with it.
I haven’t even been allowed to try my vocation, I’ve spent the past 6 and a half years knocking on doors and being told my parents divorce alone excludes me.
To be frank, I’m glad and am actually encouraged that they have culled you from the potential herd. From the sound of it you should find some other line of work.
Doesn’t stop you from serving God, tho, as any of us “civilians” can attest, but in truth, if you have the attitude you do, the Catholic Church, parishioners and the world at-large needs you doing something else other than being a priest or monk for that matter.
well believe it or not I was very different 6 years ago, but I won’t let facts get in the way of your opinon
I’m just praying for you now and everyone else here who is suffering from an acute hurt. It’s unbearable sometimes, but God does love you very much, so please don’t lose hope.
And hopefully you will be quite a lot different 6 years from now. If you give yourself to God I guarantee you will be.
I’m pretty sure your parent’s divorce doesn’t exclude you from anything. That doesn’t ring true. And why is your profile private??
well tell that to vocation directors, they are quite open that they don’t want anyone who very consider to be ‘damaged’ by a less than perfect Catholic upbringing.
Overall, that’s a great policy by the way.
Just look at Schönborn……
ahhh so you’re now advocating (as official policy) that the children must pay for the sins of the Father ……. not mention equating the parent’s marital status with doctrinal orthodoxy. New Flash most of us children of divorcees are lock in step with the Church’s teaching on Marriage (as well as everything else), because we’ve lived through what happens when its disregarded.
You really do just want a small, pure Church where everyone’s pedigree is immaculate don’t you? I was with Jude Law’s Pius XIII up to a point, but not to when generous hearts are checked with cold counsel simply because of the parents sins.
You might fantasise about a small, ultra-pure Church where the inspector Javerts of this world look down with contempt upon those who falter and those who fall. But I doubt that Christ shares that particular fantasy.
Hardly.
That is a ridiculous statement.
Merely that if that is really the policy, it is sound in principle even if there may be exceptions to the rule, one of which does not appear to be you. There are many things in a person’s past that are good reason for extra care being used in their acceptance into the Priesthood.
The Priest stands in persona Christi, the unspotted Lamb of God. Guys packing around the kind of internal mayhem you advertise here should NOT be Priests. We have plenty of recent history of the results of letting busted up, messed up people become Priests, we hardly need any more of the same.
RAISE the standards for the Priesthood and watch the Church………GROW.
You are by your own admission a mess, and no parish should have to put up with somebody like you, if what you reflect here about your own attitudes and even mental stability is true.
You NEED a good priest. By your own words you shouldn’t BE a Priest.
Good job on the gatekeepers.
That’s no prison sentence tho. Find a job, witness to the person and work of Christ and the whole Gospel of our Lord in your day to day activities. That is a powerful enough calling. Difficult enough, too.
This is getting silly. Haven’t you used these same comments on other blogs or other posts? Many people have tried to comfort you, advise you, or tell you to man up – but here you are again with the same story. Bottom line: yes, God either makes things happen, or He allows things to happen to all of us. If you don’t like it go read Job in the Old Testament. Listen to what God tells Job and his friends. First: “where were you when I created the world”?
You have been given sufferings to make you GROW in patience not to wallow and moan. Get over yourself. I do wish you well, please pray your Rosary for relief for your tortured mind and heart.
Not necessarily. Look at Mother Angelica. Whose parents were divorced.
I never said “necessarily”.
Regarding rejection of applicants based on their parents’ divorce you said “Overall, that’s a great policy by the way.”.
I am saying that’s not necessarily a great policy and referred to Mother Angelica as one example. St Eugene de Mazenod is another.
We both agree I’m sure that applicants should be assessed closely. But divorce has never been an automatic ‘no’ – at least I’ve never heard of this. And it clearly isn’t in all cases.
It all sounds very strange to me and I am not convinced. And why is your profile private????
The ultimate proof of God’s love is that He calls each one of us to share in His eternal life. And as great as our miseries are in this world (and all the saints had a lot to suffer), they will all be deemed as nothing at the light of His glory. We do not deserve heaven, but God choose to give us all the means we need to get there: His Passion, the Church, the sacraments, prayer, graces, the saints … I am sorry for your pains, but I believe that this is the way that God wants you to follow to heaven, where He himself will wipe out all our tears. This is what the theological virtues are about. Please, don’t let suffering poison your trust in God, but use it to get closer to Him, as the saints did.
