Holy Communion Nourishes Your Supernatural Life

Holy Communion preserves and increases the supernatural life of your soul. In the Holy Eucharist, Christ becomes present so that He may abide bodily among us by His Real Presence in our taber­nacles, renew the Sacrifice of Calvary in an unbloody manner on our altars, and nourish our souls in Holy Communion.

The Eucharist is not only a sacrifice, but a sacrament as well. As a sacrifice, it relates in the first instance to God; as a sacrament, to ourselves. Through the Blessed Sacrament God bestows upon us the grace by which we obtain supernatural life and are saved.

By the imparting of divine grace, God has made it possible for us to share His own nature and His own vital activity. The life of God calls for appropriate food. The Bread of Angels has become, through transubstantiation, the food of man. This Bread, the product of our Savior’s love and power, is the only food that is wor­thy of the Father who gives it and the adopted children who re­ceive it from His hands. It produces wondrous effects in those children. The first and principal effect is that it gives divine life to the soul.

Holy Communion is the Body of Jesus under the form of bread, received as food. With His Body, He gives also His Soul, His divin­ity, His merits, and His grace. All that He is, all that He has, He makes your own. No being on earth is richer and more honored than you are when you bear in your heart your God and Savior. You could not ask for more. Christ could not give you more.

Because Jesus Christ Himself is the very essence of this sacra­ment, it follows that the Holy Eucharist is the most sublime and greatest of all sacraments, not only in dignity but also in power. Holy Communion is the most intimate union of ourselves with Christ, and therefore it must excel all other sacraments in power to sustain and increase the supernatural life within us. It is justly called the Blessed Sacrament.

This article is an excerpt from Fr. Lovasik’s The Basic Book of the Eucharist. Click image to learn more.

Through the Eucharist, you share in the life of God

God is the source of life. From all eternity the Father gives Himself to the Son. Together the Father and the Son give them­selves to the Holy Spirit, sharing with Him Their one divinity.

The eternal Son of God, in His limitless love for our fallen race, became incarnate that men might have life, and might have it more abundantly. At the time of the Incarnation, most of the children of Adam had ceased to live the supernatural life and had devoted themselves to the pursuit of vain honors, deceitful riches, and sinful pleasures. They had ceased to recognize the glorious dignity to which they were called — that of children of God — and had sunk to the lowest depths of sin.

The only-begotten Son of God then condescended to become man so that He might raise man to God. He descended to the depths of humiliation so that He might raise man to a most exalted dignity, to the sharing of God’s own life. It was not enough for Him to offer to God’s offended majesty that atonement which only a divine Person could adequately pay and to merit for man the super­natural life Adam had forfeited, but in His undying love for men, Jesus bequeathed to us a marvelous gift that was to feed and foster the supernatural life within our souls, adorn them with holiness, and thus perfect us more and more in our glorious dignity of divine sonship. This wondrous gift is the living Flesh and Blood of the Word Incarnate, substantially present in the consecrated Host.

The reception of the Blessed Sacrament is of supreme impor­tance to every soul Christ has redeemed. According as that heav­enly banquet is rightly partaken of, or neglected, man will enjoy throughout eternity the fulfillment of the supernatural life in the Beatific Vision of God, or will be excluded from Him.

God wants to give you a share in His divine life. Before doing so, however, He gave His life in all its fullness to the sacred hu­manity of Jesus because of its union with the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. This divine life then extends from Christ, the Head, into the Body of the Church. The members of this Body are the faithful who in turn share in that intimate life of the three Di­vine Persons.

Christ is the Mediator through whom grace comes to all men. By His sacrifice on the Cross, He has merited this divine life that mankind had lost by sinning. Jesus gives you His divine life and unites you with God through the sacraments, especially in Holy Communion, for it is the sacrament of union.

St. Augustine prays, “Other priests offered for themselves and for their people; this Priest, not having sin that He should offer for Himself, offered Himself for the whole world, and by His own Blood entered into the holy place. He, then, is the new Priest and the new Victim, not of the law but above the law, the universal Advocate.”

