Spiritual Peril Of Our Own Sensibilities

[BarbTherese]

Quite fleetingly, I considered posting this into Transmundane or the spirituality forum, which would preclude debating the issue.  A sudden decision and I decided to post it into Debate instead - and step outside my personal 'square', my preferred boundaries within which I feel, most often, warm and safe, relatively unthreatened - and thus my personal comfort zone - and dive into the Debate Forum - a forum which 'makes my hair stand on end' in fear and trembling! :cuss:  What is the point or points for debate? - That's up to a reader to find them, if they exist - I guess.  Being a cradle Catholic and a teenager pre V2 and educated lifelong by pre V2 habited religious sisters and raised in a strict family home environment, my own formation was in The Church during a time when our parish priest said "Jump" and we replied "Yes, Father.  Thank you, Father.  How high please, Father?".  At an impressionable age still, I was conditioned into that disposition and towards most any authority figure .  I don't think there is anything wrong with this (in fact so much to be thankful for I still apply in my journey), insofar as I recognize the source of my conditioning, which still clings, (conditioning is almost impossible to shake completely, unaided, to my mind) and hence, I hope that I can recognize the sources often of my own immediate 'knee jerk reactions' prior to (hopefully) reasoned prayerful reflection on a given subject, and hopefully always, please Lord, in the light of the Teaching Authority of The Church in Faith and morals - and my ultimate and absolute earthly authority of infallibility and under whom I daily labour.  And labour it can often be - and one of love.

 

The excerpt from the article below comes from Catholic Culture and a sound and reliable resource for all information Catholic, and to me it is a very important issue both for the Universal Church and for my own personal spirituality and growth (in self knowledge, foundation of humility), and the potential (and likely!) sources (often unconscious) of my personal formation to date, well at least one or more of them. 
 

 Also this morning trying to clean up my subscription and reading matter only email inbox, I came across a sermon (in part) by St Augustine on The Mystical Body of Christ on Earth/The Body and Blood of Christ HERE.  For me it tied in beautifully with what Catholic Culture had to say about "The Spiritual Peril of Our Own Sensibilities" in that St Augustine says, reflecting on St Paul to the Corinthians, that because we are the one loaf and the Mystical Body of Christ, we are made up of many grains - or many members and that :

 

"«Because there is one loaf, we, though we are many, form one body» (1Cor 10,17). Let your mind assimilate that and be glad, for for there you will find unity

truth, piety, and love. He (St Paul) says, «one loaf»: and who this one loaf? «We, though we are many, form one body». Now bear in mind that bread is not made of a single grain, but of many.

Be, then, what you see, and receive what you are."

 

 

 â€œEveryone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

(Tolstoy).

 

 

 

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

(Barack Obama)

 

 

 

  

Excerpt from "The Spiritual Peril of Our Own Sensibilities" (Catholic Culture) http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=575

 

 

............."...............Their sensibilities still often condition their first reactions to much that happens in the Church—a daunting impediment in the human condition!—but they have learned to recognize the signs, and to exercise a certain self-discipline. Their very self-knowledge leads them to judge others less harshly. They demonstrate daily that we are not to be victimized spiritually by our sensibilities. Instead we must have the courage to expose them—again and again and again—to the light of Christ.

 

There is never anything wrong with working respectfully against genuine failings, whether heresy or vice, irreverence or laziness, laxity or severity, self-righteousness or ecclesiastical disobedience, as long as such charity begins at home. But what has happened is that too many critics have allowed their personal sensibilities to be the means by which they judge whether a priest (or any other person) is devoted, faithful, charitable, honest and orthodox. And too often the result is both derision and division.

We all have a grave tendency to class vices as virtues, or virtues as vices, and to turn trifling differences into major issues, all according to our sensibilities. This is a telltale sign of spiritual immaturity. We seek somehow to indulge ourselves in a piety pleasing to our senses and emotions, often at the expense of others. And whenever we do this, our unrestrained sensibilities masquerade as the one thing we inevitably squander in the process. Our sensibilities masquerade as holiness.