The suffering and lack of trust mainly comes from the fact that God tricked me into thinking that I had a vocation, into thinking that I was loved and wanted, you couldn’t know what that is like to someone who has never been desired. Instead it was a trick to give his Priests and Religious a good laugh as they kicked me out the door.
I’m so sorry for your pain. As it happens, Padre Pio taught that a person who is trying to live a good Catholic life, but who suffers much is favoured by God and almost certainly of the Elect. Rejoice, for you are a beloved member of the household of God.
You are right when you say that I can’t know what you felt in all you went through. Only you and God know. And that is the amazing thing about the Incarnation, the fact that God Almighty, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity became man, like you and me, and therefore, he is able to understand whatever we may go through. Our Lord came to His own, but they did not receive Him. He was rejected by His own people, abandoned by His apostles and on the cross felt all the desolation as if He were abandoned by the Father. But He never thought that He was being tricked. Let Him heal the wounds in your heart. Didn’t He say: “come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”? I am not asking you something easy to do, but it is the only thing that you need. I am praying for you.
You’re not the only one who comments here who thought they had a vocation (and perhaps in truth do) to religious life and/or the priesthood and who were denied by the current powers that be. It’s a real cross to bear, but it’s yours. I will be adding you to my prayers.
St. Therese’s mother thought she had a vocation. After awhile, the Mother Superior sent her home. She was terribly sad. St. Therese’s father also thought he had a vocation but his Superior told him no and sent him back to the lay world. He was also quite sad but then they met each other on a bridge and realized that their superiors were right and they were meant for the lay life and each other.
I’ve been in very bad places emotionally and spiritually – please don’t
blame God. As someone says below, we are fooled by other people and by
ourselves. We are wronged by other people and yes, we harm ourselves
too, but God never harms you. If you can manage nothing else at this
time, please try to at least place yourself in His hands and also into
Our Lady’s. She is, after all, our mother (and I know from my own
experience how earthly mothers can sometimes fail us and leave us
feeling desolate) and if you put yourself into her care she will NOT
fail you. Try not to feel bitter (much, much easier said than done but
if we try, God has something to work with. Try to pray, if only
reciting/reading simple prayers to start with. I did little more for years than say ‘God’s will be done’ and I’m not sure whether I really even meant it but eventually God did indeed respond very noticeably. Tell God how you feel
about everything – He already knows but likes us to talk to Him about
our problems – as you would to a good parent. If I may so this, you sound as if you might be depressed. If so, perhaps you might want to think about going for a chat with your doctor? Just an idea as I obviously don’t know whether that’s relevant. Anyway, I’ve added you to my prayer list and will pray for you daily.
I’m sorry I didn’t write back more quickly, and I haven’t read anything that’s been written below in response to you, so pardon me if I repeat something already said.
Let me tell you a just a little about myself. I was raised by a father who left the Catholicism of his youth and a mother who only found religion of any sort 3 years before my birth. My father fell ill with multiple sclerosis when I was 8, and something began to “crack” in my mother’s mind. When I was a teenager my parents divorce, remarried each other, then divorced again. I was raised “Christian” but a sort of twisted perversion that denied the divinity of Christ and any concept of “church.” After my parents’ second divorce my mother fully cracked, ended up in the hospital 7 times for attempted suicide and dragged my younger brother through 48 moves (yes, 48) over the course of 7 years. 5 years ago, 6 months after marrying, and 2 years after converting to Catholicism, I succumbed to a battle with anxiety and depression that left me nearly bed-ridden for months. I still struggle with that to this day. I take medication daily and still have great difficulty doing anything beyond typing on this computer (though I do get out and it has gotten much better from the bed ridden state of years ago, thanks be to God.) I have no older mentor, no parents to rely upon (my father may in fact be moving in with my wife and I due to increased disability in his body,) little in the way of a support system in the real world…
In short, my life has been rough. Aside from a little period of relative ease (though I often didn’t know where my next meal was coming from) during my aborted college years, life’s been very hard. I had to find the true church through my own effort and the grace of God. I had no protection from the horrors of the world. I’ve had to serve as a sort of surrogate father for my younger brother at many times. And since my struggles with anxiety and depression (I have more specific clinical diagnoses such as Panic disorder and PTSD, but anxiety and depression are more descriptive) my life has been a hellscape.
