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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
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My God -- Forgetting Material Stupor

by Broderick Barker

Back in college, I met a former student who was known for starting statements with, "Boy, if we weren't Catholic, we could..."-- insert debauchery here. I presume he was at least half-joking, but something about the notion offended me. Looking back from the vantage point of a few years, I think it was the idea that the Faith was something entirely extrinsic, a set of rules we had to submit to, contrary to our heart's desires. That it did not entail, as it should, an interior transformation, but merely a more perfect habit of obedience. (Of course, perfect obedience would mean obeying Paul's command to "put on Christ," but that's another point.)

I was offended because he had spoken what I kept silent in my own heart, and I was ashamed. I found-- I find-- that besides the occasional wishes for forbidden pleasures, I also possess the habit they spring from-- regarding the Faith as extrinsic, and being satisfied with obedience to the most extrinsic strictures it imposes.

There is a passage from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer that I have never forgotten, a description of the main character's uncle: "Uncle Jules is the only man I know whose victory in the world is total and unqualified. He has made a great deal of money, he has a great many friends, he was Rex of Mardi Gras, he gives freely of himself and his money. He is an exemplary Catholic, but it is hard to know why he takes the trouble. For the world he lives in, the City of Man, is so pleasant that the City of God must hold little in store for him. ...No shadow ever crosses his face, except when someone raises the subject of last year's Tulane-LSU game.

I remember this passage because there is recognition in it, recognition of the life I would like to have. Ah, to be rich and generous and popular and at ease with my place in the world, and a good churchman on top of it all. But I also remember the chill that comes from that suggestion, "the City of God must hold little in store for him." The words call up the unease I feel when I read in St. Paul, "My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better," and in John's Gospel, "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

I don't desire to depart. I don't hate my life. I like my life-- my wife and children, my family and friends, my house, my job, my car, and on and on. I like my connection to it, the pleasure I take from good company, from eating and drinking well, from resting comfortably in my small world. I sometimes joke with my friends that the reason my life is so good is that God knows my faith is weak, my connection to Him tenuous, and that any real test would send me skittering away from Him like a dry leaf in the wind. But though I can tell myself it's silly, since all that I have has been given to me, I cling to what I've got as if it's all there is.

In his homilies, Father Louis at Our Lady of The Rosary in Little Italy is fond of naming the world, the flesh, and the devil as the three principal obstacles standing between us and sanctity. I have some experience struggling with the flesh and the devil, but the goods of this world still look good to me, so good that I all but forget the spiritual aspect of life. So good that I think of life having a spiritual aspect, as opposed to thinking of the spiritual life as the preeminent life, the only one that matters in the end. This is the temptation of the world-- to distract us from death.

I have taken to turning the water to cold at the end of my shower each morning and saying three Hail Mary's as my flesh suffers, if only a little. I started the practice last Lent, as a simple mortification, but now I am attaching a further significance to it. I am hoping that this exterior tickle of discomfort will be a reminder that all is not well within, no matter how satisfied I feel. I am hoping that the shock of cold will rouse me from my God-forgetting material stupor, and remind me to offer Him, along with this brief suffering, my entire day.

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