Time is Treasure

I dropped the "Counsels of Perfection for Christian Mothers" for a while, partly because I feel like a phony even talking about perfection. Lent has demonstrated dramatically how far I am from it! (I always knew that, please believe me, but I definitely KNOW it now).

Chapter IV is about the "Value of Time". Related to what Msr Lejeune says here about the American saying, "Time is money", I found this "Know the Value of Your Time" that lets you enter your earnings, your hours of work time, your expenses, and then tells you how many hours of work it takes you to "earn" an hour of leisure. Of course, since I'm not paid for my work except in little bits and pieces here and there, my time either falls into the "priceless" or "worthless" category.

Msr Lejeune would echo all the saints by saying that EVERYONE's time is priceless. It has nothing to do with cash value. Rather, he says that time is the coin by which we purchase heaven. How do we use it? Do we "kill time"? (gruesome way to treat something so precious). Do we squander it or fritter it away?

His examples of wasting time seem somewhat quaint:

• Indulging in day dreams
• Filliing our minds with the rubbish of newspapers
• Reading dangerous novels for no good reason

If I had to come up with modern equivalents it would probably be silly fascination with celebrities, following the latest "hot story" about some colorful crime or scandal, or excessive devouring of junky TV.

Those don't really hit home for me -- what would be my substitutes? I'm afraid it would be excessive lesson planning, consuming a book in a sitting rather than pacing it out properly, and web=surfing. I can get on the internet or in a book or into a notebook and for me it's not too much different than what happens to some people in a casino. Better watch that.

More general cautions that he mentions:
.

• "passing time" not just as refreshment from work but just for the sake of getting through the day. A friend once told me about the AA warning --- HALT -- be especially vigilant when you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Those are the times when an attachment to something can really attach and not let go. Pastimes can sometimes attach themselves in these conditions, even if they are harmless things in themselves.
  

and finally:

• By doing something that you want to do rather than what you ought to be doing. That is, something fine in itself but out of place in the moment. Say, you decide to do the laundry rather than sit at your devotions as you had planned to. You can't be accused of idleness but still you are losing your time.

His recommendation is to design a Rule for yourself. And he devotes the next chapter to this. This is what made me want to get the book when I read it, because he made the rule sound simple and yet very valuable, not a matter of regimenting your moments like little miniscule soldiers, but rather a matter of collecting them and gathering them around your true priorities.
I'll quote his suggested resolutions:

I shall never remain idle, nor lose one single instant of my time (oops, I flunk that one every single day -- is there any hope?)

I shall draw up for myself a rule of life, adapted to my state, comprising only a few articles, and capable of being applied to the diverse circumstances of my life. I shall ask myself every evening if I have observed this rule in all the essentials (more on this in the next chapter)

I shall be faithful to the following rule which, so to speak, multiplies time, and permits even the busiest person to find time for everything. The rule is this: I shall never put off what I can do now.

Quotes on Perfection

St Thomas Aquinas on Whether any one can be perfect in this life?

The Divine law does not prescribe the impossible. Yet it prescribes perfection according to Matthew 5:48, "Be you . . . perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." Therefore seemingly one can be perfect in this life.

I answer that, ....the perfection of the Christian life consists in charity. Now perfection implies a certain universality because according to Phys. iii, 6, "the perfect is that which lacks nothing." Hence we may consider a threefold perfection.

One is absolute, and answers to a totality not only on the part of the lover, but also on the part of the object loved, so that God be loved as much as He is lovable. Such perfection as this is not possible to any creature, but is competent to God alone, in Whom good is wholly and essentially.

Another perfection answers to an absolute totality on the part of the lover, so that the affective faculty always actually tends to God as much as it possibly can; and such perfection as this is not possible so long as we are on the way, but we shall have it in heaven.

The third perfection answers to a totality neither on the part of the object served, nor on the part of the lover as regards his always actually tending to God, but on the part of the lover as regards the removal of obstacles to the movement of love towards God, ..... Such perfection as this can be had in this life, and in two ways.

First, by the removal from man's affections of all that is contrary to charity, such as mortal sin; and there can be no charity apart from this perfection, wherefore it is necessary for salvation.

