And David made this kind of lamentation over Saul, and over Jonathan his son. … And he said: Consider, O Israel, for them that are dead, wounded on thy high places. The illustrious of Israel are slain upon thy mountains: how are the valiant fallen? Tell it not in Geth, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon: lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. … Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you with scarlet in delights, who gave ornaments of gold for your attire. How are the valiant fallen in battle? Jonathan slain in the high places. —2 Kings (2 Samuel) 1:17-20; 24-25
The Episode in Eden
That even the most valiant of our Catholic warriors can fall should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the story of Genesis. Consider Adam. Elevated to the state of not just divine friendship but divine sonship at the instant of his creation, perfectly sinless and placed in an enchanted world where nothing could hurt him or at all mar his sublime happiness, physically robust, intellectually brilliant, and spiritually full of every virtue the largess of his Creator could think to furnish him with — not to mention married to the most beautiful woman on the planet — Adam had it made.
But he ate the forbidden fruit anyway.
And 7,000 years later, our unfailing reaction is — why?? You silly man, what were you thinking? How could you be so ungrateful? How could you throw away Paradise for a stupid fig? We are shocked, outraged, and, yes, scandalized. We vent our frustration in name-calling: Adam the wimp, Adam the ingrate, Adam the disobedient, Adam the traitor. Thanks a lot, Adam. I have to get up at five in the morning because of you; I have to lie in bed sick for days or weeks on end because of you, watch my children suffer and my friends and acquaintances die because YOU BLEW IT. Would it really have been so hard to have scolded your wife and walked away from that dumb old tree? That’s what I would have done!
No small part of our frustration with the whole Eden episode is our confidence that, placed in the same circumstances, we would have behaved better and more virtuously. We would have known better than to condemn the whole human race to reprobation and misery. But since actually saying as much might come off as a smidge prideful, we leave it unsaid, content to keep the implication cleverly masked between the lines of our litany of accusations. Alas! That our inward hypocrisy is not allowed to graduate to outward expression makes little difference from God’s perspective. Our gentle Savior, Searcher of Hearts, sees with sadness that the damage has already been done: in harshly judging the fallen — we, too, have fallen.
Scandal — An Almost Laughable Concept
The reality of scandal is tragic, no question. Derived from the Latin scandalum, a stumbling block, scandal by definition is that which occasions another’s sin. We do not say that scandal causes the sin in the strict sense, because sin by definition is a willful act, and no one may force us into it. But scandal provides an excuse, as it were; as an “exemplary cause,” it lays the bait, so to speak.
Its lamentable side duly acknowledged, the other less apparent feature of scandal which deserves to be brought to light is its almost laughableness. Some fellow leaves a big rock in the middle of some road, another fellow posts a YouTube video advertising the fact, and pretty soon the whole country is talking about it. But the temptation usually is not for thousands of people to say, “Oh, neat idea!” and hunt down similar rocks with which to decorate the double yellow line of their own respective Main Streets; usually the temptation is to stand squarely in front of it, exclaim angrily (or mutter angrily, if one is of the introverted bent), “What moron would leave a rock in the middle of the road?” kick the dang thing, and then hire an attorney to sue said moron for the personal injury inflicted by said rock.
Even so, the spiritual damage wrought by scandal is not always a question of our falling into the same sin the first fellow fell into; often, it is a matter of falling into different sins on his account. Like pride. Anger. Detraction. Discouragement. Hypocrisy. Put in this light, we are suddenly seen to be the silly ones. By allowing ourselves to be surprised by the frailties of others, or, to put it more graphically, shocked that those who have courageously undertaken to cross swords with the dark side in their public defense of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful should actually be wounded in battle — is about as ridiculous as choosing to break our own toes based on the supposition that if there is a rock in the road it deserves to be kicked.
Enough is enough. If we aspire to be perfect, we would do well to learn from St. Thomas Aquinas that the perfect ought never scandalized, since “no man can be unsettled, who adheres firmly to something immovable” (ST II-II, Q. 43, A. 5), the Almighty being the most immovable Being there is. If we are serious about wanting to be saints, we need to act as the saints did, see the world as they saw it. “In what does perfection consist?” asks Fr. Faber, and he answers:
In a childlike, short-sighted charity which believes all things; in a grand supernatural conviction that everyone is better than ourselves; in estimating far too low the amount of evil in the world; in looking far too exclusively on what is good; in the ingenuity of kind constructions; in an inattention, hardly intelligible, to the faults of others; in a graceful perversity of incredulousness about scandals, which sometimes in the saints runs close upon being a scandal of itself. (Spiritual Conferences, 259).
