The Valley Catholic
commentary
Spirituality
On the dangers of defining ourselves…
By Father Ron Rolheiser
February 11, 2014
19
Catholic Cemeteries offers training for
Parish Bereavement Ministers
“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)
Given speed and change in our world today, oceans of information given us by new technologies, the speed with which knowledge now passes through our lives, increasing specialization and
fragmentation inside higher education, and the ever-increasing
complexity of life, you hear someone say: But what do I know
anyway? Good question.
This may sound humble but this kind of admission has a sad underside: What
do I know anyway? Indeed, what can we know amongst all the complexity and
sophistication of our world?
We can know our own light, our own moral center, our own heart, our own
mystical center. Ultimately we can know what’s most real and most precious to us
and this is the most important knowledge of all. We can know what’s ultimately
important. Next to the knowledge we have of God, knowledge of our own moral
center is the most important thing we will ever know. Indeed, knowing our own
center is intimately intertwined with knowing God.
So many forces around us and inside us conspire to deflect us from being awake
to and attentive to our own deepest center, that is, from being in touch with who we
really are. When we’re honest we admit how difficult it is to be genuinely sincere and
how difficult it is for us to act out of our real center rather than acting out of ideology,
popular opinion, fashion, fad, or out of some prefabricated concept of ourselves.
Often our attitudes and actions do not really reflect who we are. Rather they
reflect who are friends are, the newspapers and websites we’ve read recently, and
what newscasts and talk shows draw our attention. Likewise we often understand
ourselves more by a persona that was handed to us by our family, our classmates,
our colleagues, or our friends than by the reality that’s deepest inside us.
The challenge is to be more attuned to our own light, our own moral center, with
what’s ultimately most real and precious to us, to resist self-definition, not act out
of an image we’ve ingested of ourselves, or we pay a price.
First, both our compassion and our indignation can become prescribed and selective. We will praise certain people and things and be incensed by other people
and things, not because these speak to or against what’s most precious inside us,
but because they speak to or against our image of ourselves.
When that happens we not only lose our real selves we also lose our individuality. Ideology, popular opinion, fashion, fad, group-think, and hype, ironically, bury
us into a sea of anonymity. In Rene Girard’s words: In our desire to be different we
all inevitably end up in the same ditch! One needs only to look at any popular fad,
such as wearing a baseball cap backwards, to see the truth of this.
How might we healthily define ourselves in a way that doesn’t deflect us from
being awake to our own light? What kind of self-definition might help free us from
ideology? How might we think of ourselves in a way so that image of ourselves that
we ingested in childhood might no longer hold us captive in adulthood?
Here’s a suggestion: Early on in his ministry, when people were still trying to
figure out who he was, they came to John the Baptist and asked him to define himself:
“Who are you? They asked: “Are you the Christ? Are you Elijah? Are you a prophet?”
John replied that he was none of these. “Who are you then?” they persisted. John’s
answer: I am a voice crying out in the wilderness! Just that, no more! Now that’s a
healthy self-image and true humility, with no sad underside.
• Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President
of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. He can be contacted through his website
www.ronrolheiser.com. Now on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser
By Kathy Fanger
When a death occurs parishioners
often experience fluctuating waves
of emotions in the days, months and
years to follow. Days of deep sadness,
loneliness, even anger with God, may be
sprinkled with more peace-filled, hopefilled days, as they cherish memories of
the one they love.
Many grieving parishioners look to
the Church for spiritual strength. They
seek support from thos