Healing and the Holy Spirit

Have you ever heard testimonies from fellow Christians about powerful healing experiences and secretly doubted or judged them? Or have you perhaps felt threatened by or resentful of the joy and freedom they seem to possess? I admit that I have!

For every person who has a powerful healing story there are dozens of others who have been reaching out for years and (it seems) experiencing no answer. Whether we have a physical ailment, anxiety and depression, a repeated sinful habit, an addiction, or relationship struggles, we can find ourselves suffering painfully for many years.

Reaching out and not being attuned to, not being heard, or not being cared for is one of the most painful human experiences. It can feel far safer to close ourselves off, to believe that healing doesn’t really happen, or to claim that it happened “back then” with Jesus but no longer happens today.

It doesn’t help that plenty of us Christians are prone to exaggerate or embellish, to draw attention to ourselves, or to avoid facing our brokenness by hiding behind a healing story. Even when real healing has happened, it can be tempting to tell a glamorous healing story that turns a blind eye to our ongoing struggles and avoids facing the toilsome work still ahead.

Isn’t it fascinating that sometimes God works powerful graces so swiftly and suddenly, and other times he seems to keep us waiting for SO long?

Lurking in the background here is perhaps the greatest theological mystery, namely, the interplay between God’s omnipotence and our human freedom. He is the all-powerful God AND he always honors the freedom he has given us. This means that the Holy Spirit works with amazing swiftness, but always in a way that respects and honors our human dignity, our desires, our receptivity, our readiness, and our freedom to choose.

Ambrose of Milan comments on this swiftness of the Holy Spirit, reflecting on Luke’s Gospel account of the birth of Jesus. The angel Gabriel comes to Mary and declares her to be full of grace. He invites her to say “yes” and become the mother of Jesus. She freely and wholeheartedly surrenders. Immediately God’s eternal Word becomes flesh in her womb, as the Holy Spirit rushes upon her in a new and special way. The result? She sets out in haste to the hill country. In the words of Ambrose, “Filled with God, where would she hasten but to the heights? The Holy Spirit does not proceed by slow, laborious efforts.”

The Holy Spirit acts with utmost swiftness. Whether impregnating the Virgin Mary, forgiving the sins of the Apostles on Easter Sunday, exorcising demons, healing the sick, or raising the dead, the Holy Spirit needs no time.

It is we who often need time. And God honors us in that need!

I know for myself that my “yes” to God’s invitation, my surrender to him, seems to come with strings attached. I have experienced many grace-filled moments in which I have given everything to him. Yet I keep discovering that I have secretly crossed my fingers behind my back. Somehow I have maintained a contingency plan, withholding some small parcel for myself just in case he doesn’t come through for me. It reminds me so much of the scene in Lord of the Rings in which Bilbo Baggins is called upon to surrender the highly corrupting Ring of Power, passing it to his nephew Frodo. Bilbo agrees and then gets up to leave the house – only to be confronted by the wizard Gandalf with the words, “You have still got the ring in your pocket.”

Like Bilbo, I can so often respond, “Well, so I have.”

And God waits – not with disdain or disappointment, but with eternal kindness and patience. He desires me to desire him. As a loving Father, he patiently watches me grow, without jumping in or coercing.

Receptivity in freedom is not a “one and done.” Even for Jesus and Mary, who were so utterly receptive to the Father’s will, so totally open to being led by the Holy Spirit, receiving was an ongoing reality. Mary was already “full of grace” (Luke 1:28) when she said yes to God – receiving ever greater blessings. She pondered God’s mysteries in her heart as she kept growing in her wisdom and understanding (Luke 2:19, 51). Luke twice tells us that Jesus himself grew in wisdom and in grace (Luke 2:40, 52).

To be truly human is to grow our whole life long. Our human existence is dynamic, not static. We are freely invited by God to become who we are. We are created in God’s own image and likeness, and called to receive love freely and give love freely as we grow in communion with God and each other. We are intended to love and be loved with ever greater depth and fullness and fruitfulness.

Desire and receptivity are key concepts here. We all have holy desires, sown in us by God the Father, who is always drawing us to himself (John 6:44) – often in undetected ways, but always in a manner that honors our freedom to say yes or no.

