Happy Feast Day! To celebrate St. Philip Neri, I thought I'd repost my NDS talks from last month. I've reformatted them a bit so that they are easier to read.
St.
Philip Neri: the Virtue of Joy
Fr. Philip Neri
Powell, OP
Notre Dame Seminary,
NOLA
19 April 2015
“Men are generally
the carpenters of their own crosses.” – St Philip Neri
Part
I
It is early February
in the year 1590. Philip Neri – Pippo Buono – is 75 years
old and long a saintly figure in the streets and courts of Rome.
Confessor and confidant to cardinals, statesmen, thugs, and
fishwives, Pippo stands with the entire Oratory community of the
Chiesa Nouva and eleven cardinals, waiting for the solemn
procession to arrive. Relics of the ancient martyrs, Papias and
Maurus, had been discovered in the titular church of Agostino
Cardinal Cusano earlier in the year. Cardinal Cusano, a penitent
under Pippo's spiritual care, wanted to bestow on his confessor and
friend a singular honor. He had ordered the newly discovered relics
to be transferred to Pippo's home, the Chiesa Nuova. When the
procession arrives, the Papal Swiss Guard comes to attention and
forms an aisle for the relics into the church. As the relics pass by
Pippo, a familiar buzzing begins in his heart. An old friend, Joy,
rises in his soul and Pippo does what he always does when the
nearness of holiness threatens him with ecstasy. He does something
foolish. Where most of us would drop to our knees in prayer, or
shout out praise and thanksgiving to God, Pippo does the unexpected.
He walks up to one of the stoically serious Swiss Guards and begins
pulling on his beard!
For St. Philip Neri, for Pippo Buono, the joy that love
demands of us is best expressed in humble acts of apparent
foolishness.
And about his
apparent foolishness there is much to say. Reading Pippo's
biographies is like reading a catalog of schoolboy pranks. Attending
vespers at a fashionable parish, he would dress like a beggar and
loudly mispronounce the Latin. He would send penitents on public
errands with their clothes turned inside-out. He would demand that
the young dandies who came to him for advice shave half their beards.
He was once seen skipping like a child inside the church of St Peter
in Chains. And another time, during Mass at the Chiesa Nuova,
he had a barber cut his hair!
Many thought he was simply an addle-minded old man. Others thought he
was a saint entirely lost to ecstasy. Pippo saw himself as a sinner
tempted by pride to embrace the power and glory that his closeness to
God afforded him, a temptation that – on a much larger scale –
had corrupted Rome and exiled godly humility. Pippo's antics were not
attention-seeking, or foolishness for the sake of foolishness. His
ridiculous behavior kept his joy grounded in humility. He feared the
lightness of his heart at the merest thought of God would lift him
away – literally, allow him to fly – and he feared that
his people would come to believe that only those so lifted in flight
could be said to be holy. His life, his work, his death all point us
toward the truth of joy: Joy
is love in action. Human joy, our joy, is divine love,
God's love for us, in action.
With Pippo's
living-admonition to remain firmly grounded in humility ringing in
our ears, we can move – cautiously move – toward a less
animated exploration of the virtue of joy and how joy must enliven a
priest's ministry. I say “cautiously move” because joy is an
effect of love and we do ourselves only a little good by simply
pinning joy to a specimen board, splaying open its belly, and
dissecting its parts. Examination is good and necessary, but it is
also woefully insufficient. Joy is best known in being joyful.
Not by knowing the names and functions of all its parts. That said,
we turn to the Great Dissector himself, Thomas Aquinas, for the
better parts of understanding where we are intellectually with joy.
According to Thomas,
strictly speaking, joy is not a virtue.
It is not an operative habit, nor does it incline us to perform any
specified acts. However, the virtues (theological, moral,
intellectual) do tend to produce “several ordinate and homogeneous
acts,” or effects. In the case of the virtue of charity, joy is one
such ordinate and homogeneous act, making joy an effect of charity.
Thomas writes, “Hence [charity] inclines us to love and desire the
beloved good, and to rejoice in it. But in as much as love is the
first of these acts, that virtue takes its name, not from joy, nor
from desire, but from love, and is called charity. Hence joy is not a
virtue distinct from charity, but an act, or effect, of charity. .
.”
