New Wine

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus tells the Pharisees that "new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins." (Lk 5:37-38). This principle is at the heart of the motivation behind the next pillar in Integral Formation—Human Formation. If we are to be filled with the new wine of grace, we must constantly strive to present ourselves to the Lord as fresh wineskins.

Recall what was said in the first article about how important it is to have a proper understanding of who man is and in particular, who he is in light of the Fall. Man is both body and soul and made in the image and likeness of God. Because of the Fall, our likeness to God was damaged and only through the invasion of grace in our lives can it be restored. With this view in mind, we can speak of "grace building upon nature". It falls on us to give the Lord the best raw material to work with.

With this authentic understanding of man then we can set out to outline a program of human formation. Since the soul is the higher power in man we will begin there. Man's soul has three "parts"—the intellect, the will and the heart. Each of these runs on one of the three transcendentals. So when we speak of forming these three we should always speak in relation to the transcendentals

Forming the Intellect

The intellect is made for truth, so that in forming the intellect we strive to teach the intellect to recognize the truth and cling to it when it finds it. How best to do this?

This of course assumes that there is a truth. In Fides et Ratio, John Paul II said that he wrote the Encyclical because the search for ultimate truth is neglected in our times. Rather than make use of man's ability to know the truth, modern philosophy has focused on the limitations of our knowing. It really is the irony of all ironies that in this climate where faith and reason are supposedly in conflict that it is the Church who is the sole defender of reason. Read Fides et Ratio and tell me if you see any conflict.

Well, what does philosophy have to do with this? The first thing to do is to recognize that man by his very nature philosophizes. This is a distinctly human activity. Furthermore, everyone has a philosophy whether they recognize it or not. As Cicero once said, the choice is not between having a philosophy and not having one, but between having a good one or a bad one. For the majority of people their philosophy is that of the culture around them and they give little thought to it. The danger of this is that behavior follows reason no matter how distorted that reason may be.

We no longer know how to reason properly. When this happens, people come to rely on their feelings. Ask most people what their opinion is on any issue and rather than saying "I think such and such" they will say "I feel such and such". There is no need to defend feelings because they are entirely subjective and in some ways we are beholden to them. I remember getting into a long discussion with someone over abortion and in the end they told me, "I logically follow you, but I just don't feel like it's wrong."

It is time to restore a true understanding to the liberal arts in our education. The original meaning of liberal arts comes from Aristotle and the purpose was the study of the truth for its own sake. Classicly understood, the liberal arts were focused on the model in Plato's Republic. There was the Trivium which consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the Quadrivium which consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.

We need to learn logic. Logic helps us to find the truth by demanding that we define our terms and thus understand what we mean. Logic also demands that we have good reasons for believing what we believe. Being able to formulate an argument and evaluate others arguments is vital for an apostle. Read St. Paul's sermon at the Areopagus in Acts and note how logical what he is saying is. Also note his delivery and rhetorical approach. Rhetoric has almost become a dirty word because it is so often put to the service of falsehood. Sometimes what is needed to convince people are reasons which persuade them by moving their emotions so that they will accept the truth and act on it. This is rhetoric. If you read anything that Martin Luther King wrote (especially his I Have a Dream
speech or Letter from a Birmingham Jail) you will see a top notch rhetorician drawing on religious principles.

Finally, we should study the major philosophers. We learn how to think more logically and critically. We also see how much philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant still have an effect on people today. Peter Kreeft has some excellent books to introduce the reader to their thought in his Socrates Meets… series.

Forming the Will

Pope Benedict has said that "we seem to know more about how to build bombs than how to judge whether it is moral to use them." Because of all of the specialization of education, we become specialists in certain fields of knowledge, but not necessarily in moral knowledge. Therefore we must form our will to recognize the good and cling to it when it finds it.

