By Tom Thomas –
“Vanity is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. the vain person wants praise, applause, admiration too much and is always angling for it. it is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. it shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. you value other people enough to want them to look at you. you are in fact still human.’ – C.S. Lewis
“What do I do with all these?” my wife asks.
She is referring to the many trophies and medals garnered over the past three decades of my life. Each one represented an achievement in one of the spheres of my life that I was proud of at that moment in time. Quiz, Motorbike rallying, Tennis, Gym, running etc. It meant a lot to me, each one won by a lot of sweat, tears, and effort. These trophies had lost their shine and relevance over time and were gathering dust in our showcase which needed to be taken down as it was being remodeled. I was clinging on to them – memories of the past glories.
Wondering what to do with them, and watching a recent movie ‘Marry Me, on OTT, the dialogue by Jennifer Lopez resonates “If you linger long enough in the question, you will get the answer.”
Is this vanity- my clinging onto these external symbols of appreciation- which seems futile or meaningless? Digging further for an answer, I find that Evagrius (a desert father of renown) in AD 375 described a list of eight evil thoughts – one among them being Vainglory or Vanity. This was later merged into Pride in the Seven Cardinal Sins by Gregory the Great.
I turn to the scriptures for confirmation and especially to the Book of Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” This book was attributed to having been written by one of the wisest men ever, the Kohelet, thought to be Solomon.
My beloved Apostle, Paul, writes, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way as to take the prize. Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable. Therefore I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight like I am beating the air. No, I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” (1Cor 9:24,25). I needed to grow in age and wisdom to learn what Paul is teaching us. True, all the things I did to gain the earthly trophies have disciplined me and made me the man that I am today.
I am also referred to a quote by a respected member of a Bible study group I am part of “All sensible people know that vanity is the most devastating, the most universal, and the most ineradicable of the passions that afflict the soul of man, and it is only vanity that makes him deny its power. It is more consuming than love. With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thralldom of vanity. Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity.” says, W Somerset Maugham in “His Excellency”
Reading these and pondering over them for some time, the answer to the question comes to me. These trophies are nothing but my vanity- my pride. I must not cling on to them else I cannot find my way to the Lord. There are many steps to reach Him as Thomas Merton says in his autobiography ‘The Seven Storey Mountain’, and St Bonaventure’s ‘The Soul’s Journey into God’, tell us. Vanity is certainly not part of this path to God.
St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio after his election as Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM) went to La Verna where St. Francis had received the three wounds of the Crucified Christ. While reflecting on this incident, says Bonaventure, “I saw at once that this vision represented our father’s rapture in contemplation and the road by which this rapture is reached. And the road is divesting oneself of any attachment to self. Here is the prayer he made:
“O Crucified Master,
May our prayer to you
Cleanse our minds,
So that we may know
That there can be
No reading without unction,
No speculation without devotion,
No observation without gladness,
No industry without piety,
No knowledge without love,
No understanding without humility,
No study without divine grace,
No reflection in the soul
Without the wisdom that comes
From the Holy Spirit.” (From: The Soul’s Journey into God”)
From St. Bonaventure, I learn that I cannot find my way to the Lord except through divesting myself of all and any attachments.
“I don’t need them anymore,” I tell my wife very emphatically. And I move on without any regret.
This decision makes me feel much lighter, to let go of what was my once most treasured possessions.
Saint Bonaventure, Franciscan friar, bishop and cardinal, was born at Bagnoreggio, (whose feast day we celebrate today) near Orvieto in 1218. A brilliant philosopher, he was made head of the Franciscans at a time when the order was expanding very quickly and there were many differences of opinion as to how it should be organized. St Bonaventure always worked for peace and reconciliation. Though a man of the highest intellectual attainments, he lived simply and rejected most honors.
St Bonaventure often said that a fool’s love and knowledge of God may be greater than that of a humanly wise man.
When the Pope’s envoy came to visit him at the friary of Mugello – to bring him his cardinal’s hat – he asked him to hang it on a tree and wait a few minutes because his hands were wet as he was washing the community’s dishes.
St Bonaventure died during the second Council of Lyon in 1274. He was canonized in 1482 and made a doctor of the church in 1588. His emblem is a cardinal’s hat.