The Undying Heresy
Our young men at San Damiano are reading the book of Revelation while learning masonry. It’s an ironic combination since Revelation is about unveiling or making clear and yet we’re also building brick walls. Oh, well, Christianity is full of paradox!
And so is Lent. Lent annually unveils my chief heretical tendency, what I lovingly call the “self-help gospel” or “DIY gospel.” The fancy term is “Pelagianism” but we won’t do a history lesson on that. Every year I come into this season with a toolbox of pious penances, resolutions, abstinences, fasts, and extra devotions. I figure each time I say “no” to lower passions, or recall the presence of God, I’m taking a chisel to my soul and precisely striking it with the hammer, chipping away the extra marble encasing my better self. I am the artist. I am the craftsman finishing some spiritual crown molding to make myself a fit dwelling for God. I am the blacksmith pounding away at the stubborn iron of my habits, shaping them into virtue—just in time for Easter.
But it’s all a lie.
When push comes to shove, my self-made-saint approach to Lent always ends up a lot more like this image (by Janusz Kapusta). (Here’s where the masonry comes into play.) It’s possible that every meal I skip, every extra rosary I pray adds another brick to this wall, further enclosing me in my own sense of self-salvation, my own lonely castle of self-styled piety. Perhaps my own efforts to form myself into Christ’s image actually build a blockade to God’s grace. The Psalmist warn us, after all, “Unless the Lord builds the wall, the laborers work in vain.” It’s like I’m in Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “Cask of Amontillado,” except I’m walling myself into the deadly prison of pride.
The truth, however, is more like this. I am the material. God is the craftsman. As St. Athanasius tells us, the Incarnation is God’s work at portrait restoration. We may have been created in the image and likeness of God, but the portrait is so marred that we can’t restore it on our own. Paint as we will, the image blurs only further. The original has to be present and restore the image Himself. (If that doesn’t make our ecclesial restoration classes exciting, I don’t know what will—but I digress.)
God’s work in Lent isn’t just restorative, it’s also new construction. The miracle of craftsmanship is that the builder makes something new without changing the matter of the original. The clay hasn’t changed chemical compound, but we call it now a statue. The walnut tree is still the same wood, but we call it a chest of drawers. After they’ve been worked on, things take on a new name.
This is where the book of Revelation comes in. St. John, the author of Revelation, reminds us, “To him who overcomes…I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone” (Rev 2:17). But it gets better, “He who overcomes, I will write on him the name of my God” (Rev 3:12). This Lent, the work of the Father upon our souls gains us not just any new name but God’s own name! We are divinized, remade into His image. This bestowing of renewal, His slow chiseling, is accomplished only through the sufferings He puts in front of us. If the human soul is like wood, then each reversal, setback, or struggle sent by the Lord is the slow bending that will make us the beautifully curved handrail of a staircase toward salvation.
But all this renewal and building isn’t simply passive. As St. Augustine reminds us in Sermon 169, “God created you without you, but he won’t save you without you.” We may not be the heroic statue chiseling itself, but what if we’re holding a two-man saw with God as we work on this tree? Yes, I’m pulling, but unless our Father, with His hand on the other end, pushes, the saw remains stuck. My cooperation is necessary, but even my efforts remain a gift given, a grace received.
Lord, renew a right spirit within us! Give us clean hearts, oh God. You are the potter, we are the clay. May this Lent be 40 days on your spinning wheel.
While we’re at it…
Big thanks to Ben Housley and Carlos Tejeda for an outstanding chainsaw day! Round two is coming up soon!
—“Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart” Hebrews 4:12