“Sin is something that changes God into a projection of our guilt, so that we don’t see the real God at all; all we see is some kind of judge. God (the whole meaning and purpose and point of our existence) has become a condemnation of us. God has been turned into Satan, the accuser of man, the paymaster, the one who weighs our deeds and condemns us…It is very odd that so much casual Christian thinking should be worship of Satan, that we should think of the punitive satanic God as the only God available to the sinner. It is very odd that the view of God as seen from the church should ever be simply the view of God as seen from hell. For damnation must be just being fixed in this illusion, stuck forever with the God of the Law, stuck forever with the God provided by our sin (155-156).” https://www.americamagazine.org/herbert-mccabe-faith-within…
I found this quote as someone in a Catholic discussion group was discussing The Sacrament of Reconciliation, and I recalled how Father Michael H. Hull had explained it to us in his homily on the Prodigal Son. Someone mentioned it sounded like what Fr. Herbert McCabe had described as well. What’s funny about this is I realized what McCabe describes above from reading Dean Koontz’s LIFE EXPECTANCY, which features a sociopathic kidnapper–as long as you do what he says, you won’t get killed or tortured, but you’ll never be sure whether what you’re doing is right for his expectations. I realized I was treating God like that, unknowingly. It was one of the biggest breakthroughs of my spiritual life as an adult Catholic. I think perhaps too many of us worship God as the accuser, whether we realize it or not. It’s why we can’t love as we should, and we begin accusing others. Too much fear and too much pretense of control we and our neighbor don’t have.
When I first read Flannery O’Connor (also 20 years ago), I had the same reaction as Melody Lyons describes here. Since that time, after learning how much evil there is (and how much has been covered up in our society and church) , suffering through my own chronic health problems and my husband’s sufferings from Marfan syndrome and his death this past October, I have a whole new appreciation for Flannery.
“Show me what is my secret sin” (Psalm 19) is the purpose I think of all of her works. Reading her stories and essays, after understanding their anagogical meaning, does lead me to make a better Confession as I realize how much sin I tend to rationalize and excuse unknowingly instead of repenting and confessing it. Father Theodore from the Norbertines wrote an excellent homily that encouraged and inspired me to pray the prayer of the psalmist. (http://104.236.240.51/our-top-secret-sin?page=2 is the link if that one does not work.)
Ornan the Jebusite offers David his threshing room floor for the sacrifice
In Acts 2, the early Church shared everything, even though they were being taxed by the pagan government. In Second Kings and First Chronicles , David and his people suffered horribly because he took a census, described as “A satan–rose up against Israel, and he incited David to take a census of Israel.” In other words, the devil cajoled David such that trusted his own wisdom over that of God’s and doubted His Providence. Given 3 choices, he chose to be punished by God for 3 days until he made the atonement. Because of the generosity of a stranger, Ornan the Jebusite, who gave him the land, including his threshing room, and freely offered to pay the entire atonement, at the very spot that would house the Temple in Jerusalem, David and his sins for presuming God had not granted enough for the people, were atoned. Interestingly, David turned down Ornan’s offer for it to be free, wanting to pay from his own stores.
7 But when John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his place of baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit worthy of repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come One more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Jesus came when a “census of the whole world” was being done by the secular, pagan government and offered His Life, once and for all, in atonement for our sins and for the whole world, essentially paying the price for our taking a census, of saying, no God, there isn’t enough, we can’t provide for all, which is blasphemy, as He does indeed provide for all. That pride and greed is essentially where all the other sins come from.
It’s Caesar we worship when we refuse to help each other, saying it’s the government’s job or those in need should have planned better (taken a census) instead of our very duty as followers of Christ is to trust Him and do whatever *He* tells us. Read Matthew 25 for those responsibilities. No, I am not even talking about immigration matters, though that certainly is part of it. Asking myself how many times I have “taken a census” to avoid helping someone or put someone down, period, is a good examination of conscience.
Went to Confession today. Didn’t want to be a “10 minute Confession,” so I prayed a long time about it–including my post about the Saints last night–and I talked about my existential doubt/Dark Night, my doubt of the Church, and rash actions committed because I was really angry at God and didn’t realize it. Father said to pray the Glorious mysteries and focus on the third. Didn’t even say that Penance till later this evening, but when I came out of Confession, I sat down, rejoined the people saying the Sorrowful Mysteries in church, and felt a deep sense of God’s Presence to a level I haven’t felt in a long time, and didn’t think I’d ever feel again now that I ‘m in the last stages of the Dark Night. I felt so overwhelmed by JOY, by LOVE, by PEACE, that I practically felt like a Charismatic. I thought of Joy Davidman Lewis’s famous description of her conversion:
“All my defenses—the walls of arrogance and cocksureness and self-love behind which I hid from God—went down momentarily. And God came in.”
My husband, John, the author of this blog, always said he was (_) with a life expectancy of 20. He had a genetic disorder, and so he and I discussed death probably way more than the average couple. I shared this in a discussion about what Heaven will be like, and I thought it might be helpful. It’s from a letter to a young widow by St. John Chrysostom:
But, as it is, we have been relieved from this apprehension, and we are firmly persuaded that in the great day he (the widow’s husband) will appear in much radiance, shining forth near the King, and going with the angels in advance of Christ and clad with the robe of unutterable glory, and standing by the side of the King as he gives judgment, and acting as one of His chief ministers. Wherefore desisting from mourning and lamentation do thou hold on to the same way of life as his, yea even let it be more exact, that having speedily attained an equal standard of virtue with him, you may inhabit the same abode and be united to him again through the everlasting ages, not in this union of marriage but another far better. For this is only a bodily kind of intercourse, but then there will be a union of soul with soul more perfect, and of a far more delightful and far nobler kind.
I’m John’s wife. I wrote this the day of his death, October 11, 2018.
“If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
Many of you are asking what you can do for us. One thing I know John C. Hathaway wants us all to do is forgive, from the bottom of our hearts. He had an intense dark night of the soul, but he was graced with healing and light by Jesus in the weeks before he died (1am on 10/11/18). So, please, know that John and I and the children ask forgiveness for trespasses committed, extend forgiveness, and encourage everyone to repent and extend forgiveness as Jesus adjourned us all to do in the Our Father/Lord’s Prayer. His 3 months in the ICU (after descending aorta replacement surgery) in 2013 were fraught with disturbing images. He saw hell, and God told him he needed to extend mercy to receive mercy. We have been deeply hurt by many people, often being misunderstood, rejected, and abandoned as we struggle in a world that is hugely cruel to the weak. Yes, even amongst our own brothers and sisters in Christ. It makes for a lot of bitterness, I must confess.