The Bread of Life is food for your soul

The first effect of Holy Communion is life. All the sacraments either impart supernatural life to the soul or develop it in the soul where it is already found. They do this for certain purposes. For in­stance, the sacrament of Penance raises the soul from death to life; Confirmation bestows on it a special strength to fight against its external enemies. But the Eucharist is concerned with the super­natural life itself. Its function is to intensify and strengthen that life. St. Thomas writes, “We should consider the effects of the Eucharist with regard to the manner in which the sacrament is con­ferred, as it is given in the form of food and drink: thus all the effects that material food and drink produce for the corporal life — that is, to sustain, to cause growth, to repair loss, and to delight — this sacrament produces them also for the spiritual life.”

Holy Communion is a sacrament, and hence, like all the other sacraments, it is a sign instituted by Christ to give grace. Like all the other sacraments, Holy Communion also is designed to give that precise grace of which it is a sign. Baptism, for example, is a symbolic bath; it contains and confers the grace of spiritual cleans­ing from sin. Confirmation is an anointing; it brings with it the grace of spiritual maturity. It makes its recipient firm in the Faith, anointed for the spiritual battle like an athlete of old.

Holy Communion is a sign of nourishment; hence, it is meant to bring to the soul the graces of spiritual nourishment. Holy Communion is meant to do for the soul what material food does for the body, and that is to preserve life and protect it. Material food enables you to continue living and protects you from fatal disease; Holy Communion preserves the spiritual life of your soul and protects you from the spiritual disease of mortal sin.

In His discourse after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus stresses this fact five times. “I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven; if any one eats of this Bread, he will live for­ever; and the Bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my Flesh. . . . Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The sharing of divine life means that God lives in you and you in Him, and that as God the Son has by nature the same life as the Father in its infinite fullness, so you share it by grace.

Our Lord compared the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar with the manna given to the Jews, because the Holy Eucharist was intended to be the daily spiritual food of Christians, just as manna had been the daily food of the Israelites in the desert.

Manna is like the eucharistic Bread, the Body and Blood of our Lord, which comes from Heaven to feed our souls during our life on earth, until we arrive at last in Heaven, our eternal home, the land of promise. Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the Bread which comes down from Heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.”

It is in the midst of a meal, under the form of food, that Jesus chose to institute the Eucharist. He gives Himself to you as the nourishment of your soul: “My Flesh is food indeed, and my Blood is drink indeed.” In the Our Father, he taught us to say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” This refers to Holy Communion. Like the manna, the Eucharist is bread come down from Heaven to give life by nourishing grace within your soul. The life of your soul is supported and developed by eating the “Bread of Life,” much in the same way as the life of your body is supported by eating your ordinary meals. Just as it is necessary to supply your body with food every day, so you must nourish and feed your soul, since obviously the soul has no less need of spiritual nourishment than the body has of material nourishment.

Jesus has prepared for you this great feast of the Holy Eucha­rist — the food of the soul. If you receive Communion only seldom, you become a prey to temptation and sin, and, growing weaker spiritually, you may fall into mortal sin. Many Catholics have good health and are blessed with the material goods of this world. They are very much alive physically, but are dead spiritually.

Therefore, Jesus comes not only to visit you in Holy Commu­nion, but to be the food of your soul, that receiving Him you may have life — the life of grace here below, the life of glory hereafter.

https://catholicexchange.com/holy-communion-nourishes-your-supernatural-life

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This article is adapted from a chapter in Fr. Lovasik’s The Basic Book of the Eucharist. It is available as a paperback or ebook from your favorite bookstore and online at Sophia Institute Press.

Photo by Annie Theby on Unsplash

THE LIFE OF THE SOUL AND THE LIFE OF THE BODY IN MY THOUGHTS

THE LIFE OF THE SOUL AND THE LIFE OF THE BODY IN MY THOUGHTS--11.20.2018

author unknown-

Maybe I’m kickin’ a dead horse here but hey…... I thought it was ok to disagree and share my thoughts.  I just totally disagreed with the analogy.  There was never any malice.  

When I think about ‘the life of the soul’ in Catholicism, I think about grace which comes from God through the Sacraments.  In Confession; in which we admit our sins after an examination of conscience, I think about the graces that I receive from Jesus in the confessional.  I always think of them as an infusion of grace into the soul  in which the graces feed the soul. I believe grace makes me more aware of my sins and more able to avoid them in the future with my cooperation.  It’s as though grace feeds my soul to be well.  

