January 2008 Print

I am going to try to build on a little expression you used to hear on the radio when a boat was sinking: "S.O.S."–Save Our Souls. "Save our souls": because it's about time we do. Save them from what?–from being infected by what can kill them. But to save our souls, first we must believe they exist. The vast majority of right-minded folk believe that they have a soul, but they have no idea what that implies. Too many people generally tuck it neatly away in the drawer of official phrases like a family souvenir, or maybe even hide it under ecclesiastical ceremonies. But rarely do we take our souls seriously.

I am going to tell you exactly what a soul is and dispel any vagueness in your notions. It holds the secret of our personality.

St. Thomas Aquinas defines a soul as a place. To illustrate what St. Thomas means, I want you to imagine the sitting room in your home. What is a sitting room? It is a place–a place which is "formalized," as they say in philosophy. It has a form, a form of which it cannot be deprived under pain of no longer being a sitting room. A form makes a thing what it is. In the case of a sitting room, its form is often four walls making a rectangle, but maybe the neighbor's sitting room is round; another's might be triangular. In any case, despite these differences in architecture, each sitting room has a form which distinguishes it as a sitting room (and not a kitchen, bathroom, or a garage, for instance). Curiously enough, it is the very form of any sitting room that determines the placement of the objects particular to a sitting room: the size and placement of windows, curtains, choice of paintings, the easy-chairs, bookcases, chessboard, etc. Behind it all is the mind of the homeowner from which the sitting room has originated, the homeowner who constructed the form and placed particular objects within it. Obviously the homeowner is not going to fill the sitting room with garage tools and garden implements. Despite some differences from room to room, all sitting rooms maintain their distinct destiny: they resemble a sitting room.

In general, I can say that a "place" implies two realities: 1) form: the architecture of natural dispositions that all of us share, and 2) content: that which is particular to each individual spiritual form. Our soul has been received by us from God in the way a house has received its form from an architect. But our souls, equal in that each man has one, necessarily are differentiated by the unique dispositions of character or quality which you have and I don't, or which I have and you don't.

So, as a sitting room is a sitting room, yet with variety in its furnishings and expressions, the soul as a soul is an extremely precise place, yet with each soul having a variety of responses to the Good, the Beautiful, the True, and to the Just, in its own particular manner. You, for example, will tend to express the dispositions of your soul in an artistic manner on account of the form which God has given you. Your neighbor may express certain dispositions in a more zealous manner, and another, perhaps, by stillness and contemplation. But be careful. Your soul, with its particular and unique form, is the greatest gift you have received. If you desecrate it, everything else becomes pointless. You are wasting your time. If the walls of a sitting room do not serve as a sitting room, all those objects furnishing the sitting room become pointless. They are, as it were, "wasting their time," too.

Let's be logical. In order to take on the modern age, to communicate, to take on an apostolate, a family, or a business, you have to have a soul. Before you have real knowledge, or money, or a college degree, or power, or success, you have to know you have a soul and live in this knowledge. Why? To be sure not to desecrate everything else that you do. If you use the profound qualities God has placed in your heart only in self-interest contrary to God, for pleasure indifferent to God, for success unhinged from Calvary, you are squandering your soul, your time, and everything else.

This explains why society is made up of weaklings. They may have awards, degrees, and power, but the practical denial of the soul has rendered the weaklings helpless: helpless to reorganize society because they deny in practice the principle of reorganization. They have de-formed the soul; in many cases, they have eliminated the form. They have effectively knocked down the walls of the sitting room and it is, in practice, no longer. Oh, the number of deformed Catholics, of Catholics who practically deny their form. Sometimes this, sometimes that, at the mercy of their longings, their pleasures, their reputation. We have a society that no longer believes it has a form–we have a deformed society.

Can we pull ourselves out of this mess? There are two means by which we might: 1) convince a de-formed society that it really can re-form itself at the moment it decides to reconquer its form, that is, its spiritual, supernatural, qualitative, and affective form; and 2) undertake the formation of the little children from their earliest years. We must concentrate with utmost delicacy and authority on their souls–their form–and prove to them that that is what never can be deformed. Everything else is secondary. Which parents would dare to tell their son what Blanche of Castille told St. Louis: "My son, I would rather see you dead at my feet than guilty of a single mortal sin."

What did Jesus do? He created restlessness wherever He went. He led people to focus on their interior state. It's why they crucified Him. The moment a man no longer has enough interior health to take on the blessed restlessness which arises in him, he is dead. Restlessness has the capacity to resurrect the form of the soul.¹

I am telling you this for a very simple reason: We are never so much at home as when we commerce within ourselves.