Yet I still find this article inspiring. I find it inspiring because it points to an ideal that we can strive for beyond our own painful and broken lives. Padre Pio had certain simple benefits as you outlined. But he was regularly assaulted by the devil, was censured by the church for a time, and bore the wounds of Christ on his body (that cannot be comfortable.)
We all have struggles and graces. The struggle is to go beyond ourselves, to move our minds and hearts out of the pain of our situation and look to Christ. I’m reminded of St. Paul in his letter to the Phillipians, chapter 3, verses 4-14:
St. Paul had “advantages” which he outlines in verses 4-6. But he counts all these things as dung, worthless, because Christ is so much more. St. Paul, after his conversion, for a time lost his sight, lost his privilege in society, was stoned in certain cities, was imprisoned many times (including as he was writing this epistle,) and had some sort of thorn in his flesh. He lost all he had BECAUSE of Christ… yet look what he says.
I understand you have very real personal struggles. Perhaps terrible struggles. But so do I and so many others. We’re all broken and weak… That is why St. Paul says, later in that same epistle, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can’t make it, St. Paul couldn’t make it, and you can’t do it… Christ, however, can make it to the end. We can give up, or we can turn to the grace of God given freely to us. We have only one decision to make, to accept or deny the grace given.
You. Awesome.
This is the most inspiring and encouraging thing I’ve read in a long time. Proof that sufferings can indeed be used for good. Thanks for your encouragement – I hope it will hit the mark for all who read it, so many of us desperately need to hear it.
Jafin, may you endure all and see your struggles one day transformed to a crown of glory in heaven.
Defiant, Padre Pio suffered every day for 50 some years with those wounds of his. He had to tolerate for many years hostile superiors and suffered from violent attacks from demons and had to put up with stupid lay people who kept coming to him to ask for predictions about secular stuff.
“In Lord is our hope. And we shall never hope in vain.”
Beautiful reflection over the spiritual battle the followers of Jesus must fight to abide in Him! Thank you so much for posting it, Carl. Your thoughts are deep, moving, and convincing. As members of the Body of Christ, of His Church, we are not alone as we engage in the fight against the Powers of evil: we have God in Jesus, Mary, the Saints, the Angels… and each other to pray for, share our strength and failures, our hope, and our love.
Once we have found the Love of Our Blessed Lord, how could we not continue to persevere until the very end? How could we turn back and away from the Kingdom of Heaven? To what? “Where shall we go? Only Jesus has words of eternal life!” God bless you. +
Very moving and thought provoking. Thank you Carl! On Calvary, Christendom was contained in Mary, and perhaps the way ahead is for us to figure out how we can live Christendom now as she did then, whilst the Church seems temporarily enveloped in a kind of shroud.
Inspired article Carl. Most timely in our age of disbelief. We live in the faithless age of Vatican II–the most faith and soul destroying
event in the history of the Church. One must be willing to become a Don Quixote, a fool for Christ, an outcast if he wishes to express his faith in God and mostly live accordingly. Thanks for the encouragement Carl.
In this beautiful essay, author writes, in part, “The medievalist is of a similar disposition: he is waging a quixotic, idealistic war.” It immediately reminded me of this quote of Vauban, the legendary 17th century military architectural genius, who, upon gazing on the 13th century Cathedral of Coutances, exclaimed: “Who was the sublime madman who dared launch such a monument into the air?”
Raghn
Excellent article. Just the kind of thing I needed to read in the face of all the rubbish I’m wading through at the moment.
Perfect
This essay is problematic in some dangerous ways.
To be a true medievalist is to study the history of the Middle Ages with eyes wide open, taking account of both the beauty and majesty of medieval Christendom (and there is surely tremendous beauty and majesty to be found there), but also recognizing that the middle ages was not a Golden Age, and that there are things in the Middle Ages to which no Catholic should want to return.
The Middle Ages is not a ‘fairy land’ in Chesterton’s sense of the word, it is real historical time period with evil and ugliness as well as sanctity and beauty. To confuse authentic medievalism with what you’re talking about — i.e., pining for a Golden Age that never existed — is to do a great disservice to the Faith, because it lends support to the already common claim that orthodox Catholics, particularly those who love the TLM, are ignorant of history and live in a fantasy world in their own heads, divorced from reality (and thus no need for anyone to take them seriously).
It is ignorance of history to imagine that Christendom was a nearly-perfect society of saints, which has been ‘buried’ and will be ‘resurrected’. Christendom was composed of great saints but also terrible sinners, and not only at an individual level but also as a culture (i.e., sins in medieval society as such).