As we well know, our good and holy desires often get twisted and tangled up. Augustine of Hippo beautifully described the experience in his Confessions. In our unloveliness we plunge ourselves into the lovely things God has created – things which cannot even exist without him. We run far from him even though he is never far from us. And ever he pursues us, ever he invites us to open up and receive.

Desire stretches our hearts. The more we receive and truly experience the living God, the more we thirst for him. Thirst for God is quite possibly the most painful human experience of all – and the one that keeps enticing us to stretch out our hearts in receptivity. The more we willingly thirst, the more we can receive him, and the more the Holy Spirit is then unleashed to rush upon us, to flood us, to possess us, and to lead us in haste to give freely and sacrificially to others.

God alone knows all the reasons why healing does or doesn’t happen in any particular case. In some cases, we may never know in this lifetime. Often, however, what feels like a delay to us is actually a deep honoring of our desires, our receptivity, and our freedom. I believe that the single hardest human thing for many of us is to open up and receive. It is so hard to do what the Virgin Mary did in her fiat – to receive love vulnerably, freely, and wholeheartedly, setting down all our well-crafted defenses, permitting God and others to be and to stay intimately close.

Quite often, we find ourselves in a bind. One part of us deeply aches for connectedness and communion. We ache more than anything else for someone to draw near, to see us, to hear us, to be intimately close to us. And then when a good and trustworthy person actually does that, we freak out and sabotage! I am astounded at the lightning speed with which my defenses engage in situations like this.

The great spiritual question is the question Jesus asked at the pool of Bethesda to the man who had been crippled for 38 years: “Do you desire to be well?” Of course we do! All of us desire to be well, to love and to be loved. God created us for these things and planted these desires in us. But many of us are also chained by our pride and self-reliance, our hiding and self-protection. We need Jesus to break those chains by the power of the Holy Spirit. He will eagerly do so, and with even greater swiftness that our defensive reactions – if and when we deeply desire it. Some of us need many years to grow in those desires and reach a point where the strength of our desire is greater than the strength of our defenses. The Holy Spirit will never force himself – but thankfully he only needs a tiny crack to enter. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough.

Many of us may need a long time and much breaking up of the hard soil before we are receptively willing to permit the Holy Spirit to act upon us and possess us. Likewise, after powerful moments of healing, the real work is only just beginning. Whether the healing received is physical, emotional, or spiritual (with spiritual healing always being the most important and most amazing), we are then invited in freedom to grow and mature and bear fruit. Only Jesus, through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, can liberate us. He breaks our chains, rolls away the stone that is blocking our self-created tomb, calls out forth, unbinds us and pulls off the masks that have obscured our vision. Once these obstacles are removed, his desire is for us to keep growing in our desires, to keep receiving and giving, and to bear fruit. He wants us to be true sharers in his love, his freedom, and his dignity. We are not robots of puppets. We are no longer slaves but are led by the Holy Spirit to live in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God.

Conversations about faith and good works so easily get sidetracked if we don’t look at them in terms of Love. From start to finish, it is all God’s work – starting with the very desires themselves that he sows in us, continuing with the period of preparation (as long as it takes) for receiving the gift, rushing ahead in powerful moments of healing and grace, sprouting forth with new life, proceeding with everyday moments of patient and laborious growth, and culiminating with superabundant fruitfulness. From start to finish, God honors our dignity and freedom, inviting us freely to grow and mature and bear fruit in love, as we become who we are.

Do Not Idolize the Means

Happy Feast of Saint Sharbel! Every July 24th we remember this wise monk and shepherd who lived in Lebanon from 1828-1898.

Holiness is the true goal of our life, the entire purpose of our human existence. As we all aim for that ultimate goal, Sharbel identifies one of the subtlest and most common pitfalls – making an idol of the means. Even incredibly good and beautiful things like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving can become hindrances if we idolize them: “Prayer sanctifies you; do not sanctify it. Fasting strengthens you; do not make it a god. Mortifications purify you; do not adore them. Your singing is designed to praise God, but do not glorify it.”

God himself gave us these means. He commanded penance and fasting; he inspired the psalms that King David sang; he invites us to gather and worship him. These means serve us well when we receive them in gratitude, and give them back freely to the Lord, the true object of our desire. But if we make an idol of the means, we fall into the trap of the Pharisees.