A soul is easily lost because all of modern life is calculated to draw it out of that home: business, distractions, television, radio, telephone, travel, meetings, etc. We are always lost in some project. The great drama of modern life is that we are rarely able, if ever, to be "at home" within ourselves. "Amen, Amen, I say to you: the Kingdom of God is within you." We are always outside. We never hear the "new song" within our soul. We do not even know what it is. We are never at home. Even modern liturgies drag us outside of ourselves. You can no longer make a thanksgiving after Communion, close your eyes, or pray silently. Modern life is modern life because it has an incapacity to respect souls.

When a man no longer knows how to dwell in himself, when he no longer knows how to listen to anything but the television, to understand anything above his newspaper; when he no longer knows how to be silent and hear someone else speak, he is useless to society.

Look at history. Those who really stirred things up were all contemplatives: St. Bernard, St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila. These heroes and heroines took moments throughout the day to stop and listen to their soul. This explains why they could step back into the chaos of their century with such marvelous lucidity, letting them discern straight away truth from falsehood. For it is within the soul that the sense of truth develops, and not in the political persuasions of Christians; it is within the conscience that the soul develops a sense of responsibility, and not from consulting the opinion polls; it is within the person, which is marked by the seal of Baptism: "I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Almighty; in the Name of the Son, by Whom you are redeemed; and in the Name of the Holy Ghost, Who makes you a missionary." Outside of these, you have no reason for being. We no longer believe it. We no longer have the Faith.

When the language of God and the attractions of Charity are the determining factors in a man's life, then you are dealing with a soul. On the contrary, we have become mass-produced: the same movements, roles, functions, and–listen closely–disputes [see Internet chatrooms, for instance–Ed.]. We bicker incessantly because we have practically lost our souls. There necessarily follows a general dislocation of everything and confrontation of everyone. It is no small thing.

St. Thomas Aquinas has this admirable definition: "A soul is a place where someone is always speaking." We truly are in the image of the Word of God: "A place where S/someone is always speaking." He breaks down the reasoning with staggering clarity. He says there are some who are always speaking with their inferior life, that is, the inveterate sinner who is always speaking with the (irrational) animal life and the sexual life. There are some who are always speaking with their natural life, conscientious but never stepping beyond what is purely natural: natural law, natural duty, natural respect. There are some, however, who speak with their supernatural life: regret, desire, attraction, ascent. Finally, there are some who speak with the life of charity, that sort of definitive entry into the habitual preference for God.

 

 

The question to ourselves is "What is going on in my presence?" There are three domains by which we can answer this question.

Does our speech arise from the domain of the senses, of strictly the externals? For such a man, the soul has no other inhabitants beyond the domain of the senses.

Then there is the domain of the intellect. By this I mean the sense of good or evil, of beauty and wonder, and of the excellent. Look at what havoc is wrought when we eliminate the beautiful. Who are these Catholics who feast on vulgarity and who rationalize their enjoyment of it? Ever since we have eliminated the beautiful, we have sunk into vulgarity. Why?–because we have eliminated the reflection of God from the soul. Beauty–good and true–is the delicate, colorful, and clear reflection of God which awakens within us a longing to rise higher.

The third region is the domain of that capacity each of us has to receive more than we can possibly obtain by ourselves. It is what St. Thomas called "the obediential power." We have a hunger to receive those things greater than ourselves such as grace, the beatitudes, the words of Jesus Christ, His soul-piercing reflections: "All you who are weary and do not know where to turn, come to Me, and I will refresh you...." This is that whole capacity to see our suffering transformed into accents of redemption, that desire for grace which is a communication of God's mentality to our own mind, helping us to think as God thinks. This is the mind of God which penetrates a man's heart and lifts him up above his selfishness in gestures of self-forgetfulness, liberating him from animal materiality. The vitality of a soul is staggering because it is in direct contact with God. Every single day forges our soul anew by the intermediary of grace and material events to prepare us for the very last evening. Here you touch the real gravity of life.

St. Thomas Aquinas explains the difference between souls based on who is speaking there. There is always an interior speech alive in each of us.

In some souls, he says, things appear as dead as a tomb. All one can hear is the growling of the beast. Concern for progress and improvement does not exist. The only remaining happiness for the majority of such souls is mealtime! We have killed in the souls of our children all sense of superior vitality, of moral and spiritual nobility. The law of the soul is to participate in the vitality of God, Who is intrepid. Christ had the intrepidity to go all the way to Calvary because He had the intrepidity of the Resurrection. And any spiritual life which claims it can avoid being intrepid is dead. It is no longer worthy of God. Such intrepidity doesn't rule out prudence or charity. On the contrary...