In the face of the manifest weakness of their brothers-and-sisters-in-arms, the saints by their example offer us three beautiful principles: stay calm, stay quiet, and stay Catholic.
Stay Calm
Natural calmness implies an absence of any disordered passion; it its extreme form, we call it apathy, insensitivity, or Stoicism. Supernatural calmness is anything but. Tranquility, the saints called it, or self-possession, even wisdom. Catholics have never advocated destroying the passions but ordering them properly, subjecting them to grace-enlightened reason, so that they can function as God intended them: as tools. Now, if order is the essence of wisdom, then surely disorder is the essence of foolishness. And what could be more foolish than to get upset and lose our peace over the unpleasant goings-on in a world perfectly governed by the all-seeing, all-loving providence of an all-merciful, all-powerful Father? If God ever decides to stop caring for creation, by all means — panic. But until then, don’t.
Do as Our Lady did at the foot of the Cross. Watching the most heinous act of injustice ever perpetrated by humanity unfold before Her eyes, foreseeing the devastating ramifications Her people’s ingratitude and treachery would have thirty-seven years later, fully cognizant of the Pharisaical scandal polluting the hearts of those Jews who may have otherwise believed in Him because of His miracles and the Gentiles because of His wisdom, She stayed calm.
Nothing discloses to us more astonishingly Her union with God than this unbroken calm. Where God is, there can be no trouble; and there was not a recess in Our Lady’s nature where God was not, and which He did not possess with undivided sovereignty. Hence, while horror followed horror, there was no amazement in Her soul, no bewilderment…. In what an abiding presence of God must Her soul have dwelt! How trained must each faculty of the mind have been, to fall in with the ways of God as it met them, and with such unquestioning promptitude, such unstartled dignity! …[T]here was no effort, no struggle, no pause, no token that Her inward life felt the pressure of outward circumstances. The creature kept step with the Creator, and the angels marveled at the divine repose of Her beautiful dependence. (Fr. Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, 281–282).
This is the first thing we must do, Catholics, when our comrades fall wounded on the battlefield — stay calm. Keep focused. The war is not lost for the loss of one champion, for grace is ever-ready to raise up more Davids against the Enemy’s interminable supply of Goliaths. Do not be disquieted. Weep, if you must, but not as others who have no hope (cf. I Thess. 4:12). We do have hope. As a matter of fact, our hope should be more radiant in the face of these setbacks.
It can hardly be denied that men’s actions are often worse than their hearts, even when they proceed from the heart; and they have often less heart in them than they seem to have. For instance, a man commits a sin in a sudden outburst of passion, that passion may have felt some peculiar sting in the provocation which another would not feel, and it may have fallen upon him when he was physically agitated or when his nerves were unstrung. For all this the sin may remain a sin, and yet be no fair index of the sinner’s heart. Or, again, men are propelled into sin not infrequently by false shame, by human respect, by bad companions, and the man’s heart may be far better all the while than its outward actions testify. Many a man looks to his neighbors [to be] a very monster of depravity, while the priest, who heard his general confession, has been almost touched to tears with the spots of green verdure, the almost feminine sensibilities, the refined kindnesses, but above all with the moral shyness, the ground of so many virtues, which he found in that great rough nature. Are we not learning every day to be less surprised at finding how so very much good can dwell with so very much evil? Then, again, many have so many odd crossings in their minds which tell upon their motives and hamper the free action of their moral sense; and thus it is that cruelty in war, […] murders, and the like, are not on the whole such conclusive proofs of a depraved heart as they are commonly taken to be. Much crime lies at the door of a warped mind and how much of that crime is sin can be known to God alone. The heart is the jewel which He covets for His crown, and if the heart which we do not see is better than the actions that we see, God be praised! For then the world is a trifle less dismal than it seems. (Fr. Faber, Creator and Creature, 328-329)
Along with hope, we discover here an opportunity for another precious virtue. “Humility,” St. Francis de Sales says,
enables us to view our imperfections undisturbed, remembering those of others. For why should we be more perfect than others? In like manner, it enables us to view the imperfections of others without trouble, remembering our own. For why should we think it strange that others have imperfections when we have them ourselves? Humility makes our heart meek toward the perfect and the imperfect, towards the former through reverence, towards the latter through compassion. (Consoling Thoughts of St. Francis de Sales, 124)
Do we not see now why Fr. Faber could say so emphatically that “we shall find it the truest and safest conclusion to come to that we must regard the temptation to take scandal as wholly and unmitigatedly evil, a temptation to which no quarter should be allowed, and to whose eloquent pleadings of delicacy of conscience no audience should be given but that of calm contempt” (Spiritual Conferences, 256).
