ACEDIA'S THE REASON WHY WE DON'T DESERVE A PRIEST (First published in 'NZ Catholic', April 30)

This Eastertide in our parish, following an Easter Vigil prepared with great care by our dear priest and attended by a congregation numbering about 20, some might say we’re licking our wounds. I’m thinking we don’t deserve a priest. And there’s a strange little word lurking in my consciousness.

Acedia. I didn’t really know what it meant or how to pronounce it (a-seed-ya), so I looked it up. There’s a lot of it about. For most of my life I had it myself. 

The door to acedia, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is opened  by presumption. If we think that at death’s door  we’ll be received as is, where is, unchanged and unrepentant, and given ‘glory without merit’, we’re presumptuous.  We’re often reminded that we can’t merit God’s love, but have we forgotten we must merit eternal life? God’s love is unconditional. Eternal life is not.

Coasting along presumptuously we fall prey to acedia, which the Catechism defines as ‘spiritual sloth … depression due to lax ascetical practice, decreasing vigilance, carelessness of heart’. Pope Francis talks about ‘slumbering Christians’. In a secular sense, Alexander Solzhenitsyn speaks of ‘indifference … the failure of a listless public to make use of the freedom which is its birthright’. Considering baptism offers us ‘the fulness of God’ (Eph 3:19), doesn’t that sound like us?

In the Middle Ages, when they were up with the play on this, the faithful were told to ‘counter acedia with holy activity’. We might think that doing stuff which seems meritorious and we enjoy is ‘holy activity’, but is it what God wants? Our ‘stuff’ is often a diversion, which the philosopher Pascal says ‘prevents us from thinking about ourselves and leads us to destruction … We turn to pleasures’ (sports, Tv, the internet, even work) ‘to forget our miserable state but this is even more destructive because it leads us further from our Creator.’ For centuries spiritual writers have declared acedia’s ultimate expression to be suicide.

If that’s not enough to alert us, listen to St Paul (1 Cor 11:28). Acedia is caused by receiving the Eucharist unworthily or without recognising the Real Presence, which brings ‘condemnation’. Where Confession is disregarded, when non-Catholics are regularly given Communion, we shouldn’t be surprised at acedia bcoming so rampant as to affect almost entire congregations.

To acedia sufferers, the remedy  of regular attendance at Mass, prayer, fasting and almsgiving sounds boring. Hellishly boring. But acedia is fundamentally a lack of faith which we acquire precisely by these means, and especially by contemplative prayer.  I speak from personal experience.

Pascal knew why we resist contemplative prayer: ‘Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest … he feels his nullity, inadequacy, dependence, emptiness. And at once there wells up from the depth of his soul boredom,  gloom, depression … despair.’

The paradox is, that’s where we meet God. In contemplation, instead of telling ourselves ‘Just do it’, we let Christ do it.

It’s that simple.

IF 'CONSUBSTANTIAL' IS 'CLUNKY' THEN 'TRANSFIGURATION' MUST BE CLUNKY TOO (Letter to 'NZ Catholic', April 29)

US Bishop Donald Trautman’s list of words (NZ bishop's voice joins critics of Mass translation, NZ Catholic, April 19)‘illustrating the failure of the English Missal to communicate in the living language of the worshipping assembly’ has notable omissions. 

If he regards ‘consubstantial, incarnate, oblation, conciliation, ineffable, unfeigned’ as solecisms, then logically he should also deplore ‘annunciation, visitation, nativity, transfiguration and ascension’. As human attempts to describe divine mysteries, these words all convey something of that mystery by the very fact of not being quotidian (or perhaps I should say, everyday).  

We understand the rosary’s ‘clunky’ terms because previous generations of priests taught us their meaning. The Missal now presents our pastors with an opportunity to explain the Mass as the fountain of life, to give the laity a clearer understanding of the Holy Sacrifice and incentive to attend. Given today’s reduced attention span sentences could be shortened, but dumbing-down the language connotes possibly dragging down the faithful from mystical contemplation to the level of the news at six. 

The Mass is literally out of this world. To penetrate this mystery our hearts must be dilated and our minds raised up ‘into intimate contact with the High Priest’ (Mediator Dei).

THE LINK BETWEEN ABORTION AND BREAST CANCER IS CAUSAL (Letter to Dom Post, April 27)

Breast Cancer Foundation chief Evangelia Henderson says ‘every little bit helps’ (Massey student gives back to charities, April 27). What would help women far more than pink ribbons, pink silage wrap or wedding dresses is a little bit of realism.

 

For example, the Breast Cancer Foundation, the pharmaceutical industry and the media need to face the fact, reiterated earlier this month by the American College of Pediatricians, that ‘the link between abortion and breast cancer is causal, not correlational’.  

Prevention is better than cure.

