The modern world pushes its own gospel that focuses on the “self.” There is no need to fear God, for he is merciful. Follow your heart and your desires, for that brings happiness. You don’t have to think about anything negative, like death and judgment. You can decide for yourself what is sinful in your own conscience. People don’t go to Hell, except for possibly the very worst people like Hitler. You don’t have to take religion too seriously as long as you are a nice person. Times have changed, and we’ve outgrown all those old superstitions and bigoted beliefs. The whole reason we pray and go to church is to feel good about ourselves.
Hearing this nonsense repeatedly might tire us, but it forms the basis of our mission field. People need to hear the Gospel as Christ himself preached it: “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” The Bible tells us that the desires of the heart are evil until they are directed to God, redeemed as we are born again to a new life in the spirit. The entire purpose of our lives derives from God’s calling us into existence and offering us happiness within his glory. We are for God rather than the other way around. If we turn away from him, our lives will end in futility and misery.
Even if we can’t escape today’s false Gospel by returning to the past, we can receive edification from the wisdom of our forefathers in faith. TAN Books has stood at the forefront of making “spiritual classics” accessible to lay people for decades, and I’m very glad to see newly translated classics continue to appear. In particular, Fr. Robert Nixon, OSB, a Benedictine monk in New Norcia, Australia, has greatly contributed by translating classics from Thomas à Kempis, St. Bonaventure, St. Anselm and others. I was particularly drawn to two immensely popular medieval classics that have been virtually unknown in English-speaking circles.
The first, by Pope St. Leo IX, The Battle of the Virtues and the Vices, stands in the great allegorical tradition of the moral life first laid out by Prudentius’ Psychomachia in the 4th century. Leo realized that even if we do not experience exterior persecution and battle, we all face the battle of the virtues and vices within us. Yes, we must wage war against our own fallen desires! Attending to the dynamics of the battle of the virtues and vices can help us fight against the false Gospel that urges us to chase after every new thing.
Dissolute Wandering, for instance, “seems to be ambling around at random, constantly stopping and changing direction purposelessly,” ever inducing the soul to “move on to somewhere else!” (51). To this, Firm Stability responds: “It is this pernicious but alluring tendency to seek incessantly to obtain something better – a form of restless ambition and discontent – which resulted in the fall of the angels. Never forget the fall of those angels, and never forget the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of paradise! For these two primordial examples illustrate the perils which result from seeking always for something new and better” (52).
In addition, Fr. Nixon translated The Visions of St. Frances of Rome: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven Revealed. St. Frances, the patron saint of Benedictine oblates, opened her home to the poor and, after becoming a widow, lived with other women as oblates to serve the needy of Rome. Her visions provide a necessary reminder of the reality of Hell, which we affirm by faith to exist because Our Lord himself revealed this to us. Today, we want our freedom but also to avoid its consequences. Frances relates, similarly to Dante’s Inferno, that the punishment fits the crime. She describes how, in response to sexual perversion, scorching hot claws and piercing instruments torment the damned. “For as varied and bizarre are the acts of human perversity, lust, and sexual abuse, so correspondingly varied were the tortures which were inflicted upon those guilty of them” (27). To the traitors, who followed the desires of their own hearts against those who trusted them, the demons, “firmly seizing each traitorous heart, they would draw the beating organ up through the throat” until “they would extract it completely” (24).
We think we’re above imagining Hell in such gruesome fashion, but Frances’ mediation reminds us to avail ourselves of God’s mercy now. To break out of the false gospel of our day, we should take to heart the admonition the saint heard within Hell: “O miserable and contemptible wretches! While you lived, you permitted yourself to be utterly blinded by the lusts and ambitions of the deceptive and passing world, and now your sins have bound you up here forever! Now . . . you shall never again behold the light of day. You did not fear tin cure the dire penalty. . . and preferred to pursue sin than to retain your precious members of the Church of God! Now you have all eternity to regret that foolish and evil decision!” (45-46).