We will know our spiritual life to be the life of a living soul insofar as we instinctively applaud the good and refuse evil; insofar as we instinctively react with sympathy for the truth and disgust for falsehood. This is not to deny nuances, the "diplomacies" of the apostolate. But, when we look at the way Jesus acted, He did not hesitate to say: "Yes, yes; no, no." And as St. Paul said with such verve when he appeared in chains before Festus: "It is not right." Take any one of the saints: they were full of healthy dignity.

A healthy dignity is the privilege of sanctified souls: adoring, prayerful, mortified souls. It is the privilege of the spirit liberated from the flesh. It is the privilege of the flesh proudly submitted to the spirit. It is the privilege of all those who do not model their lives and their conduct on a group, a fad, or human respect, but on their spiritual life. It is exactly as St. John said: "The truth will set you free." The prisoners among us have never rediscovered their soul.

Even though souls appear dead, it is not over until it's over. And what about the battlefield around us? I mean the lacerated affections, the wounded feelings, the shadows of night stretching out over the wounded. I mean the obscurity of darkness preventing us from seeing clearly anymore who one is, what one is, what one wants. There is the interior chaos of pitiable consciences that no longer even know if they are still a conscience. This is the battlefield upon which we are called to bring the sunlight of the Beatitudes:

Blessed are they who weep, as God wept.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after justice, the way Jesus Christ did.

Blessed are they who realize that they are being lied to, for they can call for the help of Him Who never deceives.

 

The battlefield is made for regaining your position on the eternal victory of Jesus Christ.

Then there are others who only hear noise. I mean the noise of agitation, of the passions, the noise of social organizations. We are at risk of being smothered under an excess of social-life distractions which have thrown everything out of joint because we lacked the spiritual cohesion of discernment, precise judgments, and of unyielding dignity. We are driven along by a society which we are utterly incapable of relating to God or holding up to the Faith. The value of the interior place matters little to the neo-pagan; the outside is all that counts.

Are we pagans? According to St. Thomas, a pagan is a man for whom only the exterior matters.

For a saint the soul is the primary interest. Once the love of God settles effectively into a conscience, that conscience ceases to be a danger–indeed, it becomes a help–to others, no matter how near or far. Such is the primary social service we can render to the world: to allow God to settle into us. Once we allow God to settle into our soul we suddenly become useful to the whole community, the whole parish, and the whole nation.

The sense of God will come to us in recompense of our sense of the soul. The taste for God will come in recompense of our taste for the soul. You are outside the essential as long as your daily activities fail to influence the salvation of others and do not draw you to pose the problem of their salvation. The sense of God puts us face to face with the idea of salvation.

The ultimate, real responsibility for every one of us is salvation. If you are a parent, you are responsible for the salvation of your children; the rest is secondary. If you are a business owner, you are responsible for the salvation of the poor and the humble by the justice of your proceedings. Aside from that, profit and loss are without importance. If you are a professor, you are responsible for inculcating in your students a respect for natural law, and perhaps for the supernatural law, as well. Aside from that, diplomas are without importance.

We absolutely must "demythologize" the pagan cult of human success. If we do not do it, God will–and that by the shedding of blood. Catholics have to rediscover the nobility of what conquers the world, the spirit of what saves the world, that is, the clean conscience.

I would like to make you understand that each time you draw near to God, God in turn–and it is the greatest honor He can do you–longs to raise you a cut above. You cannot be like everybody else. You must dare to be different from others, from failure, from false piety. You will dare to affirm yourself free to incarnate love, to incarnate truth, to incarnate nobility. We are on the lookout for men a cut above in the villages, in the countryside, in the industries. We are in desperate need of men a cut above. The whole work of the Holy Ghost is that the mustard seed become a great tree, that we find the pearl of great price, put the lost sheep upon our shoulders, and dig up the treasure in the field.

This is the beauty of our destiny. I believe that living means daring to die every single day so that when the final hour comes, there is no longer anything jarring. We simply continue to die because we simply continue to live eternally.

 

Translated by Angelus Press, but seriously edited by Fr. Kenneth Novak for clarity in an attempt to make it easier to understand. An unpublished conference from the private archives of the Association du R. P. de Chivré. Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984.

 

1 St. Augustine: "Too late have I loved Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstedst my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours, and I drew in breath and panted for Thee. I tasted hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace" (Confessions, X:27, 38).