Echoing Jesus’ words in Matthew 23, Sharbel warns us not to confuse the temple with the living God who dwells in it: “The safe can never be more important than the treasure it contains, nor the glass more important than the wine it contains, nor the bakery more important than the bread, nor the tabernacle more important than the Blessed Sacrament.”

Even with something as wonderful as Scripture, Sharbel warns not to idolize the means: “Christianity is neither the religion of the temple nor the religion of the book. Christianity is the person of Jesus himself.” An important distinction! We call Scripture “the word of God” – and so it is, but only because by means of it we encounter Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Word. All Scripture points to him. Sharbel compares Scripture to a mirror that reflects God’s light. As wonderful as the mirror is, our true destiny is the light itself. It is quite possible to cling to verses of Scripture while keeping Jesus at a safe distance from the depths of our heart.

It is also very possible to turn to God or to religious practices as an attempt to escape the pain of our problems. Sharbel cautions, “Do not seek refuge in God in order to flee from yourself … Do not let the world push you toward God. Allow God to attract you.”

Allowing our fear to give way to love – this is what distinguishes the disciple from the Pharisee. The disciple of Jesus discovers God in the deep yearnings of his heart, and refuses to numb those desires, no matter how painful the waiting can be.

It is in the desire of our heart that the Father attracts us, drawing us more and more deeply into Jesus (John 6:44). As we encounter Jesus, the Holy Spirit transforms us, casting out the spirit of fear that binds us up in slavery, and maturing us in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8).

Without desire, our conversion will hit a wall. We will either get stuck in the land of religious idols, or (when they fail to satisfy) we will revert to our old idolatry of sin. I know, because it’s been my story! For too many years, I was more often motivated by fear than by desire. I toggled back and forth between firm and resolute observance of all the rules and then numbing myself out with addictive behaviors. In both cases I was motivated by fear rather than by love. I was avoiding authentic vulnerability, trust, surrender, intimacy, and the deepest desires of my heart. God has been inviting me to leave the ways of fear behind and to discover him in the depths of my heart, where he has always been present.

Granted, fear can be a great motivator – especially in the very first motion of turning away from evil. But it will never fuel a full conversion in Christ. Only desire can propel me away from the orbit of my past life of sin. If I do not open up in vulnerability and trust, if I do not allow myself to feel the depths of desire (which can be painful!) I will not grow in love.

Sometimes it feels so much safer to cling rigidly to the means – especially those that God made so good and beautiful. Clinging to them, I can avoid vulnerability, resist surrender, and bury my unfulfilled desire. When I idolize the means, I feel in control. Unfortunately, without vulnerability there is no love. Without surrender, there is no faith. Without desire, there is no hope.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Not because he is a God of fear, but because all our illusions melt away in his presence. Our pretending and protecting hold no sway. He tolerates them with great patience. He respects our resistance – because he always respects our dignity and freedom, which he gave to us. He patiently waits. He entices and attracts, turning even our stumbling into wonderful opportunity. But only we can say “yes” and allow his love to be awakened deeply within in our heart.

Often, when the real growth begins, it is in ways we never expected. We spend so much of our time trying to force a path of holiness that is not for us. We grasp at means that may work well for others, but do not match with our own story. Sharbel invites us to discover our truest and deepest identity, and embrace the means of holiness most suitable to the situation God has placed us in. “The cedars and the oaks do not grow in the sand of the seashore, nor banana and orange groves among the rocks on the mountain. Do your work with the available tools, and flourish and bear fruit where God has planted you.”

Our deepest desires have always been there. The Father put them there in the first place. We just need to get reconnected with them, allow ourselves to feel them, to grow in them, and (propelled by them) to return to the Father. As this process unfolds for each of us I think we will find that we are experiencing what the poet T.S. Eliot once described in these words:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Gradualness: Lessons from Alcuin

Genuine Christian conversion happens gradually, one step at a time. That was the lesson that Gregory the Great imparted to the missionaries in England in the early 600s. By the 700s, there was a great spiritual vibrancy there, particularly in Northumbria. A land still steeped in Anglo-Saxon paganism was transformed in less than a century. In all fairness to my Irish friends, I should point out that Celtic missionaries such as Aidan may have had more to do with that conversion than the Roman missionaries. God can sort that one out! The main point is that gradualness is highly effective, especially when it focuses on inward transformation through conversion.