So, this analogy with Confession; where sin is being eliminated by the grace of God, and an oncologist; who eliminates a tumor with surgery, (cutting), radiation, (burning), and chemo (poison), in which the tumor, and worse cancer always comes back, was a true shocker to me.  I thought it was an outdated thought and terribly poor analogy (whoever wrote it) to me considering all the real health education around. It really shocked me.

And ‘Moderation’ is a terrible and deceiving term to use in either case because who wants to be moderately sinful and moderately sick...? 

So if Confession heals the soul with graces and our, ‘now enhanced abilities to cooperate’ that allows us to avoid sin more easily, then plant based food heals the body with live cell food and wards of diseases of the body. Since the body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, I would think that God would want us to have an eating lifestyle to feed the trillion cells of our body.  The world always tries to fool us into sin and bodily disease.  Just look at legalized sin in our country alone.  Just look at all the pharmaceutical companies that feed us ‘poison’ that never heals us; and the food industry feeding us dead food and processed food.  And to think about all the trees destroyed for land to grow grain to feed the animals while humans starve, and all the oxygen gone from the planet because green vegetation gives us oxygen, makes me very sad. 

The life of the soul is grace and the life of the body is live cell food.  And of course, God has His own plan for us no matter what we do.

It is also known (saints, and present health peeps who have discovered God) that there is a higher supernatural height that you go to when you eat live cell food, when you abstain from food or from fasting.   That is simple truth.  Many vegan, plant based people have discovered God in their health food journeys.

So, all I wanted to do, was to say that I was really taken back by that analogy in the newsletter on hell. Even though the topic was not ‘specifically’ related, I felt strongly that it was an untruth and a deceiving analogy.

The Fifth Prophecy of Humanae Vitae

T.A. Mylor November 20, 2019 One Comment

In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI prophesied four serious consequences if contraception became embraced by the culture and the family: infidelity/moral decadence, lost respect for and use of women by their husbands, government’s abuse of power, and man’s absolute dominion. Tragically, all four prophecies have come to fruition, wreaking havoc on the Church and our world, fifty-one years later.

Although not explicitly mentioned in Humanae Vitae, a fifth prophecy has unfolded before our eyes: women abdicating their roles as stay-at-home mothers, especially as it pertains to homeschooling. Repugnance toward homemaking and educating one’s children is a byproduct of contraception, one of her most pernicious fruits. The serpent who tempted Eve in the garden tempts every mother in a similar manner: “You should be like your husband. You don’t need to be tied down by your children.” C.S. Lewis begged to differ when he declared, “Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world.” Yes, mothers have an extraordinary vocation in God’s eyes as co-creators of life and co-formators of supernatural life.

Contraception helped initiate the trend of more mothers entering the workforce, which in turn has played a major factor in the vocations decline. For instance, a 2017 study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown found that one out of ten men in the seminary was homeschooled and that homeschooled men are four times more likely to join the seminary compared to those who study in Catholic institutions. Remove the mother from the home, and you remove vocations from the Church.

Despite the above study combined with the flourishing of traditional religious orders and seminaries, especially in dioceses with an orthodox bishop, many in the hierarchy continue to deny reality and truth by staunchly advocating for female priests and deacons. These same cardinals and bishops, who condone contraception, have failed to adequately address one of the most fundamental causes of the vocation’s crisis: contraception and its sinister effect to remove mothers from the home. Instead of being sidetracked by their own agendas, our religious leaders, especially priests, need to encourage and laud mothers for their noble and sacrificial decision to homeschool. Make no mistake: the more mothers reclaim the heart of their homes by educating their children rather than sending them to pagan schools, the more likely vocations will flower and new saints will arise.

Imagine if St. Joseph and Our Lady sent Jesus away to be taught by the Romans so they could devote all her energies to building a lucrative carpentry business. Perhaps they considered sending Jesus to the Temple permanently to be instructed by the greatest scholars of the law because they felt ill equipped for such a daunting task. Clearly, God the Father could have willed that His beloved Son be born into home of the world’s greatest intellectuals, but this was not the case. Instead, God wanted to be raised by the most virtuous parents in the history of the world. The home, the domestic church, is the greatest school of virtue. After all, which is more important: getting our children into Heaven or Harvard?

