IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Today we no longer understand the value and power of ritual. This is more than an individual failing. It’s the cultural air we breathe. In the words of Robert L. Moore, we’ve gone “ritually tone-deaf.”  The effects of this can be seen everywhere: Allow me two examples:
First, we see this today in the failure by so many couples to grasp the need to formalize their relationship in a ceremony of marriage. They make a private commitment to live together but feel no need to formalize this before a civil authority or inside a church. Their belief is that their love and private commitment to each other is all that’s needed. What does a formal ceremony or a church blessing add to that commitment? The prevalent feeling is that a formal ceremony, ideally even in a church, is nice as a celebration and as something to please others, but, beyond that, it adds little or nothing in terms of anything important. What does ritual contribute to actual life?
We see this same view in many current attitudes towards church-going, prayer, and the sacraments. What’s the value of participating in something when seemingly our hearts aren’t in it? What’s the value of going to church when we feel it’s meaningless? What’s the value of praying formally when, today, our hearts are a million miles away from what our words are saying?  Further still, what’s the value in going to church or in saying prayers at those times when we feel a certain positive repugnance to what we’re doing? Indeed these questions are often expressed as an accusation: People are just going through the motions of church and prayer, parroting words that aren’t really meaningful to them, going through an empty ritual! What’s the value in that? The value is that the ritual itself can hold and sustain our hearts in something deeper than the emotions of the moment.
Matthew Crawford, in his recent book, “The World Beyond Your Head,” suggests that ritual acts positively even when our feelings are negative. His words:  “Consider as an example someone who suffers not from some ragging emotion of lust, resentment, or jealousy … but rather sadness, discontent, boredom, or annoyance. A wife, let us say, feels this way about her husband. But she observes a certain ritual: she says “I love you” upon retiring at night. She says this not as a report about her feelings – it is not sincere – but neither it is a lie. What it is is a kind of prayer. She invokes something that she values – the marital bond – and in doing so turns away from her present discontent and toward this bond, however elusive it may be as an actual experience.
It has been said that ritual (as opposed to sincerity) has “subjunctive” quality to it: one acts as if some state of affairs were true, or could be. … It relieves one of the burden of ‘authenticity’.  …  “The ritual of saying ‘I love you’ … alters somewhat the marital scene; it may not express love so much as to invoke it, by incantation. One spouse invites the other to join with her in honoring the marriage, something one could honor. It is an act of faith: in one another, but also in a third thing, which is the marriage itself.”
What Crawford highlights here is precisely, “a third thing,” that is, something beyond the emotions of a given moment and our faith in each other, namely, the institution of marriage itself as a ritual container, as a sacrament that can hold and sustain a relationship beyond the emotions and feelings of the moment. Marriage, as an institution, human and divine, is designed to sustain love inside of and beyond the emotional and affective fluctuations that inevitably occur inside of every intimate relationship. Marriage allows two people to continue to love each other despite boredom, irritation, anger, bitterness, wound, and, in some cases, even infidelity.  The ritual act of getting married places one inside that container.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when preaching at marriage ceremonies, would frequently give this counsel to couples: Today you are much in love and you feel that love will sustain your marriage. It wouldn’t. But marriage can sustain your love. Being ritually tone-deaf, we struggle to understand that.
The same holds true for church-going, the sacraments, and private prayer. It’s not a question of going through the motions on days when the feelings aren’t there. Rather it’s going through the ritual as an incantation, as an honoring of our relationship to God, and as an act of faith in prayer.
If we only said “I love you” when we actually felt that emotion and if we only prayed when we actually felt like it, we wouldn’t express love or pray very often. When we say “I love you” and when we do formal prayer at those times when our feelings seem to belie our words, we aren’t being hypocritical or simply going through the motions, we’re actually expressing some deeper truths.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Reflections on Life
By Father Jerome LeDoux
For the purpose of discussing, analyzing and understanding, love is broken down into types (kinds) of love and styles of loving. In his book, “The Four Loves,”C.S. Lewis speaks of the Greeks’ modes. Storge, or empathy bond that likes someone through the fondness of familiarity, such as family members in gift-love, or people bonded by chance in such a way that there is a need-love.
Storge has great potential for good or bad. Of this love we say, “It’s a thin line between love and hate,” whether through jealousy, envy or smothering, for “familiarity breeds contempt,” since familiar folks are so sensitized to each other.
Philia, or friend bond, is the strong bond that exists between people, usually equals, who share common values, interests or activities. This kind of love does not have romantic features, but it is a great foundation for romantic love between man and woman. In fact, without it, romantic love can be dangerous, relying on erotic emotions that may have an all-too-short shelf life in everyday love. Love is much more enduring if it begins with friendship, with like instead of love.
