Good Mornin Digital Neighbors! Happy Tuesday ADD Irregulars, WSN Contributor & Curators, Wanderers & Lurkers across Locals. Yesterday's post on Momma Peggy prompted me to some further thoughts and prayers on piety & holiness. The two are related but not identical and I think the confusion of the two often leaves people with a very disjointed view of holiness which we should all be striving to for as Disciples of Christ if you happen to be one.
PIETY
Religious, reverent, mindful, an awareness of the Divine & Luminous presence & Persons that are with us always and carrying about yourself an evident composure because of that awareness. It is easier to see a pious person than to accurate describe one. Genuine piety is gold. And I have met many people who are about as authentic in their piety as I can gauge. There is a natural politeness and charity about them than points us back to the innocence we had as children's before the world got its hooks into us. They are innocent but not naïve. Piety scoffers should note that and the worst of scoffers will try to bait the Pious to the breaking point. Those are some the people I like to insult the most for their inability to just leave others alone. You don't have to understand piety, but you you can show some respect for it.
Genuine piety, and give people the benefit of the doubt when pondering them, receives my respect and I do my best to not scandalize them by my general lack of piety. I tend to model more piety when I celebrate Mass and the other Sacraments, but I am still who I am and do my best not to be false or phony about it. I do my best to exercise pious tact when I am around unfamiliar people, children and the elderly so that my language and actions do not cause them scandal or confusion. I am still me, the witty smart-@ss I can't escape, but I can be tactful. I know some of you may find that hard to believe, I don't blame you. Genuine piety is always linked to prayer & service.
FALSE PIETY
False piety tends to go for all the trappings of the pious but nothing beyond the show that takes place in life & worship. The Frauds will look as holy as can be but beyond their private relationship with God the rest of us are more of an obstacle, sources of shame and sinners to be avoided. It is what the Master found so frustrating about the Scribes & Pharisees. Many of them were about public piety and religiosity that viewed most of their neighbors as contemplable and avoidable. False piety gets caught up in the show of faith and the private relationship with God, neighbors tend to be inconsequential.
HOLINESS
Related to piety and often nourished by authentic piety, but not dependent on piety to be real. Holiness is the calling of every Disciple of the Master and the Children of the Covenant with Abraham. There is some disagreement among the Disciples if works make us holy or not, Catholics, Orthodox and some Protestant tend to think that works allow us to participate in holiness, others not so much. It is the divide on the question of human nature - are we fundamentally good or so profoundly broken that we forfeited that goodness and it is lost to us only to be imputed by the singular action of Christ.
I believe humanity is crated good, but profoundly broken. The operation of grace is to restore that original holiness and wholeness. The Master is the model and surgeon to help us do that. We cannot achieve holiness without Him, but we do possess the ability to make it our own and an offering back to Him and the rest of the Divine Persons. We are much more than filth covered by pleasing grace that makes us acceptable to God, we are children in the process of spiritual adoption and mature transformation.
The distilled Christian path of holiness are the Works of Mercy. I'll write more on this tomorrow but here are the Corporal Works of Mercy as revealed in the Gospel of Matthew and found throughout the Jewish Scriptures in their exhortation to be like the God of the Covenant. The Spiritual Works of Mercy are revealed in scripture as well but take a little more time to distill and implement.
CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY
Feed the hungry
Give drink to the thirsty
Clothe the naked
Shelter the homeless
Visit the sick
Visit the imprisoned
Bury the dead
SPIRITUAL WORKS OF MERCY
Counsel the doubtful
Instruct the ignorant
Admonish sinners
Comfort the afflicted
Forgive offenses
Bear wrongs patiently
Pray for the living and the dead
The Works should flow from worship and authentic piety, but the works can often be there in the absence of piety. They are not pious dependent but meant to be the foundation on which piety can rest with authenticity. Piety without works is performative, works with piety is genuine but in need of continued renewal and reform.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