Stay Quiet
Closely linked to the peace we must maintain when the valiant fall, is the necessity of keeping a holy silence in their regard. First a mental and emotional silence in our own interior: a silence that keeps our attention fixed on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame (Phil. 4:8). Holy thoughts cannot but nourish our holy calm, allowing God’s grace to work in us in a way that it could not do save for that prerequisite state of inner tranquility.
In addition to this, though, a quiet of the lips, of the pen, and of the keyboard is also critical. “[T]he mere holding of our tongues,” says Fr. Faber, “is the cessation of two-thirds of the venial sins of our lives” (Spiritual Conferences, 220). Besides the honorable principle Speak no ill of dead, which is easily baptized and applied in this context, St. John Chrysostom brings another aspect to light in his exhortation on the topic:
You have heard David’s lament for Saul when he said: ‘How the valiant have fallen. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the street of Ashkelon so that the daughters of foreign tribes may not rejoice, so that the daughters of the uncircumcised may not exult in arrogance.’ If David did not wish the matter paraded in public so that it might not be a source of joy to his foes, so much the more must we avoid spreading the story to alien ears. Rather, we must not spread it even among ourselves for fear that our enemies may hear it and rejoice, for fear that our own may learn of it and fall. We must hush it up and keep it guarded on every side. […] Let us not show that they are strong and that our side is weak. Let us do quite the opposite. Rumor can often destroy a soul but, just as often, it can lift it up; it can put zeal in a soul where there was none and, again, it can destroy the zeal that was there.
So I urge you to increase the rumors which exalt our cause and show its greatness, but not the rumors which spread shame on the community of our brothers. If we hear something good, let us broadcast it to all; if we hear something bad or evil, let us keep that hidden among ourselves and do everything we can to get rid of the evil. (Homily Eight Against the Jews)
Granting that nature abhors a vacuum and that “stay quiet” might be too high a standard for our hopelessly garrulous culture, perhaps this second injunction ought to be qualified thus: “Stay quiet about the evil — it gets more than enough airtime elsewhere! — publish the good! Encourage our allies! Shout their victories from the housetops! Surely this is the charity we are called to as Catholics, the charity that is patient, is kind: the charity that envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil: Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth (cf. I Cor. 13:4–7).
Stay Catholic
Charity rejoiceth in the truth. How is this for a truth worth rejoicing over: No matter how hard the valiant may fall, repentance is always possible. Would we not wish such a charitable hope held out to us were we the ones lying in the ditch of public excoriation, mired in the shame of our own weakness? Then let us extend that kindness to our unfortunate heroes, recalling in a single thought their past valor and the victories that are yet possible to them for the future. We are Catholics. We do not give up on those we love, any more than we cease to love those who have given up. Is this not the distinguishing mark of Christ’s adherents, that we have love one for another (cf. Jn. 13:35)?
