Tag: PrideConsolation & Desolation: What are “spiritualized capital sins”?Q: Dear Father John, You used the phrase “spiritualized capital sins” in your post on consolation and desolation. I have never heard this idea before. What are spiritualized capital sins and how do they “attempt” to re-conquer A: We have to remember that here on earth we are members of the Church militant. We are in the midst of a battle. As we grow spiritually, the enemies of our souls (the devil and his demons) don’t sit idly by. Did you know that the Church’s most notable heresiarchs (people who start heresies) were almost all priests in their forties? Pelagius, Arius, Apollinaris, Nestorius… These were all men of God, passionately dedicated to the Church and to seeking deeper intimacy with Christ, advanced in theological knowledge and in the spiritual life. Who would have guessed that they would become instruments of ecclesial devastation and spiritual shipwreck? And yet, they did. We can never forget this: as we grow spiritually, the battle doesn’t go away. But our enemies are smart. They know that temptation has to be customized to the situation of the person being tempted. They can’t invent new sins (the seven capital sins are always the primary categories for sinful behavior), but they can disguise them in new ways. So, for someone who is well along the road towards spiritual maturity, the tempters will have to clothe the capital sins in spiritual garments. “Spiritualized” Capital Sins For example, the inclination to vanity can appear in a subtle desire to have one’s new and advanced piety noticed. You start trying to draw attention to the outward manifestation of your devotion. Or you find yourself seeking to impress your spiritual director – hiding real struggles from them, lest they think you are less holy than you want to appear. You may even switch spiritual directors, not for any objective reason, but simply because you don’t want to follow anyone’s advice except your own. The inclination to pride can show up in a sort of complacency in your religious works. You think you are really doing well, and so you start planning all kinds of great spiritual projects, but you don’t actually follow through on any of them. Or, you start talking about spiritual things with other people just to give them lessons, instead of seeking ways to put the lessons into practice yourself. In the area of sensuality, you can become attached to the consolations that God has given you in your prayer and sacramental life. So you find yourself trying to force certain emotional reactions during your meditation or after Communion. You start to seek spiritual feelings too much, forgetting that the goal of holiness is union with God in mind and will, not feelings of consolation. You can even begin to become attached to friendships or relationships that seem to be based on spiritual values, but in truth you invest in them because of the emotional payback you feel instead of the mutual spiritual support they are supposed to provide; this can become a kind of spiritual lust. Spiritual greed can take the form of an insatiable desire to read every spiritual book, to accumulate rosaries and holy cards and icons, to jump around from devotion to devotion trying to imbibe the entire spiritual patrimony of the Church all at once even to the neglect of life’s basic duties (like one’s responsibilities to family members), instead of seeking patiently to go deep in the essentials. Keeping Our Eye on the Ball: “Thy Will Be Done – Not Mine!” These are some examples. You can find a more systematic summary of this spiritual trap in Fr. Tanquerey’s treatise on the spiritual life, #’s 1262-1269. We need to know that these types of attachments and self-absorption are possible, and that they can hinder spiritual progress as much as the less subtle sins. But we need not become obsessed with them. As always in the spiritual life, the compass and anchor remain the same: I love God by accepting and fulfilling his will in each moment of my life. That’s the litmus test, and that’s the surest guide through the shadows and tangles of this earthly pilgrimage – as sure a guide for us as it was for Jesus: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work” (John 4:34). How can I overcome the root sin of pride?
