Yin, Yang, and the Cross

Why can't Charismatics and Contemplatives be friends?

I went on two retreats in preparation for Easter this year. The two couldn't be more different, yet there is a union between them.

Yin

One was a silent retreat at a monastery. I've been going to the same place on an annual or semiannual basis for several years, and I've developed a friendship with the Guestmaster there. I make a general confession to him each time, so he knows a lot about me.

For those who don't know, a general confession is a confession of all the sins of your life, back to your earliest memories. A "regular" confession can be rather quick, and it is good for confessing things that are quite cut and dry, like "I drank to the point of forgetfulness" or "I stole $1500 from my company," things that you are absolutely positive that you did, as soon as you did them. It's harder to confess more amorphous sins, which occur slowly over days or weeks, like habitual laziness or pride. This is where general confessions shine because you can walk through the case very granularly, bare yourself, and be healed of deeper underlying currents of sins. It does take many hours of preparation, however, and over an hour to confess, hence scheduling a retreat for the purpose.

This retreat was somber and cleansing. Yet it left me in a state of disquiet. God made clear to me that this sort of examination, though worthwhile, was not what I really needed. It was fundamentally a matter of scrubbing my spiritual life off and taking it to pieces to examine any flaws and to re-oil the mechanisms. And indeed, I run it based on Part V of St. Francis de Sales Introduction to the Devout Life, from which I get the analogy. But if a car doesn't have a drive train, it doesn't much matter how well cared for the engine is. So, too, with my spiritual life. It didn't need examination and taking to pieces. It needed direction, encouragement, enlightenment, and action.

Thus the second retreat.

Yang

This one was a Christian Men's Weekend at a retreat center close to my family home. My father invited me on it, and I'm so glad I accepted. It was the opposite of silent. There were nearly 100 men there, and we sang. Loudly and often. The songs were many of my lullabies, for my parents have been involved at this retreat center since before I was born. You remember those first songs, and they have a massive impact on you. Hearing them again triggers something in you, a feeling of safety and calm, that makes everything clear and washes away the noise of the world outside.

The youngest retreatant was 17 and the oldest was 87, and there was everything in the middle too. I think it was my first time being exposed to the entire male lifecycle in the same place, united for the same purpose. There were software guys and insurance agents, teachers and construction workers, salesmen and financiers, drug rehab clinicians and cannabis cultivators. There were fathers and sons, husbands and widowers, priests and seminarians. And yet all were one in Christ Jesus. Being in that group made me relax in a way that I didn't know I needed. I didn't need to go it alone. I didn't need to figure it all out myself. We could support each other, and help each other to shake off the dust of the world outside.

It was perhaps the friendliest group I have ever been in. Many of the men knew each other already, but I was welcomed in as one of them immediately. There were no phones, so we could see each other. Conversation was so easy, and these men would share deep and intimate pains of their lives at the drop of a hat. They would also compliment frequently over the smallest things, and it was clear that they meant it. The genuine love they had for each other and for me shone from their faces, and enlightened the darkness of the world outside.

All of this was only possible because there was a guard dog in the form of the general spiritual director of the retreat center, who nips any disease that would invade the community, and prevent the sharing, in the bud. He is himself a funny man. Like the men there, he is very salt of the earth. He speaks very simply, so simply that for many years, I looked down my nose at him. Not so now. Sure, he spoke of the basics. But those basics mean so much more now. They pierce the soul and convict it, and wash over it and make it new. He was full of pithy aphorisms-one might almost call them kitsch-but they were said sincerely, and with great fervor. The fervor itself was contagious, rooting back into me and restoring what had been burned away by the acid of the world outside.

For many years, my pride prevented me from accepting such charismatic expressions of Catholicism, seeing all of these good things as cringe, unserious, saccharine. But their fervent and simple rejoicing completed something in me, and showed me that I was the unserious one. These humble things were barred from me because my faith was lacking, and I was the only one suffering for it.

The Cross

I said that these two retreats had a union to them, and so they do. As I described them, you were probably drawn towards one or the other. So was I. But having either one of them without the other would lead to a desiccated spiritual life. Fervent examinations and confessions lead to a pristine engine that lacks the fuel and oil, but rejoicing without examination leads to rot as the structure of the spiritual life degrades.

Some of us, like myself, tend towards the contemplative, the ascetical, and the penitential. We need to be dragged, after a time, towards the bubbling joy of the Gospel, lest we choke on our own seriousness. Others, like my girlfriend, are naturally enthusiastic. They attempt to live a holy life, but can jump into things very quickly, and completely miss the cross that God puts before them in favor of a tree rooted in the ground.¹ These types must be fed more solid and sobering food, but without ruining their more delicate digestions.

The two styles, therefore, can be compared to the standing beam and the crossbeam of the Cross. The two appear to be contrary to one another, aimed in opposite directions and fulfilling opposing purposes: the standing beam elevates the condemned and separates him from his audience while establishing the force that leads to his suffering and eventual death; meanwhile, the crossbeam spreads the victim to make the suffering more visible and clearly displayed to onlookers. Yet when united together they represent more than barbaric form of punishment. In dying on the cross, Christ baptized the source of His suffering, as He baptized the union of marriage, the sharing of meals, and even baptism itself, to signify something far greater: the source of our salvation. ²

Whichever side you are congenitally drawn towards, you must, under the guidance of your director, deny yourself and feed your opposite side so that you may develop a well rounded path in pursuit of the Salvation which Christ's sacrifice promises us.

Take up your Cross, your WHOLE Cross, with our Blessed Lord this Holy Week, and follow Him.

1. She made this analogy for herself. Yes, I love her very much. No, you can't have her.

2. In fact, one is more important, but which one changes depending on who is asking, and it is almost certainly the one that the asker is disinclined towards, unless the asker has a heroic level of self-knowledge. I am reminded of the Screwtapian aphorism "the game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers when there is a flood" (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter XXV) and also of the Roman Law "a man cannot be judge in his own cause." But who dares to assume the care of souls and judge their needs? We can only proceed falteringly, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who is the true Director of Souls.