Tuesday, 19 February 2008

Lust for Posessions

This is an extract from a book on celibacy by AW Richard Sipe.

I did find this book a real revelation when I first read it and this passage particularly spoke to me:

Recently, a celibate priest shared from his own experience an example of the interrelatedness of celibacy and material things. Once in a supermarket, food shopping for the rectory table, he had a kind of epiphany. He was tossing items into the cart with abandon, guided by his own taste and what he thought were the gastronomical and brand preferences of his associates, when he notices a parishioner- the mother of three children- also shopping. She was too engrossed in her enterprise to notice him or anything else. She was comparing the prices of brands, rechecking her coupons, pausing thoughtfully in front of certain sections, shaking her head “no” before moving on empty handed.

He told me that “the sight of her, at a moment when the biggest decision in my life was whether to buy the imported Swiss or the French Roquefort” focused a bright light on him and his celibacy. From that time on, he said, he realised that his celibacy was more than simple sexual abstinence. He said, “I knew then that celibacy is a way of loving that has to affect every aspect of how I live.” The mother of three was an unknowing grace for the priest who continues to meditate frequently on what she had taught him.

Desire- how we hesitate to call it lust- for things (such as seemingly necessary, good, and useful things like house, car, boat, even res eccleiasticae like church, rectory, vestments) can be a means to celibate undoing. This is not nihilistic doctrine. Notice that I emphasised desire. It has to do with us, heart and mind. Just as celibates do not interact thoughtlessly with others, they cannot interact thoughtlessly with things and maintain integrity at the same time. Radical self-honesty about our desires for possessions is a vital as it is with sexual desires. The goal is honesty freed from rationalisation, or denial...

Some priests compromise their celibacy eventually by an indirect path. Sexual temptations are resisted for long periods of time, while, almost imperceptibly, the foundations of celibacy are eroded as the lust for things is indulged either with a thoughtless abandon or sometimes as a kind of occult compensation for sexual deprivation. “Poor me” or “I deserve it” are attitudes that should bring a person to renewed intensity in prayer. Left unattended, these feelings will corrode celibacy from the inside.

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