"And Treasured" -- Thoughts on virtue, holiness and grace

Over the past week we've had four snow days from work, which means I haven't been to my office in a week now! Coincidentally, none of the four snow days have actually been prompted by snow -- last week's trio of days off were caused by the polar vortex and today's by a solid  half inch of ice.


Inclement weather aside, the unexpected time home has been a very welcome and well timed gift for our family. Last Wednesday was John Paul's third birthday and I was able to spend the arctic triduum with the JP's birthday right in the middle.

During our time together, we've been working our way through A.A. Milne's incredibly delightful Winnie the Pooh books. The delightful prose and charming characters have colored what has been a welcome mid-winter staycation of sorts. We've also said about 30 Masses and laid roughly 3,500 miles of wooden train track.

The absolute highlight -- and perhaps the all-time highlight of my brief career of fatherhood to date -- came over lunch today. We were reading a book and something John Paul did smote my heart so I told him I had a secret to share. So we leaned over to each other and I whispered: "John Paul: you are so very loved."

He sat back and got a big smile and said, "...and treasured."

[Cue the waterworks. First me. Then Stephanie. Then me a whole bunch more.]

 Within the first day or two after JP was born and came home -- my heart having been completely enraptured -- I asked myself: what are the handful of things that I want my son to know in the very core of his being? Ever since then, every night when I tuck him in I whisper in his ear. "John Paul, you are so very loved. You are treasured. And you are safe." 

Do you remember that scene in Downton Abbey when Matthew Crawley is driving home after the birth of his child? And the world is just perfect? The sun is shining, the grass is green, his marriage and family are perfect? [Have you watched Downton Abbey? If not, let me completely spoil it for you.] And then his car crashes and he dies?

Well, let me just say: when JP said 'and treasured' I looked around to make sure death wasn't lurking.

After that, beaming with joy and fulfillment, I wrapped up lunch and trotted upstairs to put in a few hours of work while the boys were napping.

I used to think I understood St. Paul's frustrated lament about knowing what he ought to do, willing what he ought to do and then, to his great consternation, finding that he in fact had done quite the opposite.

"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." 

-- Romans 7:15

The hard thing about virtue is that it's easy to be 'virtuous' when it's easy, but it's very hard to be virtuous when it's hard. I put the first 'virtuous' in quotes because that sort of virtue begs the question: is it really virtue if it's only present when it's easy. Is not the test of virtue the harder chance?

Virtus tentamine gaudet is the motto of our alma mater, Hillsdale College. It roughly translates 'virtue rejoices in the struggle'. Virtus is where we get our word for virtue, but it most elementally means 'manliness'. 

I think that I've written previously about our family motto: 'In all things may I choose joy, love, peace, sacrifice and Christ.' One of my goals this year is to not suck quite as badly at living it out with some consistency. 

This evening after dinner things went side ways on us. I did the dishes. Stephanie cleaned the bathroom. The boys played peacefully (enough) and we all skittered down a luge track of relative ease toward bedtime with only slight bounces and bumps off the side rails. A confused interchange between the toddler with the puppy cart and the slightly older toddler with the red radio flyer cart who wanted him to go in a different direction led to one of them sobbing, then the other one sobbing, then carts being thrown, then parents intervening, then tantrums, then discord, then gloom. Three of us were very crabby for the next half of an hour. JP whined. I sulked. Stephanie went about business with a professional disinterestedness. James -- ever the cheerful people-pleaser -- smiled and jabbered about backhoes and the Little Blue Truck and Co.

Where was the choosing of joy, peace, or sacrifice? Where was the 'putting on of Christ'? Virtue and manliness pulled a St. Paul and fled from the struggle. 

Praise God for His grace -- we managed to make an about face -- and got into jammies and had some snuggles, family prayers and book time before we toddled up to bed. 

In a meditation on one of the daily readings last week, the author made the point that the Israelites journey in the desert needn't have lasted four decades. It's a pretty quick jaunt from Egypt over to Israel, even if you are making it on foot or on a donkey. The only reason that it took so long was that the Israelites refused to learn the lesson God had in store for them. He was endeavoring to make them His people and for them to allow Him to be their God. To enter into a relationship of trust, however means that both parties need to learn trust.

Some buddies of mine are in the midst of doing an intense ascetical program called Exodus 90, in which you step back from popular culture, social media and almost all of life's more frivolous endeavors and lean on the Holy Spirit for a time of fasting, penance and (hopefully) deep conversion. One of them is leading a small group and said that his guys were nearing the turning point -- the point where participants either give up or learn what it's really about, viz. learning to have a real faith in God and to trust in His power to accomplish great things in us -- first and foremost the softening and transforming of our hard hearts. 

Faith, after all, is a supernatural virtue -- and virtue is proved in the struggle. The beauty of the supernatural virtues (Faith, Hope and Love) is that God is the muscle behind them. They are gifts given to us. Our part is simply to lean into them and abandon ourselves to His provident love.

We cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We cannot just put in the work. We cannot will our way to excellence, or holiness, or joy, or peace, or fruitful sacrifice. In Christ alone our hope is found.

"Jesus said to them, 'Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished, saying, 'Who then can be saved?' But Jesus looked at them and said to them, "with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'"

-- Matthew 19:24-26

My lesson today is that I don't need to be scrupulous and feel like a complete fraud because I gave in to the stress of the moment this evening -- the miracle of God's grace is that I'm not a selfish turd ALL of the time! But He also used my inconsistency to open my eyes to the reality that the crazy beautiful highlight earlier today wasn't my doing either. God is so incredibly good and so incredibly faithful. 

Glory be.