Mon 29 Sep, 2008
Lukewarmness
Comments (0) Filed under: Divine Law, Last ThingsTags: character, hell, lax Catholics, lukewarm
Last week’s reflection during Eucharistic adoration was on lukewarmness. The moral life is not primarily about what we do, but about who we are becoming. What we do is important because the choices we make (and therefore the actions we perform) shape who we become. My reflection on becoming lukewarm in our faith comes once again from Divine Pity by Rev. Gerald Vann.
And that is essentially what lukewarmness means: it is not using, not receiving, the life and power of God; it is in the latter stages a positive resistance to the offered power, a positive refusal to listen to the voice of the Spirit. We have no further interest in the life and the power and the voice; we are bored. So at the end we find we are in hell — and it is this that makes the eternity of hell, and the fact of hell at all, an obvious inevitability, given free will: we have turned ourselves into people of this sort, and people of this sort are precisely people who cannot turn again because they made it impossible, and being unable to turn again they cannot live with God, they are eternally, irredeemably, enclosed in their shelf of boredom.
In Matthew 23:31, Jesus says, “Therefore, I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” Many people have speculated on what might constitute “blasphemy against the Spirit.” Theologians seem to agree for the most part that Jesus is not referring to a specific action or denouncement, but of a persistent state of the heart that closes oneself to grace. Fr. Vann’s description of lukewarmness rings like a true understanding of the unforgivable sin.
The choice made by angels (spiritual beings) to follow God or to reject Him is a perfect choice that changes the heart once and for all. Human beings are not as close to perfection (being unchanging) as angels so our choices form our hearts slowly over time. Eventually, however, our hearts become just as unchangeable as the hearts of angels. When we are in the presence of the Beatific Vision in heaven, we will not desire to choose anything but God’s love. When we close ourselves off to that love completely, we become unable to receive the grace that God offers us to change our hearts. Hell truly is our choice – chosen over and over again through time until we become a place where God is absent.
I love Fr. Vann’s description of lukewarmness and of hell as boredom (I also love the description of Hell as ultimate loneliness). A red flag should probably fly up when we realize how many Catholics seem bored with their faith – not just with the music at Mass or with their pastor’s homilies, but with living the life of faith altogether. More importantly, we should carefully guard our own hearts. There are times when my faith still feels like an obligation that I complete to hedge my bets against eternity. At these times I have to admit that I find my life of faith boring. When I realize that I am bored only because I have been closing myself off to grace, I return to a living relationship with God and rediscover the adventure that He is inviting me to live.
The antidote to lukewarmness – to boredom with faith and life – is the virtue of fortitude. Fortitude is the courage to live life to the full – the way God intended it to be lived. This means first and foremost to live life in faith, in a living relationship with the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. It also means cooperating with grace in order to quest for the greatest good that life has to offer. For me, that means striving to love my wife and my children as selflessly as I can. This is a great adventure, both in the sense of the challenge and in the sense of reward. It also means seeking to serve God with the gifts He has given me. This means teaching and writing. I have always found both teaching and writing a great adventure. When I have the fortitude to live as God plans for me to live, I find life to be an exciting adventure. When I lack in fortitude (and its child virtues patience and perseverance) I find life frustrating and boring.
God wants us to lead lives of goodness and adventure. Whether or not we do depends very much on our response.
I am currently meditating on this book during Eucharistic adoration. Read it for yourself (buy it right from us)!
Divine Pity by Rev. Gerald Vann.
Father Vann uses the beatitudes as a springboard for a discussion on living the Divine Life as fully as possible. He identifies the subtle ways that Christians fail to fully live out the beatitudes, the virtues and the life of love. The social implications of the Beatitudes (the subtitle of the book) comes in with Father Vann’s persistent theme that we do not exercise the Christian life in a vacuum, but within a family.
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