A: Whole libraries could be written on how to overcome pride. Pride is the mother of all root sins. Take any sin and you can ultimately trace its roots back to pride. This vice arises because of a deep-seated desire to do things our way. Whereas vanity puts too much emphasis on the esteem of others, and sensuality stresses the love of comfort, pride puts the limelight on one’s self. A proud person is the center of his universe. Pride can manifest itself in myriad ways. One example is perfectionism, where a person gets caught up in his own work and goes to great lengths to prove himself. The perfectionist works hard for his own glory, but not for the glory of God. Pride can also show itself in an inordinate desire for control. A proud person might want to control every aspect of his life, and even the lives of others (including one’s adult children). A proud person loves to have the last word. He might find it hard to listen respectfully to others’ views. Another manifestation is an exaggerated tendency toward independence and individualism. This is common in cultures that place great value on self-sufficiency. Not infrequently this love of independence and individualism is a disguise for selfishness: Deep down the proud person doesn’t really care about the good of others. He doesn’t call it selfishness, of course. He calls it “tolerance” or “having respect for others’ privacy.” Pride also shows itself in anger and criticism. A proud person might judge everyone else to be a fool. The proud one might get easily annoyed when contradicted by others. He might turn to insincerity and lying to cover up his mistakes. He might have an inability to ask for or offer forgiveness. The prideful person might be unwilling to serve others, might show impatience or brusqueness toward others. Self-love of a proud person leads him to nurse grudges, to rebel against legitimate authority, to exhibit inflexibility. Indifference to other’s needs or feelings isn’t uncommon. A proud person might be a master manipulator, steering conversations (and even whole nations) toward his interests. What are the remedies for pride? For openers, the proud person must cultivate a deep sense of humility. He needs to recognize that all the gifts in his life come from God. The proud person must understand his own smallness; he is nothing without God’s grace. The prideful person must also recognize his sinfulness, and that this sinfulness rules out any kind of boasting. Such a person needs to remind himself constantly of the love and mercy and patience that Christ has shown him. Christ died on a cross for each of us. The prideful person then needs to realize that he is called to imitate Christ’s love and mercy and patience toward other people. After all, they too are made in the image of God and are deserving of respect. Since pride takes many forms, a person has to recognize how this vice manifests in his life, and then work on the opposite virtue. If he has a hard time listening to others, he has to work on the habit of letting others have the last word in a conversation. If he is prone to anger, he has to work on patience, preferably with very specific people (a wife, a co-worker, an in-law, etc.). If a person tends to be obsessed with his own needs, he might need to get involved in charitable organizations. Whatever the manifestations of pride, it is necessary to get to work on battling them right away. Pride tends to grow tougher with age, so there is no time like the present to get to work. Best of God’s graces to you! Yours in Christ, Father Edward McIlmail, LC Father McIlmail is a theology instructor at Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, RI. Can a root sin change?
A: The general opinion on this question is, as far as I can tell, that root sins don’t change. Remember, because of our fallen nature, we all carry within us tendencies towards vanity, pride, and sensuality. When we identify one of these tendencies as our “root” sin, that just means that it is the one that has more sway within us, it is the one we find harder to resist on a habitual basis. It’s kind of like being an extrovert or an introvert. Each of us naturally tends towards one of those: we are more of an extrovert than an introvert, for example, or vice versa. A mature personality will have developed enough self-governance so as not to be enslaved to one’s natural introversion or extroversion, but the basic make-up doesn’t actually change. Just so, the root sin is something that’s kind of built in to our unique, individual embodiment of our common fallen human nature. So why would it seem that your sensuality is being replaced by pride? It could be that your root sin is not very pronounced and that you have fairly even “doses” of both of these. I suspect, however, that something else is going on. More likely, you are beginning to get to know yourself more deeply. Having spent some time putting conscious effort into your spiritual growth, the Holy Spirit is now able to give you more light. And so, you are becoming more aware of the deeper causes of your most usual faults and sins. Maybe you had one or two glaring faults in the area of sensuality, and these blinded you to other aspects of your interior life. And now that you have been developing virtue, the glare of those faults is subsiding, enabling you to understand yourself more objectively and thoroughly. That’s just a guess, though, since I don’t have more detailed information to work with. But it is an educated guess. One of my priest friends and I were talking recently, and he told me that it took him over ten years of intense spiritual effort to discover his root sin. I would like to issue one warning before finishing this post. When we begin to work systematically on our spiritual growth, a new temptation can surface: We can become overly preoccupied with the means we use for spiritual growth (program of life, spiritual direction, meditation methods…), which can lead us to lose our focus on the goal, which is to know, love, and follow Jesus Christ a little bit better each day. So, for example, if you find yourself frustrated in your efforts to identify your root sin, or if you are discouraged by the possibility that you may have misidentified your root sin, it could be a sign of over-emphasis on the means. Christian spirituality is not reducible to techniques and formulas, because it is a real relationship, a friendship with Christ. Trust that God is leading you and making use of even your smallest and clumsiest efforts to draw you closer to himself. New discoveries along the way should never be a source of discouragement, but a source of delight. Remember, we do not make ourselves perfect and then start following Christ, rather, we start stumbling along at Christ’s side, and he leads us, little by little, with immense patience and wisdom, deeper and deeper into the endless perfection of his Sacred Heart. Yours in Christ, Fr John Bartunek, LC, ThD How can I identify my root sin?