As a kid, I never understood why “Mary,” the name of Jesus’s Mother, would mean bitter. It was only in the past several months that I realized there are two types of bitterness. There is a bitterness that causes the drying up of one’s soul from holding grudges, losing hope, giving up, shoving people away. Conversely, there is also the meaning of bitters as a medicine or herb. The type of bitterness that we can allow by God’s grace to bring healing, slowly, yes painfully, but very surely to our souls of all wrong. I read that bitters are a part of the Seder meal, which got me to thinking of the Last Supper and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Catholics have a devotion to Our Lady as the Mother of Sorrows. As I lay in bed last night, desperately missing his warm presence next to mine, it dawned on me that Mary is also a Widow. As a Catholic, I believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity but for the first time, it dawned on me how much she would have ached for her husband’s chaste presence, who guarded them through so much in the temporal life. John, I love and miss you so. Your name means God is gracious and Manly, and that you are.
I have recently “come out of the closet,” so to speak, that after 5 years of wavering I cannot accept the notion that Jorge Bergoglio is or ever has been the Vicar of Christ.
So that leaves the question: “What now?”
Many people have attempted to provide “plans” or “predictions” for worldly processes of “purifying” the Catholic Church–but that is only going to happen with direct, obvious intervention by God, whether it’s in the form of the actual Second Coming or the time period variously called the “new Pentecost,” the “Triumph of the Immaculate Heart,” “Eucharistic Reign of Christ,” etc.
As I have also been very open about sharing, I’ve been deeply shaken to my core not just by recent news headlines, which really aren’t that surprising to me except the depth to which we have been lied to by the hierarchy, but by personal events. I was diagnosed with epilepsy, and since that diagnosis have read some very convincing arguments that most of the Bible and most of the apparitions and miracles that have given me confidence in Christ may have just been epileptic seizures.
And they make a good case. And every “But what about–” I think about comes from the Church, which has been lying to us about all sorts of basic things.
So, trying to get my mind around all this stuff, I was reading a sedevacantist page last night, and much like C. S. Lewis applied the arguments atheists made against Christianity and applied them to atheism, I took home a few key points:
On the one hand, much of what sedevacantists see as heresy in the Vatican II era is really based on their own Jansenism and/or the Tridentine and Vatican I rejection of all but a few specific theological traditions and emphasis on Papal supremacy.
In spite of their own arguments for Jansenism, the sedes seem to hold that if they are wrong about the Papacy being vacant or the Mass being invalid, we’re saved by faith, so doing what they think is faithful to the True Church, even if they’re wrong, is better in their view than attending the Novus Ordo. They do not seem to give the same benefit of the doubt to those who go to the so-called “Vatican II sect” in good conscience.
Then there was this point, which basically seems to be what sedes do to begin with:
Do not spend too much time trying to figure things out — it can lead to pride, vain curiosity, dangerous ideas, and a misplaced reliance on self rather than on God. In general, we are well-advised to seek after virtue rather than knowledge. Certainly we may suppose that living a holy prayerful life and seeking to be pleasing to God, cannot but hasten the day of Restoration.
So, if I should be relying totally on God, then shouldn’t I just do the basics in the most practical way possible?
I took “OCDS” off my Facebook profile.
But I feel more Carmelite than ever.
I just don’t know how I can be “Catholic” anymore. And the questions I have are so deep and existential that no one can answer them but God.
Kindly people are answering with platitudes and apologetics. Folks, I was reading Catholic Answers when I was 12. I read the entire New American Bible, with footnotes, from ages 12-14 because at the time as a Catholic among Protestant kids in the South, “Have you read the whole Bible yet?” was a kind of a status question I wanted to be able to answer affirmatively. I spent most of 1990 and 1991 reading Lewis, Merton, St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, St. JP2, etc.
St. John of the Cross wrote Dark Night of the Soul while he was imprisoned by his “brothers in Carmel.” The Dark Night is when one is cut off from “the Church” by the wolves in shepherds’ clothing.The Carmelite motto comes from 1 Kings (3 Kings in the traditional naming) 19:14:
[14] With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant: they have destroyed thy altars, they have slain thy prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away.
Juridically, one must be a “Catholic in good standing” to be OCDS. I do not believe that the man posing in white robes in the Vatican is the Vicar of Christ. I believe the true Vicar of Christ has been forced into hiding for the past 5 1/2 years, per numerous prophecies, some of which have come to us through Carmelite mystics.
I believe that, in order to truly be a good Catholic, one cannot at this point even pretend to be loyal to a man who:
a) As Archbishop actively covered up sexual abuse
b) Was a Jesuit but broke their Rule by accepting ecclesiastical preferment
c)-zzz) Do I really need to list them?
At this point, anyone who supports “Pope Francis” is either a raging liberal, poorly catechized or so blinded by an oddly inconsistent popalotry that they are willing to say that a cube is round if the “Pope of Humility” says so.
So until this mess is cleared up–and one way or another–I’m tired of playing “undercover Catholic” within the Church, though ironically, it is now the “Vatican II Catholics” who are demanding Ultramontanism.
But I’m going through a deep spiritual crisis, and it’s not one anyone has an answer to, or can answer, except God Himself. And if and when He does answer, whatever it is, I know I’m not going to like the experience:
1) I’m wrong and Francis is legitimate, and I have to completely rethink my understanding of everything
2) I’m right, and we’re in for some pretty drastic Chastisements before either the Second Coming or whatever the “Era of Peace”/”New Springtime” is
3) The immediate future of the Catholic Church will be more the long, arduous persecution that then Fr. Ratzinger predicted in the late 60s
4) The Orthodox are right, Roman Catholicism is and always has been a vast conspiracy of homosexuals, and I have to rethink several fundamental aspects of my spirituality and theology.
5) The notion that there’s one, “True” Church is wrong and God doesn’t care as much as we’re told He does.
6) Then there’s always the fear of C. S. Lewis and St. Francis de Sales that God’s just the Cosmic Vivisectionist.
I was diagnosed with Epilepsy last month and while researching it, found all these articles with convincing explanations that the Bible is nothing but a series of stories about epileptics having seizures, and I have to admit they’re pretty convincing.
The only thing I cannot accept is that God doesn’t exist, because His intervention is too obvious in my life.
For example, He worked an amazing miracle this weekend, dissipating Hurricane Florence, though most people are chalking it up to “unpredictable weather” and “the media got it wrong,” which means the next time there’s a hurricane they won’t prepare and it will get worse.
