The Morality of Complacency

This past week, a friend forwarded an article about a book called Icarus Fallen by Chantal Delsol. Here are a couple of quotes from the abstract article:

"The morality of our time could be defined as a morality of complacency.

Complacency indicates a predisposition to seek pleasure. ...To be complacent means to be easily accommodating, to admit whatever is convenient, or to look kindly on whatever comes one's way. It indicates an open or easily obtained indulgence, without any judgment attached.

The ethics of complacency legitimizes and recognizes all thought, all behavior, and all ways of life on the condition, of course, that they do not oppose complacency itself.

The ethics of complacency's indulgent accommodation of everything corresponds to a refusal to accept any established limits, or to a refusal to refuse, which brings to mind the catchphrase of the 1968 generation, "It is forbidden to forbid".
So it is that the individual who develops a moral project and decides to equate his destiny with it becomes dangerous. He is suspected of judging others by his decision, and of secretly harboring the desire to force others to imitate him.
He who deliberately embarks on a project of this nature he who chooses meaning implicates, like it or not, the whole of society, and tends to transform a value into truth, which revolts contemporary man. This is why our contemporary so conscientiously tries to protect himself from the dangerous whisperings of seekers of meaning and strives to conserve a smooth and colorless society peaceful in its indetermination. The only defendable ethics is the ethics of complacency.
Enjoined to invent for himself his own norms, and forbidden to speak about them once he has found them, the contemporary individual is finally reduced to doing without a structured ethics at all, either because he finds that he is not clear-sighted or patient enough to invent one, or because he becomes discouraged by a project that is valid only for himself and derided as soon as it has universal pretensions."

In brief, this is why we Christians so often find ourselves on the wrong side of the Culture war. Our insistence on the existence of Truth offends the complacent. May God strengthen us to understand the world we live in, to stand against complacency, but for the Lord Jesus Christ!

Purification of the Heart

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to help hold him accountable as he struggles to overcome pornography. I sent him this brief quote from a book called "Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls: A Guide to Christian Approaches and Practices", edited by Gary Moon and David Benner. The chapter on Orthodoxy describes the process of guarding our thoughts. I hope you find it helpful.

"Another aspect of the purification of the heart is the struggle against the thoughts (logismoi) that ultimately develop into passions. This struggle should begin when such thoughts first emerge in the consciousness, before they issue forth in outward actions and take root as passions. The pattern to be aware of is as follows:

- A sinful though (a momentary disturbance of the intellect)
-'coupling' with the thought (considering acting on it)
-assent
-action
-the development of a sinful passion.

"The earlier in the process one is able to gain control of the thought, the better...by keeping watch over our heart we acquire watchfulness and discernment. We are able to detect the thoughts, to discriminate between good thoughts and evil thoughts, and to guard the heart by rejecting evil thoughts. This wrestling should be accompanied by grief, sorrow for our sins and the gift of tears."

Feast of St. Patrick Devotion

In the Confession of St. Patrick we read:

"I am Patrick, a sinner, the most unlearned and least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many. My father was a certain man named Calpornius, a deacon, son of the late Potitus, a presbyter, who was in the town of Bannaventa Berniae. He had a small estate nearby . there I was captured and mad a slave. I was not even sixteen years old. I was ignorant of the true Lord, and so I was led to Ireland in captivity with many thousands of other.."

"...after I was taken to Ireland - then every day I was forced to tend flocks of sheep in the pasture. As I did so, many, many times through the day I prayed The love of God and the awe of Him grew strong within me more and more, and my faith was strengthened also. And my soul was restless within me so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night, and this even when I was staying in the woods or on the mountainside. I often awakened and prayed before daylight - through snow, through frost, through rain - and I felt no illness or discomfort, and I was never lazy but filled with energy and inspiration. Now I know this was because the Holy Spirit was fervent within me."

After escaping Ireland, and traveling through Gaul, he returned to his home in Britain. He tells of his missionary call to the Irish:

"And there one night I saw a vision of a man, whose name was Victoricus, coming it seemed from Ireland, with countless letters. He gave me one of them, and I read the first words of the letter, which were: "The Voice of the Irish." And as I read aloud the beginning of the letter I imagined that at the same moment I heard their voices-they were those very people who lived hard by the Wood of Foclut, which lies near the Western Sea [where the Sun sets]- and thus did they cry out as one: "We ask you, holy boy, come back and walk among us once more."

" And on another night-whether within me or beside me, I know not, only God knows- they [the Irish] called out to me most unmistakably with words that I heard but could not quite understand, except that at the end of the prayer He spoke thus: "He who has laid down His own life for you, it is He who speaks to you." And so I awoke full of joy!"

" This is why it was most necessary to spread our nets widely so that a great throng and multitude might be captured for God, and that there by clergy everywhere to baptize and teach a people who need and want so badly, as the Lord admonishes in the Gospel, saying: "Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have taught you; and see, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world." And again He says: "Go out therefore to the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned." And again: "This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the entire world for a testimony to all races of people, and then shall the end come."

A Credal Statement adapted from St. Patrick

Our God is the God of all things,
God of heaven and earth, seas and rivers,
God of sun and moon, of all the stars,
God of high mountains and lowly valleys,
God over heaven, and in heaven, and under heaven.
He has a dwelling in heaven and earth and sea and in all things that are in them.
He inspires all things, he quickens all things.
He is over all things, he supports all things.
He makes the light of the sun to shine,
He surrounds the moon and the stars,
He has made wells in the arid earth, placed dry islands in the sea.
He has a Son co-eternal with himself and similar in all respects to himself;
and neither is the Son younger than the Father, nor is the Father older than the Son;
And the Holy Spirit breathes in them;
Not separate are the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe that through baptism we cast off the sins of our fathers and mothers.
We believe in repentance after sin.
We believe in the unity of the Church.
We believe in life after death, in the resurrection on the Last Day,
and that we shall come to see the very Face of Christ.
Amen