In his book Christus Vincut: Christ’s Triumph over the Darkness of the Age, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is asked specifically about the rise of homeschooling in United States along with its suppression in other countries like Germany. He declares,

This is a dictatorship. Under Communism in the Soviet Union, education in the family was also forbidden, as it was under the Nazi regime. The prohibition against homeschooling is a dictatorial law. We have a challenge and duty to restore civilization and the reign of Christ in our families, in our society.

Bishop Athanasius further comments, “So, it will always be a battle, a fight.” The battle for our children’s eternal salvation is real. Having attended Catholic schools my entire life and having been instructed by a beautiful teaching order of nuns, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, did not guarantee me a virtuous life. By God’s grace and due to my parents’ and these holy nuns’ witness, I was protected from the debauchery that infiltrated my Catholic high school. Many of my classmates who came from decent homes were not so fortunate. Their parents seemed distracted by their own careers or cared only about their sons’ and daughters’ intellectual prowess. Consequently, my classmates did whatever they wanted, so long as they maintained their GPA, made this varsity team, and got into that prestigious college. Sin was overlooked; secularism and egoism reigned. In effect, these parents entrusted their children to many faith-filled Catholic educators while sadly renouncing their fundamental right to educate their children, especially in the ways of morality.

Reflecting on my past, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t insist upon being homeschooled because I too fell for the culture’s lie that academic and athletic success is more important than loving God and living a moral life. Having heard about the devastating effects of two families who stopped homeschooling their children years ago, I felt compelled to write this article. At one point, both families lived a simple life, but the opportunity for a more comfortable lifestyle allured the mothers into the workforce. The husbands were on board. Having homeschooled their older children until they became adolescents, the two mothers decided they had had enough. Within a short time, years of solid religious formation vanished as their children were dragged into the culture of death by their godless public high school peers. Drinking, drugs, and sex replaced faith, hope, and love. Today, several of the children have the left the Faith and are living in serious sin. In conversations with their adult children who still practice the Faith, they point to their mothers’ absence from the home as the catalyst for the breakdown of their families. Even though both sets of parents attend Mass every Sunday, frequent confession, pray the rosary, and lead their families in prayer before meals, their decision to stop homeschooling was more costly than they realized.

At the same time, homeschooling cannot always keep our children on the narrow road due to their own free will. And for some parents, solid Catholic primary and secondary schools (which are rare but do exist) are the best fit based on circumstances or a child’s specific needs. Yet homeschooling provides countless opportunities for grace, such as daily Mass; siblings growing together in virtue; spending timeless moments with your children; and, above all, safeguarding our children’s purity and faith from numerous evil forces found in pagan public schools and nominal Catholic schools.

When a mother chooses her career over her children for any other reason than absolute necessity, she exposes her innocent children to a world of vice. A quick read of St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography reveals how wicked relatives and friends were leading her to Hell had she not repented.

The Devil knows that we have only a short time to form our children — eighteen years is brief, likely not even one fourth of their lives. Therefore, he relentlessly tempts us to squander this precious window by spending more time on social media and watching television than being with our children, by allowing other adults and our children’s peers to have more influence on our children than we do, and by allowing our careers to take precedence over our children’s eternal salvation. On our deathbeds, will we regret that we didn’t spend enough time with our children and do enough to keep them from Satan’s grip? I pray not!

The time is now for mothers to be that heroic and unheralded heart of their homes. The time is now for fathers to support their wives, so their children receive the finest religious and intellectual formation, even if it means working two jobs. If we fathers want to know how to raise a saint, we must look no farther than St. Padre Pio’s father, Grazio, who traveled twice to the United States for work so that his son could become a priest. Despite the distance, Grazio closely monitored Pio’s education. In fact, Grazio once convinced his wife to have Pio transfer schools because the one was run by an ex-priest and lacked sound formation. The time is now for parents to raise great saints like Padre Pio.

