The Hidden Theme of Lent: Holy Renunciation, or The Joy of Saying “No!”

“Renunciation has been, from the beginning, the logical precondition for the practice of love.”
-Ivan Illich

"I will not make you rich as to have need of many things, but I will make you one of the truly rich who have need of nothing. Since it is not the one who has many possessions that is rich, but the one who has no needs."
         -Philoxenos, Desert Father

As some of you realize by now, I am a disciple of the Christian philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich.  Illich, who died in 2002, was a voice so prophetic and counter-cultural that few in academia, the church or the popular media grasped what he was speaking about.  I am not stating that I understand Illich and others do not.  No, I have only touched the surface in my Doctoral Studies and sadly truncated Post-Doctoral research.  I have had so little time for in-depth reading, writing and thinking these last two years that I sense I have lost the feel I did have for much of Illich’s thought.  My teachers, David Cayle  (CBC Ideas), Lee Hoinacki  (Illich’s friend and editor) and Gustavo Esteva  (Mexican intellectual and activist) taught me to begin my understanding of Illich with the Gospel.  

Illich saw that the Gospel brought to birth a new possibility in human history.  The ensarkosis (“ensarkosis"), or Greek for “incarnation,” introduces into human history an understanding of a God who enters fully into human flesh and blood, renouncing power in birth, life and the crucifixion for the resurrection of love.   The Christian story is one of spiritual resistance to human imperial forces and religions that celebrate power and control, on behalf of an already present “Commonwealth of God,” known in the freedom of a community of philia (philia) and agape (agape) (Greek words for communal concern and brotherly love).  This is a community of freely chosen friendship, filial love (philia) and love for the other (agape). This new way broke with the "honour and shame" societies that shaped and still shape most of religious life, creating a community of “conspiratio (a latin word meaning “co-breathing”) in love of those who freely share in the human breath of the Holy Spirit in the peace of Christ’s body (communion).

Renunciation, which sadly became ritualized in the Christian community as a form of punishment during lent, was intended as the spiritual discipline of letting go of those things that prevented the “eutrapelia (eutrapelia) (a Greek word implying the joyful conversation of the Holy Spirit working in a community).  Illich saw that we have passed a certain threshold in our culture, where things and institutional structures have pushed out the feel and sense of living in the freedom of human community.  The freedom of the ensarkosis, or incarnate dwelling of God in human flesh, has been corrupted by the attempt to control every aspect of human life and society, placing everything in the equation of the market place.   Illich's idea was that there are limits to human ownership and control, limits beyond which we believe more in our own power and manipulations than in a trusting to the bonds of human community, care and love.  

In Lent, the theme I want to work away at is this idea of renunciation as creative love. To put it another way, there are things we need to give up, not to punish ourselves, but because they prevent us from the fullness of joy in God's creative love. This chosen simplicity is necessary for our spiritual and physical well being.  
This simplicity is the recognition that human needs are simple: food, shelter, clothing, and belonging or friendship.  As Philoxenos, the Syrian mystic once put it, “it is not the one who has many possessions that is rich, but the one who has no needs."  These simple needs are in most cases easily met by healthy communities. When human communities are torn apart, as in North America, by greed, fear, and excessive wealth, then these needs are not met.  When communities are torn apart by the manufacturing of needs and the manufacturing of an endless hunger for possessions and consumer goods, we have a great need for renunciation.  Renunciation is the first act of claiming a spiritual freedom, the spiritual freedom that Jesus proclaimed, and was crucified for proclaiming.

What we suffer from now is a corruption of the best—the attempt to “better human life”—by the drive to manufacture, place in the market place, and have power over every aspect of human experience.  The goods manufactured for the market place are sold to us as things we need.   The Joy of saying no is the joy of refusing to be used, or as Thomas Merton once put it to be suckers that imagine we need all the things we are told we need by the market place:  “We suffer all the needs that society demand we suffer, because if we do not have these needs we lose our “usefulness” in society—the usefulness of suckers.”   We are manipulated by a system of escalating consumption, because the rules of this economy—unlike the economy of God’s grace—demand an endless and limitless manufacturing and consumption of products.  The external devastation of living in this system of lies is becoming evident.  The internal and spiritual devastation is equally destructive.  We become spiritual slaves to an unattainable “perfection,” an illusory self, in an attempt to manufacture and remanufacture a perfect self.  

In years past, I have given up self- deprecation in Lent, because it distracts me and others from the creative transformation of self through the love of others, by focussing my attention on my many faults.   Self-deprecation is as much a sign of being a sucker to manufactured needs as is consumerism.  The acceptance of the gift of our being as being sufficient for the day is my own needed renunciation and simplification of life.  The spiritual journey is into the asceticism or simplicity of being where one can freely—without any sense of compulsion—offer one’s gifts to the other.  This is an example of following the Christ on a pilgrimage of receiving each moment as sheer grace, and each person as a gift. The journey in Lent can be away from self-obsession and obsession with possessions, to a recovery of the self as a mysterious gift given in relationship with others and the Other, God. It is also a journey into an acceptance of our mortality as gift rather than a dilemma. The cross leads to resurrection, for when we have accepted our own death as given and inescapable, we can begin to live freely and fully without fear and compulsion.

Let us find the joy and the freedom of just saying "No," thereby saying "yes" to the other, ourselves and to the Holy Other.   Let us prepare for the Lenten journey through the cross to resurrection.

Amen

For your further reading: Ivan Illich: http://www.pudel.uni-bremen.de/100en_index.html and http://www.spinninglobe.net/ivanillichpg.htm  Thomas Merton:  http://www.merton.ca/ Anno Domini: Jesus Through the Centuries: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Annodomini/  This last site was an exhibit that toured Canada, but was created at the Museum in Edmonton by an old friend of mine David Goa.

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