I keep asking Him to intervene, and He seems to remain silent while things keep getting worse.
Life is always “One step forward; two steps back,” and us “Older Brothers on the Porch,” begging for the Father to show us some love, get maligned, while His vicars don’t just greet the Prodigal siblings returning (which we’re more than happy to do): they go out to them in the mud and tell them to stay in the mud because God loves them just the way they are, and God made them that way, and we’re the wrong ones for being so judgmental.
At what point does one give up trying? Which “trying” should I give up?
If God doesn’t care, why should I?
But He remains silent.
I was going to quote Holy Father John, but I decided to quote Eliot’s Ash Wednesday, instead:
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like “obligation.” It’s my Asperger. It’s my Americanism. It’s my modernism. But I balk at being required to do something.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of “obligation” and the faith, and I thought I’d look up what the word actually means. While today it means more a “requirement” or “responsibility,” it originally meant “pledge.” Before that, it came from a Latin word for “binding.” In one sense, an “obligation” binds the person to do it, but also binds one party to another.
St. Augustine’s oft-misquoted “dilige et quod vis fac” comes into play here. “Dilige” is the root word for “delight” or “delicious,” but it’s also the root for “diligence.” So while St. Augustine is misquoted as saying “Love and do as you will,” with “love” here meaning “follow your delights” (something St. Augustine quite obviously would not endorse), he really means “Love your duty from that that do as you will.”
This is really a functional definition of “obligation.” It is always an act of love. Socrates says he accepts the death penalty because he loves Athens too much to be exiled. The patriot loves his country so much he offers his life in military service, which involves obligations. The student has an obligation to study, but if she loves learning, the obligation is easier.
I have obligations to my body. I have had to drastically adjust my diet and lifestyle since epilepsy was added to my list of ailments last month. Out of love for my family, I fulfill the obligations of my new condition, whether I really desire them or not.
I have obligations to my children. Some are difficult. Some are enjoyable, but I do all of them because I love my children.
I have obligations to my wife. I keep those obligations because I love her. Some of those obligations are tedious, like chores, while others are more pleasurable. But they’re still obligations. One of the things Natural Family Planning teaches about marriage is how to make love when one doesn’t feel like it: it’s an obligation.
Thus, when we speak of obligations in the Church, or even not obligations but “requirements” of devotions, the purpose is not to be legalistic as such: it’s to provide a tried and true guideline for building a relationship with Christ. Just as hugging and kissing daily strengthen a marriage, so prayer and certain practices strengthen our relationship with God. Sure, I could skip checking for discount flowers at the grocery store, but when I bring my wife flowers, she feels loved and I grow in love for her from that appreciation. Sure, I can skip my Rosary, but when I give Jesus and His Mother that spiritual bouquet, they feel loved, and I grow in love for them.
Studies show that married couples should make love at least once a week, on average, to feel happy and fulfilled in their marriages. That, again, can be an “obligation” if one or both isn’t “in the mood,” or especially if they have to schedule a time, and if legitimate impediments exist, they are usually stressful situations that will either strengthen or weaken the marriage depending on how they’re handled: do the couple turn to each other or away from each other?.
Similarly, frequency of Confession and Communion builds our bonds to Jesus Christ. It’s an “obligation” because it binds us to Him. We should receive the Sacraments because we love Jesus. Sometimes, the experience can be full of spiritual consolation. Sometimes, it can be dry. Sometimes, we receive indicators that we need to improve our relationship with Christ. And as with marriage, when crises, however frequent or infrequent, impede us from coming to Him Sacramentally, do we turn to Him for help or away from Him?
2b Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials,*3for you know that the testing* of your faith produces perseverance.4And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.5But if any of you lacks wisdom,* he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it.c6But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind.d7For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord,8since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:2-8)
On May 25, the feast of St. Mary Magdalene De Pazzi, OCD, and the feast of the great and “venerable” Englishman St. Bede, Ireland, which St. Patrick prophesied would one day lose the faith but regain it to spread around the world, officially severed itself not just from Catholicism but from basic decency and Natural Law by sentencing millions of children to death by abortion.
About 20 years ago, I had a dream that the Chastisements would begin if Ireland legalized abortion. Prepare your hearts. Repent. Go to Confession. Get baptized if you aren’t. Fast. Pray. Stop blaspheming. Love God with all your hearts, minds and souls. Arm your family with faith, service and sacramentals. This is war. And we’re all soldiers asleep at our posts. Our Lord warns us that when we have done our duties, we should say “I am an unprofitable servant for I have only done my duty.” “You’ve done your duty; nothing more,” said Valjean to Javert.
St. John Bosco had a dream where St. Dominic Savio showed him all the souls he might have helped to bring to Heaven but even his efforts and faith were not strong enough. One of the saints said that the thing Heaven and Hell have in common is that everyone says “I don’t deserve to be here.”
I for one know I could and should do much more for God.
I spent years reading books on apparitions. I’ve always been conflicted on the “Three Days of Darkness,” yet it seems to match up not just with the prophecies of so many saints and approved visionaries but of many secular and Protestant ideas (the “zombie apocalypse,” for example).
Any Cradle Catholic who’s paid attention to their grandparents or “pious old Church ladies” has at least heard of it. The prophecy is that, in a time such as ours, when the world and the Church herself fall into sin and rebellion and division, God will reveal Himself through various signs and plagues like those of Egypt, and one of the first will be three days of complete darkness (volcano? EMP?) when no lights will work except for the light of blessed beeswax candles. One candle will last the three days and light a home, but it will only burn in the homes of those who are in a presumptive state of grace. It will be the inverse of the “Rapture” as understood by Protestants: those who are in sin will be confronted by their sin and by demons and die. Reanimated corpses will torment the godly in their homes, so doors and windows should be locked and covered, and protected with sacramentals. Though it’s always struck me as a bit superstitious, too many signs are being fulfilled to not at least be prepared in spirit and in sacramentals: https://www.cukierski.net/collections/spiritual-goods-collection
I read an article about a celebrity who’s Catholic who had a personal conversion experience a few years ago and has been taking his faith more seriously. I can be vague because it seems in recent years we’ve been happily seeing quite a few celebrities who are either converts or “reverts” to Catholicism. And, as a celebrity, this person has a “past,” and I think such behavior is taken for granted among celebrities.
Meanwhile, some people seem to be relishing in allegations by various women that they had adulterous relationships with the current President at a time be professes to have really “found Jesus” and that were as “consensual” as a relationship with a married billionaire can be, so really no worse, sadly, than many presidents and at least not as bad as some presidents who’ve been accused of rape. Thus, it seems appropriate to talk a bit about detraction.
