Our Needs and Their Fulfillment
The Morality Of Creaturehood
Certain built-in stabilizers keep human nature normal, as a governor in a motor prevents running it at excessive speed. No matter how much a man tries to make himself a god, there are limitations imposed upon him which remind him that he is a creature, not a creator.
The first of these is sex. Despite even a mad pursuit of erotic pleasure, every pursuer runs up against two dead ends: first, he is never able to possess completely the person who is loved; the partner always remains an unassailable fortress, a closed garden, a heart with its own thoughts and aspirations; second, even in the maddest pursuit of carnal ecstasy, the pursuer is always thrown back upon himself, alone and solitary. He started out to be a conqueror and he senses himself a victim. He plunges himself into an abyss where he hopes to be lost, but he floats again to the surface. He hopes to be absorbed in his new divinity, but like Baal, it falls apart. In fact, he is more lonely than before unless he accepts the other as a gift of God. Then joy reigns. Man is right in his pursuit of love; he is wrong in believing that the sparks he enjoys below have no flames from above.
The second limitation is death. Man is also hindered in making himself an absolute by the tragic fact of death. Baudelaire united the limitation of sex and the limitation of death by picturing Eros on a skull. Freud himself also united the two—sex and death. Even though the best of human love is more powerful than death, it seems to lead to death and thus becomes a paradox of human existence. A believer has an exit; the unbeliever, like Sartre, has no exit and, therefore, no hope. His rigor mortis sets in not at the moment of his physical death, but at the moment of his psychical death, when he fails to perceive the Resurrection behind the Calvaries of life. The realization of personality, the achievement of happiness, is impossible in the finite, limited created order. It presupposes the infinite, the eternal.
The third limitation of man is knowledge. One of the first questions asked by a child is "Why?" He tears apart his toys to find out what makes the wheels go around. Later on, he tears apart the toys of the universe to find out what makes them "tick." Though there is in man this infinite search for truth, he nevertheless bumps up against the wall: the more he studies, the less he knows. He finds new avenues of knowledge down which he might travel for a lifetime. It is only the self-wise man who thinks that he knows. The truly learned man, like Socrates, says that there is only one thing he knows, and that is that he knows nothing in comparison to the knowable.
There is a Divine urge toward life, which is behind every meal, a love behind every sex drive, a truth which pushes the scientist into the laboratory and beyond. As we bathe in the rays of the sun, we do not always advert to the source of the light and the heat, but in the darkness and dampness, we know the sun is missing. He who knows there is perfect Life and Truth and Love, therefore, is never very much disappointed with the hurdles he has to meet in living and in knowing and in loving. But he who refuses to accept creaturehood as a limitation finds himself constantly frustrated. The gods he sought are tin. The staffs upon which he leaned have pierced his hands. In all anxiety, there is the unknown. In Truth, there is joy and peace.
Taking The Mystery Out Of Sex
In the previous article, we discussed the limitations imposed upon man which remind him that he is a creature, not a creator. In vain does one seek to escape these limitations by saying that the universe is characterized by nothingness. If this were so, why is this nothingness something that is feared, that haunts, that pushes victims onto psychiatrists' couches'? As Hamlet said, it is this very dread of something after death which puzzles the will and makes us rather bear the ills we have than fly to others we know not of.
It may have been true that the Victorian era denied sex. But it may also be true that our day has gone to the other extreme. It has taken the mystery out of it. Parents have always felt that there was something about it that they could never communicate to their children. Rightly so. The physiology of it, yes. But the deep, personal relationship of husband and wife—that was invisible, incommunicable.
Sex today is no longer a mystery, inasmuch as it is currently reduced to a pure biological function. Because its mystery, which is a profound love for another person expressed in corporal unity, has been lost, the taboo on sex has disappeared. Sex in a human being is not the same as sex in a pig. Sex in a human is both a function and a communication. As a biological function, it is similar to that of animals. As a communication, it implies another person and is worlds apart.
Eros becomes meaningful when the purpose of the function is to become united with another person. Then it is quasi-divine. When that other person is seen as made in the image and likeness of God, the purpose of sex is the enrichment of personality, by and through another person.
A feeling of sadness, of frustration which comes from being hungry after one has eaten, or of being disgusted with food because it has not nourished, is like the frustration a personality feels in not being enriched by another. A wife is saddened at the humiliation of realizing that, as a person, she is not loved and that her role could be fulfilled by any other woman.
Sex as a function is replaceable, as one can substitute one pencil for another. Love is irreplaceable. No one can replace a wife, a mother or a father. Summoned by God, implanted by nature to be ushered into the mysteries of life, the woman is often condemned to remain on the threshold as a tool or an instrument of pleasure alone and not as a companion of love. Two glasses that are empty cannot fill up one another. There must be a fountain of water outside of the glasses in order that they may have communion with one another. There must also be outside of each a love wider and greater that binds them together. That is why lovers often speak of "our love" as if it were more than the sum of the love of each.