How are these
scholastic distinctions even remotely pertinent to our exploration of
Pippo's apparent foolishness? Philip Neri studied philosophy at the
Sapienza in Rome and theology with the Augustinians just short
of a decade after Emperor Charles V paid mercenaries to sack the city
in 1527. In his biography of Pippo, Paul Turk, notes, “. . .it is
well testified that he read St. Thomas Aquinas throughout his life
and that later on he was capable of discussing intricate problems
with learned men of his day.”
Though Pippo always downplayed his intellectual prowess and
education, the influence of Thomas in Pippo's day was pervasive and
unavoidable. Pippo often sent young men to the Dominicans and
maintained friendships with the friars at San Marco in Florence. The
fiery friar-preacher, Savonarola, was a life-long inspiration for
Pippo. So, it is a safe assumption that the fine scholastic
distinctions found the Angelic Doctor's work made their way into the
saint's humble heart and mind, and were given an exaggerated
expression in his apparent foolishness. Pippo fully understood that
his antics were both a means to humility and a way to be loving. In
other words, he wasn't just acting crazy to be seen acting crazy.
When the fire of joy overflowed, Pippo – always mindful of the
temptation of vanity – let loose in the streets of Rome a circus of
God's love and drew to Him Who Is Love crowds of sinners to be
welcomed and washed clean. For sinners, foolishness was Pippo's hook.
For himself, it was a penance.
If we take Pippo's
life as a dramatic reading of Thomas' notion of joy, we can better
see not only why Pippo lived as he did, but also how we have so
misunderstood joy. Assuming that Thomas is correct concerning joy –
and, of course, he is! – then we must admit that we've been “doing
joy” wrong for quite some time. Like most of our traditional
philosophical and theological vocabulary and grammar, joy has
been stripped of its transcendental referent –
de-transcendentalized, if you will. The modernizing project of the
so-called “Enlightenment” demanded that our language submit
itself to the grubby paws of naturalized reason and bow to the harsh
judgments of empirical science. Any attempt to reach above human
reason and grasp at the transcendent was ruled out of order. Rather
than reinvent an entirely new language for the modern project, our
Betters took the languages they had on hand – traditional
philosophy and theology – and began re-writing the dictionaries to
scour them clean of the natty influences of silly supernatural
superstitions. The virtues were re-paganized into merely human
attributes, laudable behaviors with nothing above them to strive
toward and nothing beneath them for support. If the virtues suffered
such a barbaric treatment, then their “ordinate and homogeneous
acts” and effects suffered as well. Desire and joy as effects of
charity – de-transcendentalized – became little more than human
longing and momentary delight. Nothing above, nothing below. Nothing
to move toward, nothing to stand on.
The current best
definition of joy? “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” A
feeling. Not an act of love or an effect of charity. But a feeling. A
feeling of what? Pleasure and happiness. How defined? No idea. With
nothing as a referent, pleasure and happiness are defined by nothing
more than the individual expressing joy. Do the ISIS terrorists who
are beheading Christians in Iraq feel joy? Sure, why not? If it makes
them happy – and they certainly look happy – why not call it joy?
Would Thomas and Pippo call it joy? Is beheading another human being
in order to instill terror in others a loving act? Hardly. Yet we can
rightly describe these terrorists – using our modern dictionaries –
as joyful.
My purpose in
rehearsing the fall of our traditional language is to bring into
focus the depths to which we have fallen in allowing our words to
become bastardized by nominalism. That is, by not challenging the
underlying assumptions of the modern world's use of language, we
immediately surrender the field to nihilism and chaos. When we use
words in the way that our Betters demand we use them, we sign away
our natural freedom to speak as Christians. Pippo may not have
understood the problem of nominalism or even knew that the problem
existed; however, he understood all too well the temptations inherent
in allowing words and concepts to remain merely marks on a page. Over
and over again in his sayings, his letters, his strange antics in the
streets of Rome, Pippo acted out the fires of joy. Not simply
speaking about joy but acting joyfully; loving sinners; acting as a
flesh and bone avatar of joyful repentance. Turk notes that Pippo
never gave a penance that he himself failed to complete. He was as
demanding of himself as he was of his penitents. And in this way,
Pippo embodied the joy that our Lord came to us to complete.