The most dangerous element of the essay is the following statement:
“Moreover, you cannot have Christ’s divinity without also having His humanity, and therefore, you cannot desire Christ without desiring also Christendom.”
If by “Christendom,” you meant “The Kingdom of God,” then certainly this would be correct; one cannot desire Christ the King without desiring his reign, his Kingdom. But this is not in fact what you mean, as the rest of the essay makes plain. What you mean by “Christendom” is the particular political/cultural/economic reality that obtained in Europe during the Middle Ages. To say that one cannot desire Christ without desiring a return to this political/cultural/economic reality is not just nonsense, it is doctrinal error. Christianity has endured, and thrived in, many different political situations, many different geographic regions, many different economic situations. Christianity endured persecution in the ancient Roman period, when there was no such thing as Christendom in the sense you mean yet, and when Christianity was primarily located in the Near East and in North Africa rather than Europe (certainly not Northern Europe). Christianity in the past few centuries has lived and thrived in South America, in Africa, in the Philippines.
Christianity is not something particular to Europe. It is certain that Europe has no real identity without Christendom (it is not really a continent in any physical sense, just the western part of Eurasia; it can claim continent status only because of the distinctive reality of its Christian past), which is the primary reason why the European Union doesn’t know how to understand itself. But it is critically important to note that the equation doesn’t go in both directions: Europe has no real identity apart from Christianity, but Christianity has a real identity apart from Europe and from Europeans.
The particular political and cultural and economic shape that Europe had during the Middle Ages is not a perfect and Golden system to be emulated by every subsequent generation of Catholic, not because there are not eternal things which don’t change, but because many features of medieval Europe were not the direct result of Christianity but due to an admixture of Christianity with the forces of the world. This is always the case when Christianity exists anywhere; the Gospel is never fully welcomed by humanity this side of heaven, because original sin thwarts our attempts.
Your opening (about how striving for holiness is not a waste of time even when we know we won’t achieve it before death) is quite right, but it becomes deeply problematic when you then make the big transition in the middle of the essay from ‘moral perfection’ to ‘the perfection that was Christendom.’ There has been no Golden Age, not in the 13th century nor in any other. The only Golden Age is in heaven, and to present “Christendom” as a perfect ideal, without distinguishing the historical realities of the period from your own poetic vision, is wrong.
In sum, the problem is that you are conflating “Christendom” as a name for the Kingdom of God with “Christendom” as a name for a particular historical period in Europe, which period had both holiness and evil, both beauty and ugliness (as any period of the Church’s history invariably does). One cannot desire Christ without desiring the Kingdom of God, but one can certainly desire Christ without desiring a return to every feature of the European Middle Ages. To conflate these two things is to risk confusing the Kingdom of God with the kingdom of man, and also to risk confusing Christianity with Europe.
Not problematic in the least. There is corruption and virtue in each age, however, the Middle Ages was a time that we as Catholics can look to with more than simple nostalgia but as a time from which to draw true knowledge and wisdom from. The Christian faith is far more than a “personal relationship with Christ”, it has very serious implications for the way life is lived not only individually or within the family: it has societal implications. As Christians live out their call in the world, they draw the world to Christ and transform the world and renew it in His image. Paul himself stated that the whole of creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God.
It was in the historic period of the Middle Ages that those children of God were revealed in an objective manner, and really more so certainly than in the millennia prior or in the centuries since. The centuries following the Middle Ages have followed the general trend of further and further disintegration of the social, political, and economic order from the transcendent order which the Church points to (when it is functioning properly, unlike generally in our times). For all of its problems, at the heart of Middle Ages European society was its recognition of transcendent meaning of human life and Christ’s offer of salvation for the human soul. Is it erroneous to believe that the sainted rulers of those nations who ordered their affairs for the purpose of fostering virtue among the people should be confined to those times only because we shouldn’t conflate the Kingdom of God with a Christian order in human affairs?
The primacy of Christ’s revelation at work through His Church can play out in any society regardless of geography, but it is in Europe that it was given time and space to truly take root and take hold in the Middle Ages, and that era should be held up and acknowledged and the time in which society took flight on the wings of faith and reason, to the best of our ability given our fallen nature.
Christ is far more than “my Lord and Savior”: Christ is King. It is to the glory of a people when its elites are willing to suffer and sacrifice for that reality, rather than whatever it is they are doing now. We should work for the Restoration of all things in Christ. The closer we come to accomplishing that work in this fallen world, the greater the similarity between our society and the society of the Middle Ages.
