This morning’s post marks the 1,500th entry on this blog. I don’t know about you, but I can tell you that Stephen Colbert is extremely excited about this…
I began this blog about four years ago, on 11th June 2010 to be exact. At that time in my life, a few things converged and I decided that I’d have a go at running a blog. I began with a free blog at WordPress.com and, after completing a hundred posts, I decided to buy my own domain name and do things “properly”!
Since 1,500 posts is quite a milestone, I’ve put in a little bit of thought into what I could do to mark this anniversary and help take this blog to “the next level”, whatever that is! So, with that, I have a couple of announcements…
A friend of my posted the following text on her Facebook wall today. I thought it was so good I asked her if I could publish it here on the blog. One year since what she calls “the best day of my life”, here is her reflection on the seven things she learned as a Neophyte…
To put it in simple terms, a Neophyte is a new convert to a religion. New Advent describes Neophyte as originating from the word neophytoi meaning the newly planted and incorporated with the mystic Body of Christ. I converted to the Catholic Church from Protestantism last Easter, and have decided to do a bit of reflection on my last year. It has been filled with revelation after revelation but here are the top seven that have had the most impact on me.
1. Hungering for the Eucharist
To put it simply, hungering for the Eucharist is a real thing. To some that may sound crazy or impossible and to others, you may know exactly what I mean. For those reading this who aren’t Catholic, the Eucharist is what we call the transformation of the communion bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Early Church Father, St. Justin Martyr, writes in A.D. 151:
“For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and has both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food that has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.” [First Apology 66]
After partaking in my First Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil and the weeks following, I was somewhat stunned to find that I hungered for more of the Eucharist. I yearned for His Body and Blood, the peace that it brought, my human weaknesses obliterated by His strength, His divine life inside of me. This surreal and transcendent feeling is one I could never fully describe but pray all will come to experience.
I haven’t written a Bucket List entry in quite a while, so I thought I’d come back with a nice simple one:
Bucket List Item #3: Light a votive candle
In virtually every single Catholic church you’ll find a place where there are a collection of lit candles, often in front of a statue or icon. Every now and then you’ll see someone go up and light a candle, usually lingering for a few moments in prayer.
Quite some time ago I wrote about Coming Soon, a book by Dr. Michael Barber concerning the Book of Revelation (“Apocalypse”). I enjoyed Dr. Barber’s book a lot and I expressed how much I’d like to work through that book again in some kind of study group.
Well, nearly three years later, it has finally happened. Earlier this week I met up with a friend at a local Pub and we went through the first chapter of Coming Soon. I’ve affectionately dubbed our little group as “The Oratory of St. Arnoldus“ 🙂
As we work through Dr. Barber’s book each week I will attempt to do a short post summarizing our discussion…
Despite living in America for over two years, until recently I had never registered with a doctor. Well, a couple of months ago I finally got around to it and I went for a check-up.
Fortunately, everything was fine. However, prior to the check-up, I was weighed by a nurse. I was utterly horrified by the number which appeared on the scales: 175lbs. I knew I hadn’t been exercising much and I knew that I had been comfort eating, but I didn’t think it was that bad!
The following week I returned back to Boot Camp, determined to lose the weight. In fact, I set myself the goal to return to the weight I was when I first came to America, 155 lbs. I’ve been going to the 6am class every weekday and cutting down on my food portion sizes.
Well, today I had my first weigh-in since I’ve tried losing the weight: 167 lbs. That’s 8lbs in a month and a half. You have my permission to be impressed.
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
Notes & Quotes
1. Many people think of morality as something which interferes, particularly with our enjoyment.
(a) However, morality is there for our own good.
“…moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine”
(b) What might initially seem right to us will cause problems.
“When you are being taught how to use any machine, the instructor keeps on saying, ‘No, don’t do it like that,’ because, of course, there are all sorts of things that look all right and seem to you the natural way of treating the machine, but do not really work”
2. Some people prefer to talk about “ideals” and “idealism” rather than “rules” and “obedience”.
(a) However, it is misleading to call moral perfection an ideal because it implies that it’s a private taste and therefore not binding on all
“When a man says that a certain woman…is ‘his ideal’ he does not mean…that everyone else ought to have the same ideal. In such matters we are entitled to have different tastes and, therefore, different ideals”
(b) It could lead to pride…
“It might lead you to become a prig and to think you were rather a special person who deserved to be congratulated on his ‘idealism'”
(c) …and this is as foolish as being congratulated in trying to not make a mistake in your arithmetic
“…you might just as well expect to be congratulated because, whenever you do a sum, you try to get it quite right. To be sure, perfect arithmetic is ‘an ideal’; you will certainly make some mistakes in some calculations. But there is nothing very fine about trying to be quite accurate at each step in each sum.
It would be idiotic not to try; for every mistake is going to cause you trouble later on. In the same way every moral failure is going to cause trouble, probably to others and certainly to yourself. By talking about rules and obedience instead of “ideals” and ‘idealism’ we help to remind ourselves of these facts”
3. Morality can be expressed in the metaphor of a fleet of ships
(a) The ships must have internal integrity and external integrity in relation to one another
“The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order
…you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy very long. On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order they will not be able to avoid collisions”
(c) Additionally, the final destination is fundamentally important
“…however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta”
4. An alternative metaphor is that of a musical band
“…think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player’s individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others.
…The instruments might be all in tune and might all come in at the right moment, but even so the performance would not be a success if they had been engaged to provide dance music and actually played nothing but Dead Marches”
5. We may therefore conclude that morality concerns three things:
(a) Exterior: Social relations with other humans
(b) Interior: The harmonising of the interior life
(c) Teleological: In relation to the purpose of man and his creator
6. When speaking about morality, modernity tends to ignore the last two
“When people say in the newspapers that we are striving for Christian moral standards, they usually mean that we are striving for kindness and fair play between nations, and classes, and individuals; that is, they are thinking only of the first thing”
(a) It is quite natural to focus on the first one because its effects are obvious and there is general agreement
“…the results of bad morality in that sphere are so obvious and press on us every day: war and poverty and graft and lies and shoddy work. And also, as long as you stick to the first thing, there is very little disagreement about morality”
(b) However, we can’t stop there…
“Unless we go on to the second thing-the tidying up inside each human being-we are only deceiving ourselves.
What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them?”
(c) We must consider the individual’s morality (the “second thing”) because we rely upon it
“…nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly
It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual”
(d) We must also consider our purpose (the “third thing”)…
“…religion involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the right sailing of the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set”
(i) …because the answer to this question may reveal responsibilities
“…If somebody else made me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself”
(ii) …and because it makes a difference whether we live forever
“…there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever”
(A) Moral Trajectory
“Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse – so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be”
(B) The individual and society
“If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilisation, compared with his, is only a moment”
7. Jack is going to assume the Christian point of view moving forward
“For the rest of this book I am going to assume the Christian point of view, and look at the whole picture as it will be if Christianity is true”
Discussion Questions
1. How do many people view morality? How does Jack present it?
2. Why should we not be surprised when we find that morality “interferes”?
3. What is the problem with talking about morals as “ideals”?
4. What are the two metaphors Jack uses to explain the different components of morality?
5. What are these three parts of morality? Around which parts are there consensus?
6. What can we not just stop at inter-personal morality? Why does interior morality matter? What are the consequences for society?
This morning’s post marks the 1,500th entry on this blog. I don’t know about you, but I can tell you that Stephen Colbert is extremely excited about this…
