A Question about the Litany of Humility in Lent – How can I be freed from the desire of being loved?

Q: Dear Father John, I am trying to pray the Litany of Humility with special reverence and attentiveness during this Lent, and in doing so the following question keeps recurring to me: In the Litany of Humility, the second request is: “From the desire of being loved, Lord Jesus, free me!” How am I to understand this request? I had thought that to want to love and to be loved is a part of our human nature. What am I missing?

A: It has been argued (quite successfully, in my opinion) that Christ’s greatest virtue during his earthly sojourn was humility. That you have felt nudged to pray the Litany of Humility as a Lenten devotion, then, seems a sure sign that you are listening to the Holy Spirit. It is edifying and encouraging to hear about it!

Your dilemma is a good one. True, the deepest needs of our human nature, as designed by God, are to be loved and to love. This is because we are created in God’s image, and God is love, the infinite love of the relationship between the three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Insofar as we reflect that divine Trinitarian relation of love within the limitations of our human nature, we live out our vocation as God’s children and we discover and enjoy the fulfillment we long for at the very bottom of our souls.

Looking for Love in a Fallen World

But remember, our current condition includes both a fallen human nature and a fallen world. As a result, these deep needs of our human heart have a tendency to express themselves in distorted ways.

Think about a secular family in which the parents are trying to re-live their own youth vicariously through their children. They pressure their kids to excel at sports, the arts, academics, and everything else. And as the children grow up, they either rebel against this self-centered mode of parenting in some destructive way, or they fall into the over-achiever trap, thinking that achievements are a condition of love. In the latter case, they unconsciously form a habit of the heart in which their need to be loved is almost inextricably intertwined with a need to achieve. If they don’t get straight A’s, if they don’t get into a top college, if they don’t win this or that award, then they will let their parents down and therefore not be loved. As a result, they live in constant tension, deathly afraid of failure, because failure will disqualify them from being loved. This is an unhealthy spiritual state.

Or think about a girl who grows up in a broken home. Mom raises her all alone, because dad abandoned the family early on. She reaches adolescence with a void in her heart, because she hasn’t grown up with the love of a faithful father. She starts dating early, and unconsciously tries to fill that void by winning the love of a boy, a boy who, naturally, is immature and full of adolescent lust. What happens? Her frustrated thirst to be loved leads her to give herself to someone who is not worthy, and only magnifies her emotional instability, maybe even leading to unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and a whole Pandora’s box of painful complications.

The Key Concept

We could multiply examples, but the core concept is very simple: it is possible, unfortunately, to aim our natural desire to be loved in the wrong direction. The unconditional love we are created to yearn for should be sought in only one place – God. St Augustine put it beautifully in a phrase quoted early on in the Catechism:

You [O Lord] have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.

If we seek to fill our need for love from any other source, we will end up frustrated and confused at best, and wounded and lost at worst.

We should serve others and do good to others and encourage others, not in order to win their love and worship, but because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and therefore deserve our love. We should strive to develop our talents and utilize them to make a positive impact in the world not in order to win love, esteem, and praise from others, but because we are God’s children and this is what he has created us to do.

The alarming, effervescent, energizing, and contagious freedom of the saints flows from their having learned this lesson. They no longer gauge their actions or decisions by what other people will think of them. And so they don’t live in fear, instability, and hesitancy. Rather, they have discovered that God’s love for them is as firm as the mountains (as the Psalms tell us). They don’t need to earn it; they just humbly accept it. And once they do, it propels them to echo and reflect it spontaneously and joyfully, regardless of the consequences.

When you pray that line of the Litany of the Humility, as the context of the rest of the Litany helps make clear, you are praying for that same grace: “From the desire of being loved by others, from the thirst of winning the approval of others, from the slavery of depending on the praise and recognition of others, Lord Jesus, free me! Instead, Lord, grant me the grace to fill my infinite need for love at the only infinite fountain that exists: your Sacred Heart.”

Yours in Christ, Fr John Bartunek, LC, STL

How can I go deeper in my faith this Lent season?

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a great group of men at parish here in Colorado about my conversion to the Catholic faith. One of the things I shared was the unusual amount of personal suffering I have experienced. The short list of loss includes a brother and sister in their thirties and a niece at two years old. At a young age I have lived the difficult reality that life, for any of us, can end at any moment. Faced with this understanding, there really is no better time than the present to ensure that when we see God face to face he says, “well done” rather than “depart from me, I never knew you.” The latter is a terrifying thought, the former, a glorious one.

At the end of the talk, one of the men asked, “How would you advise someone who is ready to go deeper in their faith?” Here’s the “Going Deeper” plan for anyone looking to better prepare their hearts for this upcoming holy season:

1) Get a copy of “Inside the Passion” by Father John Bartunek and commit to reading a portion of it every day during Lent (starting Ash Wednesday, February the 17th) with a finish date of Tuesday the 1st of April – the day before Good Friday. If you finish this ahead of time, commit to one decade of the Sorrowful Mysteries on a daily basis or pray through the Stations of the Cross each day. A great way to do the latter is through the “Passion Companion” which also leverages the artwork of the film to held us better experience the Stations of the Cross devotion.

2) Commit to praying for five minutes (or add five minutes if you already pray) on a daily basis using any prayer that appeals to you (i.e. Our Father, Rosary, etc). Ask God to reveal himself more fully to you, just as the father of the sick boy in Matthew 9:24 asked Jesus, “…I do believe Lord, please help my unbelief.”

3) Watch the “The Passion of the Christ” on Good Friday. Be careful to watch it devotionally instead of from the standpoint of entertainment. Watch it at night just before you go to bed. Don’t pop any popcorn and keep the chips in the pantry. Prepare your heart and enter into the film. Pray that Christ would reveal himself to you. Engage with Christ as he gives his life up for you. Ask Him, “how can I give back to you in return for such an overwhelming gift?”

After Lent, use that same prayer habit you developed during lent (or further developed) and learn to know Christ more deeply. Pick up a copy of Father John’s book, “The Better Part.” Learn to meditate on the incredible person and work of Christ on a daily basis.

You will never regret your investment in your eternal destiny, and you will never be the same.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan