Distilling is the process of vaporizing and subsequently condensing a liguid for the purpose of purifying (or concentrating) it. Distilling is commonly associated with the preparation of alcoholic beverages.
However, the word can also be used to refer to extracting the essential elements of anything or, conversely, to purifying or concentrating that thing.
In this broad sense, distilling can be used to describe a process of writing an accurate and meaningful book of history or of giving an accurate and meaningful summary of processes of scientific experimentation.
It’s a necessary process in many situations, so that the essential and primary that the writer or speaker wishes to communicate isn’t lost in a sea of detail.
In one sense or another, distilling is important, useful, or even necessary.
An important area where distilling is necessary—besides for the production of a good whiskey—is in interpreting the meaning and purposes of the statements, actions, or behaviors of others both previously or currently.
This could relate to anything from cases being adjudged in a court of law to the teachings of a professor in a university or even the preaching of the Gospel in a church on Sunday.
This also could relate to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court or the teachings of the Church.
When Pope John XXIII announced the calling of an Ecumenical Council, known to us as Vatican II, he used a metaphor of cleansing of a work of art. He said the Church is like a famous and beautiful painting that has become obscured and darkened over the centuries and which needs to be carefully and delicately restored to its original beauty.
In a way, that’s a sort of process of distilling, too.
The cleansing of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was another challenging experience. It revealed that a lot of relatively darker colors were originally not like that at all—they were just right colors covered with the grime of centuries.
In a sense, you could almost call that a distilling process, too, since it involved removing the accumulated unessential and unoriginal things from the chapel ceiling while leaving the original work of the artist.
When it comes to the teachings of the Church and the practices of the faith, the need for a process of cleansing and restoring, of removing the acquired and obscuring non-essential elements, of distilling is always vitally necessary!
When we study the books of the Bible, we realize that a similar process was going on. Often later books emphasized and elaborated some teachings that were deemed essential, while ignoring or paying slight attention to others in earlier books that were very important to their writer.
As the centuries pass and our scholarship develops we are, so to speak, distilling the essential elements of our faith and our understanding of the actions of God.
And, and this is the most challenging aspect of our faith and religious practices, the “distilling” process never ends.
It’s okay to enjoy a beverage, even though another version of it may be better distilled—i.e., stronger and with fewer unessential (and distracting) elements.
Distillation, renovation, growth, discernment, or any process of positive development is a striving to get to the essential and not be distracted by the unessential.
29 January 2023