Enter Alcuin, born in Northumbria in 735. From him we can learn the essential role played by human desire and freedom in the step-by-step journey of conversion.

By the mid-700s, the spreading fire of Christian conversion in Northumbria had ignited many vocations to monasticism as well as an explosion of learning. If you or someone you know has undergone a profound conversion experience, you know how that works. You begin to feel an insatiable zeal to keep learning more about your newly discovered (or newly recovered) faith. It was no different in Northumbria. An influx of manuscripts from the mainland supplied new libraries. At the library in York, Alcuin soaked up all the learning he could: mathematics, literature, law, Scripture, theology, and more.

Enter Charlemagne as king of the Franks. He sought out a circle of intellectual advisers, and persuaded the reluctant Alcuin to come to his court in 782. Alcuin spent eight years in Aachen, educating Charlemagne, returned for a time to Northumbria, then back to Charlemagne’s court, and finally to Tours, where he lived from 796-804.

Perhaps you have heard the stories of Charlemagne forcing conversions among the newly conquered Saxons. Many of them became Christians, not because they desired to, but because they were forced to, upon pain of death. It was a gross misapplication of the Gospel passage: “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23).

What a difference Alcuin must have noticed! The recently converted Christians in Northumbria were unstoppable in their repentance, their spiritual growth, their eagerness to learn, and in their zeal to go out and evangelize others. By contrast, those forcibly made Christians under Charlemagne were not exactly growing in their Faith.

When Charlemagne began employing the same methods among the Avars in Hungary, Alcuin had seen enough. He wrote three rather scathing letters in 796: a carefully worded one to Charlemagne, a more candid commentary to Arno (Bishop of Salzburg), and an expression of exasperation to his close friend Maegenfrith, one of Charlemagne’s courtiers.

When Alcuin writes Charlemagne, he begins with flattering sentences, but you can detect the veiled sarcasm. He praises the king’s devotion to Christ’s glory, and his prowess in leading the peoples away from the worship of idols and towards the knowledge of the true God. With Charlemagne’s ego sufficiently appeased, Alcuin proceeds to correct the king’s actions, not so much by criticism of the past as by instruction for the future.  He presses upon Charlemagne the urgency to provide worthy and suitable preachers to the newly baptized, in order to foster growth in their faith during this very vulnerable stage. He cautions his king, “If knowledge of the catholic faith does not come first into the soul through the use of reason, the bodily cleansing of holy baptism will be of no avail.”

He is much more candid when he writes to Arno: “The miserable race of the Saxons has so often lost the sacrament of baptism, because they never had a foundation of faith in their heart.” He reiterates the same points to Maegenfrith: “We learn from Saint Augustine that faith is a voluntary thing, not a necessary thing. A man can be attracted toward faith, but not coerced. You can coerce baptism, but it does not profit faith.”

Has this not been the story of “faith” in so many of our Catholic families today? How many kids go to Catholic schools or go through their parish’s religious education program (or get Confirmed) because they have to? How many Catholics still show up at Mass on Sunday not because they eagerly want to be there, but because they feel obliged? Without freedom, without a growing desire, there is no authentic conversion. There is no spark that grows into a blazing fire. Indeed, there is often decline and decay.

Yes, there is a time and place for duty and obligation. It is right and just to give God thanks and praise. Not to gather on Sunday to give him due praise is an injustice against his greatness and his goodness. But even in the virtue of justice and the virtue of religion, there is a willingness and a growing interior freedom. Until there is inward growth, there is not yet virtue.

Many of my best experiences as a priest have come in my work with RCIA, as men and women of all ages find their way into Catholicism or back to Catholicism. Even in those cases where there is painful personal brokenness, the conversion can be amazing and truly transformational. Once that fire is burning, it becomes hard to keep up with the pace of their hearts and their lives.

Children are a different story, yet the same principles apply. In the end, it is desire and freedom that lead to deeply rooted virtue and enduring faith. Early on, we may need to “make” children do things. We may use fear of punishment and eagerness for reward to motivate them. But the long-range goal is to awaken holy desires and motivate them to make a free and wholehearted decision for Jesus. I don’t need to tell you that the raising of children (in the faith and in all things) is a step-by-step process – and not all steps move forward. Alcuin actually appeals to the raising of children as he explains (in some detail) the step-by-step journey of conversion in the heart of a believer. Gregory’s passage about gradualness draws more attention, but Alcuin goes more in depth on the actual steps.

