To the best of my knowledge rocky road is chocolate ice cream with some toppings mixed into it. The reason I am unsure is because I haven’t eaten it too many times in my life. I was one of those children who had a positive horror of nuts in dessert. Since then I have learned that nuts can be used to advantage in baking, but to this day I am still a firm believer that ice cream and nuts do not belong in the same dish at the same time.1
Besides the nuts providing some of the “rocks” in the rocky road, I’m pretty sure there are other additives as well: bits of candy, pieces of chocolate, marshmallow something or other. . . As much as these things are tasty in themselves, they do get in the way of the chocolate ice cream. I love the pure, smooth, unadulterated chocolate ice cream, and I don’t want any bits and chunks detracting from that delight.
My feelings about steak sauce run along the same lines. The steak sauce isn’t bad — it’s good. It just happens to get in the way of a greater good when it is put on steak. If the steak is cooked right, i.e. not cooked much at all, then its own flavor and texture are what I want. The steak sauce is an impurity.
This brings me to my real point. What is purity? Yes, I know it is the opposite of impurity, which we usually associate with the breaking of the sixth and ninth commandments. I’m looking for something broader though. Something that gets to the heart of the matter. Humor me for a moment as I try to gain some insight from the rocky road.
Let’s say that my love for God is chocolate ice cream. And let’s say that God wants to enjoy the tastiness of my love. (Why God finds my love desirable is not something I can readily explain. It seems like a mystery that we may grow to understand and appreciate, but that is not for us to comprehend. For the purpose of this meditation, I will simply acknowledge the fact. God greatly desires my love. ) Even though He is the one Who has given me this “chocolate ice cream” in the first place, He does not compel me to give it back to Him. He is terribly delighted when I freely give Him this delectable dish.
However, I think it is fair to say He would find any bits and chunks, other loves, cluttering my heart, undesirable. He wants all my love, and He wants it to be pure.
Perhaps the good things in life such as friendships, possessions, health, education, talent, the wonders of nature, etc. can tend to get in the way of my love for God. When I love these goods with a divided heart, they become so many impurities in the chocolate ice cream. Of course when God gives such gifts, He does not intend that they distract us from Him. They are meant to help and edifying us; to lead us to love Him more and more. He wants us to know and see and His goodness when we enjoy all the goods He has given.
My hypothesis is that when we love anything apart from God, it becomes for us an impurity. And conversely, when we love all things in God, seeing every good as a small reflection of the only, eternal, and greatest Good, then the chocolate ice cream of our love will be smooth, creamy, and pure.
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- From the Editor: There will doubtless be readers who are fans of rocky road ice cream (as am I), whose frozen-desert preferences incline them to reject this allegory for the spiritual life. We ask your forbearance. It is to be hoped, even in these troubled times, that pro- and anti-rocky-road Catholics can live in peace and not anathematize each other. In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas. We need not start a new de auxiliis controversy. ↩