Eros is the emotional expression of sexual love, of the desire to be as close together as possible through our sense of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. Erotic love glories in and is expressed through our five senses. One who is in love cannot get enough of love’s enhancement through the five senses. Perhaps the greatest danger to us is that we will love without first liking the person we love. Again, friendship – like – is the human foundation for lasting agape.
Agape is the highest kind of love, good will, benevolence that is predicated of God and secondarily of us. This benevolence or well-wishing derives directly from the Latin bene volens, the radical theme of the song of the angels over the hills of Bethlehem Christmas morning, “Peace on earth, good will to humans.”
The way kinds or types of love are expressed in our life is further explained by styles of loving. Based on and akin to the kinds of love, styles of loving, or love styles, actually track the types of love while adding three other types. In his 1973 book, “Colours of Love,” researcher John A. Lee uses six Greek words to explain six distinct styles of loving, even assigning colors to each style: eros, red; ludus, blue; storge, yellow; pragma, green; manic, violet; agape, orange.
Naturally, just as in the case of kinds of love, descriptions of the styles of loving overlap what the Greeks had to say about love. Added to this overlap are insights arising from John Lee’s personal experiences and conversations with others about the subject of love. What we have said about the kinds of love remains true as we discuss the styles of loving. There are but a few specific additions to make.
Ludus, or ludic love (Latin ludus or game) is a playful form of love that can have a good purpose, such as people in love teasing each other, or a harmful bent, such as a man or woman playing the field and not becoming serious about anything. Pragma, pragmatic love, has a shopping list of qualities and assets desirable in a prospective partner. This, obviously, has an upside and downside.
Mania is self-explanatory, driven by possessiveness and jealousy too painful to live with and extremely destructive of any human love relationship. Minus this one, a wise blend of the other kinds and styles of loving is desirable for us.
Apart from individuals in relatively small enclaves of cynics or emotionally scarred victims of childhood/adolescent/adult physical and/or sexual abuse, all of us feel a strong attraction to love. But love is so gripping and euphoric that we must constantly choose the best blends of love. Though of spurious origin, the saying, “Love makes the world go round” is true at home, at school, at church, everywhere.
So, either consciously or subconsciously, we constantly scour our environs for the best templates of love. For instance, iconic basketball coach John Wooden said famously, “The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” (I also heard this attributed to Father Theodore Hesburgh, longtime president of Notre Dame University)
Of course, the good coach was spot on, but only 50 percent so. The other 50 percent is, “The best thing a woman can do for her children is to love their father.” We give him a pass for omitting the 50 percent that perhaps most men would. In any case, children will imitate the template of love most immediate to them at home. We can safely say that there is nothing more important in the earliest years of a child.
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, is pastor of Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

Catholic in the Countryside
GUEST COLUMN
By Bishop Paul D. Etienne
The implications of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, are beginning to sink in like a light rain, or even a drizzle. And like precipitation, this encyclical doesn’t discriminate who it’s aimed at: it has something to say to everyone. As the Holy Father made clear, “all of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.”
Yet in a particular way, Laudato Si resonates with those in rural areas, those who live and work closest to God’s glorious creation.
Pope Francis takes as a starting point the goodness of God’s creation, a truth that rural Americans who work with nature see firsthand every day. God’s masterful creation is not only good, but it works like clockwork, as “everything is connected.” (#91) This harmonious connection certainly exists in nature, but a central point of Laudato Si is that human activity has an impact – and is in turn impacted – by our natural environment. In other words, there is a fundamental link between mankind and creation. (#66)
Rural people are uniquely situated at the heart of this relationship. We deal with the raw materials of nature, just as Jesus himself did, when as a carpenter he worked “in daily contact with the matter created by God, to which he gave form by his craftsmanship.” (#98) We make our homes not in concrete jungles, but in the very fields and forests that sustain earth’s life. Our livelihoods are directly tied to the integrity of creation.
As rural people, our relationship with creation is self-evident, not obscured by degrees of separation, but noticeable in immediate and tangible ways. So if Laudato Si is a call to defend God’s creation, rural men and women need to be the front line of that defense. This is a great responsibility, but it’s also a response to God’s invitation to be stewards of his creation.
So how can Catholics in the countryside live out the teachings of this encyclical?
Fundamentally, we need to reground ourselves in the truth that creation is not something for us to exploit as we see fit, but is instead a reality with which we are called to cooperate. Humility should guide our interactions with nature and her resources. We can apply this to the industries that thrive in our rural communities, from forestry to mineral extraction. Let us ask ourselves: Are we cultivating nature, or dominating it into submission? Are the choices we make made with the wellbeing of the planet and our neighbors — near and far — in mind, or are they solely motivated by a desire to turn a profit?
