Refrain:
We hold the death of the Lord deep in
our hearts.
(BB
424) Living, now we remain with Jesus
the Lord.
1. Once we were people afraid, lost in the
night.
Then by your cross we were saved;
dead became
living, life from your giving.
2. Something which we have known,
something we’ve touched,
what we have
seen with our eyes,
this we have
heard, life-giving Word.
3. He chose to give of himself, became our
bread.
Broken that we
might live.
Love beyond love, pain for our pain.
4. We are the presence of God; this is our
call.
Now to become bread and wine:
food for the
hungry, life for the weary.
For to live with the
Lord, we must die with the Lord.
THEME: “The evil
twin” of celibate chastity: indifference.
306.
God, who has loved us first, has given us the charism
of celibate chastity and calls us to open our hearts in love to Him and to all
people. In response to His call, we freely dedicate ourselves to God in order
to promote His Kingdom with the total strength of our love. Through celibate
chastity we wish to follow Christ, to build our community in brotherly love,
and to increase our apostolic availability.
307.
Through temporary and perpetual profession we oblige ourselves by vow to live
consecrated chastity, in which we forego marriage for the sake of the Kingdom,
and observe perfect continence, so that we can grow in our commitment to God
and in self-giving service to those with whom we live and to whom we are sent.
309.
Consecrated chastity is more easily lived where there is found in the community
true charity, extended to all, and binding all together.
310.
Consecrated chastity, lived in faithfulness and joy, is a sign which witnesses
to God’s love for all and foreshadows the union of all people in the
world to come. The love of God in us gives us the strength to mature in this
state of life. (SDS Const.)
Tonight
we continue our Lenten reflections by concentrating on celibate chastity and
its evil twin; indifference. Let me be clear from the very start that these
reflections are aimed at those who are right now seriously trying to live this
vow–to those who are actually using these years of temporary profession
as they are intended, by living the vows with intense fidelity so they can
discern whether this is the life to which God is calling them. For it is
precisely these zealous religious, not the lax and unobservant, who are most at
risk from celibacy’s evil twin. The unobservant lack
seriousness and integrity. Their’s is
another problem altogether.
It is easy to know whether we are
living the demands of this vow, at least on one level, the level of outward
behavior . . . if we are celibate, i.e., not married or having sex with anyone;
if we are continent, refraining from dating and masturba-tion;
if we are chaste: avoiding pornography and obsessive sexual fantasies. (None of
this is easy.) But it is quite possible that such a religious could fool
himself into thinking that now he is really living the vow, because now he is
not doing any of the forbidden things. For such a religious, this vow of
celibacy is something external and primarily negative. And often he manages to
avoid the things he must by distancing himself from his true self and from
others. Here is where the danger lies.
For as our
Constitutions insist, celibate chastity is not
about avoiding things. It is about loving.
Our Salvatorian life
challenges us to find new ways to love, so as to build up God’s Kingdom.
Those who maintain their celibate chastity by building walls between themselves
and others, by distancing themselves from their true selves and from others,
are actually not living chastity at all. They are possessed by its evil twin;
indifference. Such religious are cut off. They really do not love anyone. They
have “no strong feelings.” And so they are not really troubled by
attractions or attachments. It is as if they have taken the vow not to love;
not to get close to anyone; not to care, as if somehow this is what God really
wanted. But this is just the opposite of what God wants and what religious life
demands.
But from the outside indifference and
celibate chastity can look so much the same. And of the two, indifference is
much safer. You stay out of trouble. Your actions cannot be misinterpreted. You
are less tempted. Yes, that is all true. But also, you are dead, dragging along
without passion or intensity. And however successful you may be in maintaining
your bachelorhood through indifference, in the end you will never be happy because
you will never really be connected with other people. And worse, you will be
setting yourself up to love all the wrong things to fill your loneliness:
power, money, food and drink, degrees, accomplishments.
But how can you tell? How can you see
whether inside you harbor celibate love or its evil twin, indifference? You
might begin by asking yourself; Do I really care? What, or who do I really care about? How much
do I care about them? Enough to risk what? What am I
seeking in my life activities? Am I really happy?
Only the person who is in love is happy
even when he is suffering, because he is suffering for the one he loves. The
religious who does not love cannot really endure suffering. And if he does, he
is merely a Stoic, and not a Christian at all. For
only love can transform suffering into grace. So as the disciple whom Jesus
loved has written, “Children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in
deed and in truth.”
By Fr. Dan, SDS