Secondly, by the removal from man's affections not only of whatever is contrary to charity, but also of whatever hinders the mind's affections from tending wholly to God. Charity is possible apart from this perfection, for instance in those who are beginners and in those who are proficient.

St Ignatius sums it up this way in his Principle and Foundation

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.

From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it.

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.

Augustine says in On Man's Perfection in Righteousness:

Although even now every man who progresses, advancing ever with an upright purpose, departs from all sin, and becomes further removed from it as he approaches nearer to the fulness and perfection of the righteous state; because even concupiscence itself, which is sin dwelling in our flesh, never ceases to diminish in those who are making progress, although it still remains in their mortal members. It is one thing, therefore, to depart from all sin,— a process which is even now in operation,— and another thing to have departed from all sin, which shall happen in the state of future perfection. But still, even he who has departed already from evil, and is continuing to do so, must be allowed to be a doer of good.

Counsels of Perfection: What Perfection Is

Now that some false ideas of perfection have been mentioned, to try and go deeper into a true definition of perfection.

One difficulty with developing an idea of perfection is that people are different from each other. An invalid confined to bed will look very different on the outside from a young athlete. There are different temperaments and roles. A life of contemplative prayer might be excellent for a nun or monk but misguided for me if I were ignoring my family and friends. There is also a legitimate range of personalities that you can see if you read about the saints. The gentle St Francis de Sales is very different from the daring St Francis Xavier, who is different in turn from the intellectual St Thomas Aquinas and the cultured lawyer St Thomas More.

"So I might heap up citation upon citation, but these will suffice to show how difficult it is to arrive at a formula for perfection which will fit all the saints, determine the common trait which permits us to classify them all under one head, and enables us to say of each one, "Here is a saint."

Here the example of Mary, Jesus's mother, comes up. Of all humans, she was the closest to Our Lord. He resided under her heart for nine months and was nursed at her breast and brought up by her from infancy to childhood. She alone was called "gratia plena", full of grace, which to the Catholic Church has been a testimony that there was no part of her interior that was not flooded with God's light. Yet in her earthly life she was not a queen, not a doer of great deeds; little is said about her life directly in scriptures; her life was hidden. From her life we can conclude that

"Sanctity does not at all consist in splendor or magnificence or the glitter of exterior things, but rather in an interior principles which animates the most ordinary actions, and communicates to them an almost inestimable value."

If Mary is an exemplar, does that necessarily mean that the ideal life is solely hidden and quiet and domestic? To think that would be missing the point, because saints have been kings and queens, missionaries, parents of families, lacemakers and tentmakers, explorers, scientists, anything you can imagine. Without the interior principle, these professions and vocations don't mean anything; with them, every sphere of life is sanctified.

So this brings us to a definition of perfection:

"Perfection is accomplishing the will of God in a constant and generous fashion. That person, then, is perfect who does at every instant what God wishes."

Personally, this is troublesome to me. I have a good friend who tells me that she always knows what God wants of her. Sometimes she doesn't actually do it, but she always knows. I've searched my heart, and I don't have that kind of certainty. I always feel that I could be doing something better (or worse, for that matter). I suppose though that this is not the point. The point is a radical openness. I usually know when I'm getting locked into my own will or being sluggish or fearful about carrying out something good. So maybe that's what my friend means about knowing what God wants.

During this Lent I've started trying to examine those concerns carefully when they come up. In other words, I am trying to check up on myself at various times during the day to make sure I am on track. If I have a vague uneasy sense I examine it and try to take it seriously and if there seems to be a problem, I try to confront it rather than rationalize it away as I find it easy enough to do. These intuitions are usually right on target in some way when I take a closer look, even if I can't totally put it into words. At any rate, I can act upon them by doing something I know is not harmful, and trying to do it in a loving way, while being open to the possibility that I am still not completely there. Angie M is carrying on a series at Real Learning on "how we think" -- cognitive distortions and some strategies for noticing and examining them. I've found it helpful. St Francis of Assissi, when told by God that he would "rebuild His Church" started building the church at San Damiano with his own hands. This was not the full meaning of what God had said but St Francis's work of faith certainly prepared him for his future work of a different kind.