If St. Philip Neri
embodies genuine Christian joy, then what does the opposite of
Christian joy look like? Thomas tells us that desire and joy are the
“ordinate and homogeneous acts” or effects of the virtue of
charity. Sorrow is opposed to joy, and sorrow is an effect of the
vice sloth. So, what is sloth? Thomas, referring to St John
Damascene, writes, “Sloth. . .is an oppressive sorrow, which. . .so
weighs upon man's mind, that he wants to do nothing. . .Hence sloth
implies a certain weariness of work. . .a 'sluggishness of the mind
which neglects to begin good.'”
He goes on to argue that sorrow – as an effect of sloth – is
always evil because it is an intentional rejection of joy, or a
refusal to experience the effects of love, especially divine love.
That's the definition. But what does sloth, oppressive sorrow, look
like in a person? We are quick in the 21st century to
point out that sloth sounds an awful lot like clinical depression.
And the two probably share some of the same observable traits. But we
would miss the point of defining sloth if we simply shoved it into
the clinical category of depression and left it there. Perhaps the
difference that makes the difference between the two is that sloth –
as a vice – is a bad habit. Not a condition or an illness or a
psychic wound. But a bad habit. Sloth is the deliberate rejection of
joy, the calculated refusal to allow the effects of love, esp. divine
love, to touch the soul. This means that the slothful man has been
shown divine love, received it as a gift, benefited from its
promises, and yet refuses to exhibit any of its effects on him. In
this way, sloth is the bad habit of ingratitude and the added sin of
failing to bear witness to the generosity of Christ's gifts. What we
normally think of as slothfulness arises out of this spiritual
laziness: I can't be bothered to participate in the divine life
except as it directly benefits me. The slothful man knows that he is
obligated by baptism and his gifted share in the divine life to go
out and proclaim the Good News of the Father's freely offered mercy
to sinners. He himself as experienced this mercy. Yet! He refuses.
That refusal, that bad habit of ingratitude and spiritual stinginess,
produces an oppressive sorrow that only compounds and amplifies his
sloth.
Pippo Buono stands
against sloth by living joyfully. He bears witness to divine love by
acting, speaking, thinking joyfully – all as the direct result of
getting and receiving the Lord's mercy for his sins. And lest he
become prideful of his spiritual gifts and take too seriously the
accolades that cardinals and fishwives are heaping upon him, he
dresses like a clown, dances around the streets of Rome, and tells
corny Latin jokes in choir. And not only does he do all these silly
things out of love, he demands that his penitents and followers do
them as well. Why? Because the joy that love demands of us is best
expressed in humble acts of apparent foolishness.
Part II
Joe is the sacristan
at St Dominic's parish here in NOLA. He's in his late 60's, a very
humble, hardworking man who loves the Church and cherishes his job in
the sacristy. Joe is also Barber to the Friars. He buzzes Dominican
heads all over the city. And he loves it. Joe also has a gift for
making this particular friar (me!) feel just a little self-conscious,
and that's OK because he does it in a way that perfectly reflects his
charity. Every time I see Joe, he says, “Fr Philip! It's always so
good to see you! You have the best smile and you always brighten my
day! Just being around you makes me feel better about the world!
You're the smartest guy I know and I hope those guys at the seminary
know how lucky they are to have you!” And he goes on and on in this
vein for quite some time, and then he'll pause and say, “But I
don't want you to get a big ego, so I'm gonna stop.” All I can do
during these moments of praise is smile, nod, thank him, and wait for
the inevitable conclusion. Why do these praise-sessions make me
self-conscious? Because I know something about me that Joe doesn't: I
am not easily given to being joyful nor am I always ready with a
smile. In fact, I can be quite cynical and prone to the temptations
of despair. Thanks to Augustine and Calvin I make a natural idealist
living in a world that will never meet my standards. Thankfully,
that's my dark side, and it doesn't win out very often. But this is
the Fr. Philip Show not the Dr. Phil Show, so why I am telling you
all this? For one simple reason: I chose “Philip Neri” as my
religious name not because I am like him, but because I need to be
more like him.
Pippo exuded joy in
his silliness. He wore humility like a crown, never taking it off. He
was unafraid of being embarrassed; nonplussed by his social and
ecclesial Betters. He took formal social events as an opportunity to
remind himself and others that we are all going back to dust someday.
Pippo understood the need for social order and formality and he
respected authority as any good priest would; however, he never
allowed any of that to overwhelm his ultimate goal, his final end:
union with God. And he never allowed bella figura – good
form – to ruin a chance to show sinners God's freely offered mercy.
