Asceticism and the Replacement Talk

Consumerism gives us a very sorry substitute for God. One of the things I’ll always remember is a bumper sticker on a Rolls-Royce.  (Now who would put a bumper sticker on a Rolls-Royce?) But it said, “He who dies with the best toys wins.” Isn’t that pathetic?  That is just pathetic. He who dies with the best toys wins. No! He can be buried with is Rolls-Royce if he wants. But it’s this addictive pattern which we have entered into that we have to get the best and the most  and the most recent of everything. Of course, I felt very guilty with [?]. Sitting at my desk, surrounded by Apple products. [Laughter]

But what we’re called to as Christians is a life of self-denial. And it’s a life of self-denial ultimately for the sake of the other. Is there any greater than ascetic than a young mother, a new mother, who has to get up at all hours, night or day, to feed the child, change the diapers, that’s asceticism. It’s true self-giving in love. All real asceticism is self-giving in love. It’s not about beating yourself up, or about beating yourself with chains and all that kind of medieval [?] stuff. It’s about the living self-offering of oneself, for the sake of the love of the other. What is it when you’re working 12 hours a day to support your family? Isn’t that an offering, a self-offering of love? Or 8 hours a day or whatever it is? What is the asceticism we’re called to? It is also an asceticism of responsibility. It’s taking responsibility for other people. Taking responsibility for their lives. It’s taking responsibility for the environment around us, to use the resources in a responsible way. It’s living according to our conscience before God.

If we could only live according to our conscience, the fathers say, we would easily obtain salvation. Because what is our conscience but the intuitive wisdom of God given to us? And so that asceticism to which we’re called has to make us question, you know, how we use the resources that have been given to us. Because God has made us stewards of our resources. To some he has given five talents, to some he has given one. Each one is called to be a steward of the resources that he or she has been given. And there’s no shame in having five talents and there’s no shame in having one, because all of us are equal before God. But to each one of us God has given different responsibilities. How are we going to use them? The holy fathers define our fallenness, our brokenness, as the descent into egocentrism.  It’s the very essence of the Fall. It’s the loss of consciousness so that we become completely self-conscious. So that we become completely focused on ourselves instead of on God, and instead of on the other. Our spiritual task, of course, is to overcome that egocentrism, to overcome that focus on ourselves, and focus on God and the other in God. So the way of repentance is the way of healing for us. How do we heal our society?

I firmly believe that it is the responsibility that has been given to us by Christ to stand up for those who are abused, to stand up for those who are hurt, to stand up for the poor, to give with generosity, to take care of all our brothers and sisters, no matter who they are, who are our neighbor,  and to speak out against injustice and to speak out against that which destroys people’s lives. There’s a very scary thing that happened recently at one of our seminaries. One of the students wrote an essay for a blog, which said “well, if the government says that things are legal and are moral, why doesn’t the Church follow? Why does the Church have to have a different standard of morality? Why doesn’t the Church support the Government’s morality?” This is a critical thing for us, especially right now, when you look at abortion, when you look at gay marriage, when you look at all of these other things. When we [confess?] the Church, are we going to just go with the flow, and as the government not only legalizes but normalizes all of these things, are we going to go along with it? These are not…We don’t say these things are sins because it says so in a book someplace. These are sins, these are sinful things because they destroy people’s lives. And they depersonalize and they dehumanize us. Because what we were created for in the beginning is to live in intuitive synergy, in intuitive communion with God, and when we enter into a sinful state of being, what we’re doing is we’re living in a way in which we are cutting off our consciousness of God. We’re saying, “Go away.”

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