.
.The
Readiness to Change
.
by Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1997)
“Put
off the old man that belongs to your former
manner of life and is corrupt through
deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the
spirit of your minds, and put on the new
man, created after the likeness of God in
true righteousness and holiness.”
– Ephesians
4:22-24 (RSV)
These words of St. Paul are inscribed above the
gate through which all must pass who want to reach
the goal set us by God. They implicitly contain
the quintessence of the process which baptized man
must undergo before he attains the unfolding of
the new supernatural life received in Baptism.
All true Christian life, therefore, must begin
with a deep yearning to become a new man in
Christ, and an inner readiness to “put off the
old man” – a readiness to become something
fundamentally different.
All good men desire to
change
Even though he should lack religion, the will to
change is not unknown to man. He longs to
develop and to perfect himself. He believes he
can overcome all vices and deficiencies of his
nature by human force alone. All morally
aspiring men are conscious of the necessity of a
purposeful self-education which should cause
them to change and to develop. They, too, – as
contrasted to the morally indifferent man who
lets himself go and abandons himself passively
to his natural dispositions – reveal a certain
readiness to change. But for this, no spiritual
and moral growth would exist at all.
Yet, when man is touched by the light of
Revelation, something entirely new has come to
pass. The revelation of the Old Testament alone
suffices to make the believer aware of man’s
metaphysical situation and the terrible wound
inflicted upon his nature by original sin. He
knows that no human force can heal that wound;
that he is in need of redemption. He grasps the
truth that repentance is powerless to remove the
guilt of sin which separates him from God, that
good will and natural moral endeavor will fail
to restore him to the beauty of the paradisiac
state. Within him lives a deep yearning for the
Redeemer, who by divine force will take the
guilt of sin and bridge the gulf that separates
the human race from God.
Throughout the Old Testament that yearning
resounds: “Convert us, O God: and show us Thy
face, and we shall be saved” (Psalm 79:4). We
perceive the desire for purification which
enables us to appear before God, and to endure
the presence of the unspeakably Holy One: “Thou
shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be
cleansed: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be
made whiter than snow” (Psalm 50:9).
God calls us to change
The New Testament, however, reveals to us a call
which far transcends that yearning. Thus Christ
speaks to Nicodemus: “Amen, amen, I say to thee,
unless a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Christ, the Messiah, is not merely the Redeemer
who breaks apart the bond and cleanses us from
sin. He is also the Dispenser of a new divine
life which shall wholly transform us and turn us
into new men: “Put off the old man who is
corrupted according to the desire of error, and
be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and put
on the new man, who according to God is created
in justice and holiness of truth.” Though we
receive this new life in Baptism as a free gift
of God, it may not flourish unless we cooperate.
“Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new
paste,” says St. Paul.
A strong desire must fill us to become
different beings, to mortify our old selves and
re-arise as new men in Christ. This desire, this
readiness to decrease so that “He may grow in
us,” is the first elementary precondition for
the transformation in Christ, It is the primal
gesture by which man reacts to the light of
Christ that has reached his eyes: the original
gesture directed to God. It is, in other words,
the adequate consequence of our consciousness of
being in need of redemption on the one hand, and
our comprehension of being called by Christ on
the other. Our surrender to Christ implies a
readiness to let Him fully transform us, without
setting any limit to the modification of our
nature under His influence.
Readiness to change versus
natural optimism
In regard to their respective readiness to
change, the difference between the Christian and
the natural idealist is obvious. The idealist is
suffused with optimism concerning human nature
as such. He underestimates the depth of our
defects; he is unaware of the wound, incurable
by human means, with which our nature is
afflicted. He overlooks our impotence to erase a
moral guilt or to bring about autonomously a
moral regeneration of ourselves. Moreover, his
infatuation with activity prevents him from
understanding even the necessity of a basic
renewal. He fails to sense the essential
inadequacy of all natural morality, as well as
the incomparable superiority of virtue
supernaturally founded, let alone the full
presence of such virtue – holiness.
His readiness to change will differ, therefore,
from that of the Christian, above all in the
following respects. First, he has in mind a
relative change only: an evolution immanent to
nature. His endeavor is not, as is the
Christian’s, to let his nature as a whole be
transformed from above, nor to let his character
be stamped with a new coinage, a new face, as it
were, whose features far transcend human nature
and all its possibilities. His object is not to
be reborn: to become radically – from the root,
that is – another man; he merely wants to
perfect himself within the framework of his
natural dispositions. He is intent on ensuring
an unhampered evolution of these dispositions
and potentialities. Sometimes even an express
approval of his own nature is implicit therein,
and a self-evident confidence in the given
tendencies of his nature as they are before
being worked upon by conscious self-criticism.
Such was, for instance, Goethe’s case.
Invariably in the idealist, the readiness to
change is limited to a concept of nature’s
immanent evolution or self-perfection: its scope
remains exclusively human. Whereas, with the
Christian, it refers to a basic transformation
and redemption of things human by things divine:
to a supernatural goal.
A second point of difference is closely
connected with this. The idealist’s readiness to
change is aimed at certain details or aspects
only, never at his character as a whole. The
aspiring man of natural morality is intent on
eradicating this defect, on acquiring that
virtue; the Christian, however, is intent on
becoming another man in all things, in regard to
both what is bad and what is naturally good in
him. He knows that what is naturally good, too,
is insufficient before God: that it, too, must
submit to supernatural transformation – to a
re-creation, we might say, by the new principle
of supernatural life conveyed to him by Baptism.