In fact, he wholeheartedly believed that his joyful silliness was the
best way to reveal our Lord's mercy to those most in need of it.
Pippo's antics made it easier for sinners to approach the throne and
receive the gift from his consecrated hands. What he did over and
over again is what all priests must be able to do when necessary: he
made the Lord directly accessible when he seems to be at the most
inaccessible.
Joy – real joy,
the effect of divine love and our charity – makes the Lord
accessible to others through us. More specifically, your joy makes
the Lord accessible to those whom you serve. And they need the Lord
more than you will ever need your self-defined dignity.
Our people live in
this world, but they are not of it. This world demands constant
sacrifice, constant praise. It harangues us to pay attention, spend,
consume, waste, hurry up, demand, complain, be outraged, and whine.
It demands that we do and say whatever it takes to Get Mine and hang
on to it into the grave. Our sacrifices to the gods of this world can
never be enough because they – the gods – know that they are
finite creatures just pretending to be gods. If they ever get their
fill of our misery, they will have to confess their finitude and
abdicate their altars. So, to perpetuate their reign, they multiply
our miseries and await our offerings. Unfortunately, our people will
stand in line to make the proper sacrifices and then turn to us and
wonder why their lives are a mess. And when they turn to you, hoping
to see the Lord and some way out of their misery, who or what do you
show them? (Your answer to that question will define your ministry).
What do they see when they turn to you? A way into a life of grace?
Or just another obstacle to overcome? Do they see a means of
achieving freedom in Christ? Or a man too deeply committed to his
clerical role to bend down and help? They could also see you as an
easy source of cheap grace, or as a mark upon whom they can
perpetuate a spiritual fraud. Maybe you're the one who will eagerly
tell them what they want to hear, thus relieving them of a cross they
choose to carry. Or maybe you will be the priest who agrees with
their dissent and gives them permission to sin.
What will they see
when they turn to you? Better yet: what should they see when they
turn to you? To answer this question fully would require me to start
and finish a lecture series in pastoral theology and practice. I'll
leave that burden to Fr. Krafft. Instead, looking over at my patron,
Pippo Buono, I'll offer a short answer that requires some
unpacking. A priest of Christ – lay or ordained – should always
and everywhere appear to those in need as one who embodies and lives
out that great Catholic ideal: veritas in caritate. That low
groan you just heard came from the seminarians of second theology who
are currently enduring my homiletics practicum. Veritas in
caritate will populate their
nightmares until the Reaper comes for them! Nonetheless, I would
argue that this simple phrase – packed as it is with portent –
should be engraved and gilded on the doors and walls of every
rectory, priory, convent, monastery, and Catholic home on the globe.
It contains all things necessary for carrying out one's ministry as a
bearer of the Good News. It also has the distinction of being the
adage that Pippo Buono lived
out in all of his humble silliness. If you want to know why Pippo was
so successful as an evangelist in Rome at a time when ecclesial
corruption and licentiousness ruled, think: veritas in
caritate.
Earlier I noted
Pippo's affinity for the Dominicans of his time. He was especially
fond of Savonarola, the friar who ruled Florence and ended his life
on a pyre as a heretic. Pippo admired the friar for his skillful
preaching and zeal for the conversion of sinners. Savonarola went to
deadly extremes in carrying out his program of reform, but Pippo
nonetheless saw in him a soul burning with a desire for the truth of
the faith to prevail. Pippo took to Savonarola's severity and, along
with his knowledge and appreciation for Friar Thomas, tempered both
with a practical wisdom that pushed him out into the streets to
gather in the Lord's sheep. Without wavering from the truth of the
faith, he cared for God's people in whatever way they needed. Because
he loved, he clung to the truth. And because he clung to the truth,
he loved. In Pippo, there wasn't a sliver of difference between
preaching on the damning evils of sin and immediately absolving
sinners in confession. When he needed to confront sinners on the
street, he did so in way that brought them into the confessional –
with genuine love for their souls. He was never above begging for
others – food, clothes, jobs. Nor did he place himself below any
man because of his station. To Pippo, all men and women were equally
sinful and equally forgiven. And all of them deserved the attention
of his Lord's servant.
Embracing
the phrase veritas in caritate as
your pastoral motto can only lead to one, glorious effect: joy!
