Chastity as celibacy ... and why would you do this?

People really notice this one.

Even if they don't know about poverty or obedience, chastity gets their attention. In our culture, amid scandals in every walk of life, advertising and programming that borders on pornography and rampant pornography itself, this stands out as unbelievable, unlivable or just plain strange.

That's not new, of course. The human race has been disordered, more than a bit, in the area of sexuality since about ten minutes after the Fall. We are indeed a mess.

Part of the reason "Why?" is the same balancing issue as for poverty. If avarice and acquisitiveness are overbalancing a world, the abuse of our sexuality only tips the scale further and more radically. It touches our very persons. Our bodies. Our hearts.

But the love piece comes even more radically to the fore. If I love him enough to give him all my "stuff" - to give up all things to follow - how much deeper the impulse to give him all my love. In the vow of chastity, I say to the Lord: "I love you with all of me. It would not be fair to a man to marry him - you take all my love."

It is normal for a woman to want to husband and children. Not wanting that is no reason to enter the convent. It's just that we are called to an amazing love that cannot limit to one spouse and some few children.

Loving in this way - the love normally reserved for a husband is given to the Lord, completely. The love given to children is empowered and expanded and given over to his people.

We become mothers of the world - of all the sad, and sick, the broken and the confused. We come to love each and every child of the Father of Light.

No, there is nothing negative really about it. It is all about being whooly consumed by love of God and of his people.

Balancing the world

It is amazing to watch television.

I don't do it often. My life is filled with far too many interesting things to spend my time passively watching the kind of programming that is currently available. But, being a Packers fan by adoption, and having predicted that the Giants would win the Superbowl (they beat the Packers, it was a foregone conclusion that they should go all the way), with my community, I watched the Superbowl.

And the commercials.

It is a sort of semi-conscious habit, that when I watch television, I count the number of capital sins that are being advertised. Gluttony, lust, avarice, envy, pride, sloth and anger. The first five usually win out, although sloth usually isn't so blatant and anger gets in around the edges.

In pondering the question of poverty, too, this came to mind. Many people in our culture do not use property moderately. They have and acquire, and have and get (and cheat and steal). It's a bit unbalanced. Okay, it's a lot unbalanced.

Poverty goes a bit extreme on the other side.

If our world is heavy on the side of "stuff," those of us called to freely renounce "stuff" for the sake of the Lord and his people put weight on the other side.

It is not a renunciation so much as a much-needed medicine.

Why poverty?

I have been speaking to many young people recently. Some know more than others about the religious life. They know about the vows: "You can't get married," but one most thoughtful question was: "This vow of poverty. God created the world and all that is in it good. So why is it good to make a vow not to have these things - to use moderately, I mean?"

Why indeed? The question fills me with great hope for the future of the Church. If our teens are asking such questions, the future is bright indeed.

It has to do with freedom and with love - all the vows do.

Love.

I want to go directly to God; to give everything to him. It is not a devaluing of the good things of creation, or a rejection of things most helpful, but it is a question of relative value. He is more important to me than "stuff" ... and I want to show him that.

Freedom.

Our culture is all about freedom. Unfortunately, it is, in so many ways, the "freedom" to bind myself so tightly that I cannot move. This freedom is the freedom to move, the freedom to serve.

The exercise was simple: Close your eyes and think of your "stuff." Now, open your eyes. If I asked you to pack all your stuff in a box - how big a box would you need? If you received a phone call that you needed to move permanently to Florida this afternoon (pick any place far away - we were standing in western Wisconsin), could you pack everything and go?

Or pick one thing you have that is nice. If someone took that away from you (permanently), would you be upset? Would it be hard to love that person?

Since they were all normal people in our culture, my point was made.

Freedom. The freedom to move. The freedom to love. The freedom not to be attached to "stuff."

That's "why" the vow of poverty.

Prayer and Discernment

It is the question: How do I know what God wants?

That is always the question. But there needs to be an examination of the "attitude" behind it. What do we assume he is thinking? Is it a guessing game? "He has a will for me, but he's hiding it." Is it punishment-backed? "If I don't get this right, he's going to be mad at me?" What do we feel about the discernment? Anxiety?

So often we forget (in our gut) that the God who has a call is a Father who loves. He wants us to be happy. He has our best interests in mind. Everything in his call is going to be for our eternal joy, his greater glory, and the salvation of multitudes.

So why do we have this fear?

Let us desire the great things, the beautiful things, the true things. Let us give him a heart courageous. And then simply ask: "What is it that you plan for me?" I can bet he will give the answer.

Here I am, send me

The call to a religious vocation can come in any possible way. It seems that the Lord delights in calling those who are really well prepared --- and those who have no clue. He can call through long association or family encouragement --- or through a passing glance at an adverisement in a magazine. He uses every means and any means to reach out, touch us and say, "Who can I send?"

The common thread is the response. In more or less conscious ways, the person is looking for godly things; for goodness, for truth, for beauty, for meaning, for the gift of self-giving service. And in more or less clear ways, the heart responds: "Here I am, send me."

If the touch is on your heart, listen to it. Pray to know what it means, where it calls, what he desires for your life. It is joy and challenge, growth and some tears, but it is life.

Life with him. Life for him. Life for his people.

And it leads to life eternal.

The need, a purpose

There is so much to be done.

The spiritual darkness of the world is imaged clearly in the darkness of this time of year. Overcast, gloomy, late sunrise, early sunset, we live in a world physically dark.

The moral darkness is worse.

I hear much about all that is going on. There is so much violence, anger, discord, sorrow. So many lives messed up by really bad choices - often before the "chooser" is out of the teen years. War, disease, moral corruption, theft, and ignorance.

There is so much to be done.

Every age has its challenges. We belong to a Church that has weathered them all - some better, some worse, but in every generation God has raised up saints to sanctify and to call men and women back to him.

Are you a saint of our generation? You could be. The grace is there if only you ask.

To pray

How do you pray?

The first question, I suppose is: Do you pray?

Do you talk to God? How?

Does he listen? How do you know?

Everyone who begins to live the Christian life has notions about what prayer is and "am I doing it right?" If you are talking to God, you're doing it right.

Now, there are the professionals, the saints who developed systems, the ones who taught. And they have a lot to say about prayer and how to and what is good and what should be avoided. Reading can be helpful, but it's never as good as the real thing.

Talk to God.