Even though the fifth prophecy of Humanae Vitae has been fulfilled, maybe it’s not too late to reverse it since nothing is impossible for God. However, in order for us to  “restore civilization and the reign of Christ in our families, in our society,” it must start with one family at a time — specifically, one mother at a time, who courageously says “yes” like the Blessed Mother to the glories and sufferings of home life.

https://onepeterfive.com/humanae-vitae-prophecy/

Image: David D via Flickr.

G.K. Chesterton’s Radical Vision for Conservatives

Jesse Sumpter

The recent National Conservatism conference is one of many examples that conservatism is going through a significant re-evaluation process. This process began in large part as a response to the Trump presidency, but it is also a response to alarming liberal trends: transgender issues, gay marriage, immigration, abortion, and many others. All these factors have forced conservatives to examine again the principles that unite them. In the midst of this re-evaluation process, it would be worthwhile to look to G.K. Chesterton and consider his thoughts on conservatism.

While Chesterton shares many of the principles of conservatives, he also sees the common weaknesses in some forms of conservatism. For example, conservatism which seeks to simply maintain what was done in the past is not enough of a vision for true conservatism to thrive. Chesterton instead argues that true conservatism has to be able to re-align itself and make adjustments. That is what is happening in the national conversation among conservatives today. Conservatives are asking: Where did we get off target? How do we recapture a true vision for American culture and society? As we work through this evaluation process, it is helpful to consider Chesterton’s vision for conservatism, a vision that offers our generation a robust reminder of what it looks like to thrive.

Chesterton first shows how true conservatism is a radically inclusive vision. In looking to the past for guidance for today and tomorrow, conservatives are not promoting a static position but one that is truly dynamic and democratic. He writes, “I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record.”[1] In looking back to what our forefathers thought and said about our country, we are acknowledging the voices of the past that continue to have a say in our lives today. These men and women shaped where we are today and so we cannot really understand our own time unless we understand them.

The past also gives us a measuring stick with which to judge our current moment in time. The past is not the only standard to use but it is a good one that many have forgotten or ignored. Why only count the “vote” of the current generation? Let’s be radically inclusive and count the “vote” of those who first built this country. Conservatives are being truly democratic in reminding us to look to the past to gain a better vision for the future.

Chesterton next shows us how true conservatism is radically active. Rather than being a vision that idolizes one point in the past—some might call it “the good old’ days”—instead true conservatism is a constant re-evaluation process driven by a standard which we are seeking to align with more and more. The current re-evaluation that conservatives are conducting is actually something that conservatives must always do. Chesterton writes, “But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution.”[2] The world is always changing. People grow old and things fall apart. True conservatives must be vigilant and active because there is a standard which we are aiming for and we cannot reach that standard trying to maintain the status quo.

New things will arise that we must think through and understand. Some new things will be good and some will be bad. It takes vigilance to keep up with the changes and know how to handle them. To grow weeds in a garden, you don’t have to do anything. And so true conservatives realize that we need to weed a little every day. A conservative vision is one that cultivates, prunes, waters, and weeds. Conservatism is not static but a living force to be reckoned with.

This leads to Chesterton’s third point: in being for permanent truths, the conservative position is not a static position. Rather, the truly permanent things are the ones that are most alive. Chesterton looks at the sun as a great example of this truth: “Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.”[3] This is like the child sitting in a swing going back and forth over and over again. Adults get tired of that kind of action but a child will do it all day. Why is this? Because the young and youthful do not get tired like the old and aged. We tire easily. In this way we see that the sun is a wonderful picture of the conservative vision. It never tires of rising and setting. It does the same thing day after day, not because it is bored, but rather because it has never gotten tired. It is full of a robust life that we old humans must once again grasp anew.

That is why we need a constant and consistent reminder of the true and permanent things. We wear out but the permanent things never do. That is why they are permanent. They survive every twist and turn in the road. They do not change but we do. And so we need to look to them again and again. We need to refresh the vision or we will lose it.

