Category Archives: Transformation in Christ

Transformation in Christ

We are All Called

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Salvation, Transformation in Christ, von Hildebrand

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Today is my sixth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Interestingly, I came across the following quote in Transformation in Christ:

The question of whether I feel worthy to be called is beside the point; that God has called me is the one thing that matters.

Transformation in Christ, p. 168

Am I good enough or qualified enough to be a Catholic priest – nope. But as von Hildebrand has pointed out that is not the right question. The question for each and every one of us is this: what has God called me to do? First of all, He has called each and every one of us to salvation. This begins in Baptism and continues in a life lived in accordance with the teachings of Christ, which comes to us through the Holy Scriptures and the teachings of the Church.

But also we each have something specific to do in this life. Has God called all men to be priests? No, but He has called all people to something. Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman explains it best:

God has called me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good, I shall do His work.

It seems to me that those who in this life do not know their mission simply haven't asked the question: what does God want me to do? They just go through life doing what they think 'has' to be done without thinking of the most important things – such as why are we here at all? God has called each of us to something, otherwise we wouldn't exist at all. I don't know what He has called you to do but I do know that He has called you. It is your job to find out.

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Lemmings

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Transformation in Christ, von Hildebrand

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I have been told recently that lemmings don’t actually jump off cliffs to their certain doom. But the common misconception that they do fits with the point I want to make today. Even if lemmings do not throw themselves en masse off a cliff there is one species that does tend to do so: human beings. Let me explain what I mean by starting with a quote from von Hildebrand.

The behavior of unconscious persons is dictated by their nature. They tacitly identify themselves with whatever response their nature suggests to them. They have not yet discovered the possibility of emancipating themselves, by virute of their free personal center, from their nature; they make no use as yet of this primordial capacity inherent in the personal mode of being. Hence their responses to values, even when they happen to be adequate, will always have something accidental about them. Their attitudes lack that character of explicitness and full consciousness which is a prerequisite of meeting in a really apposite way the demand emdbodied in the values. For what the values claim of us is not assent pure and simple, an assent which might as well be a fortuitous efflux of our natural dispostions; it is a fully conscious, rational, and explicit assent, given by the free center of our personality. By such an answer alone does a personal being adequately honor the values and their call, which is addressed to each of us in sovereign majesty, irrespective of his individual dispositions.

Transformation in Christ, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ignatius Press 2001, p. 62-3

The way he is using ‘unconscious person’ does not mean someone who is asleep or who has been knocked out. What he means is the same thing that I mean when I refer to human beings as lemmings. The actions of unconscious persons/lemmings are “dictated by their nature.” But here another clarification is needed, because when he says ‘nature’ I think we should understand him to mean our fallen nature. In other words, those who go through life as slaves to their various inclinations.

With this in mind we can understand what he means by saying, “Hence their responses to values, even when they happen to be adequate, will always have something accidental about them.” Values are those things which are good and, therefore, make a demand on us. The demand is of an action to be taken on our part in response to the good. For instance, if we see someone bleeding on the ground with a knife in his chest, then the good we are called to do is to try to save the person and call an ambulance. And it is not just a good deed we are called to do, but we should recognize the injured person as good. In fact, the good of the person is the main reason we should perform the good act of helping him.

But for the unconscious person/lemming, if his response happens to be adequate in a given situation, it is only accidental. Lemmings, like a school of fish, just follow along with the rest of the group: if the group makes a moral choice in a certain situation then so will they. But not because it is the right or moral thing to do, but because everyone else is doing it. And it is here that we can see how people behave like lemmings.

At one point in this country the prevailing current of thought would say that a particular belief or action is wrong; for instance, homosexual acts, pornography, abortion, contraception, and the list could go on and on. But now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction on these issues and they are viewed as good. (As if that which is truly good could be arbitrary.) Why did this happen? Quite simply because too many people in our society act like lemmings. They don’t question the behavior of the group and just go along with the crowd – right off the cliff.

