By Thaddeus Kozinski
I think the one thing necessary
is to do everything one can to become conscious of God's
presence and to obtain intimacy
with this presence and the adorable Will to which it
gently invites us to surrender
ourselves. Beautiful and reverent liturgy is, of course, a
primary tool for such intimacy
and surrender. However, my personal experience tells
me that one's finite thoughts and
feelings about God and His will, no matter orthodox,
sublime, and in accord with
authentic Catholic Tradition, can easily be mistaken for God
Himself, and become an idol that
actually serves to separate us from the awareness of
and intimacy with God's presence.
The present moment, regardless of
its content (except for sin, of course, but even there
God is waiting for us to come to
our senses) is where we find God, and only there, for the
future and past do not exist. We
can easily live our entire lives in alienation from this
divine present moment, due to an
inordinate attachment to our plans, the future, the
past, our convictions, and our oh
so pious thoughts and intentions, as well as rash
judgments of others. There is
nothing wrong with a robust and loyal devotion and
defense of Tradition, but the
Pharisee temptation, the temptation to a fanaticism that
protects us from what we
neurotically fear, usually some post-traumatic-stress form of
fear of contamination and
intimacy and loss of control, is as powerful among those with
the particular charism to defend
Tradition as it is undetectable by them once it is given
in to. I speak from personal
experience. I have found that the awareness of this
temptation, and one's
susceptibility to it, once it is has been given in to repeatedly,
decreases as a function of the
spiritual urgency of one's need to recognize it in order to
be free of it through repentance.
In other words, it is the kind of sin that makes
repentance nearly impossible--for
it is "they" who need to repent, who are impure and
disloyal and traitors to God, not
me!
The world, and the people
floundering around in it, needs our love and hope and
friendship, as much as it needs
correction and even condemnation--its sins and
structures of sin, that is.
Surely, we can only do this effectively from a perspective
steeped in Catholic Tradition,
but only if such steepage is actually making us humble,
loving, simple, intimate with
God. Brother Lawrence is the model for such humble
simplicity. All he wanted was to
be in the presence of God, and he showed us how to do
it.
But, how can we be both
supportive of the best in our culture and tradition, and yet
willing to have supper with the
prostitutes and tax collectors, who we all are to a larger
extent than we want to realize,
without becoming elitist snobs and Pharisees, on the one
hand, and sentimental enablers of
evil, on the other? How can we imitate Christ and
cleanse the modern temples of
Christ of mediocrity and ugliness and hypocrisy and
ideology, and our secular culture
of self-and-mammon-worship, as we rightly desire,
while also being willing to ask
sinful men and woman for a drink of water, perhaps from
an impure well, so we can share
our gifts and hope with them?