Chesterton then looks to the only permanent thing: God. He never changes. To our ears that sounds like a dreadful, boring thing to say but that is because we do not know what that really means. To be unchanging means to be perfect. It means to be all that He needs to be. There is no lack. He doesn’t grow tired. He does not need to grow more or to improve. He is the most alive thing. Philosophers speak of God’s aseity, that is, his self-sufficient nature. He is his own source of existence. Rather than being stuck in place, like we are, God is a rushing wind, a roaring tidal wave, a cosmic dance, that never ends.

Chesterton describes it this way: “It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we.”[5] We see then that true conservatism is the vision of eternal youth. The permanent things are not really old; they are the eternal young. We are the ones who grow old and wear out; the permanent things do not. That is why they last. They are truly alive.

It is only the things that are truly alive that can outlast death. The test of time is a test of the grave. Can you kill this thing? If you cannot kill it, then it must be eternal. This leads to what conservatives ultimately need: not just permanent ideas or visions but a permanent person. Only a person who can stand the test of time is able to give conservatives a truly living standard. That is the central thrust of Chesterton’s radical vision for conservatism. There is an eternal standard—the Lord Jesus—who does not change. That standard enables us to look to the past to honor our parents, it also motivates us to be vigilant because we can see what we are aiming at, and it also gives us a vision of the true life. That vision is alive and active and we must hurry to catch him.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/11/gk-chesterton-radical-vision-conservatives-jesse-sumpter.html

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[1] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908, 84.

[2] Ibid, 212.

[3] Ibid, 108.

[4] Ibid, 109.

The featured image is a photograph of G.K. Chesterton taken by Hector Murchison (1864-1934) and courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Leftism Isn’t a Religion, It’s Something Worse

Auguste Meyrat

Like Christians of old confronting the idol-worship of the pagans, we must not attempt to parse through the dense tangles of Leftist culture’s false beliefs and mythology and make corrections; instead we must create greater counter-movements based on truth and authentic experience.

It has become common among today’s conservatives to call environmentalism, socialism, militant feminism, transgenderism, and other leftist ideologies the modern equivalents of religion. 

Whereas in the past, people treated the central ideas of these movements as ideas like any other—that is, subject to discussion and evaluation—now, people must treat them with the same reverence and respect as they would with religion.

Considering the apparent zeal of climate-change activists and social-justice warriors, one can easily spot a few other similarities. Like religion, most of these movements have a transcendent idea akin to a deity, most have a community of sorts that will come together for a common purpose (mainly protesting), and most feature a kind of dogmatism distinguishing true from false believers. And, as exemplified with the 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, these ideologies now have their own saints.

However, the similarities end there, and insisting that people treat these movements like religions does a disservice both to religion and the movement itself. In truth, they are really false idols, idealized fixations devoid of much meaning. This makes them something less than religions, in terms of their intellectual and spiritual content. Nevertheless, they are still problematic and capable of corrupting civilization—particularly a civilization that does all it can to dispense with religion altogether.

At its most fundamental level, religion is a system of beliefs, in the form of a creed, while ideology usually consists of one belief, often in the form of a general notion. This leads the former to have a system of logic based on these core beliefs about God (a theology); the latter only has a singular belief that people can interpret however they like. True, people could do away with conflicting opinions in ideology by actually studying climatology or economics (as religious people study holy scripture and tradition), but few really do—and those that do would likely have different conclusions about climate change and socialism.

Instead, most adherents of modern ideologies focus on certain narratives: “Humans, particularly the ones in first-world countries, are destroying the planet,” “The system is rigged and the rich are oppressing the poor,” or “The white patriarchy continues to hold down women and people of color at all levels.” Where they go with this depends less on logic and more on how much they care. Those who care deeply become activists joining and organizing various marches and sit-ins; those who care somewhat become “slacktivists” who periodically post articles about injustice on social media; and those who care a little may just vote Democrat and blithely ignore arguments from the other side.

Although feelings are also important to religious practice, they do not constitute its foundation. Religious adherents do not follow a certain moral code, worship a certain way, or hold certain beliefs because this makes them feel good or look cool, but because they think they are true. The typical Catholic father who drags his young children to Mass might not feel much when he is there, but he accepts the truth that he fulfilling his obligation as a Christian disciple and receiving special graces from the sacrifice at the altar. By contrast, the typical hipster may reconsider joining his friends for climate protest if he doesn’t feel like it and wants to stay in and binge-watch Netflix instead.

