The Ancient Path

The most dangerous place for my wallet is a book store. Every time I go I leave with a handful (or more) of books, which has now lead to us having to literally store them under stairs, in closets, and basically whatever spare space we can find. (Another reason for my wife’s saintliness putting up with all these books.)

On my last trip to the bookstore I picked up The Ancient Path a book by John Michael Talbot. Talbot is a fascinating character. A former musician who joined the 70s Jesus Movement and then entered the Catholic Church, he has founded a sort of hermetical community in Arkansas focusing on charity and the gospel.

The book covers lessons about Christian living that Talbot learned from the Church fathers and how the Church Fathers led to his own reception into the Catholic Church. This is definitely a topic right up my ally as it was my study at a wildly secular college of the church fathers that led me back to my cradle Catholicism.

Talbot touches on a few topics that deserve their own longer exposition : The Jesus Prayer, and the development of Marian devotion, and the development of the sign of the cross but it is his writing on the centrality of charity to Christianity that I want to cover first.

Talbot steals a beautiful image from Tertullian that the acts of charity are a “brand” that is a physical mark on ourselves. He also quotes from Ignatius of Antioch

Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heretics in regard to the grace of Jesus Christ that has come to us. They have no concern for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty.

Wow. Igantius of Antioch knew the Apostles and was one of the first real Church Fathers as we would think of them. Quite the words of conviction for our hardened hearts.

Talbot notes the Greek word leitourgia (where we get the word liturgy) is applied by New Testament writers to tree things: worship, ministry… and charity.

Talbot also remarks, I think correctly, that too often we wall off charity into institutional functions. “Oh that’s what nuns do or that’s someone else’s specialized calling” However it is a central reality of Christian life.

Talbot also discusses Basil of Caesara who built so many charitable functions into his monastic community that the locals called it the New City. He goes on to note the long history of even those monastic communities that focused on cloistered life have rich traditions of charitable endeavors for the larger community.

Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me — Matthew 25:45

This call to charity is one I struggle with in my own family life. How do my wife and I incorporate charity in the hustle of 2 children and a business and everything else we do.

I’m still quite bad at it to be frank. Especially with my time.

But we have tried incrementally and in small ways to do more. Spend a little more time, give a little more money, etc. This theme of incrementalism has been one that’s been very helpful to me. Yes God calls us to give all but we all fall short. However improving in spiritual discipline or charity or holiness I’m beginning to find is about taking small (and often painful) steps but that eventually those small steps create a sort of momentum. I suspect that momentum is really from an opening of ones will to the Holy Spirit little by little.

A brief personal note on this challenge might be helpful. There is a homeless woman that I have to pass nearly every day going from my parking garage downtown to my office. For several years I’d do what I could to avoid her, cross the road or be in a group of people and even shamefully pretending to be on my phone.

I found something painful to me in her pleas for help. I suspect it was that it reminded me of my own failings. Yet here was someone created in Gods image that I avoided as a daily routine.

This year in Lent I had a sense as I made my usual Lenten sacrifices (alcohol and some sweets — things I definitely love) that I needed to do more beyond that and felt that my relationship with this woman somehow was important to it.

Now I strive to always say hello, and ask how she is and sometimes I give some food or money. I’m not perfect at it and often find myself falling back into my old ways but I hope it is helpful to her because I know it has definitely been helpful to my own spiritual growth.

Because ultimately some of Christs harshest words in scripture are for those who say they are Christians but failed to help those in need.