Sex as function may speak the language of love, but actually it is not the love of another person, but the love of self. The ego is put into another person in order to be loved. It is not the "thou" that is loved, but the "I" that is in the "thou."
Helmut Thielicke says the taboo has shifted from sex to death. "Nobody must tell the dying man that he must die, and funeral cosmetics put the mask of life on the corpse. Man can no longer cope with the finitude. He no longer knows how to fill this finitude with meaning, and therefore he must comfort himself with the pretense of a living corpse, the illusion of deathlessness; he is compelled to prolong an existence that remains unfulfilled. He tries to rub out the boundary line of death with lipstick."
The wolf offers nothing when he kills the lamb. Functional sex makes hungry where most it satisfies, for each person needs another person, and a person is a person only when seen as an image of God.
The Apostolate Of Beauty
Francis Quarles has taken a view of beauty which seems a little base:
Gaze not on beauty too much,
Lest it blind thee;
Nor too near,
Lest it burn thee.
If thou like it, it receives thee;
If thou love it, it disturbs thee;
If thou hunt after it, it destroys thee.
This view looks upon beauty as a temptress, and generally a bodily one. It forgets that beauty is more universal than tempting flesh. Beauty is nestling in the rosebud, walking like starry sentinels across the encampment of night, smiling in the cheek of a lily, rolling onto the surf in the measured harmonies of the wild waves. Beauty, when seen this way, is a gift, not a danger.
Everything beautiful in the world is a reflection of the Divine Beauty. As Augustine put it, "All that loveliness which passes through men's minds into their skillful hands, comes from that Supreme Loveliness, which is above our souls. For It my soul sighs day and night. From that supreme Beauty, those who make and seek after exterior beauty derive the measure by which they judge of it, but not the measure by which it should be used." For a long time in his life, he had failed to see that the beauty of earth was like a ray of the sun. When finally he traced back the beams of light to the great Furnace of Light, he cried out, "Too late I have loved Thee, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late have I loved Thee! And lo, Thou wert within, and I abroad searching for Thee. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee."
One wonders if it be not true that of all the gifts that God gives, the one for which He receives thanks last and least of all is the gift of beauty. God gives wealth; those who receive it will often use it for holy purposes. God gives power of speech or music, and the gift is repaid in influence and song. But very often when beauty is given to a human, the Good Lord gets back only old bones. One wonders if any mother ever thanks God for a beautiful child, or if a beautiful woman ever thanks God for the gift of beauty.
When human beauty is allied with virtue, then it becomes one of the most powerful means of an apostolate for Good. As Shakespeare put it:
Oh, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose is fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odor which doth in it live!
"The beauty of the King's daughter is from within." Real beauty is from inside. An otherwise beautiful face is ruined by an ugly soul. That kind of beauty never makes anyone better; it becomes a rose to be trampled on. But the beauty of soul which shines through the prison bars of the flesh produces a hush of devotion and a spiritual admiration in others.
Beauty without virtue is like a fair flower that has an offensive odor. But true beauty bathes in that light without which nothing is beautiful. Beauty is a gift of God, like the rain. He allows the rain to fall upon the just and the wicked, and He gives beauty not only to the good, but even to the wicked. Wicked beauty strikes the eye, but the inner beauty of grace wins the soul.
Temperance
Several decades ago there were many temperance societies. The term "temperance" was then almost always used in relationship to drunkenness, which very much narrowed the concept of temperance. Temperance really means self-control, or the ability of a man to hold all of the faculties of his mind, all of the instincts and movements of his body in complete command, like the managed steed in the hand of the rider, or the helm in the hands of the steersman, or the plane under the mastery of the pilot. Someone has called it "that unvexed music of the body and soul."
The mind has two faculties: the intellect and the will. The intellect is the faculty of knowing: the will is the faculty of choosing. The intellect builds the target; the will shoots the arrows. One may have a target known to the intellect, but shoot the arrows astray because of a perverse will. Knowledge alone is no guarantee of virtue, because knowledge is a different power of the mind from the will. A learned man is not necessarily a saint. Nor is a saint or a man of strong character necessarily learned. The knowledge we possess of things outside of us has little or nothing to do with our moral temperament.
William James, who wrote many wise things about psychology, said of character being in the will, "The strong-willed man is the man who hears the still, small voice unflinchingly, and who, when the death-bringing consideration comes, looks at its face, consents to its presence, clings to it, affirms it, and holds it fast, in spite of the host of exciting mental images which rise in revolt against it, and would expel it from the mind. Sustained in this way by a resolute effort of attention, the difficult object ere long begins to call up its own congeners and associates and ends by changing the disposition of the man's consciousness altogether."