In order to correct this problem we are told by von Hildebrand that our decisions and actions need to be made with a “fully conscious, rational, and explicit assent, given by the free center of our personality.” In other words we shouldn’t just go along with the crowd. It is ironic, therefore, that that is how much of society view Catholics: as people who have just bought into a bunch of rules and regulations against what is happening in secular society. But this couldn’t be further from the truth for the real Catholic. A true Catholic follows the teachings of the Church not because everyone else is doing it but because of what it is: it is the teaching of Jesus Christ. After all, if Christ is who He said He is – God – then what He revealed to us must be true and good. And if it is true and good then it deserves our freely given and fully conscious adherence.

But I need to return to the main point and it is this – we are not lemmings and therefore we should stop acting like them. Yes, like lemmings we are creatures made by God but we, unlike them, were made in the image and likeness of God. We have rational souls and therefore have the ability to know right from wrong. As a result we should choose and do the good but not just because it is what a Catholic is supposed to do. To act in that manner would just make us lemmings in religious clothing. Instead, we choose and do the good because we recognize within it that which is true. We are drawn to the good and desire it because in it we see God.

 

Sharing Christ’s Life

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Theosis, Thought for the Day, Transformation in Christ

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Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call ‘good infection’. Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

…you were bought with a price.

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Repentance, Salvation, The Screwtape Letters, Thought for the Day, Transformation in Christ

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Today I have for you a selection from The Screwtape Letters. I have used bold to draw your attention to certain parts. Throughout the day, especially since it is the day of week that our Lord purchased your soul with His own Blood, try to reflect upon the fact that you are not your own. And, in addition, that you owe everything to Him.

The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modem resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they ‘own’ their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, under the real rule of wise counsellors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.

We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog’, ‘my servant’, ‘my wife’, ‘my father’, ‘my master’ and ‘my country’, to ‘my God’. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of ‘my boots’, the ‘my’ of ownership.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19b-20

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – March 9 a.d. 2014

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Salvation, Sermons, Transformation in Christ

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We have just heard the story of the fall of mankind into sin and death. At first thought we may say this sin committed by Adam and Eve was simply one of pride – because they tried to put themselves in God's place – but more specifically, it was a sin of disobedience. God had told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they did it anyway. Seen in such terms we might wonder why God didn't just forgive them and say, “Don't worry about it. That's OK.” Why was the punishment so harsh: being expelled from paradise, destined to sin, prone to illness and in the end we all die? Did the punishment really fit the crime?

One reason we might think in such a way is because we no longer see disobedience as anything really that bad. We have become accustomed to an attitude of indifference to many rules with the thinking, “This or that rule doesn't apply to me.” But this is not true! The natural law, according to the Catechism, was “written in our hearts by the Creator” and is therefore a law we are all obligated to obey. Of course due to the fact that we are fallen and because of various circumstances in our lives, many people may be mistaken about what is right and what is wrong. But that doesn't change the fact that all people know that there is a right and a wrong way in which to behave. The problem is that many times we choose to ignore this.

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Lewis and von Hildebrand

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Thought for the Day, Transformation in Christ

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If you look at the categories for this post you may think I have made a mistake. I am listing this under both Transformation in Christ and C.S. Lewis because what Lewis has to say in today's quote could have come from the pages of Transformation in Christ. Perhaps that is why I have become so interested in von Hildebrand's writings – because Lewis prepared the way for me. The two had so many similar understandings of Christian spirituality. In fact, I would say they both had a Catholic understanding of Christian spirituality. That is understandable with von Hildebrand – he was a devout Catholic convert. Lewis, on the other hand, died as an Anglican. Albeit, an Anglican that was a product of the Oxford Movement. If only Lewis had been able to accept his various Catholic friends' (such as J.R.R. Tolkien) invitation to become Catholic himself. Unfortunately, he didn't. But that doesn't change the fact that his writings can bring us closer to God, as does the quote below. But the only way his words can change us is if we heed what Lewis has to say and allow God to have His way with us.

