As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins
To sink oneself under the cover of mortal sin is to hide oneself from God[1] and to approach nothingness. If evil is the absence of being and God is, by His aseity, being itself, then mortal sin not only sunders us from God but, in doing so, from our own personal being. Our being approaches perfection, rather, when it loses itself in the Divine. To follow vice is to be absorbed into nothingness, to follow Christ is to be absorbed into everything. While everything was made for the glory of God,[2] everything was equally made to proclaim “Whát I dó is me: for that I came.” Everything is to glorify God in its own way. That is, in approaching pure being, just as “ignited and glowing iron becomes the greatest likeness of fire, stripped of its early and personal form,”[3] we lose our likeness in the fire of Divine Love; yet also in this self-denial the very haecness[4]—the personal purpose for which each thing was made—is distilled and purified. In this way, the self-denial of the ascetics is no more than purification of what is alien to the interior self. As Thomas Merton put it, “the monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order.”[5] In conforming ourselves to the divine will, we free ourselves from alien purposes and desires: we fulfill the individual purpose for which we were created.
Hereafter, the question of spiritual and interior perfection becomes one of conforming oneself to the divine will. Change of life, or at least the rhythm of life, is frequently a necessity towards this end. Merton, again, in talking of the time shortly after his conversion to Catholicism (I have taken the liberty to use a rather extensive quotation as it is simply impossible to over-quote Merton) says,
It never occurred to me that if I continued to live as I had lived before, I would be simply incapable of avoiding mortal sin. For before my Baptism I had lived for myself alone. I had lived for the satisfaction of my own desires and ambitions, for pleasure and comfort and reputation and success. Baptism had brought with it the obligation to reduce all my natural appetites to subordination to God's will: "For the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh, cannot please God ... and if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Spiritu ambulate, et desideria carnis non perficietis.[6]
Of greater significance in this quote is his “obligation” to subordinate his appetites to God’s will. It is an obligation, not an ability. Catholics have a responsibility to direct everything, including all of our natural appetites, to God’s will (as expressed in the Jesuit maxim ad maiorem Dei gloriam). We have to live, not in accordance with our natural appetites, but in suspicion of them—to raise them towards a higher purpose than their mere fulfillment.
It is important to note, of course, that the manner in which we make this change of life is individual in the same way that our vocation is. Some, like Thomas Merton or Gerard Manley Hopkins, will become priests and pray the Divine hours every day. Others will pray daily devotions such as the Angelus or the Rosary (such as those in the daily rosary group in the SSPP on campus). Others may engage wholly in ejaculatory prayer;—the only truly important thing about this is that it is consistent and that it centers one's eyes always on God.
End Notes
[1] Summa Theologica I., Q.14, A.10, Reply Obj.4
[2] Is 43:7
[3] De Diligendo Deo, Caput X. by Saint Bernard of Clairvoux: “ferrum ignitum et candens, igni simillimum fit, pristina propriaque forma exutum.” Original translation.
[4] Hopkins would use the word “inscape” here (which is not to equate them absolutely but only to highlight the theological tradition that Hopkins was working within).
[5] The Seven Storey Mountain, page 362 of the Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition
[6] Ibid. page 252
Photo by Tony Woods, Wikimedia