There is a big difference between the “Known Sinner” coming back from the parabolic Pig Sty, and the “Righteous” who speak in hypocrisy. So the reaction when a “Known Sinner” repents should be one of “Hey, good for you! Keep it up!” If a person is going around saying, “I’m a good Catholic” and then sleeping around or doing drugs or gossiping or whatever, then perhaps it would be “objectively good reason” to point out their hypocrisy, but otherwise, to poi
Detraction: it’s a sin that, on the one hand, is far too common and we all fall into very easily, with or without the Internet. On the other hand, it’s a sin people with a few thin lines. According to the Catechism, one is guilty
“of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them” (CCC 2247).
An ambiguity in our day lies in the fact that there’s so much detraction and calumny in the media that most of us know very quickly about things, so for the average person, the secondary principle is often moot, though that’s one very good reason to avoid the “news.”
Then there’s the question of an objectively valid reason, which has two sides: if the goal is purely to destroy someone’s reputation, then it’s definitely sinful, and that is one of the problems with elected versus hereditary or appointed governance: our system is supposed to based upon deciding which candidate one believes shares ones values and is of the best character. That, contrary to what many think, is the point of the Electoral College: we’re supposed to meet our electors personally and get to know them at literal “political parties,” and the electors are supposed to personally know the presidential candidates. Still, “I’m the best man for the job” often degrades to “I’m the lesser of two evils,” as it has from pretty much the beginning of the US:
I have always believed that character counts in an election, and I have always believed that people should vote for the candidate on their ballot who best reflects their views (I usually draw the line, literally, at “write ins,” unless it’s a local election with only one name).
The tensions of the last election strained and in some cases ended many relationships for me, like everyone else–and ironically for me it was mostly other conservatives because, even to the last minute, I could not bring myself to vote for Donald Trump. I voted for Castle. Had I been in another state, I might have voted for a different third party candidate, but as far as I’m concerned, one candidate was a Northern liberal who supported gay marriage and socialized medicine, and the other was Hillary Clinton. One candidate was a rich, white racist and warmonger, and the other was Donald Trump.
I’m immensely relieved Clinton is not president, and until he and the GOP failed to merely defund Planned Parenthood, much less actually do anything for Personhood, I’d have said they were doing a fairly decent job, and I’m considering voting for him next time.
The cry of Republicans today, like that of Democrats in the early 1990s, is, “We’re electing a president, not a pastor.” I believe character matters because a politician should be trustworthy. If I’m electing someone based upon my convictions, I want to know that person shares my convictions. In theory, at least, we want someone who’s relatively honest, able to keep a vow, emotionally stable, etc.
And it should definitely matter if someone in office is accused of an actual felony–the reason “high crimes and misdemeanors” is worded like that is to say that “character counts.” The Founding Fathers intended for impeachment to be applied more generously than it has been, to put the Office above the Officeholder.
So it would not, then, be detraction to point out the sins of a public official–if it were, John the Baptist and most of the other Prophets would be guilty. Indeed, Leviticus tells us that the entire people bear the guilt of the sins of their leaders.
Still, we knew Donald Trump was an adulterer before he was elected. He was not, as far as I’m aware, accused of any crimes, and he has not been accused of adultery or sexual harassment that allegedly occurred recently. Yet some people continue to harp on allegations made by different women to a degree that I would argue constitutes detraction, since their goal is mainly to impugn his character more than to discuss his qualifications to be president.
Indeed, the most potentially criminal allegations against Trump have been made, via that infamous recording, by Trump himself, and he has publicly admitted to and acknowledged his past sins about as honestly as a public figure can do without fleeing to a monastery afterwards. It arguably help him. I know it was the main reason I considered changing my vote.
Now, getting back to the main topic, one thing I have always struggled with is the Church’s insistence on avoiding scandal by not discussing past sins. In her Life, St. Teresa of Avila talks about a habitual sin she struggled with. She says it came from reading fairy tales and adventure stories. She says it was something that made her a very bad nun and caused her father to almost disown her at one point, but that she never did anything to dishonor her family. She says it’s a sin many people struggle with, and she wished she was permitted to be open about it because it could help others who struggle with the same sin. And yet people always say, “Oh, it was just scrupulosity.” Now, Therese of Lisieux was definitely scrupulous, but I think Mother was being as honest as she could about an actual bad habit.
When Mary and I did our Engaged Encounter, one of the couples leading the retreat were as we expected to be in a few years–and pretty much were. They were a vibrant young Northern Virginia, JP2-era, Catholic couple who met on a cruise, spend 2 weeks together, got engaged the first time they saw each other after the cruise, and got married as soon as they’d gone through their 6 months.
The other couple were middle-aged, and they had a palpable tension between them. I could sense from the start that something major had happened in their relationship–not just the comfort of years but an actual rift that they’d had and healed from. Throughout their various talks, they eventually said that they’d had a serious rift they’d had to heal from and eventually that the husband had committed adultery. And it became a profound story of forgiveness and healing.
If a couple were standing there, talking about marriage and *not* admitting to such problems, that would be hypocrisy. Saying, “I sinned, and Jesus forgave me, and my [wife/parents/kids/friends/whomever] forgave me for sinning against them” is not hypocrisy and should not be considered scandal–it’s testimony.
Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble has provided insightful reasons for Catholics and non-Catholics alike to embrace the practice of “memento mori.”Many spiritual classics encourage us to keep ever mindful that our paths all lead to one place–to death, to God, to our final judgment. In a world that has long valued health, fame and fortune, perfection in anything but the spiritual life, the practice of remembering one’s death, one’s judgment before Christ, will always be a challenge.
I struggle with the fear of death, both my own and my loved ones, but God granted me my husband John, now a Third Order Carmelite, whose strong faith enhanced by the extreme medical challenges from his genetic disorder, Marfan syndrome, has allowed me to understand and embrace my mortality through my Catholic faith.
Are there days when I falter and allow fear to overcome me? Yes, just about every day. But thanks to God for bringing John into my life, I have slowly come to a better understanding of how to climb the ladder of theosis, to dialogue with God, to explore my interior castle, and embrace the Little Way. So many times, Christ delights me in the amusing ways He brings my interests together in my life to remind me to get back to the path that leads to Him.
