During Holy Week, I found a thin book called ,The Sacrament of the Present Moment, in
the back of a church. Haphazardly,
I picked a section to read and it
resonated with me. The text had been compiled in the 18th century from
spiritual conferences and letters that a French Jesuit, Jean-Pierre De Caussade
had conducted for a convent of nuns. The
book is considered a spiritual classic, and I am surprised that I had never
heard of it before.
I finally ordered a copy through my local library, and now find
the book tedious and suffocating. The book is about living in the present
moment and completely surrendering to the will of God in each moment. As the translator, Katherine Muggeridge says,
the aim is to annihilate the ego, the self.
The author talks extensively of the importance of listening
to one's heart, of affection for one's heart, and how God talks to each of us
in our hearts. Only recently have I learned that the word heart in the romance
languages means something different than how it is most commonly used in
English. In English, the word heart is
used as a synonym for feeling. In the
romance languages, the word heart means the innermost part of our being. From the European definition, it seems that the heart is a hidden and true self. For me personally, to do something from the
heart means to do it with all of our faculties acting in full
concert--intellect, emotions, intuition, experience, and whatever other human
components.
As an American of my generation (age 58) raised in an Irish-Catholic
religious culture, feelings were scorned, were not to be trusted. The intellect was all. When I was a child,
displays of emotion were ridiculed. Ironically, I grew up in a parish called
Sacred Heart. While I knew that our pastor and many others had a devotion to
the sacred heart of Jesus, I had no understanding of what the sacred heart
meant. It was something abstract . This
is an example of a religious practice that has been reduced to formalism.
The emphasis on doing God's will is biblically and theologically
correct of course. The problem is the approach--that teachers, writers, and
clergymen like De Caussade present it in such as way that it comes across as
repressive. They seek to impose it upon
us externally. Rarely has it been taught
as an interior movement, as something desired by the heart, as something sought
by the self. Where is my "I" in all of this? On the other, perhaps I should consider De
Caussade's original audience, of women who have already chose to give their
life to God and are presumably well along the spiritual journey.
On one level, De Caussade is contradictory. He puts the
highest value on the desires of the heart; yet, he seeks to destroy the self. De Caussade's discussion of the heart is wonderful and beautiful and should be a
part of everyone's education. He in fact
writes very preciously and affectionately of the desires and movements of the
heart. There is nothing harsh, authoritarian, or repressive about that part.
In my childhood Catholic education, the desires of the
"I" counted for nothing. The "I" could be abused,
neglected, sacrificed. Sanctity meant
denial of the "I." Coming from
my background, anything about the heart is always about something different and
far away, that I can relate to only in the abstract.
So, despite De Cassade's beautiful counsel on discernment of
the heart, talk of God's will being imposed from without is enough to frighten
me off. Although I think I have a better
than superficial understandings of concepts like heart and God's will, and can work
through the historical and cultural differences, the book's apparent
contradictions are too complex for me to be able to be able translate,
reconcile, and integrate. Doubtless. the book contains many spiritual riches, but perhaps readers from a less authoritarian upbringing than
I will appreciate it more.
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