Vital to this is a proper formation of conscience. Remember that first and foremost conscience is a knowing about what is good and what is evil and is not a feeling. A feeling is always a result of some other cause—in this case the act of reason known as conscience. God has given us two avenues to moral truth on which we should form our conscience. The first is natural law and the second is the Revealed Law. Natural law is that which is knowable by human reason alone while Revealed Law comes through the Church. We have to remember though that the Church is the authentic interpreter of both because they both have the same source. The role of the Church in public life is to form consciences.

We sometimes simply dismiss the Magisterium as being opposed to conscience—but we must ask ourselves some important questions. What is it in me that contradicts the Magisterium? Is it perhaps only my comfort? My obstinacy? Or is it simply because society considers it reasonable?

This is why the ancients set prudence as the first of the cardinal virtues. They saw it as the willingness and capacity to perceive reality and respond to it in an objective manner.

Of course, we must still act on the good once we recognize and acknowledge it. We must train our wills and often the best way to do that is through renunciation and mortification. Remember that the purpose of life is to make a sincere gift of ourselves. That is the greatest good. If we continually seek comfort and our own good, we will not be able to act when the time comes to make that gift.

Forming the Heart

I think we have all heard the adage, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". This statement essentially means that beauty is entirely subjective. But as we said before, beauty is one of the three transcendentals and is objective just like truth and goodness. When we call someone tall, we are comparing that person to some objective standard of height and saying that they exceed that height. Likewise, when we say something is beautiful, we are comparing it to some objective standard of beauty and say that it is approaching that in some way. We may not know exactly what that objective standard is, but nonetheless we know it exists or else we couldn't call anything beautiful. Therefore, we must train our heart to recognize the beautiful and to cling to it when it finds it.

Most people can tell you what beauty is until you ask them. It is a very difficult thing to define. The philosophical definition of beauty would be that which has unity (it is distinct from all else), harmony (balance in its parts), and radiance (brightness or clarity). Aquinas said pulchra sunt quae visa placent—"beautiful things are those which, when seen, please".

Why this philosophical grounding? Because I believe we live in one of the ugliest times in the history of man. Look at the art that is produced today. Art has become all about self-expression. Listen to the music of today. Can you really say that it has unity (it all sounds pretty much the same), harmony and radiance? Half of all marriages end in divorce. Marriage loses its beauty when it loses its harmony with God's plan which does not include divorce and contraception.

What is the cure? The cure is cultivating a sense of awe. When was the last time we were caught up in awe? It is so difficult in a scientific culture that wants to pick everything apart, analyze it, and classify it to have a sense of awe. We must resist that temptation and simply take things in in their essence. GK Chesterton is someone who clearly understood this. One of my favorite quotes of his pertains to beauty. He says that "it has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here-it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally."

I was in the mountains in the fall and looked out across the valley with the leaves all changing color and said "my God" and really meant it. That is awe and that is something that we all need more of. Beauty ultimately leads us to want to know more about the artist. In that way it can be a tremendous means of evangelization.

We need to help to cultivate awe in our children. We have to get them outside, away from the TV and the Wii and go exploring with them. Show them "all the cool stuff" that can be found in the woods. Children naturally have this sense, we as parents need to help them hold onto it.

I can't recommend Thomas Dubay's The Evidential Power of Beauty enough as a means to opening your eyes to the marvels of creation. I am constantly going back to it for meditation material.

Physical Formation

Because we are body and soul, we cannot neglect our bodies. When St. Francis was dying, he asked pardon of Brother Ass (that is what he called his body) for how harshly he had treated it. Our bodies are meant to be subservient to our souls, but that does not mean we should neglect them.

Physical activity helps to preserve emotional balance. Sports are a great means to grow in virtue. Physical exercise is a great antidote against laziness since it gives us more energy. Manual labor is also good for those of us who spend the bulk of our day at a desk. I am always drawn back to the fact that the first Apostles that Christ chose—Andrew, Simon, James and John—were obviously no strangers to hard physical work. That probably factored into Our Lord's choosing them and calling them when He did.

In two weeks, we will look at the third pillar—Intellectual Formation.