I’ll share more next time.

To be continued…

Asking and Receiving

“The hand of the Lord feeds us; He answers all our needs.” These words beautifully summarize Psalm 145. We Catholics sing them repeatedly when that Psalm comes up in our liturgical worship. I find them so consoling. God will indeed nourish and guide me; He will indeed answer the deepest needs of my heart. I pray to be able to internalize that truth more and more. When I abide in that truth, my life is truly blessed. Many of you can probably testify to the same experience.

To say that God “answers” all our needs implies a dynamic of asking and receiving. It does not just happen. He invites our free and willing participation in the process. Jesus teaches us to depend upon the Father, to beg Him for our daily bread. He teaches us to seek, to ask, and to knock. And when He answers, it is so often by means of the larger community of Faith. We are not isolated individuals. We are made to be dependent upon God and interdependent upon each other, freely receiving and freely giving love in imitation of God who is an eternal communion of love.

Our wounded human tendency is to take or grasp or seize when we feel empty in our human needs. We might use others and then cast them aside. Or we might engage in more socially acceptable forms of violence as we strive to seize control or manipulate the situation. Perhaps we interrupt or raise our voice; we get demanding or demeaning. Perhaps we drop hints or posture ourselves, silently hoping that the other person will notice and step in. Maybe we punish others with the silent treatment. Maybe we even go into self-punishing or self-criticizing mode, figuring others will feel sorry for us and then will surely give us what our heart is looking for.

None of these methods work, of course. They leave us emptier than ever. None of them involve authentic human freedom.

God always respects that freedom, even when we do not. He never forces his love upon us. Rather, he attracts us, arousing holy desire within us. When we learn to express that desire by seeking and asking, he gladly blesses us and fills us with as much as we are capable of receiving at that given moment. Often, we are choosing to pretend that we don’t really have emotional and spiritual needs. We close off our hearts in self-protection. God patiently waits until we are ready to open up and ask.

When God answers our prayers and touches our heart in its deepest needs, his “answer” often comes through chosen human instruments. Is this not a theme that runs throughout the Scriptures? God hears the cry of his people. He chooses small or weak human beings and sends them to accomplish his mission: Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, Samuel, Isaiah, Jonah, David, Peter, and Paul. In those stories, God connects people together and orchestrates blessing upon blessing, in ways that they the human instruments could never have imagined possible. God is full of surprises, and we never know exactly where our free “yes” to God will lead us.

Still, there are certain patterns in this divine dance, patterns that reflect who we are and what it means to be human. One thing I’ve definitely learned is that it is so much healthier (and so much more effective) to speak our needs humbly and truthfully – and then to remember that the other person is free to say “yes” or “no” to helping us with that need. Perhaps we need a listening ear, some encouraging words, a comforting presence, some instruction amidst our confusion, a hug, advice, feedback, or  assistance with being accountable. When we humbly name what we need and ask someone if they are willing to assist us, they often say yes.

If we have learned the wrong lessons in life, asking and receiving may prove quite difficult. Our family of origin may have taught us (openly or subtly) that it is bad or selfish to ask for help, or that it will get you in trouble. Others may have modeled for us that the best way to (try to) get needs met is to drop hints or manipulate or throw a fit. Or we learned that it’s better not to have any needs (as though that is actually possible!).

Likewise, if we have learned some of the wrong lessons in life, we might struggle to tune into others’ needs, to listen quietly and empathically, or to respect their freedom. Our families (and our churches) are often places in which people barge in to fix other people’s problems. It’s so much easier than facing our own pain or sitting with the pain of the other person. Not all things need to be fixed. We can easily rush in with unsolicited advice when the person really just needs someone to listen or encourage or accompany.

We can watch our words. How often do we find ourselves saying “You need to…” or “You should…”? Is that really for us to decide? Have we learned to wait upon the Lord? He truly knows our needs, but bides his time in allowing us to grow.

