Pray

Another of the three Lenten basics is prayer. Writing a blog post about prayer is a bit like writing about love. Either overwhelm all internet servers with terabytes upon terabytes of words, and still not do the subject justice, or be brief. This shall be brief.

The final 76 pages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is devoted to Christian Prayer. Reviewing this, I was struck anew by this insight: That, though a thoroughly spiritual exercise, a movement of the heart, prayer is necessarily related to our physicality as well. "...it is the whole man who prays." {2562}

For one thing, the practice of fasting and other ascetics is essential to cultivating a healthy prayer life. A very common cause of sloth in prayer [2733], the spiritual masters say, is related to a failure to discipline the body through ascetical practices.

Secondly, true prayer is connected to living one's faith [2745] in concrete ways, else the prayer is hollow and meaningless.

Thus: Prayer, fasting, giving.

Fast

The season of Lent teaches us to return to basics; namely, the three basics of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (or mercy). This year, Pope Benedict has focused especially upon fasting.

Fasting from food is unique to us humans. Other animals may go without eating for any number of natural reasons. A domesticated animal may even be trained to refuse food as a conditioned behavior. But an animal has no spiritual nature; it does not have the faculty of volition, of free will, and so cannot deliberately choose to abstain from what its instincts, appetites, or conditioning demand. It cannot fast. Neither can angels fast; having no physical bodies, they have no need of food in the first place. To engage in fasting, one must be both physical and spiritual at the same time. We humans are the only creatures that fit the bill. It's a privilege, when you think of it; we can offer to our Creator something which no other creature can offer.

And so, the kind of fast that the discipline of Lent prescribes is the kind that engages both our physical and our spiritual natures. A non-religious person may fast solely for reasons of health or weight control. A hedonist may fast to heighten his pleasure in eating afterward. Such fasts could not be considered true Lenten practices, because they are merely physical; they do not connect with the spiritual partner of fasting which is prayer.

Likewise, a fast that does not connect with its other partner, almsgiving or mercy, is not a true Lenten fast. The religious person may fast severely and pray earnestly, but if he fails to give in concrete ways, his fast is incomplete, and his spiritual discipline is pointless. Chapter 58 of Isaiah rails against this kind of false fast, and Jesus condemned those who prayed and fasted rigorously, but whose hearts were far from both God and their neighbor in need. (e.g. Lk.18:9-14, Lk.5:29-35)

Fasting, then, as both a spiritual and physical reality is a sort of bridge uniting prayer and mercy. The essential harmony of these elements is perhaps best summarized by St. Peter Chrysologus:

Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God's ear to yourself
  - Sermo 43: PL 52, 320. 322.

So, hold the mayo. And hold the burger, too. Hold the pickle, bun, tomato... lettuce... pray.

Incarnational faith

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.

Last Saturday, Lenore and I were talking with two friends, strong Catholic converts. The 6:00 bells rang, and we paused to recite the Angelus. Then we resumed our conversation about the physical aspects of Catholicism: kneeling and standing at Mass, the employment of our bodies in our worship.

The Angelus prayer commemorates that singular moment in history when Mary said yes to the angel, and the second person of the Holy Trinity came to physically dwell within her: God Incarnate, God in the flesh. This is central to the ancient Christian faith, that Jesus was both true God and true man. The baby growing within Mary's womb was no disembodied spirit, but a physical baby, who also happened to be God. Like any human, Jesus nursed at Mary's breast, dirtied his diaper, slept, cried, and grew. He lived a completely human life, working with his hands and growing tired and requiring rest. He felt real pain when he was scourged and nailed to the cross. He shed real blood, and died a real death. It was through his physical human flesh that Jesus won our salvation. From this it becomes clear how we, too, composed of both body and spirit, must live out our faith. Faith involves the whole person: spirit, mind, and body. This is incarnational faith. So, standing and kneeling are a part of our worship, and not mere incidentals. We employ the Sacraments and sacramentals: Baptism, Holy Communion, bells, incense, etc.

Almost as ancient is the Gnostic denial of all the above. To the Gnostic, Jesus was either not truly human, or (like the present-day Jehovah's Witnesses believe) not truly God. Typically, this denial of the Incarnation turns the life of faith into a purely spiritual affair, with minimal thought given to our physical nature and the material world.

Protestantism can run the gamut between these two extremes, but classic Protestantism is also likely to see faith as spiritual, comprised solely of an internal relationship with Jesus. Any emphasis upon physical trappings like rosaries, holy water, ashes, and such may be regarded as unnecessary and even as superstitious or idolatrous. To the Evangelical Protestant, salvation comes via an internal, purely spiritual encounter with Jesus, and baptism is just an act of obedience following that faith experience. To the Catholic, Baptism is the channel of saving grace, the water just as necessary as the internal faith response. To the Evangelical, the Lord's Supper is a symbolic remembering. To the Catholic, the Eucharist is the real Body and Blood of Jesus. So it is with the other Sacraments as well - in the Catholic understanding, each one truly confers God's grace by physical means.

One more Sacrament in particular bears mentioning: Matrimony. In incarnational terms, marriage consists of some essential physical realities, namely, the union of two bodies, one male and one female, with the usual result of producing more incarnations. For that is precisely what every human conception involves: the knitting together of a physical body with an immortal soul to produce an incarnate spiritual being. This explains the incarnational believer's horror over the crime of abortion, the murder of a priceless human being, newly incarnated in the image of God. To overlook or downplay the seriousness of this crime involves a Gnostic-like denial of the pre-born's humanity. Likewise, many folks attempt to redefine human marriage via a Gnostic-like spiritualizing, a denial of the physical essence of marriage. The incarnationalist can never facilely spiritualize these essentials, and can never divorce the physical from the spiritual.

And that's why I find the typical 'Catholic' politician so repugnant. It was, ironically, our only Catholic President, JFK, who popularized the current mantra of not letting his personal religious beliefs interfere with his job as President. Such is not true Catholicism, but is the cry of the Gnostic: Let me be personally and privately and spiritually religious with no Incarnation, with no outward and concrete expression of that faith. The early Gnostics could pretend to be Christian while doing nothing to warrant martyrdom. The modern one claims to be privately spiritual while conveniently accepting or promoting the politically correct heathenism of modern culture.