The saints look at sinners as saints themselves in possibility. Their hopefulness is the secret of their charity. Their humility also, which gives them a clear view of the excess of God’s grace over the amount of their own correspondence, makes them slow to believe that others, even with less grace, will not surpass their attainments. Thus they come to believe, what the experience of those versed in the affairs of souls abundantly establishes, that conversion is one of the most common phenomena of grace. It is the sort of thing to be expected of grace, the ordinary occurrence which comes as a matter of course, just as the sun warms, or the frost chills, or the water wets us, or the fire burns. […] Thus it is that apostolic zeal, with its enlightened love, looks at sinners as the materials for the future triumphs of Jesus, as the harvest yet ungarnered of His Passion and His Cross. (Fr. Faber, Creator and Creature, 330–331)
This was the charity of the hermit St. Abraham for his niece, and which worked in her an all but miraculous restoration of her beauty so scandalously sabotaged. Fr. Alban Butler recounts the history as follows:
His brother dying…left an only daughter, called Mary, whom the saint undertook to train up in a religious life. For this purpose he placed her in a cell near his own, where, by the help of his instructions, she became eminent for her piety and penance. At the end of twenty years she was unhappily seduced by a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a wicked monk, who resorted often to the place under colour of receiving advice from her uncle. Hereupon falling into despair, she went to a distant town, where she gave herself up to the most criminal disorders. The saint ceased not for two years to weep and pray for her conversion. Being then informed where she dwelt, he dressed himself like a citizen of that town, and going to the inn where she lived in the pursuit of her evil courses, desired her company with him at supper. When he saw her alone, he took off his cap which disguised him, and with many tears said to her, “Daughter Mary, don’t you know me? What is now become of your angelic habit, your tears and watchings in the divine praises?”
Seeing her struck and filled with horror and confusion, he tenderly encouraged her and comforted her, saying that he would take her sins upon himself if she would faithfully follow his advice, and that his friend Ephrem also prayed and wept for her. She with many tears returned him her most hearty thanks and promised to obey in all things his injunctions. He set her on his horse, and led the beast himself on foot. In this manner he conducted her back to his desert and shut her up in a cell behind his own. There she spent the remaining fifteen years of her life in continual tears, and the most perfect practices of penance and other virtues. Almighty God was pleased within three years after her conversion, to favour her with the gift of working miracles by her prayers. And as soon as she was dead, “her countenance appeared to us,” says St. Ephrem, “so shining, that we understood that choirs of angels had attended at her passage out of this life into a better.” (Butler’s Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Saints, Vol. I, 333–334)
From the story of these two heroes, we learn that we who mourn over another’s sin must be equally zealous for his recovery. God alone knows whether Judas himself might have been saved had there been a friend on hand to encourage him to turn to our Blessed Mother in his distress. Such a charity was withheld from him and see what became of the poor man! Will we, then, be responsible for the loss of those we could have helped — should have helped! — when we had the chance? What can it mean to be Catholic if not this? “Therefore, let us now go forth,” urges the Golden-Mouthed Doctor, “let us get busy and search for the sinner, let us not shrink back even if we must go into his home. If you do not know him, if you have no connection with him, get busy and find some friend or relative of his, someone to whom he pays particular attention. Take this man with you and go into his home….” At the very least, let us seek him out spiritually, as it were, through compassion, and rescue him by the vehemence of our prayers.
O Felix Scandalum
“He is happy,” Father Faber assures us, “who on his deathbed can say, ‘No one has ever given me scandal in my life!’ He has either not seen his neighbor’s faults or, when he saw them, the sight had to reach him through so much sunshine of his own that they did not strike him so much as faults to blame, but rather as reasons for a deeper and a tenderer love” (Spiritual Conferences, 259).
Yes, a deeper love, a livelier hope, a faith stronger for having faced the temptation of scandal and rejected it with holy disdain; a greater diffidence in ourselves and a vastly increased confidence in Him — these are the secret treasures that await us upon closer inspection of that inconvenient rock in the road. Beneath its rough, muddy exterior, it is gold; gold that Providence allowed to be placed before us not for our demise but for our benefit. O happy scandal! Our crowns will be the brighter for having seen you and stayed calm, for having heard of you and kept quiet, for having faced you in the path of our mortal life and remained full of charity for our fellow members of the Mystical Body! We see how Adam, safely enthroned now in Heaven, ravished forevermore by the sublime radiance of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, blesses the very fruit that was the occasion of his dreadful curse. Taking his example to heart, may we, his sons and daughters in exile, respond to the scandals around us in a manner befitting valiant Christians who hope to remain — by God’s grace — unfallen.
“Death of King Saul,” 1848 by Elie Marcuse (Germany and France, 1817–1902) Public Domain. Source.