Temperance does not mean not drinking, not eating or not enjoying God-given instincts. It is rather the controlling of these excellencies in order that they may not run into faults. Some edible plants, for example, if they are allowed to go to seed, can poison a man; so a man's good qualities need to be kept under order, so that they be not exaggerated into weakness. As long as a man is master of his affections and desires, he can live in peace. It is a bad job when the fire extinguisher catches fire, and that is exactly what happens when man's will through abuse becomes so weak that he is unable to be master of his fate and destiny, but becomes bribed and enslaved.
The drunken Rip Van Winkle portrayed by Joseph Jefferson excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time." He may not count it, but the eternal registers count it, and it is being counted in the nerve cells and fibers of the body. Napoleon once said of Ferdinand of Spain, "He is a man incapable of governing himself, and of course he is incapable of governing the peninsula."
An athlete on the field or a boxer in the ring will do better because encouragement is shouted at him. But in building a self-controlled character, the loneliness of a struggle makes it the harder. There is no audience to encourage us; hence, a powerful spiritual motive is required. Here is a battle that is not being watched, except by God and the self. The fact that God is watching prevents us from evil, but more important still is the fact that we may also call upon Him for strength.
Character
A normal human being is one in whom all of the emotions are subject to right reason) to conscience and to the law of God. No emotion can completely possess us until reason evaluates and the will allows it its free sway. In a normal household, a person may allow his own dog to come up the stairs into the house, but he will not allow all the dogs in the neighborhood to follow. That would be irrational.
Right reason suggests eating food sufficient for health, but not eating food enough for ten men. Right reason tells a man that he ought to allow enough light to come to his eye in order to read, but right reason would not recommend the eye's looking into an ultraviolet arc. Right reason suggests putting the ear within reach of harmonies, but not within the reach of an explosion.
A radio station once received a letter from a man who asked them to strike the note A on a studio piano. He told them that he had an old fiddle which was out of tune, and all the pleasure he got out of life was playing his fiddle. The man was affirming that there is a standard to which he must conform. Right reason, conscience and the law of God are that standard for all the emotions.
We live in a vale of character-making, and character is made by bringing the complexities of emotional life to unity under right reason and morality. As long as emotions are held on the leash of goodness and truth and moral law, there are character, happiness and self-possession. There are those who say that there is "nothing wrong with sex." This is correct, if by sex is meant the propagation of the human species according to right reason and the moral law. But the statement could be wrong if it meant that sex is never capable of excesses and deordinations. The emotions without right reason become like rivers without embankments.
It is also argued that all of our instincts are right, and therefore should be obeyed. But it must not be forgotten that the instincts in man are subject to reason, and therefore are to be rationally and morally guided. A man has a hunting instinct just as a fox does, but it is not rational for husbands to hunt mothers-in-law. It is also argued that if young people knew the evil effects of the excesses of sex, and were told of their consequences, they would have no urge to abuse sex, just as they would have no urge to go into a house where there was a smallpox quarantine sign. The argument is fallacious, first of all, because such a position fosters only hygiene and not character; secondly, it does not make allowances for every individual's believing that he will escape the evil effects. More important still, it forgets that no young person has an urge to break down a door on which a quarantine sign is written, but everyone has a sex urge, which needs considerable control.
Too much emphasis is laid upon the fact that we must adjust ourselves to our environment and adjust ourselves to society. Rather, we must be self-adjusted, by subordination of body to soul, senses to reason, reason to faith. Actually there is a decline of the right kind of passion and enthusiasm due to a want of the love of truth.
Great Moments Of Decision
Napoleon held that the fate of every battle was decided in the space of about five minutes. All the maneuvering and all the preparations led up to the strategic moment of crisis. If the leader had vision to take advantage of those few moments, the enemy's rout would be complete; if, however, he allowed it to pass, defeat was certain. In one battle his forces were halted before a bridge over a deep ravine. If the bridge were not crossed, the battle would be lost. The soldiers were afraid to advance upon it inasmuch as it was swept by the fire of Austrian cannons. Napoleon snatched the flag from the standard bearer and rushed onto the bridge shouting, "Forward to save your general!" The effect upon the soldiers was electric and in that five minutes the battle was decided.
