Where do you live?
One of our confreres took the risk of sharing his experience and thoughts on one of the crucial challenges of his life: his fight against alcoholism. We thank him for his courage and humility. Our confrere whom we will call Abba Barsanuphe, as in the tradition of the first monks of the desert, like his illustrious ancestor from Gaza in Palestine shares with us here his wisdom acquired during his human and spiritual struggle. We hope that this life story can help us in this time of Lent to share in community and with our spiritual guide. We can thus together take stock of our relationship with alcohol and evaluate our degree of freedom or captivity at a personal and community level. Each part of Abba Barsanuphe’s story is followed by questions that he offers us to feed our sharing. The Lenten liturgies, which also recount experiences of deliverance, can be reasonable times to also implore the Lord’s help and give thanks for His blessings. Have a good Lenten time and good reflection.
Abba Barsanuphe: “You don’t need to go to bars to drink as much as you need to stay at home. For a bottle addict, all places (I say all places) are possible cabarets. Indeed, in my personal experience, I have found that the best places to drink without arousing suspicion of one’s conscience or that of others remain the unusual places: vestry, car, toilet, nature when travelling, lift. I eliminate the room because this place is very well known to everyone. You might say that I am exaggerating because of where to carry the drink. Well, don’t worry, the alcoholic that I am has more than a thousand tricks and places to keep his provisions. And don’t think about backpacks right away. The best hiding places for a priest are the chapel suitcase, and the pockets of his coat (even if it is 50 degrees in the shade), his long and large gandoura or his trousers.
Until then, I speak to make us aware of the vicious aspect of addiction. However, I would like to go further. In common practice, it is in bars or bistros that alcohol is drunk outside the community, either alone or in company. And it is precisely there too that people indulge in all kinds of excesses in the name of personal, social or community relaxation. Personally, when I realised that the barman started to serve me automatically as soon as I sat down (he knew my favourite drink), I said to myself: “Hmm, I’ve become too well known here. He shouldn’t know I’m a priest.” And then I moved, but the damage had already been done: what are the repercussions on myself and the people I leave behind? In addition to this, my addiction experience made me realise that on every road that led to a field of apostolate (masses, conferences, meetings) I had found bars where I would inevitably quench my thirst once the work was done. This being the case, I could always have a clear conscience: “I don’t go to bars; the proof is that I had gone to an apostolate and it is not a bad thing to restore one’s vital forces after a mission well accomplished, I would even say very well accomplished.” And it became routine because behind every apostolic zeal there was a reward: to indulge in my favourite relaxation, which is to drink properly, with a clear conscience.
Replanting my experiences above on a general level, I see that for personal decisions such as “I’m going out for a drink”, or social decisions such as “Father, I invite you to have a drink”, or even “White Father, you invite me to have a drink when?”, we are moving more and more into bars/restaurants. My personal story tells me that when the faithful meet us in the pubs, they greet us politely and buy us a drink. But that does not mean that they approve of our regular presence in this mundane place.
A few questions to think about
- I am not saying that there are people who are addicted to alcohol like me. Still, when I look at all the individual or community reasons that are put forward for going out for a drink, restaurant/bar, I ask myself the following questions: if going for a drink be the only way to welcome a confrere?
- How much time do we spend in drinking establishments, outside the community, in our field of apostolate?
- In other words, and I plagiarise St. John 1:35-42 so that we may ask ourselves: Where do I/We live?
- Where do we spend most of our free time?
- With whom and what?
- Are we still connected to our choice of life, to our inner self?
- What do we feed them with?
- Am I able to live my solitude without needing compensation?
