Readings for the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Mt. 5:48
Jesus is talking about charity. We should be generous with others as God is generous with us. If taken out of context, however, his words can kill the spiritual life. Our quest for perfections is reduced to a game of Chutes and Ladders. If we do something good, we get closer to God. If we do something bad, we slide back down. One example of the Chutes and Ladders approach is the life of Mere Angelique Arnaud, the reforming crusader of the 17th Century French Convent Port Royal. If you have ever heard of “Jansenism” this is the story, or at least, a big part of the story.
Jansenism is Catholic Calvinism, that is, it over emphasis on the sovereignty of God in human theology. The characteristic of heresy is that it overemphasizes one truth and, thereby, destroys another. See if God already knows everything, he knows the future. If he knows the future, then he knows whether you are going to heaven or hell. There is really nothing you can do about it. That is the Jansenist perspective. There is no room for choice or free will.
All you can do is try to show that you are perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. You do that by your extreme penances and by never offending God. There is a distorted truth in Jansenism, as there is in all heresies. The worst aspect of Jansenism is what it does to your relationship with God. Jansenist practice is to avoid communion, because Jesus’ meal at the last supper is meant for the perfect. If you recall past generations and weekly confession, you are seeing the echoes of Jansenism, a jumble of moral perfectionism, fatalism and contempt for church authority. If you have grave sin, you should go to confession. You shouldn't take the Eucharist for granted. But an over emphasis on sin will undermined your experience of God's mercy in Christ Jesus, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Rom. 5:8
The Story of Mere Angelique, Jansenism and self-help
The story of Jansenism is wound up with the story of Mere Angelique Arnaud, abbess of Port-Royal Abbey. Angelique was a very strong willed woman who wanted to worship her God, her way, regardless of what anyone else had to say. Simply put, she was an elitist who knew better than anyone else. She gathered her little group of supporters and defied everyone, her family, the archbishop, the clergy and, in the end, the Pope. Her sense of perfection included hair shirts and other mortifications and the sense that almost everyone but her and her followers were damned. She worshipped a powerful, demanding Jesus that only showed mercy to the worthy.
Angelique was the first self-help guru. If you believe that salvation is about being without sin or any moral failing, then Jansenism is for you. You don’t need God’s mercy if you never do anything wrong. God’s mercy is for other people. If you fail, then you offset failure by doing some penance; maybe scourging yourself or wearing a hair shirt. Jansenism was a joyless heresy that could not reconcile an all-knowing God, with and all-merciful God and human sinfulness. The Archbishop of Paris said that the nuns at Port Royal were “as pure as angels and as proud as devils.” You could not doubt their sincerity or their love for God, or their prayerful contempt for those who disagreed with them, including the Pope
Everyone has a back story.
Angélique, was born in 1591, the time of Shakespeare and the Catholic church’s hit and miss attempts at self-reform. She was only seven when her powerful grandfather arranged for her future as a nun and abbess of Port Royal. Her choice in life, according to her grandfather, was that she could do whatever she wanted to do in life as long as she was abbess at Port Royal.
She was sent off at age seven to learn her catechism in a convent that was notorious for its loose morals and even looser grip on the fundamentals of the faith. She made her first holy communion the day that she was installed as Port Royal’s abbess at age eleven. She inherited a convent that was administered and funded by her mother. Angélique spent her first years as the abbess reading novels, depressed and dreaming of marrying the man of her dreams. The social life at the convent was, however, lively; costume parties, well decorated apartments, a priest that mostly liked to hunt and a group that couldn’t tell the difference between a sacrament and a sacramental.
Her moment of change
Then Angelique’s life changed when a Capuchin friar preached a retreat that convicted her, changing her life. But Angelique was one of those personalities where everything was either black or white; the switch was full on or full off. She had a series of spiritual directors. One was St. Francis de Sales, who is known as the saint maker. To this day, his advice is so reasonable that his book, Introduction to the Devout Life, is still widely read. Good advice was, however, lost on Angelique. She was in full on mode and full on for her meant getting rid of sin in her life. Who needs God’s mercy if you don’t ever sin.
That is when she encountered the priest who introduced Jansenism to France, Jean du Vergier de Hauranne,, known as the Abbot of St. Cyran. She couldn’t get enough of prayer, penance, self-reproach and a particularly grim morality. Where St. Francis de Sales had counseled against her extreme opinions, she now had a spiritual director who poured gas on the fire. She was scandalized by some Christians and condemned many others. She hated Jesuits in particular as sell-outs. As a result she was disciplined by the Archbishop and, ultimately, the Pope. She continued fighting; she did not respect any voice that disagreed with the certainty her version of religion afforded her. At her death she compared herself to St. Theresa of Avila who herself had run afoul of the Inquisition. Angelique lacked, however, what St. Theresa had in abundance; cheerful obedience. After her death, her convent was torn down and the remaining nuns scattered. It’s influence remains however in Catholic public discourse that distrust all authority that is contrary to one’s own opinion.
Perfection and the Gospel: The Anti-thesis
Mere Angelique had her ideal of perfection. Jesus describes God’s vision of perfection.
Perfection“You have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Self-help salvation is how you straighten out all the things about you that you just don’t like. We all have failures that only God can cure. We can choose to be generous in speech. We can learn self-control. We can guard our minds from poisonous thought. We can be generous with others.
Jansenism focuses on ridding ourselves of sin, not perfection in charity for others. Salvation is not self-help. We get our taste of salvation when we recognize our own need for mercy. Salvation is learning how to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. God will heal our failures, perhaps six months after we are dead, but still God will heal us.
Lent begins Wednesday. We engage in prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Our Catholic discipline is pretty reasonable. Angelique was right, we need to learn to say no to our darkest impulses. Fasting does give us a spiritual exercise in controlling out appetite. Prayer, is the reminder that we need God. Salvation is not self-help, but our recognition of our need for a savior. Almsgiving, reminds us of the importance of generosity it our life.