It could very well be that the life of every person is not so much decided by the routine events of every day, but rather during two or three great moments of decision which happen in every life. As Shakespeare put it:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
If the opportunity is allowed to slip by unimproved, success turns into failure. There is the name of a place which signifies such a turning point in the lives of men and that is Kadesh-Barnea, which is situated on the southern border of the Promised Land. There came a point in the pilgrimage when the children of Israel were within striking distance of their inheritance. They sent out spies, twelve of them, to report on the land they were about to take. The majority report, made by the representatives of ten of the tribes, was that the land could not be taken because the cities were too fortified and the enemy too numerous. The minority report, brought in by Joshua and Caleb, was turned down despite the fact that God had told the people through Moses that they would possess the land. It was this point in the journey, like the five minutes in the battle, which determined their future. With the fruit of their tribulations within their grasp they refused to take it and thus had to continue wandering in the desert for many years.
There is a Kadesh-Barnea in every nation, a critical moment when it has the power to turn back a force from without, or a corrosion from within. It has been called "a time of visitation" when power is given to vanquish, but if not seized, turns the nation into a kind of cadaver on which the scavengers feed.
There is a Kadesh-Barnea in every man's spiritual life. His background may have been filled with unbelief, guilt, dishonesties, adulteries and any of the seven pallbearers of the soul. Then there comes a moment of illumination to the mind, perhaps in a moment of sickness or a startling thought while reading, or the vision of innocence in a child. If this grace is responded to, a person is lifted out of himself, cuts connections with the past and starts out on a new career and new paths, with Heaven shining in his face.
Men too often play with opportunity as a toy, and when their eyes are opened to see its value, lo! it has vanished. Many reach the margin of a glorious destiny and then turn back to the desert. The path of duty, in a flash of the eye, becomes very plain, but self-indulgence makes the soul as blind as a mole. Were we to deal honestly with these pious inclinations and whisperings of conscience, we should see through the thin guise of our own pretenses and would strip the veneer of insincerity from our deeds. There is often a conspiracy in every man against himself; he hunts for excuses to cover up his disobedience, but in a single moment, life can be changed—not by pulling oneself through the power of one's own will, but by a response to Heaven's inspirations which leaves the deserts of the world behind.
Encounter With God
Men today do not come to God through the order of the universe; they come to Him through disorder within their own selves. The argument is still valid that the Heavens do declare the glory of God, but we rarely see the stars, and neon lights hardly reflect anything. When men could see nature, they argued back to nature's God. In the complexity of modern civilization man, however, sees himself less as living in nature, but more as living within himself.
It must not be assumed that it is only through the order and finality of the universe that one comes to the Creator; one can also come to the knowledge of the light through shadows. Health is more often appreciated after a sickness. Modern man has many encounters with God, but he does not know that he has met God. His encounters with God may come in a moment of disgust or sickness, after some kind of excess, or in a holy desire to be like another person who spends himself and is spent on his neighbor, or it may be through a pious inspiration.
These encounters or soul skirmishes do not necessarily mean that one begins to know God. Jacob wrestled all the night without knowing who his opponent was until the break of day. The young man who was born blind was questioned by the Pharisees as to who it was who cured him. He answered, "Whether He is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."
The woman at the well who was living in adultery did not know immediately Who it was Who confronted her at midday at the well. She first thought Him to be a Jew, then a gentleman, then a prophet, then a messiah, but only at the end did she recognize Him to be the Saviour of the World.
One of the most common encounters is in the moment of emptiness, boredom or fed-up-ness. This comes generally after a sensible pleasure or a mood of exaltation, as when the bills come into the kitchen when the honeymoon is over. It is an hour of need, and every need cries out for fulfillment. The need may be compared to a hollow space that rattles as it cries out to be filled; every void is related to a desire, a groping, a reaching out, a yearning for something.
This need can be multiplied, such as food for the stomach, learning for the mind, companionship for the heart. But whatever it be, it has one basic characteristic: The longing cannot be stilled by our own power, but with the aid of another. There is need of some extraneous agent to fill up the cavity. The individual himself feels impotent and powerless. Associated with this need is what a distinguished Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Igor Caruso, has called "the need of salvation." The One Who can enter is God, but there is no one who can force Him to enter. The human person can bar the doors to the Divine Visitor.
It is here that one comes face to face with the problem of existence. The well-known Jewish psychiatrist, Dr. Viktor Frankl, who passed through two concentration camps, one Nazi, the other Communist, had ample evidence to study the findings of meaning and purpose, even in trial. Some turned a deaf ear to the encounter with God and of them he writes, "Often, existential frustration leads to sexual compensation. The sexual libido often becomes most rampant in an existential vacuum." Others, he said, became religious through this encounter, and he defines a religious man as "one who actually does not feel responsible to something, but to someone." From that point on, one learns he can endure any "how?" in the world, because he knows the "why?"—namely, that all things compensate unto good to those who are called to fulfill their need of salvation.
This item 1423 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