Counsels of Perfection: What Perfection Isn't

Here are some of the ideas of perfection that are false or incomplete, according to Msr Lejeune:

• Perfection is frequently attributed to persons who assume strained attitudes and an affected bearing (to warn us against taking this as our model, every year the Church warns us in the Ash Wednesday service that it is necessary to "rend our hearts, not our garments"-- that if we make a big show of our great spiritual deeds, we have already had our reward).
  
• Perfection consists in an invariable series of prayers.
• Perfection is a focus on books, images, and exterior signs and symbols.
• Perfection is... corporal penances (such as) long-continued fasts.

Is there anything these have in common? Well, I can tell that they are all about exterior practices that may or may not affect the interior heart. They are exchanging a thing for a relationship. It is not that these things are bad things -- in fact, the Ash Wednesday service also tells us that prayers, fasting and almsgiving are vital parts of a Christian life -- but that they are means to an end. If they become ends in themselves they can become mixed up with pride or self-absorption.

St Francis de Sales says that a lot of people tend to

"paint devotion according to (their) own passion and fancy.... many persons, by covering themselves with certain external actions make the world believe they are truly devout, whereas they are in reality nothing but statues and phantoms of devotion"

(see here for the whole passage that goes into details).

When St Francis de Sales talks about "devotion" he is talking about something similar to "perfection" -- that is, it's love for God that expresses itself not just in warm feelings or in detached exterior practices but in actual intentions carried through into every thought and action and stemming from love.

Because I'm a sort of intuitional type I'm not usually likely to confuse external practices with true devotion. When I do succeed in practicing some exterior habit, I know very well that my heart can stay unchanged if I let it. The fasting can become side-tracked into a sort of control issue, the praying can be routinized and mechanical, the desire to progress can become a sort of complacency, or else discouragement, neither of which have much to do with proper humility and diligence. My problem is more of a division between interior and exterior. I can have nice intentions and think of myself as good, or try to be harmless and think of that as loving, when it is really not the same thing at all. Devotion has to translate from good intentions to an actual way of thought and life. It can't be parasitic. It has to "bear fruit". Msr Lejeune says that it is easy to surround ourselves with a cloud of good feelings and intentions and mistake that for virtue. Definitely I have to keep a watch over that in myself. Yet I need to reflect on the good intentions, too; I can't skip that step, I've found. It's definitely a balance.

So I've been trying to live out this part of it by acting on my aspirations and intentions, but first reflecting on them prayerfully and trying to figure out "the next step" from where I am. An unrealistically idealistic resolution is not much better than no resolution at all.

Counsels of Perfection: Reflecting on the Goal

So here goes: As the title Counsels of Perfection indicates, the book is composed of counsels or pieces of advice. The first section of the book is about obstacles, the second is about means to the end, and the third is about "the means par excellence". The "end" mentioned, of course, is Christian perfection and the means are how we reach it.

Perfection is a word that needs some explanation. It doesn't mean that redemption is unnecessary or that there is some human ideal that we can reach by our own efforts. Nor does it mean something absolutely unachievable or presumptuous to attempt, either.

Rather, it comes from the gospel: "Be ye perfect; as your Father in Heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Christian perfection consists not only in the habit of charity, i.e. the possession of sanctifying grace and the constant will of preserving that grace, but also in the pursuit or practice of charity, which means the service of God and withdrawal of ourselves from those things which oppose or impede it.

As you see, there are a few things here: (1) there has to be a habit, not just an occasional sporadic act (2) it depends on God's grace plus our will to preserve that grace (3) it involves action plus (4) withdrawal from things that are obstacles. Except for the bit about God's grace, Aristotle would have agreed with all these conditions, and he clearly laid out convincing reasons why the only road to true happiness "eudaimonia" was through virtue.

Later in our civilization's history, important thinkers tended to disregard Aristotle as well as the Christian tradition, and got bogged down in various confusions -- for example, thinking that "happiness" meant "pleasure" or virtue meant "duty" or various other things that only overlap and do not sum up the essence. Probably most people intuitively sense though that "pleasure alone" is like getting sick on too much candy and "duty alone" is a draining and insufficient prospect like the leech cure of olden days.

