Relearning one of the beatitudes...

Why am I doing this? Why am I spending my summer struggling over Latin? Why do I need to learn another language? 

       There are just certain things that you need to do. You don’t particularly want to, they may not seem incredibly useful, but you just need to do them. Every academic subject has its thing. For pre-med i remember my Holy Cross friends fretting over organic chem.  In philosophy it was logic, we philosophers have never had much use for logic anyway. In theology studies a good number point to Canon Law as the beast to get past, and I may well discover that to be true in the coming year in Rome. Right now, however, it is Latin. 

University College, Cork. Where I am plugging away at
Latin. 

It is not that I don’t have a facility for languages, I speak or read 6 at least in part, and have some conversational ability in 3 of those,  but Latin just seems so peripheral to everything that I want to do or accomplish. Especially now, reading the Satyricon, which makes trashy reality TV like the Jersey Shore look like Sesame Street, I feel so far removed from anything useful. Even still, when I think about it I realize that the ways in which I will use Latin, even if I go onto study more in Theology after ordination, will not require excessive knowledge of the obscure 1st century idioms I am learning right now. 

Somewhere on the Ring of Kerry, in one of my thankfully
less studious moments. 

At this point, the study seems useless, except for one thing. The truth is that all too often it is easy today to see something that looks too difficult, too intense, and turn away. Sometimes the discipline of getting through it is unto itself its own reward, however. Sometimes when we can force ourselves pass the peripheral, less important, desires that we have it helps us to focus on what we really want. Many saints have called it the practice of mortification, and they had many sundry and often medieval ways of doing this.  (Many of which I don’t recommend.) The truth is though, that sometimes sticking with something which is unpleasant is precisely the sort of thing that makes us better able to understand just what we desire most. 

Case in point. I am here, in Ireland, for the summer. I would much rather go find a pub and listen to good traditional music just about every night rather than study Latin. I would much rather go out hurling (the traditional Irish sport that I have taken up in the past couple of months, not the gastronomic feat) every afternoon than translate from Petronious. Truth is, I would much rather do just about anything, including writing on this blog, than study Latin. It has  been a struggle not to write, or hurl, or go to the pub as often as I would like. Latin is sometimes, as it was tonight, a sheer endurance test. The truth is, though, that sometimes having to suppress those momentary desires for a much more profound one helps us to remember who we are. I find myself here in Ireland much more focused on the reality of what will happen in my life over the course of the next two years, and realizing just how deep that desire flows in me. With the peripherals stripped away, or forced to the background, the most true thing comes to the fore, which for me is the desire to be  priest. I am doing this because I wan to fulfill the University’s requirements, which will help me to become a priest. So I can’t go to the pub when I have class the next day, which is 6 days a week here. I can’t go hurling every afternoon. I have to do this and stick it out, even if it is a struggle to. Being forced to sit and struggle, or endure something unpleasant, for the sake of a greater desire can often make it clear to us just how much we want something. For St. Ignatius, when we can get in touch with that deepest desire we can also be sure we have been in touch with what God wants for us, who else would have placed such a desire on our hearts?

So sure, I am convinced that God smiles at my feeble attempts a picking up a new sport at 30, and he likely delights in the songs at the pub and a pint shared among friends. More importantly, putting these legitimate little joys aside, having to say no to them more often than I would like, and realizing the struggle that can be, has helped me, and I think can help all of us, get closer to what we want most, and understand how much we want it.  In rediscovering it we find a kind of joy that the pure of heart have always known for so long, they can put aside the other desires in their heart for the most profound of all, and that is likely why they see God.