TOM SCOTT CALLS A KETTLE BLACK (Letter to Dompost, April 23)

New Zealand should take more refugees, you say (April 23). Of course we should. But next door to your editorial there’s Tom Scott deriding Tony Abbot’s ‘indifference’ to the plight of boat people.

Talk about a pot calling a kettle black.

WHAT LUCRETIA SEALES IS ACTUALLY PLEADING FOR (Letter to DomPost, April 23)

The heart-breaking case of Lucretia Seales will surely generate many more column inches for The Dominion Post, but could you please desist from employing oxymoronic terms such as ‘medically assisted death’(Groups want a say in assisted death case, April 22)?

 

The word ‘medical’ means ‘curative’, which is exactly opposed to the nature of the act she proposes. That it’s done by a doctor doesn’t make the deed ‘medical’ any more than a doctor going for a bike ride makes it a medical bike ride. 

Not to mince words, Lucretia Seales is pleading for a general practitioner of the art of healing to kill her and get away with it.

 

ONE GOOD THING (Letter printed in Dom Post, April 10)

There’s one good thing to be said for the otherwise depressing Nearly 30pc worldwide are obese (April 6).

No more will we hear from the doom and gloom merchants who say there’s not enough food to go round.

IT'S TRUCKS THAT ARE TROUBLESOME (Letter to Dompost, April 7)

It’s trucks that are troublesome, not roundabouts. Like our food portions, our dinner plates and our bodies, trucks are oversized, and basically it’s all down to consumerism.

Or to put it bluntly, greed.

IT'S CHRIST WHO'S REALLY SUFFERING (Letter to Dompost, April 7)

How ironic that Darryn Odering should ask plaintively (Friday best trading day so far for garden firm, April 7) in regard to trading on Good Friday, ‘Who is really suffering?’

Any Christian could tell him that it’s not Odering’s customers who really suffer, but Christ who died to save them, and who suffers still because of their ignorance and indifference.

THE SAME DAY MY LIPSTICK MELTED, I FELL IN LOVE WITH A CHURCH (Published in NZ Catholic, April 5)

The same day my lipstick melted, I fell in love with a church.

We were in Aussie; ‘im indoors and I were in Sydney for our godson’s wedding and it was on Sunday afternoon on the Manly ferry that the lipstick went sideways. By then we’d been charmed by egrets strolling in a park, the heaven-scent of frangipani in the night, flat whites served gratis while we waited outside a café for a taxi - but what knocked our socks off was St Peter’s Church, Surry Hills.

On Saturday morning, dear ‘im indoors having booked an apartment around the corner, we set off on foot for the convent where their website said Mass would be celebrated.

We never found the convent; instead the parish priest found us, lurking lost in the street behind the church. He directed us to a side door. In the entry was a statue of St Therese of Lisieux. In the church, in front of the tabernacle the Blessed Sacrament was exposed until Mass began, closing St Peter’s monthly overnight Vigil for Life. Oh, and there’s key pad entry to the Blessed Sacrament, any time.

On Sunday morning, we heard hymn-singing and laughter just within earshot as the choir rehearsed nearby for an hour. A teenager entering the sanctuary in jeans and trainers presaged the style of Mass to come: in his hand he carried a pair of shiny black shoes. Three such boys processed with the priest, all wearing black shoes and robes whiter than white.

By now I was purring, I who’ve been told off after Mass occasionally by ‘im indoors for subdued grinding of teeth. Before Mass I’d joined the queue (of people neither old nor Asian) outside the confessional. On a Sunday. Inside was a prie-dieu and a curtain. There’s no provision at St Peter’s for a cosy chat, for Father in a vulnerable moment opening compassionate arms to a lovely young thing in distress, of either sex. And after Mass the confessional light went on again. Immediately.

Communion was under only one kind. An altar server held a paten beneath the Host, distributed by the priest’s consecrated hand. I noticed people kneeling to receive on the tongue. When in Rome, I thought, and did likewise.

The only female to enter the sanctuary, a literally Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, was one of St Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. The altar servers were male and whenever they passed before the tabernacle they genuflected. Every time. The lectors were male, the organist was professional, young, and male.

The choir master was a mistress, however, and a very pretty one at that. She didn’t look like she lies awake at night worrying about gender balance. Some of the hymns were Latin. I knew the lyrics. The homily was about sin, repentance, and intimacy with Jesus.

Afterwards in the porch we had to say no to a cuppa. It was a nice man who asked us, but he wasn’t the priest.

The priest was in the confessional.   

IF ONLY WE HADN'T LOST THE HABIT OF KNEELING (Letter to Dom Post, April 1)

Wina Sturgeon’s ‘easy routines to help build much-needed strength’ in the knees (March 31) actually sound awfully hard. I wonder how many untold millions spent world-wide in knee replacements would have been saved, and untold benefits gained, by a simple exercise that’s been around for ever.

If only we hadn’t lost the habit of kneeling.