Consecrate them in the truth
- FR. DONALD HAGGERTY
Without a yearning for truth cultivated and deeply embedded in our character, we can easily be swept up in current intellectual fashion.
Novelty and innovation exercise a powerful appeal. The rupture with old ways and old thinking, the replacement of them with the new, is not just an intellectual act A subtle inclination of rebellion is often taking place. The desire to be independent in one's thinking and in one's decisions has a seductive quality, especially for the young. But often what parades outwardly as independence in thought is simply an unreflective need to embrace the ruling opinions of the time.
When no critical faculty is exercised from a source deeper in the soul, it is easy to fall under the sway of views disdainful of older traditions. In the religious realm, this is often disastrous. The incapacity to perceive sacred questions in the truths of religion leads sometimes to a permanent loss of interest in religious faith. At some point a soul must have, on the contrary, a profound experience of the sacred, which by its nature is always an incomplete taste, provoking a desire to know more. This need is fundamental for religious faith.
The contemplative life in one sense is an ongoing intensification of this initial encounter with sacredness, The indestructible drawing power of the sacred, rooted in changeless truth, carries the contemplative life forward. Intellectual fashion will seem quite unsubstantial and flimsy against this far deeper attraction for the soul.
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Acknowledgement
Fr. Donald Haggerty. "Consecrate them in the truth." The Contemplative Hunger (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016).
Reprinted with permission from Ignatius Press.
The Author
Fr. Donald Haggerty, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, serves at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. He has been a Professor of Moral Theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York and Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland and has a long association as a spiritual director for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. He is author of Conversion: Spiritual Insights into an Essential Encounter with God, Contemplative Provocations, Contemplative Enigmas: Insights and Aid on the Path to Deeper Prayer, and The Contemplative Hunger.
