Lay folks are getting more and more into Carmelite theology. And that is a great thing. Carmelite theology is all about detaching from creatures in order to attach to the Creator. For a Carmelite priest like St. John of the Cross, this was ascetically difficult but strategically simple: Detaching from creatures will automatically make a soul in grace cling more closely to the Creator. Thus, a monk can live alone with The Alone.
What Eastern Rite Christians call askesis is to detach from all creatures (people, food, pets, comforts, pleasures, locations) in order to go deeper into the prayer life. Some of the greatest authors on this topic of ascetical theology include the Desert Fathers. Every old-school canonized saint was a master of the ascetical life, even if they were married saints. But how can married people do this? How can those in family life completely detach from creaturely affections when affection is inherently part of family life?
I came up with three tips on how to detach from people while still loving people. These are not exhaustive. Nor are they meant to replace the great spiritual writers for lay people like St. Francis De Sales in great books like Introduction to the Devout Life. But here’s a few of my weak insights:
1) First Commandment First The Ten Commandments were written on two tablets by the finger of God when given to Moses on Sinai. But these were not divided into five commandments and five commandments as most people think. Rather, the first tablet had the first three commandments (all in regards to love of God) and the second tablet had the next seven commandments (all in regards to love of man.) Thus, when a first-century canon lawyer asked Christ the most important commandment, He summarized both tablets thus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”—Mt 22:37-40.
The above must be your rule of life, even if you’re in family life. While you are not obliged to evangelize at every moment, you may never deny the traditional Catholic Faith in order to make peace with a neighbor, avoid conflict with a spouse or even maintain a paycheck at work. We all want to be kind and pastoral (and we should certainly strive for both) but if ever there were to befall us an unfortunate situation where it would seem we had to choose between love of God and love of man or between the First Great Commandment and the Second Great Commandment, we must put God even before our best friend or spouse. Our Lord Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”—Mt 10:34-35.
(My friend Mark runs a blog by that very name, Non Veni Pacem, meaning “I have not come to bring peace.” It’s a great site I would encourage you to read daily, as they’re always short posts.)
2) Steadfast Love in the Face of Fickleness Many a beginning Protestant blogger likes to show he knows the Old Testament Hebrew word for love, Hesed, חֵסֵד, means “steadfast love and kindness.” And I’m not against that. It’s actually a good translation. (I just want to admit up front I’m not doing any astonishing linguistic work here in loving that word.) In fact, hesed also means goodness, kindness, God’s own lovingkindness, mercy, loyalty, faithfulness. It’s specifically God’s trait. We Christians are called not only to imitate it, but reflect it via transformation into love.
Now, let’s consider another Old Testament trait of man: Fickleness. The prophet Jeremiah writes, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”—Jer 17:9. The word there for deceitful is עָקֹב (aqob) also meaning insidious, steep or hilly, crooked, fraudulent and polluted.
So, not only our enemies, but even our friends and family are frequently going to act crooked and unpredictable. To reflect God’s love, you don’t have to flee like a Carmelite. (Some of you are called to do that, yes.) But most people called to family life can begin to be transformed deeper into God’s own Trinitarian mystery of supernatural charity by being that steadfast love and kindness in the face of loved ones who act with fickleness, for “the human heart is tortuous above all else.”
I’m not saying to be a doormat in front of a narcissist. I’ve written on this site and podcasted a lot about boundaries. But in the face of normal human weakness (and good fraternal correction aside) you can choose to be steadfast love in the face of human fickleness. Because this is how God loves us, this lifestyle makes us cling more closely to God than creatures. Or to put it in the dark Irish way, you can never be disappointed in people if you have no expectations!
3) No Normal Life We are all too taken into the romance of what the suffering in life should look like. We see stories on social media of someone coming closer to Christ through physical suffering (which is an awesome thing) or we read stories of saints who sang while being martyred (which is an awesome thing, too.) But then our own suffering seems to be much more flat, embarrassing or less grace-filled.
First of all, remember that the stories of triumph that people put on social media (where they gain faith through suffering) usually only show the more romantic parts of the suffering. They don’t reveal the more embarrassing nights of, say, colon cancer, that led to a deeper faith in God.
Also, we are frequently taken by the sufferings of Padre Pio. But then we might dare to think something as silly as “Even the stigmata would be more bearable than my husband!” The fact is: If you look closely at the life of Padre Pio, he frequently said the shame in his life hurt more than the stigmata. What shame? Probably the shame of feeling he wasn’t worthy to carry the wounds of Christ and St. Francis. Or perhaps the shame of being shunned by at least one Pope and many bishops, Cardinals and priests. Those things really hurt him.
There’s no normal life. When you realize God has sent (or at least permitted) the current sufferings of your life (including the shame you wish to speak to no one but a confessor about) you can then begin to enter into a life of abandonment to Divine Providence. This doesn’t mean a life of quietism (thinking about God while doing nothing) but it does mean that you realize God Alone is in control of your life more than your spouse or children or boss.
And when you detach from the expectations of a normal life and a normal job and the judgments of a “non-normal spouse” or the opinions of “non-normal kids,” then you can attach exclusively to the love of the Blessed Trinity. Ironically, you’re then able to love even better those from whom you have started to detach.
All my articles and pods are free for everyone. You can donate to my future hermitage here. The location is still unknown to me. We’ll see which doors God opens.