We may call endeavors that harvest and use natural resources “businesses,” but the reality is that they have social, ethical and environmental dimensions that are just as relevant as economic outcomes.
This is especially true of agriculture. Although there was not a dedicated section on farming in Laudato Si, Pope Francis used ag-related terminology more than 30 times. Clearly, agriculture has to do with more than just making money. Our Holy Father illustrates how certain farming techniques injure not only natural ecology – through pollution and deforestation—but also human ecology – by disrupting rural communities and forcing family and proprietary farmers out of business. He suggests alternatives that are sustainable, working in harmony not only with nature but also healthy patterns of human living.
The approach to agriculture that clearly informed Pope Francis can only be described as “vocational.” That is to say, farming is not just a way to make a living; it’s a way of life, a unique and privileged way of cooperating with God’s plan. Catholic Rural Life, a national organization of which I am currently the president, is in the midst of a project to help articulate this vocation in the 21st century. In partnership with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, we will produce a set of resources that give faith-based, practical guidance to the next generation of food and ag leaders. I believe that this is one way of putting the teachings of Laudato Si into action in rural America.
We may not all be farmers, or have livelihoods that directly put us in touch with nature. But we all have a vocation, a call to holiness. And for all of us – but especially rural Catholics — that means respecting, cherishing and cooperating with God’s glorious creation. May Laudato Si help bring about the needed conversion in our hearts to live this truth of our faith.
(Bishop Etienne, the bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne, is the president of Catholic Rural Life, a national organization dedicated to applying the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Church to rural America. To learn more about Catholic Rural Life, and how to become a member, visit catholicrurallife.org.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The renowned spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, made no secret about the fact that he was emotionally over-sensitive and that he suffered, sometimes to the point of clinical depression, from emotional obsessions. At times, he, a vowed celibate, was simply overpowered by the feeling of being in love with someone who was hopelessly unavailable that he became psychologically paralyzed and needed professional help.
Yet, given Nouwen’s moral honesty and the transparency of his life, one would hardly ascribe this to him as a moral flaw, however emotionally-crippling it was at times. He simply could not help himself sometimes, such was his emotional sensitivity.
Almost all sensitive people suffer something similar, though perhaps not as acute as what afflicted Nouwen. Moreover these kinds of emotional obsessions affect our whole lives, including our moral and religious lives.
What we do in the pain and paralysis of obsession rarely does us proud and is often far from a free act. In the grip of an emotional obsession we cannot think freely, pray freely, decide things freely and we are prone to act out compulsively in ways that are not moral. What is the morality of our actions then?
Classical spiritual writers speak of something they term “inordinate attachments,” and, for them, these “inordinate attachments” are a moral fault, something we need to control by willpower. However what they mean by “inordinate attachments” covers a wide range of things. In their view, we can be inordinately attached to our pride, our appearance, money, power, pleasure, comfort, possessions, sex and an endless list of other things.
They saw this as the opposite of the virtue of detachment.  And, since its opposite is a virtue, “inordinate attachment” is, for classical spirituality, a vice, a moral and spiritual flaw.
There is a lot to be said positively for this view. Normally, lack of detachment is a moral flaw. But, perhaps there is an exception. An inordinate attachment can also be an emotional obsession with another person and this muddies the moral issue. Obsessions, generally, are not freely-chosen, nor are they often within the power of the will to control, at least inside the emotions.
As our old catechisms and moral theology books used to correctly teach: We are responsible for our actions but we are not responsible for how we feel. Our emotions are like wild horses; they roam where they will and are not easily domesticated and harnessed.
Hence, I believe, the notion of “inordinate attachments,” as expressed in classical spirituality, needs to be nuanced by series of other concepts which, while still carrying the same warning labels, carry something more. For example, today we speak of “obsessions,” and we all know how powerful and crippling these can be. You cannot simply wish or will your way free of an obsession. But is that a moral flaw?
Sometimes too we speak of “being possessed by demons” and that also has a variety of meanings. We can be possessed by a power beyond us that overpowers our will, be that the devil himself or some overpowering addiction such as alcohol or drugs. Most of us are not overpowered, but each of us battles with his or her own demons and the line between obsession and possession is sometimes thin.
Moreover, today archetypal psychologists speak of something they call “daimons,” that is, they believe that what explains our actions are not just nature and nurture, but also powerful “angels” and “demons” inside us, that relentlessly haunt our bodies and minds and leave us chronically obsessed and driven.
