Happiness and Sacrifice

Recently I heard two very different nuns criticize a mentality that masquerades itself as Christian. The first was a habit-less Dominican who wondered quite explicitly where we ever got the idea that “if it hurts it’s good”. The second was Mother Mary Francis, the acclaimed author and, by today’s estimation, “radical” Poor Clare nun. Mother Francis had the same sentiments though, despite her life of seemingly extreme penance. We have two nuns who live out religious life in two totally different ways, one living penitently, and the other not, both saying that something isn’t good just because it hurts. What gives?

We must always come back to the fact that Christianity is Love, because God is Love. And while it seems rather cliché to comment on the sacrificial nature of love, it is the core of the subject. But I’m not talking here about radical sacrifices – they are never remotely sacrificial... The sacrifices necessary for love are simple and small, but cut to the core. They are the sorts of sacrifices you feel in your whole body. Any red blooded human can’t help but know exactly what I’m talking about. They are patiently dealing with the walking ashtray that sits next to you in economics. “Patiently dealing with” is even the wrong term. The sacrifice of love is utterly ignoring the fact; being so overwhelmed in the fact that the ashtray is a person that you can love that the very real possibility of asphyxiation can escape your mind. In a speech I gave at my high school graduation I claimed that my classmates loved each other by borrowing (in reality “giving”) a pencil to the same kids every day. It is much easier to deny ourselves food and rest than to continue to pull the pencil out of our pocket day after day knowing it will never come back.

And yet even more than these penances for the sake out outsiders, we have the greatest opportunity to love those we live with. Mother Francis points out that the loss of sleep, lack of food and other material penances are nothing like the penance involved with living in a small convent with 15 other nuns. Imagine it! I live in a house with three stories with 3 other people, each with a well-fortified barricade of computers, TVs and headphones such that no one need ever bother anyone else. You’d never just happen to be in the same room as somebody else. Then consider these nuns. They have a cell which houses a bed, a crucifix, and maybe a desk – that is the only thing that is their own. When they are not in their cell, they are around other nuns. These are not people they have known and loved since birth, or have any remote excuse to have an enjoyable disposition towards. Their fellow nuns are complete strangers: consider how many strangers you meet that you instinctively like, much less would live the rest of your life with. I would find it difficult to live with my own family in such tight quarters, much less live with 15 strangers. By the world’s standards, convents should implode!

It doesn’t, because of love. Love is what holds the convent together. The inconsequential humming of my sister sends me into a rampage, while these nuns vow the rest of their lives to a convent full of clattering rosary beads. The inattentiveness of the families cleaning is sure to frustrate my mom, and yet these nuns, who could surely do a better job themselves, live in a convent cleaned by other nuns. Not only that, but every other chore involved with running a house (cooking, washing, and sewing) is done by somebody else. And the nuns just live with it! They put up with a dirty floor. They put up with cold potatoes. They put up with every annoyance 15 strangers could throw at them. That is the sacrifice that Christianity demands!
These nuns don’t voluntarily accept the spine-tingling pain of clattering rosary beads simply because it hurts! What stupidity! They do it because it gives all the more life! They can love their sister if they put up with the noise. They can embrace the very nature of Christianity if they put up with it. But if they do not, what come of it? Nothing but teeth-gritting and tongue biting! Christian sacrifice is not about hurting yourself, it is about living all the more. These nuns are faced with a choice: either they put up with the annoyances their sisters pose them, or they put up with the pains of a lack of love. They always choose to put up with the annoyances, because the stakes are so high.

Sacrifice is most truly encapsulated in these mundane aspects of life we are inclined to forget, and it necessarily permeates every aspect of life. Up until now the two nuns, the habit-less Dominican and the “strict” Poor Clare have been in perfect agreement, but on this they disagree. The Poor Clare wakes up at midnight to pray Matins, never (ever) eats meat, and voluntarily undertakes countless other penances, where as the Dominican lives a fairly comfortable life by most standards. Is the Poor Clare’s radical life necessary if in the least profitable? Yes, it is both, but every so subtly.

No future-alcoholic begins drinking immoderately, in truth and in self-opinion. Slowly though the distance between the two becomes greater and greater, until he finds himself moderate, but is wildly immoderate. The only hope for him is misery. Misery breaks down the walls of self-opinion we build up and forces us to realize what we truly are. The alcoholic who becomes miserable is truly lucky! He realizes the drinking will never satisfy him, that the more he drinks the less happy he is, and if he were to give it all up happiness would be his. That deserves repeating: the more he drinks, the less happy he is. O, if only we all had a healthy dose of misery to show us the truth! The more we do anything, the less happy we are. The less we do it, the happier we are. The world and happiness are inversely related.

And the reason is quite simple: the more of this world we have, the less we have of Heaven. It’s not that happiness is fleeting because nothing in this life will make us happy. Rather, happiness is found in God. Simply, exclusively, and wholly in God. The greatest evil the devil has promulgated is that Heaven is a distant reality which is inherited in an instant at the time of death. Nope: Heaven is here! Heaven is now! Well, I cannot say that in complete honesty, but that is a far more comfortable extreme than the one we are inclined to fall into. In truth this world can only be a veiled reflection of Heaven, like the Moon is to the Sun. We can gaze at the Moon, but the Sun is too much for our earthly eyes. Either way, do not fall into the trap of thinking that Heaven is anywhere but here. Every moment of the day is an opportunity to win Heaven, and to experience it. And that is why we must sacrifice the world too. Just as sacrificing the annoyances of others lets us love them, sacrificing insignificant pleasures lets us experience Heaven here and now.

On this, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century mystic, we are reminded of this even more: St. Catherine was given the extraordinary grace of not receiving any food but the Eucharist for 7 years prior to her death. She was allowed to live Heaven in a far fuller sense than most are. We are always that beginning alcoholic who flirts with immoderation, and only with grave self-reflection can he see himself for what he truly is. But St. Catherine was exempt from those troubles for a time. She was allowed to live wholly on Christ, and that is what we all must strive to do. We should long to live without a dinner and without sleep – we eat and sleep only out of obedience to God who made them necessary. Were we given the slightest indication that we were exempt from these human responsibilities, we’d rejoice! We would be able to live wholly for God, no longer delicately observing the needs of this world while longing for the totality of Heaven.

Now, pay attention to the point of this whole conversation. We didn’t endure any of these sacrifices for any reason but a greater joy. Happiness is the goal, not pain! You’d be insane, not Christian, to think that pain is an acceptable end. Happiness is most assuredly the end, but pain is that unavoidable, but incredibly brief middle step which gets us there. And I don’t claim that we can understand this fully. As with all of Christianity, you have to throw your hands up when you confront the paradoxes and put forward for no reason at all.