Perfection springs from love, and in fact, the book uses "devotion" as a synonym for perfection. Jesus said in Luke 10:27:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as your­self.”

Thomas a Kempis writes:

Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good; Love alone lightens every burden, and makes the rough places smooth. It bears every hardship as thought it were nothing, and renders all bitterness sweet and acceptable. The love of Jesus is noble, and inspires us to great deeds; it moves us always to desire perfection.

So I guess it's pretty clear that love is the means by which we approach closer to what we are supposed to be as human beings. However, most of us know by now that Love is not just a feeling, a desire or impulse to draw closer or do well, but a matter of the will and intelligence. If we didn't already know it, a long stay in the ER with a sick child, or a rough patch in our marriage, would show us the truth of it. Love, perhaps "devotion" would be a more targeted word, is an integration of emotion and intelligence and will.

Although charity is at times intensely emotional, and frequently reacts on our sensory faculties, still it properly resides in the rational will: a fact not to be forgotten by those who would make it an impossible virtue.

As you see, there is both a positive and a negative aspect to these efforts, just like there might be if you were trying to strength train or lose weight or learn something new. You want to increase your strength -- your ability to do the thing. And you want to avoid things that will present obstacles or hurt your attempts to grow. Even though growing in Christian perfection is something that can't be done by ordinary human means, that doesn't mean it doesn't INVOLVE human means -- it just means that it has to go beyond those.

That is why the book starts with some of the obstacles that commonly present themselves -- misconceptions and problems -- just like a book on strength training might start with some of the mental and physical mistakes that beginners might make that would cause lack of progress or actual injury. Then once those are understood, the writer can go on to the actual positive steps to make towards improvement.

This distillation of human aspirations to one simple command -- Love-- is difficult to understand fully, it seems. The word "Love" is so often misused. "I did it out of love" -- the punitive parent, the cheating scoundrel, the wimpy enabler all use the language. I find I only get the meaning of it in tiny glimpses. I was just reading the last bit of Plato's Phaedo with a discussion group this evening. One of the things he talks about is opposite qualities and how they can't stand together in the same place -- one has to decrease as the other increases.

• Heat flees at the approach of cold.
• Life recedes as death approaches.
• As I get fatter, I get less thin, and vice versa.
• As love increases, hatred and indifference decrease
  

Sometimes it seems to me that love is generally glimpsed this way, by the extent of its presence and by what is still lacking. I see something done and think "There was not much love in that, however right the person thought he was in doing it"; or I cuddle my nursing infant and I think, "This is true love, though it is not Love in its infinite form." (I don't really think like that, but somehow I'm aware that my love is a reflection, like the moon reflects the sun's light).

So there you go, for now, with a half-thought out thought. If Christian perfection is love, then it has to get rid of all the things that are an obstacle to its full effect, and it has to increase in its strength. This does not mean simply affectionate or tolerant feelings, but something that is what Aquinas called a "habit", meaning a firm disposition that was consistent and not easy to block or divert.

Aspiring

For Lent I'm going through this old book called Counsels of Perfection for Christian Mothers, written by Msr Paul Lejeune. You could probably tell just by the title and the beginning words that it's an old book (yes, the imprimatur is from 1913).

"My daughters, you all aspire to perfection. But what is your idea of perfection?"

It occurred to me while I was reading it that I can hardly think of a priest nowadays who would begin a book by saying that we "all aspire to perfection." I think nowadays the word "perfection" brings a mental image that is either unreachable (like a supermodel) or rather distasteful (like Little Miss Perfect). I notice that nowadays, perhaps with some excuse, priests will emphasize the "humanness" of even the saints rather than their excellent qualities. The excuse is that pastors are talking to the people of this day, and in this day there is a trend towards focusing on the "dark side" in biographies and fiction, even to the point of stretching slender evidence to the separating point in order to find some shady element in, say, Jane Austen's life.


There is an emphasis on "being real" nowadays that would have seemed strange to former days, I think. It makes sense in a way, working against the unappealing "Little Miss Perfect" type of image, but at its worst it can lead to a sort of avid pursuit of folly and a kind of settling for mediocrity. This is probably why I cringe a bit when an authority figure, like a priest, tells some story about his own little follies in a homily. Sure, I understand the motive -- he doesn't want to come off falsely as some superbeing, he wants to share that he is human too. But I look at my pre-teen boys and worry. What do they have to aspire to, if a priest seems quite amused by his own imperfections and relays them almost as if he was asking for entrance into the cool club of messed-up people?