For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is our-selves. For each of us the Baptist’s words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.” He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary” life. I do not mean that each of us will necessarily be called to be a martyr or even an ascetic. That’s as may be. For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God’s hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his “religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be admitted—what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy—is the idea of something that is “our own,” some area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no claim.

For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.

It is finished…and yet only just begun.

13 Monday Jan 2014

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Finally, through what can only be described as a miracle, I have finished Transformation in Christ. I cannot remember exactly how long it has taken me but I would say it was 4-5 months. Of course, I did read it very slowly on purpose. There is too much in this book to read it quickly. Instead, it must be mulled over continually, which is what I tried to do. And as difficult as it is to take so much time reading such a long book (500 pages) the hard part has only just begun – applying what I have read to my life.

While after reading this book I do understand some about the thought of von Hildebrand, I am by no means an expert. Nor does reading this book qualify me as an expert in Catholic spirituality. But, it has greatly improved my knowledge of it. Our lives as Catholics is a continual process of becoming more like Christ – a goal we will not reach on this earth. But, at the same time, we do have a duty to continually strive towards that goal and that is what I hope, with God's help, to continue to do. And I think that the works of von Hildebrand will play a big part, especially Transformation in Christ, in my own transformation.

I have used Jesus' last words on the Cross in the title for this post. This was done for the obvious reason that I have finally completed this book. But, and more importantly, I have used our Lord's words because they are an indication of what we all must do to become like Christ – we must die. Dying to ourselves is a common theme in Transformation. If we are not willing to give up ourselves and our selfish desires then how can we ever love God and others as our Lord commanded? We must remember that through our Baptisms we have all participated in Christ's own death and Resurrection; and for the rest of our lives thereafter, we must live out that death by living our lives for Him.

The Divinization of Man, part 2

02 Thursday Jan 2014

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This idea of the divinization of mankind may be a foreign idea to many. I don't think I heard about it until I started seminary. But a correct understanding of the divinization of mankind, which is a result of the Incarnation of God, and what we are to do with this correct understanding, is necessary if we are truly to be Christians. I say necessary because to be transformed into Christ is actually what being a follower of Christ is all about. The bulk of this post will be taken up with another wonderful excerpt from Transformation in Christ. This particular section is from the first chapter and is one of the most important sections in the entire book. It is necessary to grasp the meaning of what he says here, and its implications, in order to understand everything that follows in the rest of the book. This section is subtitled: Transformation in Christ requires unqualified readiness to change.

The full readiness to change – which might even better be termed readiness to become another man – is present in him only who, having heard the call 'Follow me' from the mouth of the Lord, follows Him as did the Apostles, 'leaving everything behind.' To do so, he is not required literally to relinquish everything in the sense of the evangelical counsels: this would be in answer to another, more particular call. He is merely required to relinquish his old self, the natural foundation, and all purely natural standards, and open himself entirely to Christ's action – comprehending and answering the call addressed to all Christians: 'Put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.'

Readiness to change, taken in this sense, is the first prerequisite for the transformation in Christ. But, in addition thereto, more is needed: a glowing desire to become a new man in Christ; a passionate will to give oneself over to Christ. And this, again, presupposes a state of fluidity, as it were: that we should be like soft wax, ready to receive the imprint of the features of Christ. We must be deteremined not to entrench ourselves in our nature, not to maintain or assert ourselves, and above all, not to set up beforehand – however unconsciously – a framework of limiting or qualifying factors for the pervasive and re-creative light of Christ. Rather we must be filled with an unquenchable thirst for regeneration in all things. We must fully experience the bliss of flying into Christ's arms, who will transform us by His light beyond any measure we might ourselves intend. We must say as did St. Paul on the road to Damascus: 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'

From this we should come to understand that Christ – God made Man – did not come and die for our sins so that we could merely become the best possible versions of ourselves we can be. No, He came so that we might become like Him.