Since last December, or maybe January, I have been in a spiritual formation program developed by Fr. Santan Pinto, SOLT, called Disciples of Jesus and Mary. The program centers around five fairly simple principles, the first of which is "Nothing happens accidentally but everything is gifted providentially." I think this sounds deceptively simple, but when you start trying to apply it to everything you find that a great deal of trust is needed.
This concept wasn't really new to me because years ago I cobbled together a variety of things I'd read and heard and figured out that whatever was going on in my life at any given moment was something that God knew about and that He had allowed to happen and that He knew I needed. Now, I don't always, or even usually, accept these things in this spirit, especially when I am in the middle of them, but usually when things (meaning when I) calm down, I can see that it's really true, that Romans 8 isn't just a nice platitude. And when I occasionally manage to remember this in the heat of the moment, it transforms that difficult moment into a channel of grace.
Then several months ago, I came across a passage in Caryll Houselander that said that the events of our lives are not just gifts that Jesus sends us, but indeed, they are Jesus Himself. Since I read that, and since I have been trying to be always aware of the Hidden Christ, I am more and more conscious of the presence of Jesus everywhere and of the providential gifts that are hidden in our everyday lives.
So, it was easy for me to go to bed early on Tuesday night before I knew the results of the election, even though I knew that if Obama won, a variety of difficult and, I will even say evil, things might be in store for me and those I love, and for my beloved Church. I was entirely peaceful when I got up Wednesday morning and found out what those results were because I believe that they are providential. I believe that they are Jesus coming to us--not as the Glorious Conqueror, but bruised and bleeding and asking us to go where He has been.
Many people have been talking about "What we did wrong," and "What we need to do next," but I think that largely I will do exactly what I have been doing. I am trying consciously to live the best Catholic life I can, and I believe that before anything else, this is the most important thing we can do. I will trying to add bit by bit to the prayers I say and try to get to Mass more often. I'll try to let Christ in me be present to those around me. And then maybe I will have other duties as assigned.
A couple of things that have been running through my mind for the last 24 hours are this:
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"
from The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton
The whole thing is here.
And this:
WILD RIDE
I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.
Let cowards and laggards fall back! But alert to the saddle
Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.
The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appeal or entice us.
What odds? We are Knights of the grail, we are vowed to the riding.
Thoughts's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.
A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty,
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.
I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.
We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind,
We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.
Louise Imogen Guiney
I really like this poem, but I have yet to find anybody else that's very enthusiastic about it. I think it's because although I look like a dumpy housewife, this is who I really am.
AMDG
That's a great post. And although I don't think that's going to be my favorite poem (the second one), I did enjoy it. It happens that I've recently been reading Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and really enjoying it, and thinking that although real knights and their world were certainly nothing like Tennyson's version, the latter is still very real on another level.
ReplyDeleteOf all the responses to the election results that I have seen, this is the most edifying. However bad things may seem down there, they are at least as bad up here, and encouragement of this sort does my heart good.
ReplyDelete"Nothing happens accidentally but everything is gifted providentially." I think this sounds deceptively simple, but when you start trying to apply it to everything you find that a great deal of trust is needed.
ReplyDeleteTrust. That’s where I always fall short and need a constant reminder of.
Love the avatar you’ve chosen for yourself. ;-)
Maclin, Thanks, and I agree about the knights. In their way, I suppose some, maybe many of the "real" ones were trying to emulate the real ones.
ReplyDeleteCraig, Thanks very much. That's encouraging to me.
Marianne, It's nice to see you here. I hope you will come again.
About trust, I think that's what I was trying to talk about on Maclin's blog and not doing a very good job. I think that if we put our trust in the Person that is trustworthy, then we can do whatever we have to do in the political realm without pinning our hopes to the success of what we are doing. We can just be obedient and let the Lord use our efforts in whatever way He pleases, and that might be something we can't even see.
And thanks, I like her too.
AMDG
Thank you Janet, and Maclin for sending me over here. I agree absolutely about Providence. I'm slowly learning the lesson for myself.
ReplyDeleteThe real you looks a lot like the real me, Janet, I also am cleverly disguised as a dumpy housewife. :)
Louise
You're welcome, and you are welcome.
ReplyDeleteOn my good days I wear mithril.
AMDG
I don't mind so much me suffering from Providence. It is when I have to watch those I love suffer from my Providential gift that I struggle. Especially when they are 7 years old or 11 or 14.
ReplyDeleteWell, Robert, I've spent several hours wondering about how I could possibly respond to this, but though I don't know you very well, I get the impression from things you've written that you probably already know anything that I could say. I do know from experience that this is the hardest thing, and that it persists in one way or another for, as far as I can tell, the rest of your life.It's also pretty evident that your children have a father that loves them and is involved with their lives, which, short of the the Faith, is about the greatest blessing they could have. I will keep you all in my prayers.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I had no idea Louise Imogen Guiney was a poet herself. I only knew her as the compiler of Recusant Poets.
ReplyDeleteHa. One day I posted that poem somewhere--mabye CatholicSource--and said something about her writing about recusant Catholic poets, and I'm fairly sure that you said something about it and that that was the first time you had heard of her. I can't imagine who else I would have had that conversation with.
ReplyDeleteToday, I was looking for the version of the St. Martin novena that I have to put on a page here and the only place I could find the exact version that I have was on your blog. ;-) Since I gave it to you in the first place, I'm going to steal it back.
AMDG
Funny because as I was reading that poem I was imagining you with long, flowing hair yielding a sword on a fiery, white stallion ready to slay whatever evil comes your way! Is that weird? I love reading your posts.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks again. Maybe you can teach me to ride a horse.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
May I send a link to this post to all my friends?
