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The Challenge of Living the Evangelical Counsels
Or—Living the Evangelical Counsels: The Challenge
Let me begin with a statement that’s meant to get your attention, although it’s not particularly controversial or startling. Spirituality will not make our lives easier, and it’s not really supposed to. Of course, as we know, spirituality sets us along a path requiring inner conversion and a change of heart, as well as spiritual growth. And fidelity to that path can ask a lot of us. But there is more. Spirituality puts us into conflict with the world in which we live. And it doesn’t then proceed to assuage or ameliorate that conflict. It doesn’t give us tools for coping. Rather, spirituality intensifies that conflict and can even make it grow worse.
We live in a world that is spiritually hurting, fragmented, stunted, and malformed. The problem spirituality awakens us to is not just a personal problem, one found only in our hearts or souls. It is a problem with our lives. It is a conflict between ourselves and the world in which we live, the world we’ve learned to get by in and even find some measure of success in. It is a problem with our lifestyle. Spirituality pits us against our own lifestyle, so to speak. It doesn’t teach us how to cope with and better manage and succeed at the way we’re living. It asks us to change the way we’re living. Both within and without, spirituality will not make our lives any easier.
You will notice that I’ve been using the word “spirituality” here, not the word “religion.” No, I’m not trying to make a subtle distinction between spirituality and religion. I’m avoiding the word “religion” because of that word’s many entanglements with culture, institution, ritual, and tradition.. Of course, for the Christian, religion is meant to be the vehicle for a living encounter with the risen Lord Jesus wherein we come to live in the light and power of his Spirit. Religion is meant to transform our lifestyles, calling us to live in the here-and-now for the sake of God’s Kingdom. Religion is meant to be spirituality. And often that is the case. But just as often—maybe even more often—it is not. Instead, we have our secular lives, and then there’s our religion over here, in a corner. It helps us cope. It sooths our souls and smooths over life’s spiritual emptiness. It gives us a moral boost. But otherwise, it just sits there filling the place assigned to it, one more activity among all the other activities that fill our lives, seeming at once very important and ultimately meaningless. Yes, there is a difference between spirituality and religion, although there probably shouldn’t be.
So, I’ll stick with the word “spirituality.” While spirituality usually begins in the heart, with a moment of grace or personal revelation, or some experience of transcendence or of spiritual awakening, soon enough it impels us into a kind of critical reassessment of our life, of our way of being in the world—of who we think we are and are striving to become, of what we’re seeking in life, and what we’re looking for from it, and of course of what we’re doing with our lives, with our time and talents, our abilities, energy, and money. Spirituality, in other words, begins with the heart but soon works itself outward, into life and action—ultimately, into lifestyle. There it starts to prod us towards making changes in the way we live, in how we organize and structure our lives, for whom and for what we spend ourselves, the sorts of people we want to identify with or be associated with, and the image or persona we’re trying to project to the world.. The list could go on.
It is one thing to talk about the values and ideals we hold dear and the sort of world we’d like this to be and the way we’d really like to be able to relate to others and act for the sake of the greater good, if only we could. It is another thing to look at our lifestyle and ask what values and ideals and aspirations and commitments it embodies. What are we really living for? If spirituality is ultimately about trying to bring these two—our inner intentionality and its outer realization—into greater congruence and harmony, then spirituality most definitely will not make our lives easier. Instead, life will become a kind of all-encompassing spiritual challenge of the highest order..
Maybe that’s why the figure of Jesus as found in the gospels can seem so unworldly to us. It’s not as if he floats above it all, a ghost-like being from another realm. No, he’s unworldly because he seems to have no recognizable lifestyle among us. He has come to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Otherwise, he holds no job. He has left his family of origin behind, even disowned them, and has no wife and children of his own. Indeed, he has neither house nor home. He seems careless for his personal security. He doesn’t guard his reputation. He’s unconcerned with social status and advancement and lets himself be surrounded, instead, with down-and-outers, nobodies, the faceless and nameless, indeed the scum of the earth. And as for wealth and power, and the people who wield them, he couldn’t care less. He even seems not to care about positions of religious authority, nor even of being perceived as particularly religious or devout or morally upright himself.
Where, then, does Jesus fit in? Where’s his place in this world? How would we describe his lifestyle? It is in this sense, it seems to me, that Jesus appears so unworldly—even otherworldly—in the gospels. And how are we who would live in allegiance to Jesus Christ, who would live lives laid claim to by his Spirit—how then are we to live, what sort of a lifestyle should we adopt, if it is to be a lifestyle at least as much in conformity with the following of Jesus as it is a lifestyle shaped for us by the ways this world sets out before us?
Along this same line, it’s clear that just as Jesus lived, so he died. Or rather, I should say—so he was killed. To those who managed the social order of his day Jesus, with all his otherworldliness, was to be judged at best as possessed or mad. At worst he was to be regarded an enemy of God and the state, who must be either cowed or killed. And if killed, then killed “outside the gate”—that is, put to a shameful death, cast off and scorned, reduced to nothing but to a writhing, wretched corpse. And this is the one whom we would call Lord and Master. Who in their right mind would ever want to be a Christian—that is, if we were truly being serious about it?
