Catholics as ‘Strangers’
More than a few passages in the Bible can cause Catholics a bit of a shiver. Take, for instance, “when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth.” ((Lk 18:8). Or, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Mt 10:34). Then there is this, “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it far from thee.” (Mt 5:30). Amongst all these, one perplexes more than the rest, “I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims.” (I Pet 2). Of course, faux biblical experts will take their scythes of Higher Criticism and reduce these divine passages to a mound of husks. These bien pensant render the pages of Holy Writ a theological dust bowl. True devotion to the Word of God first proclaims that it is true. Then seeks its meaning from the Church: the millennial Tradition of the Church Fathers and Doctors, as well as her Sacred Liturgy. These are wellsprings that yield riches truly Divine, refreshing and enlivening the souls of men.
Perhaps the epistle of St. Peter should occupy our attention for a moment. His salutation gives many modern Catholics pause.
He addresses us as “strangers”? “Strangers”? The first Pope’s description of us is stamped with the fire of the Holy Spirit, and there can be no doubt as to its veracity. It can only be understood by properly grasping the world in which we find ourselves. That world ought to be “strange” to us, not “strange” in the sense of wicked, but “strange” in the sense of foreign, unfamiliar, far beneath our aspirations. Indeed, this world, as lovely as our good God has created it, is not our home, not where we should be, not where we belong. Each of us has been created for joys far deeper, far higher, far more infinite. Chesterton expressed it perfectly: “For the Catholic, it is a fundamental dogma of the Faith, that all human beings without exception whatever, were especially made, were shaped and pointed like shining arrows, for the end of hitting the mark of Beatific bliss.” Though we accept our fate as dwelling in this ‘valley of tears’, it is not the state for which we created. It is ectopic, a disjunction of Original sin.
It is within this ontological ‘strangeness’ that innocence finds its home. It stands as a principal trait of the Catholic striving for sanctity. It would be a betrayal of its nobility if it were misunderstood as a callow naiveté. Innocence is not a shrinking embarrassment before evil, nor a childish ignorance of all things wicked. It is not a cartoon; it is a heroic canvas. Its splendor lies in its all-consuming love of the good, making sin something uninteresting, unworthy of attention. O yes, innocence knows wickedness well, but loves goodness more. It avoids sin not out of Puritanical stiffness, but from an extravagance born of having seen the face of the Crucified Savior. It feels ‘strange’ in the presence of sin because it is something so alien to the longings of its heart.
Yes, for Catholics this world is indeed “strange”, or should be. It is this mystery to which St. Augustine gives the memorable words on the very first page of the Confessions: “Thou has made our hearts, O God, and our hearts shall not rest till they rest in Thee.” Every good and blessed delight that God showers upon us in this life is only a morsel of what awaits us in the ecstasies of Heaven. C. S. Lewis’ words, like a golden key, unlocks the mystery:
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust them; it is not in them, but only comes through them. And what comes through them is longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of the past, are good images of what we what we really desire, but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself: They are only the scent of the flower we have not found, news from a country we have never yet visited.
So it is that Holy Church begs her children to acts of mortification. To keep our eyes on that which befits our dignity, not on the fleeting flashes of this world’s delights. Not that we should not love these created things, but we love them with an ordered love, all ordered to God. No one illustrates this more than St. Francis of Assisi, whom Chesterton said, “taught (the world) how to enjoy enjoyment.” If not for consistent bodily penance man will fall in love with shadows, leaving the glorious Reality behind. So stands the plight of Modern Man – to become infatuated with shadows, which is madness. Chesterton once more: “Catholicism is sanity preached to a planet of lunatics.”
The ‘pilgrim’ is an appellation less opaque. We poor banished children of Eve suffer an exile from which we desire relief, always searching for the place where we truly belong. How else to describe our mission in this world? We are on an adventurous search for a perfect happiness not be found here. We are nomads desperately hunting for the ‘pearl of great price’. Pilgrims are on their way to a prized destination. We rest occasionally, but only as a pause as we necessarily make our way forward. St. Thomas rightly defines man as homo viator (man on the way). The journey may be strewn with obstacles, but the pilgrim tackles them, then, moves steadily forward. In W.H. Auden’s poetry, “stumbling forward, rejoicing.” No room for sentimentality here, only the blazing truth of the Church. Urgency beckons. There is a place where we must be; no tarrying; no self-pity at setbacks; no falling back due the severities of the climb. Only joy that we are on our way, that God has marked out for us the way, and that His graces guarantee our final arrival home. Herein lies the reversal of Leo Strauss’ melancholic description of modern man’s dilemma: “the joyless pursuit of joy.”
Modern Man has made the world, not the place through which we pass, but the place beyond which there is nothing to pass towards. He has buried himself in a tomb of his own doing, and makes merry of his entombment. This devoted immanentism of Modern Man has even breached the walls of Holy Church. Rare is the mandate from her pulpits of ‘saving one’s soul’, but to ‘saving the environment’. Such sacerdotal myopia does not grasp that the environment is indeed sinfully wasted, but only because man has first wasted his soul. Unusual are the sermons enjoining us to the love of the Cross, instead, the cheery duty of assisting others to be at ease with their sins. The Savior bequeathed to His Holy Church only one mission, to carry us to heaven. It is salvific, not sociological. All other temporal concerns, sub aeternitatis, are only mirages fashioned in the laboratories of Hell.
Lamentably, not a few voices in the Church preach this humanitarian message, rather than a redemptive one. Lacking the sparks of transcendence, their message cheats man and makes him a spiritual dwarf. He is consigned to the sentence of never knowing the thrice Holy God, and, and therefore, never knowing himself. These deracinated members of the First Estate would miniaturize Christ to fit the demands of the zeitgeist. They are pleased to ban the crystalline teachings of the Faith for a gruel of Neo- Marxist analysis and post- Modern rubbish. Isn’t this feeding the flock ‘scorpions’ when they crave bread? Aurel Kolnia, distinguished Hungarian political philosopher, dramatically diagnosed this malady when he wrote: ‘The worshipers of Baal professed a more genuine religion than many present adherents of a vague and threadbare religion soaked in humanitarianism.” Even in places where Catholics enjoy the blessing of spotty Catholic truth, it is still bedeviled by blinkered clerics who fervently “kneel before the world”, in the evocative phrase of Jacques Maritain. With toothy good cheer they proffer a ’happy talk’ Catholicism. No ‘scorpions’, perhaps, but certainly bubble gum instead of bread. Where is the majestic Catholicism that meets the challenge of Victor Hugo, who, with great gravitas, rightly told of man able to make of his soul a “sewer or a sanctuary.” Where is the summoning “Athanasius contra mundum!”?
Peter’s salutation to all of us as “strangers and pilgrims” perfectly embraces our vocation on earth. Unless we work each day to make of ourselves strangers in this strange exile, then we shall ever be strangers to Heaven.
May 2020