ReplyDeleteCertainly.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
What novena is this? Please? Grumpy
ReplyDeleteI doubt it, Janet. I knew Recusant Poets (and was citing Guiney, as its compiler, in undergraduate essays) years before I was on Delphi.
ReplyDeleteGrumpy, I just got home from a meeting, but I'm going to put the novena on the sidebar today.
ReplyDeletePaul, That is really weird. Who else could I possibly have been talking to back then that was interested in recusant Catholic poets.
AMDG
Thanks - I just printed it!
ReplyDeleteRobert's concern is mine, too. Though it's not a factor in my personal life now, the whole question bothers me. And, looking at it from the broader historical perspective, I keep thinking of the English Reformation, of Henry's break with the Church, etc. All providential, we have to believe and trust. Yet the whole of British civilization was lost to the faith then, and has never returned, with profound consequences to the whole world, considering the reach of British influence. I'm not suggesting that that means it wasn't providential, only that the ultimate purpose remains hidden, even after all this time. It's not like the "God closes a door and opens a window" view that we can often (or at least sometimes) apply to situations in our own lives.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking of the English Reformation, of Henry's break with the Church, etc. All providential, we have to believe and trust. Yet the whole of British civilization was lost to the faith then, and has never returned, with profound consequences to the whole world, considering the reach of British influence.
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of a review by Archbishop Chaput of a book on the Reformation. He uses elections and the dilemmas they pose for Catholics as the springboard for his exposition of the book’s main ideas:
“In the United States, our political tensions flow from our cultural problems. Exceptions clearly exist, but today our culture routinely places rights over duties, individual fulfillment over community, and doubt over belief. In effect, the glue that now holds us together is our right to go mall-crawling and buy more junk. It’s hard to live a life of virtue when all around us, in the mass media and even in the lives of colleagues and neighbors, discipline, restraint, and self-sacrifice seem irrelevant.
Brad Gregory, the Notre Dame historian, seeks to show how we got this way in his recent book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. His answers are surprising, and for some readers, controversial. But his book is also important—and in its explanatory power, brilliant.
Gregory argues that today’s relativism and cult of the consumer—what he ironically calls “the goods life”—have roots that run centuries deep. He wastes no time on nostalgia for a golden age that never existed. But he does show with riveting clarity that in the sixteenth century, Protestant Reformers unintentionally set in motion certain ideas that eventually enabled today’s radical self-centeredness.”
The whole thing is worth a read.
Thanks for your comments. I'll answer later but right now I'm trying to find the commandments in Spanish for my PRE class, which isn't as easy as you might think.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
Hmm, yeah, Marianne, I do need to read that whole review and maybe the book. I'm still trying to get around to The Stripping of the Altars. "the goods life"--heh. Or ouch.
ReplyDeleteHadn't heard of The Stripping of the Altars; sounds good. And just checked -- some libraries here in New Zealand actually have it!
ReplyDeleteThat book on the Reformation looks really interesting Marianne.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes say that the seeds of the dissolution of Protestantism were in it's conception, but no time to go into that now. ;-)
AMDG
I don't think Mac has a case with the English reformation. To Catholics, the English reformation is really bad stuff. So it comes down to saying, is really bad stuff providential? And the only answer to that is, yes: God writes straight with crooked lines. If one takes the 'bad stuff' out of all that one considers to be historical providence, there wouldn't be much providence left in history.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, there does seem to be a problem with seeming to say that 'everything is providential, good and bad, rain or shine'. In that case, nothing is providential, if you see what I mean - it becomes just another word for 'everything'. Perhaps this is Maclin's point.
I think the providential path for any human being is the path they cooperate with God in shaping. No human co-operation, no providence.
Grumpier than Ever
I wasn't thinking that Maclin was so much making a case as he was just saying it's diificult to live with the seemingly overwheming evidence that things are just wrong.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
Correct. I wasn't making a case, or any kind of argument, just pointing out the psychological difficulty. Which I'm sure some people have more trouble with than others, and I'm in the "more" category. That's an interesting conception of providence, though, Grumpy.
ReplyDeleteI went to the Catholic Encyclopedia and looked up divine providence and found this by St Thomas Acquinas on providence (I broke it into paragraphs to make it easier to read--for me):
ReplyDelete------------------------------------------
St. Thomas' treatment of the problem of evil in relation to Providence is based upon the consideration of the universe as a whole.
God wills that His nature should be manifested in the highest possible way, and hence has created things like to Himself not only in that they are good in se, but also in that they are the cause of good in others (I, Q. ciii, a. 4, 6).
In other words He has created a universe, not a number of isolated beings.
Whence it follows, according to St. Thomas, that natural operations tend to what is better for the whole, but not necessarily what is better for each part except in relation to the whole (I, Q. xxii, a. 2, ad 2 um; Q. lviii, a. 2, ad 3 um; Contra Gent., III, xciv).
Sin and suffering are evils because they are contrary to the good of the individual and to God's original purpose in regard to the individual, but they are not contrary to the good of the universe, and this good will ultimately be realized by the omnipotent Providence of God.
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Grumpier than Ever, do the last two paragraphs sort of sum up why you said “I think the providential path for any human being is the path they cooperate with God in shaping. No human co-operation, no providence.” ?
Marianne, This is the first time I've had enough time to respond to your comment about St. Thomas. What he says is pretty much what I've always thought, He arranges everything for the best possible good; however, I don't think that what you say, "...He has created a universe, not a number of isolated beings," really captures what Thomas said. He says we are good in ourselves, and also the cause of good in others. We aren't isolated; we are interdependent; but aside from our usefulness to others, we are "good in se." So, "natural operations tend to what is better for the whole," but there is also the whole supernatural realm where God deals with each of us individually.
ReplyDeleteGrumpy, I'm not sure I understand. I hope this doesn't make you grumpy in the superlative.
AMDG