James Keating - Listening for Truth: Praying Our Way to Virtue

Listening
for Truth

Praying Our Way
to Virtue

James Keating

Imprimi Potest:

Richard Thibodeau, C.Ss.R.

Provincial, Denver Province

The Redemptorists

ISBN 0-7648-0816-8

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2001092240

2002, James Keating

Printed in the United States of America

02 03 04 05 06 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

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To Ina Mairead, a blessing beyond all telling,
and to all women who faithfully work
the fields of Christian motherhood, praying
and hoping for a harvest of saints
in their children, especially Kris Gehring,
Rita McCabe, Toni Mitchell,
and, of course, Marianne.

CHAPTER ONE
Prayer, A Basic Christian Need

CHAPTER TWO
Rediscovering the Soul Through Prayer

CHAPTER THREE
Conscience: Listening for Truth from the Mouth of Truth

CHAPTER FOUR
Conscience: Forming a Mind Eager to Know Moral Truth

CHAPTER FIVE
Practical Ways of Living a Life of Virtue Prayer

P rayer, whether offered as an individual or as a community in a liturgical setting, is the seeking of communion with God. The moral life also seeks communion, but its first purpose is to facilitate communion with what is morally good, not with what is ultimately good, namely, God. But the two are not opposed in any way. In fact, the more one grows in moral goodness the more one seeks completion in what is ultimate. Being good, in other words, is not its own reward; the virtuous may come to a certain sense of peace in their dispositions and behavior, but their hearts are still restless until they rest in God (Saint Augustine).

We are made for more than virtue, but we cannot enjoy that morewhich has been identified by faith as communion with Godwithout first attaining moral goodness. If we were to come to God first, without seeking moral goodness, God would lead us to virtue. Coming to God through a religious conversion is simply the implicit beginning of a moral conversion, just as coming to moral conversion is the beginning of communing with the ultimate source of all virtue: God. Thus, prayer (discovering and communing with God) and virtue (being faithful to the meaning of what is morally good) complete and define one another. Their joining together explicitly in every Christian life and community is the way to enter the struggle of taking on virtue even as one accepts the gifts to put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14). In other words, living in prayer and virtue places us at the very core of discipleship.

There are thousands of descriptions of prayer in thousands, maybe millions, of books and essays. What characterizes my approach in this book, however, is that I am going to describe prayer from a perspective of growing in moral virtue. Of course, prayer cannot be manipulated for our ends, but like communication with ones spouse, it can serve the purpose of deepening communion with your beloved regardless of the specific topic at hand. It is the communication itself that serves to deepen intimacy, not the content of the message. One can grow in communion with a spouse even while speaking about mundane domestic issues as long as the spouse is attended to in love and respect. Similarly, if we converse with God in faith and hope and love about any topic, we will grow in intimacy with God. Certainly, we are concerned with our growth in moral goodness; our very success as a human person is at stake in becoming good. God is equally concerned with that topic for our sake, and so we can approach God and converse about our need for moral conversion.

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C hristian moral living appears at once lofty and yet ordinary. Many Christians report how frustrated they are with their perceived lack of growth in virtue. The moral life seems unattainable. It is mentioned by some that they carry their struggle with pride for decades, or the burdens of lust or greed have weighed them down year after year. For others, envy gnaws away at their inner peace and refuses to yield to the development of steady and pacific virtues. Yet, in spite of personal failure and struggle, many of us do not give up on moral growth and yield to cynicism. We want to believe we can reach a place in life where temptation is muted, even if not eradicated; a place where we make decisions out of the hope and knowledge of being persons who possesses a dignity from God. Do we ever reach a place of such rest and strength?

The answer to that is, as to most things human, yes and no. We can reach a place where, for the most part, our decisions are the fruit of dispositions yielded over to God in faith, hope, and love. But there will be a remainder factor. This factor is the struggle to be good; the work of remembering our dignity and living accordingly; the task of being focused upon fidelity when many around us, and voices within us, tempt us to go lower rather than higher. I am using the words struggle, work, and task not to reduce moral living to simply an exercise in will power, but rather to contextualize it in our real life-graced efforts to do the right thing.

Simply saying that moral living is a grace, or to encourage the struggling ones to lighten up in their quest for virtue, may in fact be just that: too simple. We recognize that emotional and mental pathologies and various neurotic tendencies can heighten the anxiety or impossibility of such persons achieving moral peace. Of course, noting this does not end the reality of struggle for those who are balanced, sane, and integrated. The most fruitless choice is to try to end the struggle by giving in to the temptation. Trying to end the struggle by giving in to the unrelenting gnawing of envy, for example, certainly takes some pressure off, but only in the way abuse of alcohol relieves the pressure to escape a truth too real to bear: It masks an unpleasant reality, it doesnt remove it. Giving in to a vice merely quiets the voice of temptation long enough for one to engage in the object of such temptation. After the morbid delight is satisfied, we find that the voice of temptation has not gone away satisfied and full. Rather, the tempting vice takes up residence in us, and it will not leave if we continue to yield to its voice; in fact, just the opposite, it comes to possess us. To arrive at such a state is the true origin of personal horror. Becoming morally good does involve a strugglein due proportion, a struggle that hopes to break the bonds to vice we have built up over the years.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.