 

 

 

 

 

[Chestertonian]

I read the article you linked to and really liked it. I try to examine all of my positions and knee-jerk reactions in the context of my faith, although I admit that my pride and stubbornness sometimes get in the way. 

[BarbTherese]

I read the article you linked to and really liked it. I try to examine all of my positions and knee-jerk reactions in the context of my faith, although I admit that my pride and stubbornness sometimes get in the way. 

 

Spot on and thanks for the daylight and the sharing!  And delighted you read the article. :cheers:

 

 

Nothing like pride and being stubbornly closed minded on any issue to blind one and get in the way of growth.  Growth means change.  I don't like change personally being something of a control freak needing to feel I have the reins firmly,  and not all that long ago converted from a complete and total control freak. And without change there can be no growth for growth is change.  We humans (and especially this human) like our sense of security and 'belonging' and nothing like change to whisk us out of our comfort zones into a zone of insecurity............at least initially until that zone becomes the known and secure.  Then I can repeat the whole process again, and leave the lesson of my personal history unlearnt, frantically clinging to my personal comfort zone or zones, the known.  The boundaries within which I can feel rather safe and secure, relatively unthreatened by the unknown.

I do love the Galilee Song : http://gospelyrics.blogspot.com.au/2007/10/galilee-song.html

 

What I really like about these articles etc. and often posts into a Catholic discussion site for me personally, is that sometimes I sorta know something but cannot verbalize it to or for myself with clarity and thus I don't understand what I probably really need to understand - and then along comes an article, text or post (Holy Spirit ever active and in a great variety of ways - as colourful and diverse as nature) - and it's like a blind going up very suddenly in a dark room and daylight flooding in.  Then I understand in a new and more understandable manner that which previously I could not articulate for myself and thus not fully understand and grasp - and perhaps an invitation to change and growth. (Of course, not all change and growth is of necessity in a positive direction)

 

Then the really hard work for me can begin.  Intellectually, I can grasp something, but the real sweat and tears is working to apply and internalize what my intellect is telling me I need to do and should.  I try very hard also - well most of the time I hope - to consider all matters prayerfully in the context of Faith and The Gospel.  I watched a movie not long ago about Oliver Cromwell and in the script, he prays before his first battle "Lord if this day I forget Thee, please do not forget me".  Great prayer!

 

Thank you for the comments and sharing, Chestertonian. :)

Edited June 2, 2013 by BarbaraTherese

[BarbTherese]

I read the article you linked to and really liked it. I try to examine all of my positions and knee-jerk reactions in the context of my faith, although I admit that my pride and stubbornness sometimes get in the way. 

 

I really do appreciate and admire short and concise posts that can go right to the heart of a subject - while at the same time totally frustrated that such gifts totally elude me!   I guess when those gifts were being handed out, I was still in the talking queue...........

 

.................. and for quite a few months to boot!

 

I am not putting myself down........at 67 years of age, coming up 68 years, one gets to know oneself rather well, may as well be honest about it so others are forewarned and thus forearmed................ and living alone most often in silence - with computer and typing skills and a very active mind and more time on my hands just now than I care to have truth be known -  can literally drive a person crazy, mad, round the bend ...........and others up a wall !  :)

 

Thank you again, Chestertonian!

[Chestertonian]

I really do appreciate and admire short and concise posts that can go right to the heart of a subject - while at the same time totally frustrated that such gifts totally elude me!   I guess when those gifts were being handed out, I was still in the talking queue...........

 

.................. and for quite a few months to boot!

 

I am not putting myself down........at 67 years of age, coming up 68 years, one gets to know oneself rather well, may as well be honest about it so others are forewarned and thus forearmed................ and living alone most often in silence - with computer and typing skills and a very active mind and more time on my hands just now than I care to have truth be known -  can literally drive a person crazy, mad, round the bend ...........and others up a wall !  :)

 

Thank you again, Chestertonian!

 

Thanks for posting the article. I didn't think your post was long-winded at all; on the contrary, I thought it was eloquent and well written.
 

[BarbTherese]

 

Thank you!