Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [214]
Holy sobriety rejects illusions caused by interpreting natural things as supernatural
Another form of illusionary exaltation consists in the tendency of many of us to misinterpret this or that purely natural and all too human attitude or state of mind as a manifestation of supernatural origin and dignity. This vice mostly betrays itself by a habit of idealising all things, and a mincing aversion to call them by their proper names.
One such person, for instance, will mistake an emotional dullness in him, which may in fact be the consequence of chronic fatigue, for a sign of religious serenity. Another will believe himself devoured with a holy zeal for the House of God, whereas in fact it is a purely natural urge for correcting and admonishing others, a pedantic or governess-like disposition, which prompts him continually to upbraid and to preach to his fellows. Another, again, will misconstrue what is simply his healthy temperament, his vitality, his sanguine vivacity, as an outflow of his imperturbable confidence in God. Even the rash blunder of mistaking one’s purely natural depression for the caligo, the dark night of the mystics, is by no means an unheard of occurrence.
Holy sobriety calls us to blunt truthfulness about our nature
Yet, our transformation in Christ requires precisely that blunt truthfulness which is eager to call everything by its proper name. In order to become a true Christian, I must first say with the honest pagan: “I am a man, and know that nothing human is alien to me.”
We cannot be constituted in a true relationship with God nor dwell in conspectu Dei unless we consider man in his true reality and guard against all illusive interpretations. For whatever is specious and spurious in us cuts us off from objectivity and humility, falsifies our response to values, distracts us from God and thwarts the path of our transformation in Christ.
Holy sobriety remains constantly mindful of our terrestrial status
An ordinary fellow who, aware of how subject he is to material things, preserves his sanity and common sense, is likelier to awake some day to a full supernatural life than is the muddle-headed illusionist of false sublimity who is busy decking human and natural things with pompous but false tags and deceiving himself along with others. Indeed, he who makes a habit of transposing natural things of everyday occurrence into an idiom of faked interiority or solemnity, and thus (deeming himself a saint while in reality his motives are entirely of this earth) leads an existence based on illusions, not only falls short of any progress towards true holiness but actually insults God.
A danger of religious illusionism attaches, in particular, to some Christians’ proclivity towards disregarding—leaping over, as it were—the reality of man’s terrestrial situation. To be sure, our glance should be directed to eternity; we should consider everything sub specie æeternitatis and accord a primacy to everything that is relevant to eternity and extends to its sphere. Indeed, we must ask with St. Aloysius, “What does this mean to eternity?” Yet, we must not take on a pose of dwelling already in eternity, nor simply pass over the status viae. For we must always abide in truth, which we cannot do unless we realize our metaphysical situation as a whole, taking into account both our being ordained to eternity and the fact that as yet we are dwelling on this earth.
This disregard may produce its bad effects in two alternative directions. Either our mode of experience becomes ungenuine, and we dwell in a pseudo-sublimity; or else, we fall into debasing and banalizing the supernatural: we drag it down, unintentionally, into an atmosphere entirely of this world—a danger which has been discussed earlier, in the context of false simplicity.
Holy sobriety respects the stages inherent in many