Charity, as a virtue, produces both desire and joy. Desire and joy
are effects of charity. If you preach, teach, and minister veritas
in caritate then you will
experience and exude the fires of joy, drawing to yourself those who
most need to hear the Good News. But there's a significant danger
here, one Pippo himself brushed against more than once. With great
joy comes great temptation. After Cardinal Cusano had the relics of
Papias and Maurus transferred to the Chiesa Nuova in 1590, Pope
Gregory XIV tired to sneak a cardinal's biretta onto Pippo's head.
Pippo leaned forward and whispered something in the pope's ear,
persuading His Holiness to hold off making him a cardinal.
Pippo endured and resisted many attempts of this kind to elevate him
to the episcopate and even popular movements to declare him a living
saint. A large part of his antics were meant to dissuade others from
seeing him as a man of classical saintliness. The danger here, of
course, is pride. At a time in the Church when hierarchy, station,
money, and power were the daily currency of Rome, Pippo knew too well
how easily it would be for him to be entombed in the layers of silk,
brocade, silver, gold, and jewels. He wanted no part of an imperial
Church. Whatever work he had left to do would be done as a beggar or
a clown. . .not as a Prince of the Church.
The
dangers we face as priests and ministers in the 21st
century are not exactly the same,
but they rise from the same cardinal sin: pride. Success in ministry
– successes like the ones Pippo managed – would draw the
attention of the world. And with the world comes applause, prestige,
wealth, and even power. How many bishops and priests have we seen in
the last fifty years fall because they forgot to embody veritas
in caritate? Books, speaking
tours, websites, CD's, interviews with the press, requests for
comments on current events – all fine in themselves, but also ways
for pride to inflate the ego and the ego to become to a god.
Even if you were to
become a god only in your own mind, you would still fall into
idolatry. How long would it be before your bishop becomes a meddling
fool? Your brother priests jealous clerics? Your parishioners whiny
know-it-alls? Looking back on your days at NDS, you would see the
deep and cavernous flaws in your professors and formators. Safe to
discard all that nonsense now. Because before you would be a
wide-open road and clear-blue sky just waiting for you to make your
next astonishingly brilliant move. And the only thing holding you
back would be the drudgery of daily parish ministry and all those
whinging sheep who can't seem to wash themselves more than once a
month. You have a career to build! Important people to meet!
Important meetings to attend! A golf game at 3 and drinks with the
mayor at 5. . .OK. OK. You get my point. I hope. Being a successful
spiritual father opens you up to the particular temptations of fame
and fortune. So, the truly successful spiritual father never allows
himself to forget that he is first and foremost a father. And a
father cares for his children by telling them the truth in love. And
by making sure that he himself is told the truth in love. Even when
that truth stings.
Shifting
gears a bit. Jesus says to his disciples, “I
have told you this so
that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” What is
this? What did Jesus
say to his disciples so that his joy may be in them and their joy may
be complete? Right before this statement, Jesus was giving his
disciples a metaphor for how he sees his relationship with them: the
vine and the branches. He is the vine; we are the branches. As long
as we remain with him, we will grow and thrive, producing much good
fruit. Then he says, “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear
much fruit and become my disciples.” How is his joy given to us and
our joy made complete? By bearing much fruit and becoming his
disciples. More than that, actually, he adds, “As the Father loves
me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my
commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my
Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” Then he promises
to complete our joy. But what does “complete our joy” mean here?
We do all these things and then we find our joy complete. If joy is
an effect of divine love, then our completed joy is an effect of
completed divine love; that is, perfect divine love. In other words,
if we remain in Christ, loving as we ought, bearing much fruit, and
following the Father's commands, we will receive the effect of
perfect love called perfect joy. We will find ourselves gazing upon
the Beatific Vision.
Pippo knew this
well, so he lived his life as if he were always, already in sight of
the Beatific Vision. What we might call his silliness was a means to
an end: humility. Others saw his humble silliness and rightly
identified its source: his joy. And Pippo knew the source and summit
of his joy: his love for God and his Christ. In every way that
matters, Pippo's ministry to sinners was an expression of his love
for Christ and Christ's love for him. Without guile or boasting or
weariness, he gave himself – sacrificed himself – to the holy
cause of making known to sinners the Father's freely offered mercy.
He died May 25, 1595 firmly attached to the vine of Christ.
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