I sat down with the family, and we began reading. Each chapter takes an image from St. Catherine’s Dialogue as a means of meditation and contemplation. The first one we came to was the “inner cell.” As we pondered the life of St. Catherine who had chosen a cell for her prayer life and was called from there by God to take on politicians who were corrupting Christ’s teachings, and adjure the Pope to go back to Rome, the higher meaning of Koontz’s new series dawned on me.
Every one of Dean Koontz’s books I have read (most of them published since 2000, the year of his reversion to Catholicism) have made me marvel, laugh at the absurdity of humanity’s pride, be filled with proper fear, squirm in my sinfulness, and repent. His work is a true horror, meant to entertain, yes, but also to bring the reader to reconciliation with God. And he does provide some great laughs along the way–a skilled mixture of bathos and pathos. Drawing from Flannery O’Connor’s discussion of Biblical exegesis applied to literature in her essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” every one of his books can be considered literally, allegorically, typologically, and anagogically. His new Jane Hawk series is no exception.
As we read excerpts from St. Catherine’s Dialogue, my mind reeled with the understanding that Koontz’s “silent corner” is a synonym for the “inner cell.” Thus began the revelation of the higher meanings of The Silent Corner that I would never have learned if I had tried to bow out of the saint study. (Pray for me.) With that realization of the parallels between St. Catherine’s Dialogue and the names and imagery in Koontz’s Jane Hawk series, I continued to find the gems of allusion he had used from Catherine’s spiritual work and incorporated into his fictional yet spiritual masterpieces.
I don’t want to give too many spoilers in my brief analysis, but I would like to provide a few key points. In her Dialogue, St. Catherine of Siena refers to Christ as the Bridge, and she refers to the importance of having an inner cell of the soul recollected to God, essentially a “silent corner.” In the Jane Hawk series, Jane has a son named “Travis,” which means “bridge.” The name “Jane” means ” God is gracious” and one of the meanings of the name “Hawk” is “nook” or “corner,” so, her name blended could be construed as “God’s gracious corner.” Catherine in her Dialogue refers to the sin of the world as a “river.” So, extending the imagery, Jane as the soul recollected to God’s grace can use her focus on Christ as the Bridge (Travis) who has overcome the river of sin. Every hotel room (silent corner, inner cell) she stays in as she pursues and is pursued by the enemy, she considers her actions and inspiration (Holy Spirit) as a means to return to her son and honor his father (so, the Trinity). In that sense, Jane could be the Blessed Mother, God’s full of grace corner. Dean Koontz made Our Lady a rogue FBI agent! Or, taken another way, Jane is Catherine herself, a soul recollected to Christ, who took on the powers that be to bring them to repentance and to bring them to Christ.
As a final insight, in St. Catherine’s Dialogue she describes the Body of Christ as the staircase to Heaven…the next Jane Hawk novel is The Crooked Staircase...and the fourth novel in the series is The Forbidden Door, yet another reference to Christ in Catherine’s Dialogue. I can only guess what images will be taken for the fifth, sixth, and seventh books in the series.
So, if you were looking for a unique way to practice “memento mori,” I suggest reading The Dialogue of St. Catherine and Dean Koontz’s Jane Hawk series. All of his books since 2000 can be considered a type of “memento mori,” as he encourages us readers to see our good deeds in the work of the heroes and heroines, but also to see our sins in those of the villains, and thus consider our final judgment, all the while providing suspenseful, amusing, inspiring, sobering, and terrifying fiction.
A young woman goes to college. She comes from a decent home and family that has its issues like any family. She maybe has a genetic propensity for autism or bipolar or something that wasn’t quite caught because his parents were able to manage it with love, discipline and counseling from time to time. She was never really engaged in her faith, and whichever comes first, the usual college combination–skipping Mass, “partying” and collectively anti-Catholic ideology among professors and classmates–cause her to abandon the Church.
She meets a boy. He considers himself an atheist. They base their relationship on sexual attraction and what bands they like but say religious, philosophical and political matters are irrelevant to their relationship. They *might* discuss a bit of modern philosophy or New Age “mysticism,” and they might talk pop psychology. They start fornicating. Then they decide they “love” each other. They use contraception, unknowingly conceiving and aborting several babies. At one point, one of the babies escape all the “Plan B” mechanisms and manages to implant. Worried about her career, she has an abortion.
Then they decide that maybe they should get married. They “wait” to have children till they’re “ready.” They spent 10 years living for careers and vacations and things, having a relationship based on a self-centered “love.” Maybe they self medicate with booze or cigarettes or worse. Maybe they go to the professional drug dealers and get Prozac or Ritalin.
After a few years, they decide they’re “ready” to have kids. They have their boy and girl.
They say they’re going to raise their kids “open minded” and refuse to have them baptized. Maybe they expose them to bits and pieces of Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, any anything but Christianity.
Believing that children need lots of “stuff” to be happy, wanting their kids to have whatever they believe they were deprived, and believing that they have to limit themselves to 2 kids, so they want the most of the experience, they fill their kids’ lives with toys, video games, movies, etc. But they also fill their kids’ lives with workaholism and competitiveness: sports, scouting, fine arts, clubs, and lots and lots of homework.
Their son can’t keep up, and starts acting out. Quite often, the child in this all-too-familiar scenario is probably just stressed. “I don’t want to give him an MRI,” says the doctor. “That might have dangerous side effects, and it’s really expensive. Let’s see how he does on Ritalin first.”
So the kid goes on Ritalin. He’s on the equivalent of 2-4 cups of coffee a day. He focuses better at school and his many activities, but his schedule is still stressful with no time for true relaxation or recreation. He still needs to burn his energy, and he’s stimulating it chemically with a drug that produces rage as a side effect. So he starts bullying other kids. And he starts trying to channel his rage through video games and movies. Oh, and since he’s chemically stimulating his dopamine and endorphins, he loses his ability to feel satisfaction from oxytocin. He just starts craving more dopamine and endorphins, so more video games and more movies.
Now, if he was relatively neurotypical and just stressed, this would be bad enough. If he even legitimately had ADHD it would be bad enough. But what if he actually has something else, like bipolar? So the the effect of the stimulants is even worse.
They try different meds over the years, never actually doing medical tests to see if and what meds he needs, even though they have tests available that in many cases the DSM says to do first. Hundreds of dollars a month in prescriptions and doctor visits are so much more cost effective than a few thousand dollars at one time to actually find out what’s wrong.
Meanwhile, the daughter goes on similar spiral, but this, as Aslan might say, is not her story.
Meanwhile, the parents who didn’t put much thought into values before they married start to do so. They realize they have little in common. They rarely spend time together. Going off “the Pill” to have kids then going back on changed her hormonal reactions to him and vice versa. They’re burdened with stress of money, jobs, the kids’ demanding schedules and the kids’ mental and behavioral issues.
