Modern life blocks acceptance of God

During Advent, we anticipate Jesus' coming, both His imminent coming on the Christmas feast we are about to celebrate and His ultimate coming, when He will return in power and glory to judge the living and the dead, and when we must render an account of our stewardship.

As we await this two-fold coming, let me suggest several factors that can block or hinder our acceptance of God into our lives.

The first is a loss of a sense of sin. This is evident in a variety of ways, most notably for us Catholics in the decline of the numbers of those celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

While penitents have dwindled to a corporal's guard, those receiving Holy Communion at Christmas and Easter, or at weddings and funerals, even when they haven't darkened the doors of the church other than on such occasions, is all too frequent.

Redeemed from what?

I am not proposing that we revert to the sin-dominated culture of the pre-Vatican II Church, with its emphasis on weekly confessions or not receiving Communion unless preceded by confession.

But I am suggesting that, for many contemporary Catholics and others, sin is no longer a reality that is significant in their lives. That is an obstacle to opening ourselves to Christ's coming, because if there is no sin, then, there is no need for a Redeemer.

Maybe I'm all wrong in this regard. Maybe sin really doesn't exist in today's world. Maybe sin was the result of a Jansenistic piety or an antediluvian approach to control the masses, an approach no longer relevant in our enlightened, post-modern culture.

Evidence of sin

But the fruits of sin are certainly evident all around us. We see it daily in domestic violence...family breakdown...child physical and sexual abuse...addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex and pornography...and in gambling, street crime and school violence, as well as in the social sins of racism, sexism, ageism, militarism, homophobia and xenophobia.

Unless there is a willingness to acknowledge the existence of sin and evil in the world, to assume responsibility for it, and to bring about the conversion of mind and heart which alone can rectify it, then there remains only a social approach to these ills.

That approach is inadequate to respond to what is primarily and essentially a spiritual problem.

Split personality

That surfaces another issue in the contemporary milieu: the bifurcation between spirituality and religion. More and more people -- especially young adults -- make the distinction between:

* spirituality, which is conceived as private, subjective and individualistic, freeing one to be in touch with the authentic self, with one's true inner core, and

* religion, which is viewed as an assent to a self-limiting creed that can lead people to become dogmatic, rigid and intolerant.

Living faith

That tendency to embrace a "spirituality-only" or a "Catholic-lite" approach to faith fails to appreciate the importance and value of tradition and community.

Tradition, and the rituals which sustain it, is not traditionalism (or what the late theologian Jeroslav Pelekan called "the dead faith of the living"); it is the living faith of the dead.

Unlike a spirituality-only approach, with a religious tradition we don't have to start out from scratch. We have not only a time-tested and track-proven perspective on life and its ultimate purpose, but also a community that can challenge us to examine our biases and self-centered habits, and that can sustain us emotionally, aesthetically, intellectually and morally through all the dry days and dark nights that inevitably occur on our life's journey.

Technology

I would suggest that the explosion of new technologies can also pose a significant threat to our spiritual well-being.

There are personal computers and the internet, cell phones, iPods, and Blackberrys, which, as an August editorial in America magazine notes, have created both a culture of distraction and a culture of constant work, where we are reachable around the clock, and, therefore, unable to disconnect from the demands of the workplace.

Ironically, these new technologies were supposed to lessen our workloads and free us from menial tasks like phone calls and letters. Instead, they have filled our lives with even more superfluous communication.

Quiet space

Equally significant, as we spend more time connected to these technologies, we can become more disconnected from one another, from our families, and, because of a lack of quiet space, from ourselves and ultimately from God.

Certainly, the dawn of these new technologies is not a cause simply for lament. Even I, who am technically challenged, must acknowledge and, indeed, stand in awe of the benefits they can produce. But there must be a judicious caution about how these new technologies can affect a relationship with others and our own spiritual life.

The great spiritual masters in every tradition have long counseled the need for solicitude and quiet. We can experience God in many ways, even through internet sites like Beliefnet or Pray-As-You-Go, but there remains the need for solitude and quiet, so God can speak to us in the silence of our hearts.

Listening

As the editors of America note in their commentary on this matter, without silence, without conscious disconnecting from the cares of the day, and even from friends and families, it becomes increasingly hard to carve out space needed to listen to one's own thoughts and to God.

St. Benedict wrote in his monastic rule: "Silence and the absence of noise in a certain manner encourage the soul to think of God."

To connect with God, then, it is sometimes necessary to disconnect.

Me first

The final challenge I would cite to opening ourselves to Jesus' coming into our lives is the rampant narcissism and individualism that permeate our culture and much of the world.

It is not only we in the Church who view this narcissism and individualism as a problem for individuals and society; so do many psychologists, sociologists and even economists.

In his new book, "Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom," the South African Dominican theologian Father Albert Nolan cites a false or superficial sense of freedom that is at the root of this problem.

It is not the freedom to choose any brand of toothpaste you like; it is a more radical freedom. What people often seek, Nolan notes, is a freedom of the ego, instead of freedom from the ego.

Freedom of the ego means that I can do anything I like in relation to others: The more my will triumphs, the more I get what I want, the more free I am. But that is a dangerous illusion, which only imprisons us further.

Free for God

Freedom, in the true Christian sense, is freedom from the ego. In other words, it means we are not tied down by our own selfishness. It is a freedom to do God's will, to work for the common good, not just the selfish idea of what's good for me.

When we develop freedom from the ego, we can recognize that we often project our problems on others, that we have a false image of ourselves and that we may communicate this false image to others.

As Jesus pointed out, until we really understand what is happening within ourselves, we have a real beam in our own eye. We are blinded by something we need to remove in order to see clearly -- and to understand that we are not the center of the world.

Root cause

That is why Father Nolan states that narcissism or self-centeredness is the root cause both of personal failure and of social injustice.

He suggests that the reason so many so-called liberation movements of the 20th century failed is because they neglected the need of the individual to overcome personal selfishness.

Father Nolan cites, as a specific example, the experience of his own native South Africa, where hard-won freedom from apartheid was replaced by "greed, corruption, crime, hypocrisy and power-mongering."

The solution to this egotistical self-centeredness, Father Nolan posits, is Jesus' own spirituality, which responds to the need of people to heal, love, forgive and affirm...a spirituality that is not based on condemnation, blame or guilt...but one that liberates, persuades, encourages, enables and empowers.

Advent goal

This Advent, may we examine how a loss of the sense of sin, the bifurcation of religion and spirituality, an absorption with new technologies, and the rampant individualism and narcissism of our age may be impeding Christ's coming into our lives, as it impeded the openness of Herod and other people of the first century A.D. to accept Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah.

May this season of hope and anticipation be an opportunity for us to purge ourselves of these stumbling blocks so we may accept Jesus the Christ as our Lord and Savior.

(12/06/07)