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Now that I’ve set the stage, let me bring out the evangelical counsels. My topic is “Living the Evangelical Counsels: The Challenge.” Thus far I’ve spoken of the challenge that is living the Christian life itself, something which is surely a big challenge, and the one that matter the most. But it can also be a little amorphous. The evangelical counsels, in my view, don’t so much up the ante, making the challenge of living the Christian life even harder, if you will. Rather, they help to formalize that challenge. They channel it and give it direction.. They turn the challenge of living the Christian life into the challenge of living a particular Christian lifestyle. In that sense, the evangelical counsels help us live out spirituality in a more formal, regular, and deliberate way. We promise to live by them, and then we apply ourselves to fulfilling that promise just as one would take up a set project or overarching, controlling purpose in life. In other words, they help us define our vocation so that, by living them, we can reshape the way we live, making it more Christian and evangelical.
We all know the evangelical counsels. We can name them—chastity, poverty, and obedience. Of course, none of these three words are self-explanatory. It is spirituality that gives them their content—first of all, the spirituality of the Christian life, but also (for us here present) the spirituality of Carmel, and specifically (for you) the spirituality of the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites. The evangelical counsels receive their content for you, then, at least in broad terms, through your Constitutions—and nn.13-15 of your Constitutions, to be exact.. You need to study these numbers closely and carefully, therefore, pondering them repeatedly, personally and in community, if you are going to understand what you have promised in promising to live the evangelical counsels.
Given this content, though, the evangelical counsels then orient this spirituality towards its being lived out along three very fundamental and decisive components that go a long way towards shaping—and reshaping—our lives. These three components are: (1) love—that is, not just who or what we love, but how we love and why; and (2) possession—that is, what we have, and how we got it, how we hold on to it, and use it, for others, ourselves, or some other end; and lastly (3) belonging—that is, to whom or what do we belong, for we all have to belong to something or someone, and why, why do we belong as we do, and perhaps most importantly, to what extent, do we belong freely, fully, willingly, or unwillingly, by compulsion, and as little as possible, selfishly. Loving and caring; having and using; belonging and being a part of, or participating—you can’t get much more fundamental and decisive than that when it comes to defining our lives and lifestyles.
The evangelical counsels, then, call us to evangelize how we love and possess and belong in this world—in a word, they call us to evangelize what we do with ourselves, and for what and for whom. They are thus as much a matter of practice—of putting into practice—as they are of interior disposition. Of course, as we strive to live them out, ever more fully, richly, authentically, our hearts are changed along with our lifestyles. We’re not hypocrites, pretending to be someone we’re not. But we’re not helpless victims either, having to live in this world in a way contrary to our hearts and beliefs as we wait longingly for the next.
Of course, it’s not easy. Living the evangelical counsels is a huge challenge. It will pit us against the world and its ways.. It will undermine our satisfaction with the place we may have won for ourselves in the world. It will throw into question the sources of our security, and whether or not we really deserve the privileges and prestige we hoard, along with the self-image we’ve mastered, and our sense of personal competence. No longer will we feel quite so in control of things, nor will we really want to be. Personal autonomy and self-fulfillment, which were perhaps important needs for us in the past, won’t seem all that important or pressing anymore.
Yes, living the evangelical counsels will, like spirituality itself, make life not less but more difficult for us. In fact, it may likely make life well-nigh impossible for us. That’s why most of us can only go so far, letting gospel spirituality have a certain, yet limited, impact in our lives. We are good people, thanks be to God, and we suffer the sin and injustice, the selfishness, emptiness, and loneliness of the world. But even as we long for a new world remade in God’s grace, and even as we in some measure experience here and now God’s re-creative Spirit at work in us, it is still this world that has its hold on us and seems always—even as it did with Jesus—to have the last say.
The inevitability of defeat, though, doesn’t mean we despair. After all, we are followers of Jesus. We take up our cross and follow. Of course, we do so not only because it’s worth doing in itself—to live for the sake of God’s Kingdom and have in Jesus our Lord and Master. We do so in the light and hope of resurrection, which we have in him as well.
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Nn.13-15 of your Constitutions set forth the content of the three evangelical counsels in the vocation of a Discalced Carmelite Secular. You are to evangelize your ways of loving, having, and belonging in this world, and these numbers tell you what that means, at least in general terms. The language is concise and, as I said, needs to be pondered carefully. It is for you to let it speak as fully as possible, and then find ways to apply it in your lives. This sort of reflection should be done not only individually but in community—and perhaps most especially in community. The issues here are not matters of private devotion or religious practice. They have to do with the way you live your vocation in the world, with how your lives are shaped by it, and with the sort of persons you are becoming in God’s grace. They have to do with the spiritual integrity and authenticity of your vocation.
In the time remaining to me, let me offer a few remarks on the specific challenges presented by each of the evangelical counsels. How do they call you to evangelize your lives? My remarks will necessarily be limited and generalized. It is really for you, as I said—both individually and in community—to engage in this sort of reflection, making it personally concrete and applicable.
(1) The evangelical counsel of chastity. Your Constitutions here speak of loving God above all else, and others with the love God has for them. They call you to a love of God and neighbor that is free and unselfish—a tall order, but one meant to give witness in the world to an interior intimacy with God. Then follows this statement: “The promise of chastity is a commitment to Christian love in its personal and social dimensions in order to create authentic community in the world.”
With this sentence the evangelical counsel of chastity, as described in your Constitutions, moves you beyond a question of interior dispositions of the heart, and the personal acts of virtue that flow from them, to the question of your entering into and helping to create and sustain true community in the world. But what is your experience of community? And what sort of vision or understanding of community motivates you in seeking it? What do you want from it? What are you willing to put into it?