What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
– 1 Corinthians 4:7b
Cassian is at it again this morning, poking at the tender spots in my spiritual life, forcing me to reckon uncomfortably with sores I’d rather nurse alone. Really, he’s talking about something (almost) entirely different in Conferences 2.16, which is mostly occupied with questions of free will & human effort. But hearing this verse as the very last words of today’s chapter prodding something that was brought to the surface of my heart yesterday: spiritual pride.
I no longer really try to conceal what I sometimes call my “nosebleed-high” ecclesiology and sacramental theology. It is too central to my experience of the faith for me to hide or deprecate it and still minister with integrity. My belief in (and experience of) the centrality of apostolic succession and the Sacraments—dominical and ecclesial—is a big part of why I am now Christian.
But there’s an insidious temptation that comes with holding things to be central. However central these things are to the nature and life of the Church, they’re not things the Church possesses in any proper way. The temptation to see apostolic succession and our sacramental life as the property of the Church can lead swiftly into viewing them as points of pride to be held over others.
It’s incredibly easy to make this slip. Yes, I believe that historic apostolic succession is a necessary feature of the visible catholic Church. But that conviction ought never breed in me a spirit of superiority over those Christians who do not share in the historic succession. Yes, I believe that confessing the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (validly administered) is an essential tenet of the faith we have received from the apostles. But that should never prompt a disdain for those who have not received that gift.
Because it is just that: a gift. What do we have that we have not received? Absolutely nothing. These sacramental and ecclesial treasures are not ours to clutch or use as a platform to lord ourselves over others. They are thing to be held with open hands and shared with others. Like the 12 Step adage says, “We keep what we have only by giving it away.” This doesn’t mean we have to compromise our belief that they are essential. But it does mean that we have to resist the urge to turn up our noses at people who do not share them (or are even uninterested in them).
This tension—to embrace the nosebleed-high theology of the Church while not making it a site for snobbery—is one that I think I’ve neglected for a while. But I’m grateful for the saints and the Spirit nudging me to remember that the Church’s catholicity is a gift from the Giver of all good things, not something we own or can boast about. Lord, help me keep on remembering that and keep my bleeding nose straight ahead on the your path.