The spiritual books have the "smell" of the saints who wrote them - sort of like how the smell of really good wine, or for that matter single malt scotch whiskey, is somehow half the experience of drinking it. Knowing who the saints are, where they came from, etc., isn't the same thing as reading their own words first hand. And in the case of Catholic saints, the words are wild. The saints aren't great writers in the sense in the sense of Shakespeare. Rather, they relate a perspective that is so radical and insights so keen that it is unlike anything else I read. For example, in reading "The Dark Night of the Soul" (St. John of the Cross), he relates page after page of common mistakes that followers of Christ go through as they try to embrace the message of the cross. I was blushing and finally wound up chuckling with embarrassed laughter as he relates things that I have done, am doing and likely will continue to do and I make my way toward Jesus. The guys is "spot on". All this from a book written some four hundred years ago!
And the central tenet of the Christian proposition that the saints have embraced is that our "salvation" - our being rescued from the helplessness of this life - is accomplished through our self-destruction, the traditional image of which has been the cross.
It occurs to me that trying to describe the ratio of how easy "embracing the cross" is to say to how easy "embracing the cross" is to do requires the same type of thinking that was involved when I studied the fundamental concepts of differential calculus - talking about the limit that is reached as one number approaches infinity. It is so much easier to state the Christian proposition than it is to do it. The smell of these saints' books are the insights that these people have received from struggling with and in this mystery for a very long time.
The central tenet of the Christian proposition is actually followed by an important corollary that is often omitted in the present day. Namely, the cross is a "good deal" for mankind. More to the point, the idea is that our personal self-destruction is actually a small price for us to pay for our eternal salvation. This is the "smell" of the saint's writings. This is the revelation of purgatory - something that almost no one wants to talk about. And the central theme behind purgatory is that the sufferings of this present life cannot be compared to the sufferings that we will undergo in purgatory in order to sufficiently complete the purification, required by God's justice, to enter heaven. The sins we commit here are out of all proportion to the sufferings we experience here. The image I keep returning to is oil spilled in the ocean - in the spiritual life, most of us act like BP - after committing sins that have a character like the oil well spewing at the bottom of the ocean, we then try to dress ourselves up in "haz. mat." suits made of our good intentions and make promises to God that it's all going to work out in the end. But the revelation of Jesus Christ says we won't be in heaven until every last drop of oil has been found and collected. EVERY LAST DROP. There's a different smell.
The Greek's called the message of the cross foolishness and I think the modern world would do well to be reminded that, in a natural sense, they were right. At least, I give the Greeks credit for at listening and seriously considering the issue. The modern world doesn't even bother to listen. The revelation of purgatory drags the cross down from Golgotha into our living room. This is where the modern world might encounter it and attempt to pass its version of judgement - "Get that cross out of the way, I can't see the TV!".
The foolishness of believing that salvation can be found in self-destruction and that this is a good deal for us is where the concept of "witnessing" (the word is "martyrdom") is so important. Any reasonable man knows that these concepts are crazy - except for the problem that you meet people, and not a few, who have done it, are doing, and will do it.
When I trained karate, my instructors related to me the facts about properly executing karate techniques - what to do and what not to do. As I progressed in the art, earnestly striving to do the things they were telling me, I developed a sort of experiential skepticism about what they were saying - thoughts like "there's no way I can actually do what you are saying I need to do - I've tried a hundred times and I'm not even close". But there was no arguing with the experience of seeing them actually do themselves what they had been saying I needed to do. There is just no arguing with a demonstrated example.
It seems to me that helpless circumstances are somehow the door to the spiritual life. And it seems to me that, until fairly recently, human beings generally had very little control over their lives and were confronted on a regular basis with their own helplessness. Take Medicine for instance. My own mother, who was born as recently as the 1940's, relates that it wasn't uncommon, when she was a young girl, for sick people to be sent home from the hospital by a doctor being told "There's nothing more we can do. Go home and pray." Such a response is unimaginable today. And add to this that it's one thing to be helpless in regard to your own health and well-being, and quite another thing to be helpless in regard to your kid's health and well-being. My wife and I have joked that we might be willing to part with one of the traditional "necessities" of life (food, clothing, shelter) as long as we can keep Children's Motrin. I can sleep in a tent as long as I can get that kid's fever to break.
If helpless circumstances are the door to the spiritual life, then the rise of technology in the modern world seems to be like a spring loaded hinge that is slowly closing that door. Technology is about putting human beings in control. I can write about this in a blog all day long, but you won't be seeing me give up the Children's Motrin. Yet, I need to get a daily whiff of the saints to remind me that life hasn't always been like it is now and that struggling has value in and of itself.
I think I feel that Calculus lesson coming on again...