The lack of theology, in turn, affects how these movements are organized. Because feelings predominate, specific people will become leaders based on their ability to inspire feelings instead of having actual credibility or expertise. Even if Greta Thunberg is a troubled teenager suffering from depression and Asperger’s Syndrome, or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is an actress who originally auditioned for the Justice Democrats in her run for congress, or Bernie Sanders is an old man who failed at every job except being a politician, they all generate buzz and make their respective issues exciting and accessible.

Normally, this kind of hierarchy would wither in the face of conflicting reality, but a well-funded media and new technology have pushed perception ever further along and effectively smothered reality. This is how so many young people genuinely fear ecological doom despite living in the best of times. This is how so many college students, perhaps the most privileged group in society, identify with the proletariat and hope to overturn the very institutions that made them so privileged in the first place. The messages they see and hear have normalized these fantastical notions.

All this poses unique problems for institutions looking to best reconcile these movements with the greater good of the community. They cannot disprove them because they were never actually proven. They cannot reform them because they were never actually formed. They cannot argue against them, because they are never actually argued. And, these ideologies cannot be adapted to philosophy or religion (as Pope Francis and his progressive bishops were trying to do in the recent Amazon Synod) because they are inherently incompatible with rational systems.

Rather, in order to best handle these movements based on falsehoods and propaganda, such institutions must create greater counter-movements based on truth and authentic experience. This was precisely what the early Christians did when they encountered idol-worship. They did not attempt to parse through the dense tangles of each culture’s false beliefs and mythology and make corrections; they proclaimed a coherent, all-encompassing religion to replace them. In answering the confused collective of people channeling their anxiety into idols, they offered a universal community based on charity.

Too many religious people today seem averse to confronting these idols, and most non-religious people are unequipped to properly identify and reject these ideologies as idols. Moral relativism and mediocre education have made all opinions and arguments equal and legitimate.

Many conservatives have rightly attributed the rise of fanatical ideological movements to the unfulfilled religious longing of people who live in secularized societies, but this doesn’t really explain the meaning of religious longing. Religious longing is the longing not just for ceremony, higher ideals, and shared label, but also a longing for truth, logic, and engagement.

People fall into these modern idols, however false and incredible, because there is no authority to offer something of substance. Therefore, the best way to lead people out of them is not reasoned rebuttal or disparagement, but a confident faith and honest friendship.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/11/leftism-religion-auguste-meyrat.html

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Sir Gawain on Maturity

Louis Markos

The mature man is the one who not only honors vows and oaths, but who, when he breaks them, confesses his crime, feels shame for his failure, and seeks to make right what he has violated. Shrugging off one’s moral failings, acting as if they don’t matter, is not a sign of maturity but an abdication of it.

Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power to do both of those things, what might they say to us? How would they advise us to live our lives? What wisdom from their experience and from their timeless poems might they choose to pass down to us?

Sir Gawain: On Maturity

We all mature in different ways and at different rates. Some reach maturity by the age of twenty; some never reach it all. Part of the reason for this is that people rarely mature, rarely come of age, until they have undergone a rite of passage, an ordeal that tests their courage, their endurance, and their faith.

Alas, there are many who fail the test when it comes, who choose to meet it with pride or envy, bitterness or skepticism. Such are those who think they have matured, but who have not. For maturity and cynicism are not synonyms but opposing states of mind. There is a difference between seeing one’s flaws and feeling sorry for oneself, between choosing to sacrifice yourself for others and developing a martyr’s complex, between doubting yourself and doubting goodness and truth.

Consider my Sir Gawain, noble knight of the Round Table and nephew to King Arthur. The trial he underwent tested every ounce of his physical courage and moral fiber. Yet he survived it and returned to Camelot a sadder but wiser man.

We are all friends here; let me tell you the tale.

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The tale begins on Christmas Eve during the innocent days of Arthur’s court, before Guinevere broke her troth or Mordred schemed the downfall of Camelot and the Table. Oh, those were golden days of untroubled chivalry. It seemed that neither cowardice nor malice nor treachery could spoil the joy of Arthur and his knights.

