questions
Y08904
PPthroughFeb19Ascetics-CatholicStuff.pptxASCETICS: Understanding
How have different understandings of the “ascetic experience” been expressed?
A) The New Testament:
Paul
A) The NT: Paul
So how would one live out a new transformed life in the structure of 21st century America?
What would you keep?
What would you get rid of?
A) The NT: Paul
A spiritual director or counselor might ask,
what holds you back or distracts you from goodness, truth, beauty, love, and justice?
What holds you back from God? (since God presumably has something to do with truth, beauty, love, and justice)
Paul
Paul was actually born about the same time that Jesus was. However, he lived a lot longer.
Jesus died around 30 bce; Paul was still writing in the early 50’s.
Paul
Paul was the most well-known Christian missionary.
He, like Jesus, was Jewish. So he was a Jewish Christian…one of the first.
He never met Jesus personally, but he converted. He then devoted the rest of his life to spreading the “Good News” of the new covenant.
Paul
Since he was one of the first missionaries, though, he not only spread the Good News….he defined it.
Most of the writings in the New Testament, apart from the Gospels and a few other books, were written by Paul.
Paul
Paul was clear that there were some “passions,” or desires, that were dishonorable. Not all—some.
Also, he thought that there were some actions that were dishonorable not only to those around you, but to your own body.
Paul
If you choose those actions and desires again and again, pretty soon God will just let you have them (“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves…”) (Romans 1: 24).
If you live in that life-style long enough, you lose your ability to see goodness, truth, beauty, love, and justice clearly.
You are then left with “a base mind and improper conduct.”
Paul
What are these “base, improper” things?
The Buddhist would call them “afflictive emotions.”
Paul makes a list of them: “wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice…envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity…gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Romans 1: 29-30).
Paul
Someone once asked Jerry Seinfeld what he was looking for in a woman. He grinned, shrugged, and said “Someone good. Beautiful, kind, smart----good. Ugly, mean, stupid---not good.”
With the exception of “disobedient to parents,” which could well depend on the rules and character of the parents, would you like to date someone with the qualities listed in Paul’s verses?
Paul
“I’m looking for someone who gossips, boasts, and is foolish. He’s my kind of guy.”
So even though the idea of listing “vices” is old-fashioned and preachy, we can still sort of recognize them and want to shy away from people who have those qualities.
.
Paul
Of course Seinfeld included the whole physical appearance aspect, as most of us would.
Paul, of course, did not. Being good looking is not a virtue. It is an accident of birth.
But other than that, the analogy works.
Paul
Furthermore, Paul had a sense of cosmic justice. He states that “the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things.”
If you think that there is a sort of cosmic justice, whether you’d articulate it as “karma” or “God’s justice” or something else, then you’d probably agree that nurturing the above “afflictive” qualities would result in future pain.
Paul
Paul says, “…for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil…”
Yet, he also states that God will give “eternal life….glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good” (Romans 1: 7, 10).
Paul
This idea of “justice at the end” is critical to the ascetic.
Part of asceticism is paying your dues NOW. You know that you’ll have to pay. We’ve all done little things that weren’t that terrific. They add up. Why not start paying off that debt immediately?
The ascetics are the ones who start paying it off now, instead of racking up more debt.
Paul
Of course if there IS no cosmic justice, you’ve sort of wasted your life.
You should have been sleeping in, eating a lot of chocolate cake, having good sex, watching TV, smelling the flowers, and ignoring the starving people because, thank God, you can.
Paul
Buy a new wool sweater; wear it because pink is a great color for you; take yourself out to dinner.
Don’t worry about the people in Haiti. Don’t ask where your sweater was made.
Get all the pleasure you can out of life, before it is over.
Paul
Very few people would condemn someone who did the above things. It might even be healthy.
It might be healthier in the long run than many of the ascetics that we will look at. It might even be the best way.
That is up to you to decide. I’m just saying that it is not the way of the ascetic.
Paul
Paul was aware that his way of life was built on a belief that might or might not be true.
He built his hope on the BELIEF (not the knowledge) that goodness, beauty, love, and truth eventually triumph over all the crap.
He encapsulated this in one phrase: Jesus has risen from the dead.