Those who frequently say “You need to…” often have difficulty articulating their own personal needs. They are avoiding their own emptiness by rushing in to “serve” others – whether those others desire it or not!

Desire is key here. Even in those moments when we may see with great clarity what other people really need, if they do not desire it, they will not be able to receive. They are not yet ready. God waits for them to be ready. Hopefully we can learn to imitate his patience!

I think of the times in which I have been truly helped in my needs. Far from stealing away my desire or freedom, the other person helped me become more fully aware of what was really going on, of what my heart most deeply needed and desired. I was then free to ask for help and receive it. We typically do not “figure out” our own needs. We learn them in healthy relationships, healthy community. But healthy relationships and healthy community respect our human dignity and freedom. They bring out the best in us, without violence, coercion, or manipulation.

Many of us have a need to expand our experience of healthy Christian community. If we are experiencing struggle or conflict in daily life, if we are harboring resentments, it is often because we are expecting those individuals to meet our needs. We easily forget that no one has an obligation to meet our own needs – not a co-worker, not even a spouse. If we do not humbly state a need and ask them if they are willing to help, then there is no freedom on their part to say “yes” or “no.” We are violating their dignity – and in many cases expecting them to be mind readers. We also are probably expecting things that they could never possibly give, even if they wanted to.

This often happens in the marriage covenant. Husbands or wives sometimes silently expect (or loudly demand) that their spouse is supposed to meet all the needs of their heart. That is not what marriage is for! Certainly, loving husbands and wives tend to say “yes” willingly to being there for each other in moments of need, but ultimately it is God who answers all our needs. No one else can take his place. We’re merely his instruments.

The wisest and most mature Christians that I know have learned this skill of humbly stating a need and asking others for help. Rather than unreasonably placing expectations on one or two people, they tend to build up a larger support network, whether in the form of trusted confidantes and friends, a support group, or a faith sharing group. They have learned the beauty of receiving love and support from God and others, recognizing that they need it and not hesitating to ask with humility and vulnerability. As a result, they are that much more effective and generous when they freely choose to give and share with others who reach out in their need. They know what it means to ask and receive. They know what it means to answer and give.

My Needy Microwave

In my last post, I described my oversensitive smoke alarm. It is not the only kitchen appliance that gives me grief. There is also my needy microwave. It emits three loud beeps when the timer elapses. If I don’t promptly get up and open the door, it beeps three times again. Another thirty seconds, and it will beep again. And again. And again. It doesn’t give up! It will literally keep on beeping every thirty seconds, per omnia saecula saeculorum, unless and until you give it the attention it so desperately craves.

Part of me has a vivid and rather morbid imagination. Maybe I read too much Dean Koontz. I visualize myself having an untimely accident. Perhaps the smoke alarm startles me and I stumble into the refrigerator. It falls upon me, and there I lie, my pelvis crushed, pinned to the floor for hours or days – alone, that is, except for my microwave beeping at me every 30 seconds! Hey, stranger things have happened…

Thumbing through the owner’s manual left me in a state of stunned disbelief. There is no way of reprogramming the beeping on this particular model. Seriously, what was that programmer thinking? Was he a misogynist secretly hoping to exact revenge on housewives everywhere? Who in his right mind wants a microwave that never stops beeping?

Well, you know what they say about owners and their appliances: they become more and more like each other over time. I got to thinking that, just as my brain has an overactive smoke detector, it also engages in a regular and relentless beeping, much like my microwave. This crying for attention is not a programming glitch or oversight. It is there by God’s design.

Having needs is a human reality. On a spiritual level, we depend upon God through regular prayer, and depend on others for guidance and faith formation. Physically, there are obvious needs like food, water, shelter, and sleep. We can add to those the less obvious yet quite important physical needs like meaningful touch, regular bodily exertion, and regular relaxation. There are also emotional needs like feeling safe and secure, belonging to a larger tribe, feeling wanted, feeling cared for, feeling calmed and soothed, feeling understood, feeling encouraged, and more. If we are running on empty in some of these basic human needs, our brain will start beeping at us.

Most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as having so many needs. We fear becoming a nuisance like my microwave – constantly bothering others until they pay attention to us. These fears run more deeply for those of us raised in homes that discouraged us from having or expressing needs. Speaking for myself, I definitely came into agreement with the idea that I should put my emotional life on the shelf and learn to be “independent.” Eventually, I came to believe the lie that I don’t have that many needs. I went through decades of my life convinced that I wasn’t a very emotional person and that it was much better not to depend on others.

