Reading the Saints

This post is not original to me – a friend shared his thoughts following our participation in a long email discussion with proponents and opponents of NFP. Much of that discussion boiled down to a disagreement about Church teaching that reflected what each side preferred to read, in terms of papal documents and the writings of doctors of the Church. (See also my post "Butting Heads over NFP" which briefly examines Fr. Chad Ripperger's thoughts on "operative points of view" of traditionalist vs. neo-conservative Catholics.)

Reading the Saints

When you open the writings of real saints, you can compare it to reaching into a bag to pull out a ping pong ball for a lottery prize. Now most of the ping pong balls are worth only the cost of the plastic ball itself, which is no more than pennies – just like most publications are worth no more than the value of the paper on which they're printed. But one of the balls in the bag is worth a million dollars. On the outside it looks exactly like the other balls, but on the inside it is marked with a special number that means that you are the winner of fabulous wealth.

What is it like when you reach into the bag and pull out the million-dollar ball? Imagine yourself closing your eyes, and you reach into a deep, black bag, and you grab hold of something spiritual, something supernatural, something not of this world. Or perhaps it is not you who grab hold of it, but it that grabs hold of you…

…which could be said just as well of the allegorical lottery ball. Do you win it, or does it win you? Or the same metaphor could also be used not just for good books, but also for bad ones. Do you grab hold of them, or do they grab hold of you? Yet even these bad books, for all their faults, including the fact that they are intrinsically evil, nevertheless have something real about them, something alive, something that is capable of dragging your soul to hell. Other works, in comparison, are dead, lifeless, meaningless, idle thoughts that will soon dissipate and leave no trace.

The question is, when you take one particular document, whether it is a letter or a book or an encyclical, what do you experience? Does it speak directly to your soul with the words of God? Does it sound like a message from a supernatural world? Or is it the thoughts and imaginations of men, no matter how smart or learned or even devout they might be? If it's the work of man, then it's one of the losing lottery balls.

But if it's the work of God, then it's like you've pulled out the million dollar prize. And you feel it. Who could pull out a winning lottery ball and not feel the excitement of suddenly from one moment to the next to go from being a pauper to being a millionaire? And who could open the pages of works by real saints without feeling like the poet Keats when he first opened Chapman's Homer:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

I don't want to muddy the waters of the metaphor by getting into a discussion of individual titles, but it’s clear that the difference in the arguments of proponents vs. opponents of NFP comes down to what they are reading. Some are reading St. Augustine and the pre-conciliar popes, while others are reading Vatican II and John Paul II. How many thousands of men throughout the many centuries have opened, for example, St. Augustine's “Confessions” and felt very much like Keats when he opened Chapman's Homer? But can it really honestly be said by anyone that they felt the same way upon reading “Love and Responsibility” or any of the post-conciliar encyclicals? Can anyone even make heads or tails of what is being said? Aren't we often told that we need interpreters to explain to us what the personalist language is supposed to mean, since it doesn't convey any meaning at all directly to our minds upon first reading it? In contrast, I recall vividly the feeling I had when I first read “Casti Connubii” about 25 years ago. There was that same sense of having grabbed hold of a live electric wire. And it changes your life in the same radical sorts of ways.

What applies to these writings on marriage, applies even more so to genuine works on the spiritual life. Who can read St. Teresa of Avila without feeling that you have come to know her personally as an intimate friend, and without having a sense that the spiritual life is close and within your reach and available to you if only you will stretch out your hand to grasp it?

The unfortunate reality, however, is that most people – even among those who consider themselves devout – are not reading St. Teresa, but instead are reading derivative works with no supernatural value. They have reached into the bag and pulled out losing lottery balls whose only purpose is to fill up the measure of the bag and hide the genuine article in a sea of ersatz replicas, like the slave girl Morgiana who hides the X placed by the captain of the 40 thieves upon the door of her master Ali Baba by placing similar X's on the doors of all the other houses in the neighborhood.