Optimism was high and virtue abounded, but few, if any, of the knights had yet been tested. Even Arthur himself was a trifle naïve, thinking the good days would last forever and that no ill thing could befall his majestic court.

And then he came, a pebble to trouble the still stream, a stone to shatter the stable roof, a boulder to start an avalanche on a peaceful mountain. He was a man, but a man as tall as a giant. And his hair and his skin and his raiment so glistened and shone with a brilliant shade of green that those who dared to gaze upon him thought that a mighty tree had strode into the hall.

At once, the Green Knight challenged Arthur and his men to a duel, an exchange of blows to the neck. He did not share their sunny, complacent faith in their own courage and invincibility and told them so in cutting words and menacing gestures.

The silence of the knights in response to his haughty and condescending call to single combat was deafening. Ashamed that no one would take up the Green Knight’s challenge, Arthur himself made bold to accept it. But he was stopped by Sir Gawain, who begged that he, young though he was, be allowed to grapple with this giant upstart who dared to taunt the flower of chivalry.

The Green Knight agreed and laid down his neck to receive a blow from Sir Gawain’s sword. With all his strength, the young knight brought down his weapon, severing the green head from its massive body. But Sir Gawain’s victory was to be short lived. For the headless body of the Green Knight, though blood streamed from its naked neck, rose from the floor, took its head in its hand, and held it up to speak:

“This time next year, you must meet me at my Green Chapel and offer your neck to receive a blow from my own sword.” And then the Green Knight was gone.

The festivities continued, with Arthur laughing aloud at the spectacle. But the heart of Gawain was troubled, knowing what awaited him in the following year.

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Had my Gawain received his blow on that self-same night, his initiation into the world of maturity would have been far less severe and lasting. As it turned out, that year of waiting and dread and searching aged him by ten, forcing him to face his own capacity for despair and building up within him the gifts of patient endurance, fearless honesty, and resolute chastity. In a word, delayed gratification.

For his was to be a slow and grueling education. In addition to facing dangers along the road, Gawain, in his search for the Green Chapel, came upon a castle where the true quality of his Christian chivalry was tested to the breaking point.

No sooner was Gawain ushered into the castle than he was treated by all as a celebrity, a knight from Camelot well-schooled in the dual arts of war and love. The lady of the manor quickly took a fancy to the handsome Gawain while the lord proposed a game. He would leave Gawain behind in the castle while he went hunting for three consecutive days; in the evening, they would exchange whatever prizes they had won.

How could the innocent Gawain know that on each of those days the lord’s wife would steal into his bedroom and attempt to seduce him? Nevertheless, the knight stayed true, only allowing himself to indulge in a number of courtly kisses—all of which he passed on to the lord in the evening.

Alas, his courage proved less true. When the lady gave him a green girdle that she swore would protect him from harm, he chose to conceal it from the lord and bring it with him to the Green Chapel.

In the end, the Green Knight did not kill Gawain; instead, he cut a gash in the side of his neck as a reminder of the cowardice and coveting he showed in keeping the girdle. For you see, the Green Knight and the lord of the manor were one and the same. Though he scolded Gawain for loving his life too much, he praised him for staying true in the test of chastity and sent him back home with the scar and the girdle as tokens of his journey.

Chastened, Gawain returned to Camelot and confessed to all his deeds. But Arthur and his knights, preferring to remain in their state of innocence, made merry of Gawain’s ordeal and adopted the girdle as the symbol of their order. Amidst the courtly laughter, however, Gawain took to heart his hard-won maturity and hid his tears from the rest.

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What then has my tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to say to those of you who live in an age where chivalry is but a distant memory and chastity has lost its central importance? A great deal, I believe.

The mature man is the one who not only honors vows and oaths, but who, when he breaks them, confesses his crime, feels shame for his failure, and seeks to make right what he has violated. Shrugging off one’s moral failings, acting as if they don’t matter, is not a sign of maturity but an abdication of it.

Taking responsibility for one’s actions, staying true to one’s word, and denying one’s lusts: in my age, in yours, or in Arthur’s, these are the perennial signs of maturity.

—A humble poet

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

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https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/11/sir-gawain-maturity-louis-markos.html