Personal Piety: A Case Study?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 09, 2013

Indulge me, if you will. I am finally on the way home from that cross-country trip to visit relatives and vacation in two of our national parks. Driving all day today and tomorrow will put me back in Manassas, Virginia Saturday evening, with time enough to catch up with yard work on Sunday—before returning to my desk (yes, where I belong) on Monday. So in keeping with the close of what has at least been a working vacation, let me save meatier fare for next week. Here is a brief reflection on personal piety.

One of the remarkable things about Catholicism, in contrast to the high degree of specificity in many Christian sects, is that it embraces an almost unlimited range of personal piety in its adherents. This is another sense in which the Church is truly universal. There is room here for the upbeat and the downbeat, the stern and the easy-going, those who thrive on the traditional, and those who love new devotions or spontaneous prayer. There is room for those who fret about their piety, and those who chuckle over their own pietistic foibles. The Church encompasses in her members forms of piety which thrive on the intellectual, the emotional, the artistic. We may be prone to exercise our piety socially or privately, and in either corporal or spiritual works of charity. The list of the particularities which drive our various forms of piety is nearly endless.

Now, as I must always say in such discussions, don’t get me wrong. Personal piety is not only unique to each person; it is also necessarily imperfect. This is so true that the greatest mistake we can make with respect to piety as Christians is to sacrifice humility by regarding our own pious sensibilities as uniformly superior, while looking down on the pious sensibilities of others. But there are other pitfalls, too. The most important of these trap us into resisting or refusing either the teachings of the Church or her authority over ecclesiastical life, including sacramental life, based on our own pious preferences. Sometimes we even let our piety interfere with our own reception of grace, as when we disdain the Mass, concentrating throughout on the imperfections of a particular liturgy, if it should happen to be prayed in a way that is not to our liking.

On more mature reflection, which of us is worthy of even the most poorly said Mass?

There is room, then, for our own particular inclinations in piety, our own particular forms of piety, but because each form of piety carries its own imperfections and even dangers, there is always room for improvement as well. It is the job of the Church to warn against these dangers and to lead each form of piety to be more perfectly itself, more perfectly in tune with Christ, the universal God-Man, who has given us the gifts which actuate our own piety, and who expects to receive our unique and precious devotion unsullied, as much as humanly possible, by our own selfishness.

I am thinking about piety today largely because of an experience I had this morning, when the engine in the van began to make yet another dreadful whining noise. We had overnighted in Little Rock, Arkansas on the long drive home from our oldest son’s home near Dallas, Texas. Some readers will recall that we had to get our differential rebuilt while on an extended “break down” visit with my older daughter’s family near Indianapolis. I confess I prayed to St. Joseph to help us avoid another automotive delay, though—arising from the peculiarities of my own piety—I dislike praying for things which, on a scale of human misery, are so trifling. But my wife cheerfully responds that Our Lord loves to hear from us about everything, and I am pretty sure we are both equally (but never absolutely) correct in our pietistic differences.

Anyway, I trundled over to a nearby Firestone Service Center in Little Rock first thing in the morning, shortening my beauty sleep to do so, not without an interior chuckle at my corresponding disgruntlement. It’s that piety thing again. I find it difficult to avoid laughing at my pretensions. In any case, I asked a mechanic to take a listen, which led to the following conversation:

Him: [Opening the hood] Start ‘er up!
Me: OK. [Engine roars and squeals into life.]
Him: Hey, turn off the air conditioning, will you?
Me: OK. [Click.] Hey, wait, the engine stopped, too. The sky is falling!
Him: No. You just can’t hear it now that the AC compressor has stopped.
Me: [Feeling, um, stupid.] Oh, so what would it cost to fix the compressor?
Him: Probably half a day’s work and a thousand dollars.
Me: [Broke, but vindicated!] And if we drive a thousand miles to home without fixing it?
Him: Worst case? You’ll feel too warm.

(Well, unless the AC clutch binds up, which isn’t likely.)

And then there was the follow-up discussion with St. Joseph:

Me: Well, uh, thanks…I think.
Joseph: Did you or did you not ask to get home without another big delay?
Me: Hmph. I guess you have me there….
Joseph: Yes, I do. I always do. I don’t see why you can’t get used to it!

And you know what? St. Joseph can have me. I couldn’t be in better hands. It really is that piety thing, once again. It is inescapably highly personal. But under the guidance of the Church, it works. It works, in its own way, for each of us.