Tuesday, June 25, 2019

The pursuit of holiness; how to train your brain



What is procrastination anyway? Most of us assume it's a moral failing. This is probably a bit true, but it's certainly mixed with a bunch of other psychological brain-trickery.

As a good friend recently reminded me, a big theme of my writing over the years is that "your brain is not your friend." In simplest terms, we have habits of thought - often deeply engrained - that do not correspond to reality. This messes us up.

There's a whole huge deal of stuff that psychologists are just now starting to get hold of - the ideas behind Cognitive/Behavioural Therapy (it's been a long day trudging around in the blistering summer heat, so I won't go into it right now - Google it) and all of it corresponds beautifully with Thomist thinking on how the path to holiness is through the subordination of the passions to the intellect and will - the right ordering of the human faculties.

In other words, procrastination, fear, anxiety, depression - all of these are mental habits that involve us indulging in things that are not in keeping with reality. Procrastination especially is a way of avoiding reality. The method of overcoming it is to exercise the will to choose The Real over Fantasy - defined as adherence to a personal preference in conflict with observable reality. This is the way to overcoming poor self-discipline (endemic in our culture), procrastination, fear, anxiety and depression - but much more crucially of rooting out our habitual sins and faults. The saints and theologians all talk about the methodology of sanctification, the "purgative way," and this, in essence, is it.

This is the work of the interior life that has to be done before we can start advancing in holiness. This is what the whole thing is about, getting yourself under control.

8 comments:

Fr PJM said...

This post is not pleasant.

Anonymous said...

Why can’t Roman Catholics get beyond St Thomas? There is a millennia’s worth of Christian writing that precedes St Thomas. Give it a go.

Lydia

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

Lydia, I don't really read Thomas. He's a bit mechanical, mathematical, for my personal taste, but we don't "get beyond" Thomas. The suggestion that we should is the foundational premise of the Modernists who have come so close to fulfilling Satan's plans for the Church. For devotional purposes of laymen all two thousand years of saints are fine; but as a basis for discerning what is and is not authentic Catholic teaching, the need to return to Thomas - abandoned by the twisted hubristic egotism of modern churchmen is an absolute necessity.

Fr PJM said...

Where's the like button?

Anonymous said...

Dear Hilary, I totallly accept your point but I think you have missed mine. When I suggested getting “beyond” Thomas, I meant going back in time, not forward. The early Church Fathers in the East were the first to formulate the teaching on thoughts. Evagrius of Pontus, Dorotheos of Gaza, Methodios of Olympus, St Mark the Ascetic, etc all wrote on the thoughts and passions. And there are many others. It is in the East that you will find the most fully developed ideas. The teachings are tough and ascetic and that’s why we need them. Modern Roman Catholics quote Sts Augustine and Thomas almost to the exclusion of others. By ignoring the early Fathers of the Church, we deprive ourselves immensely of great spiritual knowledge and insight.

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

Lydia, I'm going to be writing something for the Remnant about exactly this; basically that things are so far gone that if we're shooting for recreating the culture of the High Middle Ages (as many monks are doing with building these big stone monasteries with pointed arches and whatnot) we're not taking into account just how bad it really is. We're not at a stage at which there's enough Christian culture left to presume to recreate the glories of the Age of Faith. We're back at the 3rd century again, starting from the dust of paganism; the one difference being that we no longer have a tired late-classical paganism looking for something better, but a jaded post-Christian paganism that is resigned to auto-destruction...

stay tuned.

Lynne said...

I have overweight for many years. There's a new weight-loss "technique" called intermittent fasting, i.e. where you stop eating round-the-clock. You eat maybe 2 meals a day or even fast for many hours. I've done 48-hour fasts, etc. Once again, the Church, in its wisdom, had a technique, a way of life that not only was spiritually good for you, getting your passions under control, but it was also good physically for you. I'm reminded of several older folks who, when hearing that I fast at least 3 hours before receiving Holy Communion, tell me how difficult it was to fast from midnight. We've become such wimps.

Anonymous said...


Fasting is proof that God loves us and want us to be healthy. I lost 20 lb's once I understood fasting to be the gift that it is.

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