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May 7, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
COMMENTARY
Ascending, Descending, and Just Keeping Steady
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
Where should we be casting our eyes? Upward,
downward, or just on the road that we’re walking?
Well there are different kinds of spiritualities:
Spiritualities of the Ascent, Spiritualities of the De-
scent, and Spiritualities of Maintenance, and each is
important.
Spiritualities of the Ascent are spiritualities that
invite us to strive always for what’s higher, for
what’s more noble, for what stretches us and takes
us (figuratively) upward beyond the humdrum moral
and spiritual ruts within which we habitually find
ourselves. They tell us that we can be more, that we
can transcend the ordinary and break through the
old ceilings that have up now constituted our hori-
zon. They tell us that if we stretch ourselves enough
we will be able to walk on water, be great saints, be
enflamed with the Spirit, and experience already
now the deep joys of God’s Kingdom. These spiri-
tualities tell us that sanctity lies in the ascent and
that we should be habitually stretching ourselves
towards higher goals.
These spiritualities have a secular counterpart
and that counterpart is what we often hear from
academic commencement speakers who are forever
challenging those graduating to dream big dreams,
to reach for the stars.
There’s a lot to be said for this kind of an invi-
tation. Much of Gospels are exactly that kind of a
challenge: Keep your eyes trained upward: Think
with your big mind; feel with your big heart; imagine
yourself as God’s child and mirror that greatness; let
Jesus’ teachings stretch you; let Jesus’ spirit fill you;
let high ideals enlarge you.
But the Gospels also invite us to a Spirituality of
the Descent. They tell us to make friends with the
desert, the cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation,
with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death
itself. They tell us that we grow not just be moving
upward but also by descending downward. We grow
too by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing
cherished dreams to accept the cross, by letting the
humiliations that befall us deepen our character,
by having the courage to face our own deep chaos,
and by making peace with our own mortality. These
spiritualities tell us that sometimes our task, spiri-
tual and psychological, is not to raise our eyes to
the heavens, but to look down upon the earth, to sit
in the ashes of loneliness and humiliation, to stare
down the restless desert inside us, and to make peace
with our human limits and our mortality.
There aren’t a lot of secular counterparts to this
spirituality (though you do see this in what’s best
in psychology and anthropology). The challenge
of the descent is not one you will often hear from a
commencement speaker.
But there is still another genre of spiritualities, a
very important kind, namely, Spiritualities of Main-
tenance. These spiritualities invite us to proper self-
care, to factor in that the journey of discipleship is
a marathon, not a sprint, and so to take heed of our
limits. We aren’t all spiritual athletes and tiredness,
depression, loneliness, and fragile health, mental or
physical, can, if we are not careful with ourselves,
break us. These spiritualities invite us to be cautious
about both an over-enthusiastic ascent and a naive
descent. They tell us that dullness, boredom, and en-
nui will meet us along the road and so we should have
a glass of wine when needed and let our weariness
dictate that on a given night it might be healthier for
us spiritually to watch a mindless sitcom or a sports
event than to spend that time watching a religious
program. They also tell us to respect the fact that,
given our mental fragility at times, there descents that
we should stay away from. They don’t deny that we
need to push ourselves to new heights and that we
need to have the courage, at times, to face the chaos
and desert inside us; but they caution that we must
also always take into account what we can handle at
a given time in our lives and what we can’t handle just
then. Good spiritualities don’t put you on a universal
conveyor-belt, the same road for everyone, but take
into account what you need to do to maintain your
energy and sanity on a marathon journey.
Spiritualities of Maintenance have a secular counter-
part and we can learn things here from our culture’s
stress on maintaining one’s physical health through
proper exercise, proper diet, and proper health habits.
Sometimes in our culture this becomes one-sided and
obsessive, but it is still something for spiritualities
to learn from, namely, that the task in life isn’t just
to grow and to courageously face your shadow and
mortality. Sometimes, many times, the more urgent
task is simply to stay healthy, sane, and buoyant.
Different spiritualities stress one or the other
of these: the ascent, the descent, or (less commonly)
maintenance, but a good spirituality will stress all
three: Train your eyes upward, don’t forget to look
downward, and keep your feet planted firmly on
the ground.
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor, To the Editor:
I’m trying hard to understand why Tony Magliano’s piece on NATO being
incompatible with Gospel Nonviolence was even published. Why is he even
allowed to have a soapbox in The Valley Catholic? His vociferous attack against
NATO is really puzzling and misinformed, given the role of the alliance in
liberating the former countries of the Warsaw Pact from Communism. In read-
ing more of his pieces, he is clearly and unequivocally anti-military. Is that the
stance of the Diocese? It’s dismaying to me that my Diocese decides to publish
this kind of drivel. Indeed, I found his commentary to be incongruous with the
large and respectful ad for the Veterans Tributes by Catholic Cemeteries on the
back page. It’s insulting to the Catholic men and women serving our country
to have his inflammatory rhetoric be published.
Perhaps The Valley Catholic could devote some ink to the Catholics faithfully
serving our country through our military. For starters, there is the Archdiocese
for the Military Services (www.milarch.org). In your most recent edition of The Valley Catholic, Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article
“Unfinished Relationships,” on first read, gives a lot of hope. However, on a second
read, that kind of hope is, as I see it, a “permissive hope.” Sure, it’s never too
late as long as we’re still living, but it’s not necessarily so after we’ve died, for,
although we believe in the communion of saints, the saints are only in Heaven.
As regards death, it is a theological assertion, as I’ve always understood it to be,
that death is final; the Catechism says so, because the Gospel says so.
His statement of “it’s never too late...” is akin to my telling my children that
it’s never too late to go to college. If I will ever say that, what I really mean is,
it’s never too late to learn. So, I wonder if what he really means is, it’s never too
late to pray for the deceased or to ask for their intercession, because we should
always hope that they’re in Purgatory or in Heaven. Or, is it possible that what
Fr. Rolheiser believes is, Hell is empty (?!)
Andrew Nguyen
San José, California
With great disappointment,
Martin Oppus
Letters to the editor should be 200 words or less and may be submitted via email to tvc.
[email protected]. Deadline for the June 11, edition of The Valley Catholic is Friday,
May 24, noon. Letters may be edited and are published at the discretion of the editor.