Maybe the mother decides to start taking the kids to church, and they fight about that.
There’s some anger and abuse. One or both commits adultery. They divorce.
Now the kids, as Maggie Gallagher documents in _Abolition of Marriage_, have lost their trust in relationships. They both come to think of marriage as something temporary and mutable. They have lost their one mooring in life.
The son starts expressing his anger at his Christian classmates, arguing all the time in favor of atheism, abortion, etc. The daughter becomes sexually active. The son starts using marijuana and other drugs. All those resume-building activities begin to implode: grades collapse; he starts dropping out of his activities. He spends most of his time watching violent movies and pornography and playing video games. All the activities meant to “build social skills” never taught him to make friends. His original genetic propensity, whether it’s for autism or schizophrenia or bipolar, is now largely irrelevant except that it’s compounding his lifetime of stress, betrayal, materialism, overstimulation, drugs, etc. He doesn’t know how to approach girls, and girls find him creepy.
His parents have tried to give him everything the world has to offer but they’ve deprived him of the most important things a human being needs: God and a stable family.
Depending on who reaches into his life at this point, and whatever his earlier issues, he grabs onto whatever sense of hope and acceptance he can find. We could go several ways from here, but this all-too-common story lends itself to several results.
But our particular instance is following the path to hate and violence.
He’s been inoculated against Christianity, of course, by his parents and by the schools. He’s been taught that Islam is a “religion of peace,” so he starts reading the Koran.
He’s been taught that socialism is a great thing and capitalism is bad, so he starts reading Marx.
He starts reading Hitler.
Eventually, the violence he imagines becomes reality. Maybe his mother has found true Faith in her middle age, and desperately tries to get him to come to church with her as she tries to atone for her younger lifestyle. Maybe he is interested in a girl who’s not interested in him. Maybe he’s had a girlfriend who recently broke up with him. Maybe he’s been taught by the media, the movies and the few books he’s read that Christians are the real enemy. Maybe he’s just filled with hate for all the institutions he’s come to mistrust.
Thousands upon thousands are in his situation. Many turn to suicide. Many turn to matricide or patricide. Many murder the girl they’re interested in.
Many join gangs and commit gang murders. Many just retreat into themselves and into the games and drugs, committing a slow suicide. Many live lives of abuse and fighting without actually killing. Many find Jesus and overcome the hate.
So what makes one person “snap”?
If any of these few circumstances could clearly explain why people commit mass murder, then it should happen far more often than it does. If guns are the reason, it should happen far more than it does. If guns are the reason, then there wouldn’t be suicide bombers and fertilizer bombs and madmen driving trucks through crowds.
If, as the Joker claims, all it takes is “one bad day” to make someone like him, why aren’t there?
There’s a movie called Conspiracy Theory where a guy says all notorious assassins owned the same book, and to the extent that it’s been reported, all the notorious mass murderers in the US in the past 20 or 30 years have had one thing in common: hatred of Christianity. Many of them have shouted or posted “Allahu Akbar.” Most of them seem to have some sort of admixture of Communist, Anarchist and Nazi leanings.
As long as a person has some faint fear of God, he’s going to have a line of conscience. Once we strip that line of conscience away from him, it doesn’t matter what tool he uses, he will find a way to kill as many people as possible before he kills himself. He might do it in the name of “The Revolution,” or “The Master Race,” or “Satan” or “Allah,” but he will do it. Should we put tougher restrictions on certain kinds of weapons? I don’t know. It seems to me the government should do a better job of enforcing the gun laws that are already on the books.
But to address the real problem is to address, across the board, the moral and spiritual rot of our society and requires each of us to look at our own responsibility, not for our political choices but for our moral ones.
Since you tried to steal my identity, I’m here to reclaim it. My name is John Hathaway.
You obviously know my address as well as SSN because the card was sent to my home. If you want my identity, I think you should know what goes along with it.
You’ll probably never see this, but hopefully it will go viral.
I have Marfan syndrome
(Regular readers should know this)
If you want my name and my “credit,” would you like the dissected and twice-grafted aorta that goes with it? How about the brain aneurysm? The scarred lung? The leaking heart valves? The bleeding and bruising from Coumadin? The joint and rib pain? Would you like to share in those?
Would you like to share in wondering any time you have a sharp pain if it will be your last, in genuinely being aware–every day of your life–that you have no idea when you will die? Many people live that way, of course. Maybe you do, but most do because of the threat of violence from people who care more about $200 watches than they do about other human beings who are made in the image and likeness of God.
I am Catholic
I have a deep love for Jesus Christ, and the Church He established, particularly His Mother and His Saints in Heaven. If you want to share in my “identity,” I invite you to share in the love of Christ.
I wish I could afford to be as generous as the Bishop in Les Miserables.
But I do forgive you, and I do call you my brother.
You need to know that your action has violated three of God’s Ten Commandments,
The seventh, eighth, and tenth, specifically.
7. You have obviously stolen my legal “identity,” and you have stolen two expensive watches from Belk.
8. You have also born false witness against me by performing an act in my name that I never would have done.
10. You have done this out of covetousness.
For my part, I forgive you, and God is willing to forgive you, too. If you are not baptized, please seek out any Christian, but ideally a Catholic priest or deacon, and request to be baptized. If you are baptized, please find a priest and confess your sins and sin no more.
You need to know that your action has done in my name something that I find morally repugnant
I can’t remember the last time I bought anything at Belk. I don’t even wear a watch, and if I did it would be the least expensive, most practical watch I could find. I think it’s wrong to pay more than $30 for shoes without a good medical reason or more than $30 for a watch for the same. The most expensive items of clothing I have ever bought myself were the blazer for my wedding, which I still wear; the overcoat I bought at Penney’s in 2005 to wear over my blazers when I worked outside the home; and a few other blazers for when I worked, which I gave away to charity because I believe and do a very poor job of practicing the teaching of St. John the Baptist that anyone with two coats should share with the one who has none.
My family spends way more than we should, but most of that is on fast food. With six people with various physical impairments and on the autism spectrum, we have a lot of medical appointments. Other than that, our incomes goes to housing, utilities, food, and a bit of technology. We enjoy way too many luxuries yet far less than most Americans.
I would never spend $200 for a watch, much less $400 for 2! And these days I’d buy a $30 cell phone rather
We don’t even have enough to regularly donate to the Church. Usually, when we do plan to give something to the Church, we find some person in urgent need first. I don’t say this to brag, but to make an appeal to you not to be materialistic and greedy, and to think about others.