Personally I think the best time to live is the time God stuck me with.
I am an historian by training and by choice, and though I love the study of history I prefer to be a poacher of it than a “venerator” thereof, plucking what is offered for my betterment both spiritually and even physically. Thus I am delighted to have fingertip access to a library of doctrinal and historical documents that no Medieval university could aspire to {the internet} AND I enjoy making my own charcoal for the forging of my knives and tools. Mix and match you might say, something past folks often didn’t have the luxury to do.
God is the God of the living, not the dead. He is the Great “I AM”.
As far as I am concerned, the only “medievalists” I know are folks dressing up like Monty Python peasants for weekend bashes of bad home-brew downing and worse dancing and then going home because the ground is too hard to sleep on. You might say that goes for both the spiritual and the physical as well. Maybe I don’t know them all or maybe I don’t know what a “medievalist” is. I can’t find same lauded in either the bible or the Magesterium so forgive my ignorance.
We are in a war, the war God has allowed to be fought by the troops at his disposal; US.
By His grace He has given us things that last from every single period of time in history to serve as weapons in this war, many things from the medieval era of course as well. But while we can actively participate in some of those things {like the Mass of the Ages} we MUST be 100% forward looking as we advance TOWARD the enemy, not withdrawing in the hope that the enemy will quietly just go away.
I think the Catholic Church on the whole, that is, at least in the developed world, has become ensconced in “the past”, with many Traditionalists and Novus Ordo Progressives chained to opposite ends of the same pole. The former look back to grander times of over a half century ago and the progressives looking back to Woodstock. Taken on the whole I’ll take the former, but in truth, we who consider ourselves Traditionalists in things of the Church MUST advance, look forward, evangelize, and bring the Gospel to new lands or to lands where it has already been denied. Both are equally difficult.
Good discussion here. I am finding myself liking both sides of the debate. I have to disagree that Traditionalists are “looking back to grander times”…..I don’t think that’s really what it’s about…but on the whole I agree with you. In these difficult times I understand very well a longing for Christendom….a “medieval” mentality that struggles to get along in these irreligious times….but you are completely correct IMHO that God made us to be born in our own time and place and we have to deal with the challenges that presents.
I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, either, so I hope that statement isn’t taken too sweepingly. It is meant to jar the thought, because with the mess we are in, it is a terrible temptation to think in terms of “that’s not the way it used to be” as if the “way it used to be” was great. And yes, there are a number of sites for example with rather large followings that present anything Catholic that existed before 1965 as beautiful and harmonious. Let’s not forget that Pope St Pius X didn’t write Pascendi in a vacuum!
For example, pining for the Church before V2 is to what…pine for a time when Father Ratzinger called Catholics “pagans” in his 1958 lecture you can find on-line? Or a few years before that when things we so crystal clear and Catholics…..were faced with killing each other in the World Wars?
Or should we go back before that to the grand ole days of Bismarck’s “Kulturkampf” or sweeping anti-Catholicism in the USA, Italy, Mexico, etc. Anyone for the French Revolution, or the Reformation, or the Black Plague and all that meant in the destruction of the family {literally}?
See, every single era has its joys and its evils.
I totally agree about the desirability of Christendom in the sense of unity as it existed on the whole in Europe before the Reformation BUT to pine for what WAS must needs include a strong wariness against believing the lie that “it was better in the good ole days”.
Because, it wasn’t in so many ways.
God chose us to live in these times for a reason, and we have a duty to exercise the Catholic apostolate today. But just like a fallen soul would not be wrong to long for its past relationship to God, so we are not wrong to long for a past social order. Of course I am not advocating that we sit in our libraries, read Arthurian romances, and cry ourselves to sleep. But we must study the Middle Ages with deep respect, and long for the restoration of an order like it, and once it exists, the perfection of it. Anyone who knows me well knows how seriously I take the duty of the apostolate. But we are not Catholics in a historical vacuum.