But these “daimons”  are also very often at the root of our creativity and that is why we often see (in the phraseology of Michael Higgins) “tortured genius” in many high-achievers, romantics, people with artistic temperaments and people like Van Gogh and Nouwen, who, under the pressure of an obsession, cut off an ear or check themselves into a clinic.
What is the point of highlighting this?  A deeper understanding of ourselves and others, is the point. We should not be so mystified by what happens sometimes in our world and inside us. We are wild, obsessed, complex creatures, and that complexity does not take its root, first of all, in what is evil inside us. Rather it is rooted in what is deepest inside us, namely, the image and likeness of God.
We are infinite spirits journeying in a finite world. Obsessions come with the territory. In ancient myths, gods and goddesses often fell helplessly in love with human beings, but the ancients believed that this was a place where the divine and human met. And that still happens: The divine in us sometimes too falls hopelessly in love with another human being.
This, of course, does not give us an excuse to act out as we would like on those feelings, but it does tell us that this is more an encounter between the divine and the human than it is a moral flaw.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Word on Fire
By Father Robert Barron
Last week I spent six days at a place only about a ten-minute drive from my home, but I had, nevertheless, entered a country as “foreign” to my experience as Botswana or Katmandu. Hospitalland. I was brought in for an emergency appendectomy and then had to undergo a second surgery, due to complications.
As a priest, of course, I had visited Hospitalland many times, but I had never actually lived in it for an extended period. Hospitalland has its own completely unique rhythms, customs, language, and semiotic systems.
For example, the normal rhythm of day and night is interrupted and overturned. You are only vaguely aware of the movement of the sun across the sky, and people come barging into your room as regularly at two in the morning as two in the afternoon. Relatedly, the usual distinctions between public and private simply evanesce in Hospitalland.
As my mother told me many years ago, “When you enter the hospital, you place your modesty in a little bag and leave it by the door.” Nurses, nursing aides, medical students, doctors, surgeons, tech assistants — all of them have license to look over any part of your anatomy, pretty much whenever they want. At first, I was appalled by this, but after a few days, I more or less acquiesced.
Hospitalland has its own very distinctive language, largely conditioned by numbers: blood pressure rates, temperature, hemoglobin counts, etc. It was actually a little bit funny how quickly I began to banter with the nurses and doctors in this arcane jargon.
But for me the characteristic of Hospitalland is passivity. When you pass through the doors of the hospital, you simply hand your life over to other people. They transport you, clean you, test you, make you wait for results (an excruciating form of psychological torture, by the way), tell you what you have to undergo next, poke you, prod you, take blood out of you and cut into you.
And this is of more than merely psychological interest. It has, indeed, far-reaching spiritual implications. As I lay on my back in Hospitalland, a phrase kept coming unbidden into my mind: “the divinization of one’s passivities.” This is a line from one of the great spiritual works of the twentieth century, The Divine Milieu by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In that seminal text, Teilhard famously distinguished between the divinization of one’s activities and the divinization of one’s passivities. The former is a noble spiritual move, consisting in the handing over of one’s achievements and accomplishments to the purposes of God.
A convinced Jesuit, Teilhard desired to devote all that he did (and he did a lot) ad majorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God).  But this attitude, Teilhard felt, came nowhere near the spiritual power of divinizing one’s passivities. By this he meant the handing over of one’s suffering to God, the surrendering to the Lord of those things that are done to us, those things over which we have no control.
We become sick; a loved one dies suddenly; we lose a job; a much-desired position goes to someone else; we are unfairly criticized; we find ourselves, unexpectedly, in the valley of the shadow of death. These experiences lead some people to despair, but the spiritually alert person should see them as a particularly powerful way to come to union with God.
A Christian would readily speak here of participating in the cross of Christ. Indeed how strange that the central icon of the Christian faith is not of some great achievement or activity, but rather of something horrible being done to a person. The point is that suffering, offered to God, allows the Lord to work his purpose out with unsurpassed power.
In some ways, Teilhard’s distinction is an echo of St. John of the Cross’s distinction between the “active” and “passive” nights of the soul. For John, the dark night has nothing to do with psychological depression, but rather with a pruning away of attachments that keep one from complete union with God. This pruning can take a conscious and intentional form or it can be something endured. In a word, we can rid ourselves of attachments — or God can do it for us. The latter, St. John thinks, is far more powerful and cleansing.
I certainly wouldn’t actively seek to go back to that land, but perhaps God might send me there again. May I have the grace to accept it as a gift.
(Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary. He is the creator of the award winning documentary series, “Catholicism”  and “Catholicism:The New Evangelization.” Learn more at www.WordonFire.org.)