Thirdly, the man of natural moral endeavor,
willing as he may be to change in one way or
another, will always stick to the firm ground of
Nature. How could he be asked to relinquish that
foothold, tumbling off into the void? Yet it is
precisely this firm ground which the Christian
does leave. His readiness to change impels him
to break with his unredeemed nature as a whole:
he wills to lose the firm ground of unredeemed
nature under his feet and to tumble, so to
speak, into the arms of Christ. Only he who may
say with St. Paul, “I know in whom I have
believed” can risk the enormous adventure of
dying unto himself and of relinquishing the
natural foundation.
Not all possess the
radical readiness to change
Now this radical readiness to change, the
necessary condition for a transformation in
Christ, is not actually possessed by all
Catholic believers. It is, rather, a distinctive
trait of those who have grasped the full import
of the Call, and without reserve have decided
upon an imitation of Christ.
There are many religious Catholics whose
readiness to change is merely a conditional one.
They exert themselves to keep the commandments
and to get rid of such qualities as they have
recognized to be sinful. But they lack the will
and the readiness to become new men all in all,
to break with all purely natural standards, to
view all things in a supernatural light. They
prefer to evade the act of metanoia: a true
conversion of the heart. Hence with undisturbed
consciences they cling to all that appears to
them legitimate by natural standards.1
Their conscience permits them to remain
entrenched in their self-assertion. For example,
they do not feel the obligation of loving their
enemies; they let their pride have its way
within certain limits; they insist on the right
of giving play to their natural reactions in
answer to any humiliation. They maintain as
self-evident their claim to the world’s respect,
they dread being looked upon as fools of Christ;
they accord a certain role to human respect, and
are anxious to stand justified in the eyes of
the world also.
They are not ready for a total breach with the
world and its standards; they are swayed by
certain conventional considerations; nor do they
refrain from letting themselves go within
reasonable limits. There are various types and
degrees of this reserved form of the readiness
to change; but common to them all is the
characteristic of a merely conditional obedience
to the Call and an ultimate abiding by one’s
natural self. However great the differences of
degree may be, the decisive cleavage is that
which separates the unreserved, radical
readiness to change from the somehow limited and
partial one.
Transformation in Christ
requires unqualified readiness to change
The full readiness to change – which might even
better be termed readiness to become another man
– is present in him only who, having heard the
call “Follow me” from the mouth of the Lord,
follows Him as did the Apostles, “leaving
everything behind.” To do so, he is not required
literally to relinquish everything in the sense
of the evangelical counsels: this would be in
answer to another, more particular call. He is
merely required to relinquish his old self, the
natural foundation, and all purely natural
standards, and open himself entirely to Christ’s
action – comprehending and answering the call
addressed to all Christians: “Put on the new
man, who according to God is created in justice
and holiness of truth.”
Readiness to change, taken in this sense, is
the first prerequisite for the transformation in
Christ. But, in addition thereto, more is
needed: a glowing desire to become a new man in
Christ; a passionate will to give oneself over
to Christ, And this, again, presupposes a state
of fluidity, as it were: that we should be like
soft wax, ready to receive the imprint of the
features of Christ. We must be determined not to
entrench ourselves in our nature, not to
maintain or assert ourselves, and above all, not
to set up beforehand – however unconsciously – a
framework of limiting or qualifying factors for
the pervasive and re-creative light of Christ.
Rather we must be filled with an unquenchable
thirst for regeneration in all things. We must
fully experience the bliss of flying into
Christ’s arms, who will transform us by His
light beyond any measure we might ourselves
intend. We must say as did St. Paul on the road
to Damascus; “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do?”
| Brief biographical
background on Dietrich von
Hildebrand (1889-1997), from
Ignatius Press:
Hitler
feared him and Pope Pius XII
called him a “twentieth century
Doctor of the Catholic Church.”
For more than six decades,
Dietrich von Hildebrand – philosopher,
spiritual
writer, and anti-Nazi crusader
– led
philosophical, religious, and
political groups, lectured
throughout Europe and the
Americas, and published more than
30 books and many more articles.
His influence was widespread and
endures to this day...
Soon after the end of
World War I, Nazism began to
threaten von Hildebrand’s beloved
southern Germany. With his
characteristic clearsightedness,
von Hildebrand immediately
discerned its intrinsic evil. From
its earliest days, he vociferously
denounced Nazism in articles and
speeches throughout Germany and
the rest of Europe.
Declaring himself
unwilling to continue to live in a
country ruled by a criminal, von
Hildebrand regretfully left his
native Germany for Austria, where
he continued teaching philosophy
(now at the University of Vienna)
and fought the Nazis with even
greater vigor, founding and
editing a prominent anti-Nazi
newspaper, Christliche
Ständestaat.
This angered both
Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler,
who were determined to silence von
Hildebrand and to close his
anti-Nazi newspaper. Orders were
given to have von Hildebrand
killed in Austria. Although his
friend and patron, Austrian
Premier Engelbert Dollfuss, was
murdered by the Nazis, von
Hildebrand evaded their hit-squads
and fled the country just as it
fell to the Nazis.
It is characteristic of
von Hildebrand that even while he
was engaged in this dangerous
life-and-death struggle against
the Nazis, he maintained his deep
spiritual life, and managed to
write during this period his
greatest work, the sublime and
highly-acclaimed spiritual
classic, Transformation in
Christ (Cf. pp. xiv-xvii).
Fleeing from Austria,
von Hildebrand was pursued through
many countries, ultimately
arriving on the shores of America
in 1940 by way of France,
Switzerland, Portugal, and Brazil.
|
[Excerpt from Transformation
in
Christ, Chapter 1, © 1948, 1976
Dietrich von Hildebrand © 1990 Alice von
Hildebrand, 2001 edition published by Ignatius
Press, San Francisco. Used with
permission.]
|
