Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Discipline
(From "Christ Is My Life" by Rev. Fr. Marcial Maciel, LC)
A man who is preparing for priesthood, or is already a priest or religious, likewise has to maintain a personal discipline in line with his vocation. For example, if you want to live in priestly celibacy or take the vow of chastity you need the discipline in your life-style that will enable you to be faithful to that commitment. Not to know this would mean operating outside of a healthy concept of man not just on the Christian but even on the merely human level.
I do not believe in discipline for discipline’s sake, but do I believe that man, wounded by original sin, has tendencies that can lead him to evil. The Council of Trent, borrowing an expression of Saint Paul’s, calls this concupiscence. In Romans 7 Saint Paul vividly describes the inner battle waged in the theater of the human heart: I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate with the result that instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want. In my inmost self I dearly love God’s Law, but I can see that my body follows a different law that battles against the law which my reason dictates. This is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:15, 19, 22-24).
We all have to wage this battle against our passions. This is undeniable. Discipline, motivated by love for God, helps us to come out on top in this battle. All the elements of discipline that we use are there for a higher goal and motivated by love. This produces free and mature men, not men with complexes, stunted in their faculties or unfulfilled. Just take some time to observe the seminarians and priests who live the classical elements of Church discipline (the only kind that we demand), and see if they give you the impression of not living life fully. Quite the opposite: This discipline, lived in the balance given by faith and the harmony of the nobler faculties, helps them live what Saint Augustine called libertas maior. They radiate freedom, composure and self-mastery. They radiate freedom be they Legionaries of Christ, regular Christians, or members of any other religious congregation or new community. When you practice discipline out of love and in an atmosphere of personal and community balance it does not enslave but liberate.
A man who is preparing for priesthood, or is already a priest or religious, likewise has to maintain a personal discipline in line with his vocation. For example, if you want to live in priestly celibacy or take the vow of chastity you need the discipline in your life-style that will enable you to be faithful to that commitment. Not to know this would mean operating outside of a healthy concept of man not just on the Christian but even on the merely human level.
I do not believe in discipline for discipline’s sake, but do I believe that man, wounded by original sin, has tendencies that can lead him to evil. The Council of Trent, borrowing an expression of Saint Paul’s, calls this concupiscence. In Romans 7 Saint Paul vividly describes the inner battle waged in the theater of the human heart: I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate with the result that instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want. In my inmost self I dearly love God’s Law, but I can see that my body follows a different law that battles against the law which my reason dictates. This is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:15, 19, 22-24).
We all have to wage this battle against our passions. This is undeniable. Discipline, motivated by love for God, helps us to come out on top in this battle. All the elements of discipline that we use are there for a higher goal and motivated by love. This produces free and mature men, not men with complexes, stunted in their faculties or unfulfilled. Just take some time to observe the seminarians and priests who live the classical elements of Church discipline (the only kind that we demand), and see if they give you the impression of not living life fully. Quite the opposite: This discipline, lived in the balance given by faith and the harmony of the nobler faculties, helps them live what Saint Augustine called libertas maior. They radiate freedom, composure and self-mastery. They radiate freedom be they Legionaries of Christ, regular Christians, or members of any other religious congregation or new community. When you practice discipline out of love and in an atmosphere of personal and community balance it does not enslave but liberate.
Labels: Books, Priesthood, Spirituality, Vocation
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