Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Divided Kingdoms, Divided Selves

Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. But aren’t we all just that — houses divided against ourselves? Plato said that our passions were like chariot horses seeking to run each in their own directions instead of pulling together. St. Paul said that people are caught in the frustrating situation of wanting to do good but doing evil instead. Yet, still, in our deepest desires, we long to be one thing, which is another way of saying we wish to live with integrity.

How can we be at peace when we are constantly at war within? And the strain of keeping our divided selves from totally collapsing is enormous and exhausting.
I wonder if that answer is that, if we want to cease being divided, we must give in to that which is stronger and better than us — to God.

The English poet John Donne expressed this in his Holy Sonnet XIV:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

No project of self-improvement, no exercise of willpower can make us whole and undivided. Only our surrender to God can do that. It’s probably the work of a lifetime. But we won’t be acting all by ourselves as we try to put ourselves into the hands of the One whom the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins addressed as “Thou mastering-me God.”