You both have good points, but I empathize with your thoughts here. I find that my son (under 40) is wont to remind me that when I say the best days of America as far as overall Christian living in a large majority of the public and a general good quality of life was probably around the 1940’s, 1950’s, but my son would be quick to remind me that these were not wonderful days for everyone, and we had wars going on as well, during those times. But, there was so much that was good, and worth recalling, it was a vastly happier and more Christian time, when the Judeo-Christian ethos was adhered to by the majority of Americans, and that in itself made life far better than it would have been without. There is nothing wrong with remembering these golden days, and what was good about them. We were formed by them, and enjoyed a kind of bliss in them. I don’t recall the 40’s or 50’s, but I benefited from being raised by people who did. They were good people. We can say, in general, things were better then, and certainly more people were serious Christians, and that is what made us better. Were they perfect? No, but they were in most ways better. Younger people have been taught all the evils of prior times, and sometimes I wonder if they were taught all the good that happened as well. To me it is connected to the Leftist self-hatred that has infected white America and Europeans. This self-loathing has perhaps helped natives to become unwilling to fight cultural invasions so that they and their culture even survive into the future.
This is certainly an interesting conversation and one that seems to carry with it several different elements to consider.
While I completely agree with you, I think that Jordan’s observation’s are not completely without merit.
On the one hand, it’s true that we, as Catholics, have a spiritual pining for a utopia and a sort of cultural/spiritual memory of how desirable it would be to return to our pre-Fall state in Eden (which would be our true Golden Age). But paradise is lost and trying to identify it with any earthly time period or location and describing Catholics as “utopians” seems to put us dangerously close to our Marxist and Masonic counterparts.
I would argue that we are actually anti-utopians and realists in so far as we recognize that perfection is not of this earth. That being said, it’s hard to look at the Church and at our soceities today and not see how, by comparison, the Middle Ages have a lot to teach us.
On the other hand, from a Hebraic perspective a tzadik or a saint is he or who a rigtheous man who is in shalom (peace) with God through the keeping of the covenant out of love and is epitomized by the description found in psalm 1.
And there was certainly a lot of that back then which we would do well to remember without overloiloking the sins of the era too
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Perhaps I can clarify my meaning. I think you are right about wrongly divinizing moments of the past, including the Middle Ages. This article was chiefly written in response to those who say that Christendom has died and so we must not look back, but look to the future – that it is impossible to look back.
Perhaps we could use the analogy of a human soul who has fallen from the state of grace and has been living for years a life of sin. Would it be right for him to look with longing on his old relationship with God, despite whatever sins and imperfections were present at that time? Of course. To seek the restoration of that friendship with God does not mean to believe that moment represented absolute perfection – or even close to it.
Moreover, we could not blame him for longing for his past relationship with God on the grounds that he that Christianity is not peculiar to him. Likewise, we are Western men, formed and shaped by the Western tradition, including those peculiar cultural elements that are neutral until taken up and sanctified by the Gospel.
When we seek to live as a Catholic in the modern world, we cannot ignore the societal implications of our beliefs. We cannot ignore the fact that Christ deserves to recognized as King of the social order. And to understand what this looks like, we should not be afraid to look to the past at an era that, for all of its venial defects, was directed towards God. This is not to say that everyone was a saint, but it is to say, that the social body as a whole was struggling in the right direction, like all repentant and forgiven sinners on their way to sanctity.
As we look forward to the rebuilding of Christendom, how can we ignore the rubble of the Christendom that came before? If men one day build Christian civilization in China, they will have no rubble to guide their efforts. But we do, and when European Christendom is one day rebuilt, will it share that blend of the Roman and the Germanic that it had in the Middle Ages? Of course, how could it not?
Will future Western Catholic society be different than the Middle Ages. Of course! But it will not be entirely new, and there is no reason to deny Catholic men the right to look into the past for wisdom for the future. And if it is nostalgic or romantic to long for the restoration of an order in which a king and a pope would write letters to each other arguing over the interpretation of difficult scriptural passages to settle difficult theological points about the relationship of Church and State, then call me nostalgic or romantic. I know the Middle Ages were far from perfect, but it is the closest thing we have seen, and despite the passing of time and the experience of many revolutions, we remain Western men – and we must become students of the ruins if we are to rebuild the social order, restoring what was good, perfecting what was imperfect, and rejecting what was evil.
Hey Steve – my reply here got eaten. Can you fish it out?
Good article. May I suggest that we can even go one step further: sainthood is in fact attainable for each of us. It is not merely a pie in the sky pursuit but is our true goal because it is goal that can be realized; not because each of us has it in ourselves to do it, but because through Christ we can do all things. The saints were regular people whom God sanctified. He can do for us what he did for them if we let Him.
As Leon Bloy once said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”
Excellent encouragement to us. Beautiful writing.
Amazing, man.
God Bless.