Habits in Dining, Learning, and Spirituality

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I often read and hear about the "fast food" culture in which we live, which is akin to the "sound bite" culture by which we consume our information.  While fast food and sound bites may provide some benefits at some intervals, they certainly are no way to maintain healthy bodies and minds.  Instead, human beings require good, fresh food and holistic learning if they are going to grow to their fullest potential.

In recent days, I've been thinking about the many ways that a person's dining and learning habits might reflect his or her spiritual habits.  Does a person expect spiritual health with quick and small bites of information and formation?  From all the available evidence, it is clear that many in our culture think and act according to such a paradigm.  People surmise that they can cultivate deep spirituality and win answered prayers by way of distracted worship rituals, quickly-recited rote prayers, and commercial-bookstore "spirituality" texts.  They seem to believe (remember, actions always identify a person's beliefs) that the religious and spiritual life operates in exactly the same way as buying a lunch or a latte; or that a half-hour documentary on the Discovery Channel contains all that needs to be said about followers of Jesus.


If our culture is to recapture its former magnanimity, it is necessary for us to eschew laziness in dining, learning, and religion and spirituality.  For purposes of this post, I'll leave commentary on holistic foods and learning to other people or for other days.  I'll focus only on spiritual habits.

It is imperative for individuals (myself first among them) to cultivate certain habits, virtues, if they are to become magnanimous in the spiritual life.  First among these is humility.  Humility combats the capital sin of pride, which causes a person to place himself over and above God and others.  There can be no other starting point than humility.  Another necessary virtue is religion.  Religion is the first moral virtue under the cardinal virtue of justice; it is the justice that we owe and give to God in response for his acts of love and creation.  A third virtue without which we fall into spiritual sloth is docility.  Docility is the habit of being open and being led to the truth that God wants to reveal.  A docile person allows God to reveal His plans according to Divine timing and methods; she does not tell God that "this is how it's going to be..."  Fourthly, diligence is a virtue of primary importance to dive deep into the spiritual life.  Attaining to the transcendent will not happen in short bursts, like three days of praying the Rosary intensely and faithfully, or giving up sweets during Lent alone.  We must sustain our efforts of prayer and fasting over much longer periods of time, even when we don't feel like it and even when it seems as though God is not with us through it.

The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception by Samuel Van Hoogstraten
Coupled with the virtues listed above (and the others which are applicable but weren't mentioned), persons who seek to grow in holiness cannot omit faithful and diligent study from their repertoire.  To become a deeply spiritual person, one must engage in deeper and deeper learning.  Even the best op-ed pieces on religion in magazines and newspapers, YouTube videos, daily devotion paragraphs, and so on, fall short after a brief period of time.  That's precisely because they are only small stepping stones to much deeper and richer knowledge and understanding.  Those small bites ought to make us hunger for something more solid and enduring.  Just like the appetizer at a five-star restaurant only serves to augment the main dish, so it is with the small morsels of truth that we receive from our culture.  Eventually, we ought to begin to desire the Real Thing.  A person will only be satisfied when he or she can spend time encountering the Divine and Transcendent, not in grasping shadows of His glory!

Indeed, it is for the betterment of humanity as a whole that we take every opportunity to slow down; that we hear a new and broader perspective; that we become willing to wait patiently for God to reveal Himself to each of us.  It is in the waiting and hearing that we will come to know God and ourselves more fully, and we will glimpse the Reality that fills our deepest longings.

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