We can take that approach to life, but not without consequences. God gave us free will –including even the shocking possibility of living against the truth of our human nature. Eventually it catches up with us.

The full truth of our humanity involves being needful and interdependent. God alone can fill us, but we depend upon others in the process. This past Christmas, I found myself often pondering the example of Christ, who shows us what it means to be human. Even though he was exalted and perfect and divine, he humbled himself to become one of us (Philippians 2:6-8). He became profoundly needful, depending totally upon Mary and Joseph as well as upon his heavenly Father. Indeed, he spent most of his earthly life growing and maturing, in dependence upon others (Luke 2:52). He spent only a proportionately small part of his life giving and serving and sacrificing. It was precisely because his human needs had been regularly met that he was able to lay his life down so freely, surrendering to the shame and abandonment and rejection of the Cross. He had no doubt of being God’s beloved Son, chosen and blessed and called. Did everyone love or understand or accept him? By no means. But he did receive all of those things with some regularity from those who mattered the most. As a human being, he needed to receive those things, and did not take any short cuts.

We live in an age of short cuts and quick fixes. Modernity seduces us with the lie that we can reshape our human nature to be whatever we want it to be. Perhaps we ignore our physical needs, eating only what we feel like and living a sedentary lifestyle. In so doing, we ignore the truth that our bodies need nourishment and are made for physical exertion. The end result is an unhealthy body, not to mention emotional and spiritual misery. Or perhaps we ignore our emotional needs –to belong, to be understood or soothed or encouraged or accepted. We impetuously insist that only weak people need to worry about those things. But all the while our internal microwave keeps beeping and beeping. If we repeatedly ignore those needs, then our brains will start beeping in other ways: enticing us to fantasy thinking, unhealthy lifestyle choices, or addictive behaviors.

There are consequences if we ignore what it means to be human. St. Thomas Aquinas defines man as a rational animal. We are “rational” insofar as we are set apart from the rest of the animals, “very good” in God’s own image and likeness. Yet we remain bodily creatures, together with the animals – and are invited to respect the goodness and authentic physical and emotional needs that God has given us.

In so many aspects of life, our bodies and brains work like those of our fellow mammals. Our lower brains have a limbic system that helps us to belong, survive, and thrive as a meaningful part of our social group. Those parts of our brain (including the “smoke alarm,” or amygdala) give us a sense of pleasure or fear or anger. They give us a desire for union with others and for fruitfulness.

When authentic needs are repeatedly ignored, we become especially susceptible to the wiles of the evil one. Our genuine needs morph and twist into insatiable urges for things that won’t actually help us. For example, if we totally ignore our need for safety and security, we may find ourselves constantly craving “comfort food” and having little freedom to resist those urges. If we totally ignore our needs for belonging or acceptance or affection, we may find ourselves having unwelcome fantasies – perhaps in the form of envy or jealousy or rivalry, perhaps in the form of lust or flirtation or pornography.

When these things happen, our impulse as devout Christians is to shame ourselves. Certainly, it is wise to avoid the near occasion of sin. But instead of self-shaming, a more helpful approach is to take some deep breaths, step into our “watchtower,” and calmly notice what is going on, with a childlike wonder and curiosity: “Huh, there goes that alarm bell again. I wonder why it’s ringing this time?” On the surface, it seems like it’s a matter of jealousy or lust or gluttony or greed. Those are the urges we feel. But so often, if we really tune in, we will notice that we’re not actually hungry, that we don’t “need” to make that purchase, that we don’t “need” sexual gratification, etc. Our limbic brain doesn’t know the difference! It’s just programmed to go off when our emotions need attention. It needs to be led and guided from there. In fact, it’s made to be led and guided – not just by our higher brain function, but by healthy relationships with God and others. It is often only when we begin sharing our deepest struggles and deepest yearnings with others that we begin to make more sense out of them. We become more aware of our deepest spiritual and emotional needs, and they begin to be met as we learn to receive from God what has always been there. We gain greater freedom to embrace the full and rich truth of our humanity. We begin to abide in love and truth.

