Anyway, the book contained a lovely excerpt from Monsignor Quixote in which the Monsignor and Sancho, the Communist Mayor of Toboso, discuss how they came to travel together. I wish that I could simply let you read it for yourselves, because summary sometimes does not have the impact of fiction. The Monsignor explains that it is the sharing of doubt that really brings the two of them together.
Like I said, I can't do it justice. Paraphrase can sometime involve a flattening rather than an expanding of subject matter. Doubt. Doubt is a huge component of faith. Faith would not be faith without the presence of doubt, and doubt seems to be most seccessful at driving us to God.
Instead of frustrating myself further, I'll simply include an excerpt from another part of the book. I sent this out to friends during my initial reading because I found it haunting, like so much of Greene's subtly spiritual work. In this scene the Monsignor and Sancho have just left a theatre in which they've seen a pornographic movie called "The Maiden's Prayer" (Don't worry; it's tastefully written (and edited). I only hope I'm not horribly violating any copyright laws by reproducing this much of the text without permission):
"I was afraid you might be shocked, father, but it was you who chose the film."
"Yes. By the title. But I don't understand what the title had to do with what we saw."
"Well, I suppose that a maiden's prayer is to find a handsome young man to love.""That word 'love' again. I don't believe that Senorita Martin [St.Theresa] prayed for anything like that. But all the same I was impressed by the silence of the audience. they took it so seriously that I was really afraid to laugh."
"You wanted to laugh?"
"Yes. It was difficult not to. But I don't like to offend anyone who takes a thing
seriously. Laughter is not an argument. It can be a stupid abuse. Perhaps they saw things differently from me. Perhaps it was beauty that they saw. All the same, sometimes I longed for one of them to laugh - even you, Sancho - so that I could laugh too. But I was afraid to break that total silence. It would hurt me if in church when I raised the Host someone laughed.""Suppose everyone in the church laughed?"
"Ah, that would be quite different. Then I would think - I might be wrong of
course - that I was hearing the laughter of joy. A solitary laugh is so often a laugh of superiority."That night in bed Father Quixote opened his volume of Saint Francis de Sales. He still found himself worried by those scenes ... in the cinema - worried by his failure to be moved by any emotion except amusement. He had always believed that human love was the same in kind as the love of God, even though only the faintest and feeblest reflection of that love, but those exercises which had made him want to laugh aloud... Am I, he wondered, incapable of feeling human love? For, if I am, then I must also be incapable of feeling love for God. He began to fear that his spirit may be stamped indelibly by that terrible question mark. He desperately wanted comfort and so he turned to what Sancho had called his books of chivalry, but he couldn't help remembering that Don Quixote at the last had renounced them on his death bed. Perhaps he too when the end arrived...
The dreaded question mark was still stamped on his spirit when they set out next day. Rocinante [Monsignor's automobile] was positively skittish after her stay in the garage and complained not at all when their speed mounted to forty - even forty-five - kilometers an hour, a speed which they only obtained because Father Quixote was deep in his unhappy thoughts."What is wrong?" Sancho asked him. "Again today you are the Monsignor of the Sorrowful Countenance."
"I have sometimes thought, may God forgive me," Father Quixote said,"that I was specially favored because I have never been troubled by sexual desires."
"Not even in dreams?"
"No, not even in dreams."
"You are a very lucky man."
Am I? he questioned himself. Or am I the most unfortunate? He couldn't say to the friend who sat beside him what he was thinking - the question he was asking himself. How can I pray to resist evil when I am not even tempted? There is no virtue in such a prayer. He felt competely alone in his silence. It was as though the area of the confessional box and the secrets which it held had extended beyond the box itself and beyond the penitent to include the car he sat in, even the wheel under his hand as they drove towards Leon. He prayed in hissience[?]: O God, make me human, let me feel temptation. Save me from my indifference.
[?] is because I don't know what this word was supposed to be. Like I
said, it's been a while since I read the book.
6 comments:
When Jesus was trying to teach about prayer, he made the statement, "Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"
I have never really been concerned that God would give me a snake when I ask for a fish. But, I must constantly remind myself that He will give me a fish if that's what I need, even if what I ask for is a snake. It is this fear, more than any other, that keeps me from praying.
This story you quoted reminds me of this. I would be scared to death to make the request of God that this guy made.
I think this priest is very brave, as opposed to naive or stupid. He was wittingly praying a dangerous prayer. He also appears to be a fellow curmudgeon, who detests hypocrisy and dishonesty, even in himself. He evidently is not satisfied with mediocrity, even from himself. He knew there was a potential problem and was willing to face it and deal with it, rather than gloss over the situation or justify it. That is something I admire and it is a quality severely lacking in humanity in general, not merely in the Church.
I didn't think the priest was naive. I did think he might be stupid. It seems to me that the promise that God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear is at play here, and that perhaps God was not allowing him to be tempted in that way because God knew he would not be able to bear it.
Reminds me of the Tale of Sir Gallahad>
Sir Gallahad: "Let me go back and face the peril"
Sir Lancelot: "No, it's much too perilous."
However, I can also see that a person like this fictional character may have been responding to a prompting of the Holy Spirit to ask for growth in the area of interpersonal relationships, and accepting that along with that growth would be certain dangers, like the one he mentioned, and that he couldn't have one without the other.
C.S. Lewis often times said that sometimes we aren't tempted by certain sins because we are above them, but because we are below them. He thought that, for him, excessive gambling was one example. He said that he felt that his lack of temptation to excessively gamble was caused from his need to play it safe and from his miserliness, instead of from his piety. He further said that if he ever encountered enough personal growth such that he no longer felt afraid to take chances and that he no longer felt the need to hold his money so tightly, then he would have grown to the point that he could be tempted by gambling.
Perhaps that is what the priest meant.
Though Fr. Quixote could be experiencing what Lewis described, I really don't think the passage shows that. What I see here is a priest observing something that is common among his fellow humans, but something he himself lacks, at least that's what Fr. Quixote is telling himself. It seems he has the gift of celibacy (not merely the priestly requirement of being celibate) so his approach to the issue of lust could be legitimate. In wrestling with the issue, at least within this passage, we don't really see Fr. Quixote protecting himself from lust via an extreme tendency toward some other fear or vice; he merely has nothing to fuel the lust, unless I'm just missing something here.
What we do see is that he realizes something is very different between him and the people around him, and it has occured to the Fr. that the flaw might not be entirely everyone else, but possibly himself as well. He sees everyone else's lust as an expression of a natural drive, and how that drive, at its core, is important. Fr. Quixote then realizes he may be out of touch with his fellow man, and worse, out of touch with God. Then something quite refreshing happens: Fr. Quixote does not try to rationalize that he is just fine the way he is; nor does he flatter himself with false humility. Though his prayer for addressing his own flaw may have been a little off base, the priest prayed that his love be made authentic, knowing that it would likely be done in a painful way. Not only is he persuing integrity and truth, he was also willing to let God decide how this should be accomplished. That is a level of trust in God I seldom see, even in myself.
For those of us averse to discomfort, such a prayer may seem foolish. But that's part of the point: Fr. Quixote acknowledges human comfort (or complacency) isn't the important thing. If he really is gifted with celibacy Fr. Quixote probably isn't deluding himself about this, unlike the people in the audience taking the porn film so seriously.
That's helpful. I think I understand it better now. Thanks.
That's helpful. I think I understand it better now. Thanks.
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