I once dropped a credit card at a gas station. The person who found it used it to buy gas someplace else. While I disputed the charge, I also thought “At least they did something practical.”
We are just getting our credit up to where we might be able to get a loan to make repairs on our home without appealing to charities for help in making them.
It is cosmically unjust that if I apply for credit at a store I actually shop at — and not because I need it but just to take advantage of one of those offers and then pay it off — I get denied, but you, my brother, have managed to get credit at a store that I rarely even enter to buy products that I not only would never buy but whose very existence I consider mortally sinful per the teachings of the Fathers of the Church.
For those reasons this hurts me deeply, but I seek the grace in my pain. I pray that, like St. Stephen and St. Paul, my prayers will inspire your conversion and we can be together in Heaven where we will both share the identity of Christ.
(My wife, Mary Hathaway, was given a free e advanced reader copy of THE WHISPERING ROOM, by Dean Koontz, but due to health and other issues, she could not finish the novel until now. This is written from her point of view and shared on Amazon as well. The links go to Amazon, but we are NOT getting any money for it. You can find the books elsewhere and even some are free for download. They just enrich the meaning if you have read them.)
Many read Dean Koontz for his horror and suspense. I read him because he makes me laugh, brings me hope in our very fallen world, and his plot twists and character development serve as an amazing examination of conscience, one that usually leaves me squirming and landing on my knees in repentance. The higher, anagogical meaning is what I look for and am never disappointed.
In her essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” found in the collection, Mystery and Manners, Flannery O’Connor writes, “I think the way to read a book is always to see what happens, but in a good novel, more always happens than we are able to take in at once, more happens than meets the eye. The mind is led on by what it sees into the greater depths that the book’s symbols naturally suggest. This is what is meant when critics say that a novel operates on several levels. The truer the symbol, the deeper it leads you, the more meaning it opens up.”
O’Connor could have been predicting the work of one of her biggest fans, Dean Koontz, in this essay. He may be known as the “Master of Suspense,” and aptly so, but it’s his use of symbols and their anagogical meaning that has me pondering his works long after I finish them and brings me back to them again. The “suspense” of what happens after earthly life is what he wants his readers to consider and I do, with every novel of his I have read.
THE WHISPERING ROOM, the second novel in what is promised to be a 7-book series features the intrepid and determined Jane Hawk, a rogue FBI agent on the run, investigating a series of deaths while attempting to guard herself and those she loves against the unseen enemies. Having been startled, enthralled and moved to tears by the end of THE SILENT CORNER, the first book in the series, I was anxious to see where Mrs. Hawk would land next in her quest to bring justice for her husband and safety for her son and others imperiled by “them.”
While THE SILENT CORNER is meticulously crafted to introduce the Jane Hawk universe, THE WHISPERING ROOM immediately draws the reader into an intimate scene of the slowly unveiling iniquitous underground. The pace is fast and the mood sinister. Jane’s quest for justice introduces her to some of the most foul and disgusting people one can imagine, as well as some of the bravest and kind. One’s conscience is pricked and left mourning for evil and its web in which we are all entangled. Its end left me puzzling and wondering where Jane was headed next in the quest for justice, an answer that is coming in May 2018, in THE CROOKED STAIRCASE. If you have not read The Silent Corner: A Novel of Suspense yet, I strongly recommend reading it first and then reading the sequel, THE WHISPERING ROOM.
In closing, I would strongly recommend reading a novel by his apprentice of sorts, Frank Redman, ELIJAH: A Suspense Novel and reading Redman’s publisher web site for his Koontz story. Redman’s influence on Koontz’s writing and his life cannot be exaggerated, as once again, Redman’s integrity, bravery, faith, and health battle are featured in the Jane Hawk series, hidden in the characters’ names, words and actions, just as he served as the inspiration for ASHLEY BELL.
Like most adults, my spare time is limited, so I can cover all my reading needs in one of Koontz’s amazing novels– a spiritual work, a fantastic suspense, a deep romance, a political critique, a futuristic sci-fi thriller, and an examination of conscience, all in one incredible work of art.
I tolerate a lot, maybe too much, when it comes to TV and movies, but I appreciate seeing the consequences of actions, even if the writers depict those consequences unwittingly.
But, fine, 4%. Yes, there are people who identify that way and yes they should be depicted *honestly*.
But a year or two after the Ellen controversy, when the Catholic League lead a coalition of pro-life, pro-family, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish organizations protesting Nothing Sacred, ABC said, “We can’t have what amounts to 10% of the population dictating to us.” Yet *that* coalition represented the views of 50% of the population.
I read an article once about the unrealistic depiction of sexual relationships on TV that pointed out for example how many characters known on TV shows as “losers” who can’t find a girlfriend actually have more sexual relationships, particularly in a short time, than even relatively promiscuous people in real life.
How often, outside of sitcoms and a couple reality shows that may be exceptions that prove the rule, do you see couples who are happily married and stay married?
How often do you see people on any fictional TV show who are committed Christians and serious about their faith and love their faith? Even The Middle and recently cancelled Last Man Standing depict religion as something important but still a kind of chore or ideology (though Mike’s monologues on Last Man Standing sometimes make up for it quoting the Bible and even the saints). Characters who are in any way serious about religion are, again, freaks and weirdos (which, yes, many people who are serious about religion in real life are also, and should be, but not the way we’re depicted).
How often do you see families on TV with more than 3 kids that aren’t “blended”? (and yes, child labor laws come into play).
I could go on with examples, but if it’s a question of “equal representation,” all the demographics I listed are a higher percentage of the population than LGBT yet they hardly ever show up and are treated as weirdos and bigots when they do.
Meanwhile, in the inverted Natural Law, where Neuhaus’s Law is in full effect, sex is meaningless recreation. People on TV don’t even wait for a commitment, much less marriage, sex is a “test”–and saying “I love you” is a big “event” that comes after a couple have already engaged in sex not as an act of consummation of love but as a fulfillment of desire. And, yes it has been this way on television for decades, and in “real life” without the Biblical moral framework, but what strikes me is how, in recent years it hasn’t even been a semblance of concern for decency or depicting any kind of negative view of sexual promiscuity, but an overt sense of saying, “This is perfectly normal, and it’s Judeo-Christian morality that’s aberrant and bizarre.”
And don’t participate in the Thanksgiving because it encourages gluttony.
And gift-giving at Christmas encourages greed and covetousness.
And Valentine’s Day encourages lust and adultery.