In some ways a desire for perfection is built into human nature. Who wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I want to end my life as an inadequate mess?" But here are some of the more indirect manifestations I've seen of a desire for perfection:

1. We could already be quite disappointed and cynical because we have an ideal that seems completely out of line with our reality. I know people like that; I was just reading about essentially disappointed people in The Great Gatsby.
2. We could be thinking that the "ideal" was another person that we know about, perhaps some super homeschooling mom or distinguished person, so by definition NOT ourselves.
3. We could feel fairly content with where we are now and not really want to think about aspirations and perfecting. We look around us and think we look pretty OK in comparison to most people we know.
   

I think nowadays many people are essentially disappointed. They have disappointed themselves and they've been disappointed by people around them. And they have grown up in a society which has promised them that this shouldn't really be. They feel they are owed something more than they have and that fulfillment is relatively easy to find. So in order to find some level of content in this situation of cognitive dissonance they look for stories about messed-up people so they can feel not so bad in comparison. So you see the biographies of flawed people, or flaws attributed to excellent people, or the reality shows and talk shows on television where dysfunction is almost celebrated (though there is usually some token consequence for the dysfunction).

A corollary seems to be some version of #2, grabbing onto some exterior trait of someone who appeals to us -- their beauty, or their wealth, or their artistic talent or level of organization -- and then fall into a sort of wistful "following". Emulation is good, but often it's an attachment to some exterior trait and so doesn't really help the follower to become his or her own unique being.

Socrates mentions in Phaedo that there is a temptation when we've glorified someone or something, when we are disappointed, to become disillusioned with everything or everyone. I see this happening sometimes, too. We see some Super Mom and idolize her and regret bitterly our own inadequacies. Then when she turns out to have some imperfection, it is very disappointing or else, in a weird way, satisfying. In either case, it's a distraction from our own responsibility.


I was recently reading bits of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics -- he goes through the various things that are conventionally thought of as means to happiness. Beauty of appearance, health, intelligence and competence, wealth; love, friendship, respect or honor from those around you.

These things are indeed goods, it is undeniable, but they are vulnerable to chance and to change. You can lose them all in a moment and you are bound to lose them over time. For sure, you can't take them with you, and they will not necessarily help you in your last moments. So while they are goods of a sort, they can't be the essence of what makes a human being approach perfection. Anything that is vulnerable to exterior fortune can't be that.

He says that virtue is the only thing that is essentially part of the human being. The etymology of "virtue" comes from "vir" meaning man and implies things like courage, loyalty and magnaminity (largeness of spirit).. "Arete", the Greek word used by Aristotle, meant something like "excellence" or the goodness proper to the thing (in this case, the human being). So "virtue" isn't the Little Miss Perfect ideal to Aristotle, but almost the reverse. It doesn't shrink someone down to a pattern model, but elevates their natural qualities.

The Greeks realized vividly that this ideal of virtue was difficult to actually realize. Stories of virtue, and philosophical discussion about virtue and its role in society, gave them models to participate in, in a way, and strive for, and an underpinning of reason rather than sentimentality in their approach to human excellence. But these models weren't models of one individual and the stories and philosophy didn't promise lasting worldly success as a reward for virtue.... it wasn't a mercantile system or a straight "input/output".

I am sometimes concerned that when pastors and teachers and parents and the like try to meet the lowest common denominator, that they actually set a lower expectation. I know I've been talking about that a lot lately. I am thinking more and more that it is essentially human to actually do better than one would expect IF the desire is there. We seem to have an ability to grow into something higher than ourselves.

Humans seem to be the only creatures that aren't satisfied with being as they are -- that CAN'T be satisfied with being what they are at a given moment, or they will actually slide towards being less than they are. Chesterton says that we say to a man who is acting like a beast, "Be a man" but we don't say to a crocodile pursuing his prey, "Be a crocodile" because that's exactly what it is already doing.