A: You are already on the right track. A program of life is worthless (well, almost worthless, at least) without having identified our root sin. Unless we understand the dynamism underlying our frequent faults and failings, we will never be able to work intelligently to overcome them. It’s like gardening. If you want to get rid of the weeds, you can just pull out the stems; you have to get at the roots. Otherwise, progress is short-lived and unsubstantial, and sooner or later discouragement and frustration set in. In trying to identify our root sin, the wisdom of the Church comes in handy. Spiritual writers through the ages have identified three possible candidates. Before I describe them, however, it behooves us to make one clarification. All of us, simply because of our fallen human nature, have sinful tendencies linked to all three of the candidates. Saying that we have a “root sin” simply means that for each of us, one of the three is dominant. It’s bigger than the others and exerts greater influence on our day-to-day behavior. That said, here are the three possible root sins: pride, vanity, and sensuality. Pride, in this sense, refers to a disordered attachment to our own excellence. The proud person tends to seek meaning and fulfillment in their own achievements and conquests. Vanity is a disordered attachment to the approval of other people. The vain person tends to seek meaning and fulfillment in being appreciated or liked by other people. Sensuality is a disordered attachment to comfort, ease, and pleasure. The sensual person tends to seek meaning and fulfillment in taking it easy and simply enjoying life. Notice that each of these root sins is a disordered attachment to something. The things in themselves – achievements, relationships, pleasures – are not evil. The problem comes when we seek meaning and fulfillment in those temporal, created realities. In fact, we are created and called to seek our meaning and fulfillment in God alone, in our ever-deepening relationship with him. Achievements, relationships, and pleasures are meant to be ordered around and towards that principle and foundation of our life. As the Catechism puts it in #27:
Again, it is important to realize that we each have tendencies that spring from pride, vanity, and sensuality. None of us is exempt from any of them, because we all have inherited a fallen human nature. But in each of us, one of the three is usually dominant. If we can identify which one, we can better aim our efforts to grow spiritually; we can strive to develop the virtues that counteract the cause, the root, of our falls and faults. We can identify this root sin, also called “dominant defect” by some spiritual writers, by looking at the common manifestations of each. The manifestations which are strongest in your life can clue you in to your root sin. Below you will find a list of these common manifestations. Read through them once quickly and make a note of the ones that characterize you most. You will find that sometimes you fall into all of them, but some of them will jump out at you as particularly common or strong in your life. Whichever of the three has more of those is, most likely, your root sin. As you go through this exercise, you may find it more difficult than you would like. That’s because self-knowledge is slippery. And that’s one of the most compelling reasons for finding a spiritual director to help us be objective in our spiritual work. I hope you keep looking, and pray that God will lead you to one. COMMON MANIFESTATIONS OF PRIDE:
COMMON MANIFESTATIONS OF VANITY:
COMMON MANIFESTATIONS OF SENSUALITY
Yours in Christ, Fr. John Bartunek, LC, STL Frustration and Humility – Is there such thing as an “Act” of humility?
A: This question is clearly a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit: Where else could a desire to make “acts of humility” have come from? I will try to share some thoughts that will help you follow this beautiful inspiration. Traditional Catholic spirituality often uses the phrase “act of” when referring to a particular type of prayer. You have probably heard or read about an “act of faith” or an “act of hope” or an “act of love.” The term can be traced back to the Latin verb “agere,” which has the past participle form of “actum” (it’s always good to review our grammar!). That verb is juicy. “Agere” means about a dozen different things in Latin, but the core sense of the word is to put into motion, to focus energy upon. Our word “action” is derived from this root. So, when we make an “act of faith,” we put into action, in a conscious way, the virtue of faith. An act of faith, in this sense, is an activation of our belief, a focused assertion of our assent to what God has revealed as true. An act of humility is the same conscious activation of the virtue of humility, a focused assertion of our absolute dependence on God for existence, salvation, and growth in all that is good and healthy, naturally and supernaturally. Your instinct that there may be short acts of humility (ready-made formulas that can help us make this conscious assertion frequently and energetically) is right on target. All spiritual writers agree that we should frequently lift our hearts to God, even in the midst of our busy schedules. In fact, the Church has attached a partial indulgence to the lifting of our hearts and minds to God during our daily activities, even for a brief moment. This is how we stay in tune with our heavenly trajectory in life. At the end of this post, I will include some formulas for acts of humility that you may like. But I want to emphasize that the value of these types for formulaic prayers is not in the word themselves. They are not magical incantations. Rather, their value is in their ability to help us focus our minds on the deep truths that God has revealed to us in Christ. They give us words to express our deepest convictions. And every time we express those convictions consciously, really meaning what we say, we deepen them. And it is from deep, mature Christian convictions that virtue can grow and flourish, that we can gradually learn to live in elegant and dexterous harmony with God’s unceasing action in and through our lives. So, by all means, make frequent acts of humility, but when you find yourself falling into the empty or routine recitation, don’t be afraid to switch formulas, or to use your daily prayer time to compose a one yourself! (Yes, we are allowed to write our own prayers – sometimes these are the very best ones, because they come from the very depths of our experience of God.) Some short prayers that can be used as acts of humility:
Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD |
|
|