And St. Patrick’s Day encourages drunkenness.
And Federal holidays encourage violence and xenophobia.
This is Mary, John’s wife posting. I found this homily exactly the challenge I need to grow in holiness by rooting out the base that is in me, through God’s Grace.
“The mentality just described by St. Francis might be summed up in one sentence: “I’m too weak to practice virtue—at least, not heroically like the saints did—so I’m definitely dispensed from doing so.” Some of us here may be thinking similar thoughts. Despite this presumption, we might still manage to save our own soul, but many others will be lost—those onetime wayward souls whom any given saint manages to drag along with himself to heaven. Even one mortal sin can cost us much peace of mind, yet umpteen souls are lost and our conscience won’t be any worse for the wear, because here below this sin of which we speak will remain buried under a heap of excuses. We wanted to avoid the cross, but in the end we only managed to exchange one cross for another—perhaps even a heavier one. In the process, we forfeited ever so much joy to which the saints are privy both in time and eternity. What shall we say about all this? How about a prayer? Lord, spare us so rude an awakening in purgatory! Save us from our secret sin—and from our top secret sin: ingratitude. Make us thankful in thought, word and deed. Amen.”
Question: “Why would a loving God send people to Hell?”
Answer: People choose Hell over God.
Question: “Why would anyone choose Hell over God?”
Answer: Because they’ve spent their lives preparing themselves to make that choice.”
Question: “How could a Christian make that choice?
Answer: By formulating and clinging to a false notion of God that makes us recoil when we see the reality, or by allowing ourselves to be so attached to sin that we don’t want to be relieved of the attachment even in Purgatory.
Question: “Well, why did God make it so hard. Doesn’t that make Him some kind of Cosmic Sadist who just wants to torture us?”
Answer: That’s a mystery. The Old Testament basically says that’s what God is, at least from our perspective, and we just have to accept it because He’s God and we’re not. New Testament atonement theology doesn’t help much, and there are many interpretations that try to get us out of that trap.
The simple answer is love, and the personalism of St. John Paul II. Yes, God could have made us differently than He did. He could have made the angels differently than He did. Maybe He has made other life-forms that are different–He certainly seems to love diversity and possibility. But the fact is, He made us, and He made us such that, just as each specific kind of plant or animal needs certain nutrients and environmental factors to thrive, so people function to our fullest potential when we live according to God’s design and intention for us.
The New Testament tells us over and over that God has “imprisoned all in disobedience” that He might show Mercy to all, that He prizes the sheep who stray and come back more highly, and so on. Again, it might seem like a weird way to set things up, but the more we understand it as a relationship of love, the more sense it makes.
To be free to love we must be free to reject, and I believe strongly that Christ gives us the freedom to reject Him. I believe that we have to pray to Christ to shape our understanding and our will to accept Him, just as spouses must both try themselves and pray for the grace to improve ourselves to be better people and to love our spouses for who they are, not who they want them to be.
I believe we set ourselves up for rejecting Christ when we form images of Him that conflict with Who He really is and refuse to allow those images to grow. In marriage, we start off with an idealized Other whom we love. As we grow, we realize the Other doesn’t always match that Ideal. The Ideal gives way to the Real, we try to make ourselves more like the Other’s Ideal, and one day hope that we will be together, perfected, in Heaven, where the truly Ideal and the truly Real meet.
The same is true of our relationships with Christ, but the difference is that He is unchanging. We are mutable and weak, and blessed with the gifts of ignorance and unknowing that He gave us to give us the opportunity to grow. However, we start with an “ideal” of Christ that we tend to cling to. If we take our mistaken view of Christ, whatever its basis, without trying to grow in our understanding, we end up like Javert, confronted with the reality of Christ and too proud to admit we were wrong.
In this sense, the ancient Christian tradition, reflected in both Catholic and Orthodox sources, tells us that it might sometimes be easier for a pagan or an atheist who has gone through life with an attitude of sincerely seeking God, to embrace Jesus when she meets Him than for a self-proclaimed Christian who is too self-confident to admit being wrong.
This is also why we must caution ourselves against the extreme of presumption–we use the rather extreme example of someone who has lived a life of erstwhile holiness potentially “snapping” and committing a murder-suicide, but the far more realistic example is that we are too attached to *something* to let it go for Christ when called to do so.
Paradoxically, one of those attachments can itself be scrupulosity. We can often be the worst Javert’s to ourselves–indeed, in the book, Javert resigns his position, writes a confession, and commits suicide because he has broken the Law by not arresting Valjean on sight. He cannot forgive himself for being forgiving–the ultimate paradox of the damned.
The possibility of damnation does not make God a Cosmic Sadist–though, as C. S. Lewis, St. Francis de Sales and the Book of Job all tell us, even if God *is* a Cosmic Sadist, we don’t have any choice in the matter so we might as well play by His rules.
At judgement, we put God in the Dock, as Lewis says–we judge Him. We say, “I can’t accept Your Mercy,” or “I can’t accept Your Justice,” or both. In Lewis’s Great Divorce, souls are first tempted — not with the more obvious ones but tests of pride, impatience, etc.–and then greeted by Saints they have the biggest grudges against. This is similar to the Orthodox theory of the “toll booths”—that personal judgement is a journey, where we must stop and confront different temptations that plagued us in life, and if we don’t built up the resistance to them now, we won’t be able to resist them then. As well as the tollbooths, like in Lewis’s story, the soul is called to both by the Damned and the Saved, and if the soul has kept bad company in this life, she will be drawn to the appeal of the Damned to join them.
It’s like the joke about the millionaire who is told he can decide between Heaven and Hell and after seeing Heaven, he is taken to Hell for his three day preview. He spends three days at a luxury resort, with every pleasure imaginable, and all his friends and family are having a big party. So he decides that Hell has been misrepresented and tells the angel he wants to stay in Hell. He finds himself in torment, with his friends and family chained nearby, cursing him and each other, and the handsome concierge now revealed as Satan, and he asks what happened. “That was sales pitch. You purchased.”
The other mistake we can make with every conception of judgement, even the “tollbooths,” is that we think, “Christ forgives everyone. He will forgive me.” We presume that we haven’t bought into Satan’s sales pitch. We presume we will be able to withstand any temptation in our final journey or that we won’t find ourselves agreeing with all the celebrities and internet combox atheists who say that they’d rather be in Hell because all the interesting people are there.
We have to shape our minds, our lives, our desires to make God, as He has revealed Himself to be, desirable to us, and to recognize when the World is trying to make us think differently of Him.
The Lewis Crusade 