Fish with Fins

In my last post, I described a rather unique homily of Pope Gregory the Great, in which he compares the virtue of compunction to a smelly bucket of dung that we can use to fertilize a robust spiritual growth. By humbly and truthfully acknowledging our sins and through eager repentance, we can receive God’s grace and bear fruit in good works.

Gregory proceeds to consider the woman who has an evil spirit that causes her to be stooped over for eighteen years. As with the fruitless fig tree, he suggests that she is an image for fallen human nature.

He contrasts homo incurvatus with homo erectus. God made us in his own image and likeness: upright, erect, and good. We are destined for heavenly glory, and have those eternal desires in our heart. But earthly desires have bent us over: wealth, honor, power, and fleshly delights. We have stooped low in our sins, and can no longer stand erect. Like the woman, we must cry out to Jesus, so that he can cast his light on our sins and help us to stand once again.

Luke describes the woman as beyond crippled, as “having a spirit of infirmity.” Even in Jesus’ time, not all cripples were seen as oppressed or possessed. Some ailments are explained by natural causes; others suggest a superadded torment inflicted by demons.

This distinction does not escape Gregory’s notice. He describes all sin as hunching us over, causing us to be “stooped and deeply bowed” (Psalm 38:7). But then there evil spirits who prowl like lions looking for the opportunity to torment us. They are enemies of our human nature and envious of our true human destiny to become like God. So Gregory calls to mind the words of the prophet Isaiah, who describes the plight of God’s people in their sins: I will put it into the hands of your tormentors, those who said to you, “Bow down, that we may walk over you.” So you offered your back like the ground, like the street for them to walk on (Isaiah 51:23).

Who on earth would willingly bow down and give their backs to evil spirits to walk on? Well, many of us. Fewer more truthful words can be found than those of Paul: “I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15).

Many of us Catholics find ourselves confessing the same sins over and over again –even sins that we hate intensely. Often it is the lies of fear and shame that oppress us, binding us up. In our false belief that we are not really lovable, we can become mired in habitual sin, face down in the muck. In our darkest moments we think, “Why bother? What does it matter? I’m already ___(fill in the blank)___.”

Deceived by those diabolical lies, it can definitely happen that we bow down and give our backs to evil spirits, allowing them to trample on us. When that happens we find ourselves, like the stooped woman, unable to stand erect even when we really want to. Thankfully Jesus is our Lord and Savior who can bind up the evil one and reclaim our freedom and dignity (cf. Mark 3:27).

Gregory specifically mentions desire for “illicit pleasure” (voluptas illicita) as bowing us over in a crippling way and becoming an entry point for diabolical activity. I think any number of the addictions that are on the rise today (pornography, sexual deviancies, drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.) can be entry points. Don’t we often talk about “battling our demons”? As Paul tells us, our battle is not just against flesh and blood, but against powerful spiritual beings (Ephesians 6:12).

Jesus is the one who can deliver us from oppression at enemy hands. He is the one who can help us stand erect. He is the one who inflames our hearts with a holy desire for heaven.

To illustrate this point, Gregory turns to the image of fish. The law of Leviticus forbade the Jews from eating fish without fins or scales. Fish with fins are able to leap from the waters, striving heavenward. Fish without scales and fins (in Gregory’s understanding of biology) were bottom feeders, even detritivores, engaging in coprophagia. But for the grace of God, so go all of us. Once the diabolical lies of shame get a grip on us, we can habitually do the things we hate, like the dog that returns to its own vomit (Proverbs 26:11; 2 Peter 2:22).

That is where holy desires come in. Gregory preaches so beautifully about them, here and elsewhere. Holy desires are like the fins on the fish. They propel us to soar heavenward. True, until this fleshly existence is fully transformed, we will always come back earthward, like the fish re-entering the water.

But, returning to the fig tree, holy desires are meant to grow and bear fruit. The greater our desire, the greater our capacity to receive. So often people pray for many years to overcome a certain sin in their life. They imagine it is just a matter of willing the sin away. But God wants to go down to the roots of the tree, to see the whole truth (sometimes painfully), to heal and deliver us. The combination of compunction and heavenly desire will ultimately set us free – thought not always in the way we imagined. Delivered and restored, we can learn to look upward habitually, and so receive ongoing healing and peace.

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