What can I do to increase the strength of my will to resist temptation and grow in holiness? Part II of II

Q: I would like to ask you for a piece of advice. Since my will is not so strong as it should be; what are the exercises to practice that important element of spiritual formation?

A: In our first post we talked about some of the foundational ideas required to begin an effective effort toward strengthening our will. In this post we will talk about a few secrets and tips to making solid progress.

The Secret of a Schedule
The best tactic to employ for sure, even if slow, progress in this area is by establishing and following a weekly and daily schedule that reflects your priorities and duties. If at any given hour of any given day you know what you are supposed to be doing, you give your willpower a huge advantage over your raucous appetites. When your appetites want to abandon your duty or commitment, you will recognize it immediately, because you can look at your schedule and see what your own, freely chosen life-priority is right here and now. If you are supposed to be working on your thesis and your appetites want to take a trip to a museum, you can look at your schedule and make an act of self-governance with your will, training your appetites: “Well, okay, the Borromini exhibit is indeed worth seeing, but right now I can’t just abandon the office – I have some deadlines to meet. But I have scheduled a time for some recreation on Saturday morning, so I can go to the exhibit then.” That’s self-governance; that’s forming your will so that you are liberated from being a slave to your appetites. Coming up with your weekly and daily schedule may not be easy for you, especially if you have a spontaneous temperament. But with the help of a friend (someone who likes to plan and organize things), or even with your spiritual director, you can do it. But then you will have to watch out for another pitfall: becoming a slave to your schedule! That will only cause you to be frustrated and tense all the time. The schedule is a tool, a means to an end, but it can’t foresee everything, so you have to maintain a certain flexibility. Balancing your freedom between the two types of slavery – to your whims or to your schedule – is the proper job of the virtue of prudence. And you will grow in this virtue only if you try, make mistakes, identify them, and keep on trying. For that, the daily examination of conscience can be invaluable.

Top Tips
Be sure to schedule your weekly day of rest, and honor that. Be sure to schedule free time to relax and enjoy the company of family and friends. We are not robots, after all. Be sure to schedule your times of prayer. Be sure to try and follow through on your commitments and decisions; exercising constancy is key for building willpower. If you want to make adjustments to your schedule or commitments, try to do so during your weekly review and planning session, not just on a whim.

Another spiritual discipline, penance and mortification, also aids in the formation of the will, although those disciplines have other primary goals.

Don’t forget that forming your will is a long process – in fact, it’s something we can never stop doing. Like a muscle, if we stop exercising, consciously, our willpower, it atrophies. Don’t worry if you don’t see much progress right away; don’t worry if you keep falling back into slob-blob mode; just keep begging for God’s help and plugging away, confident that you are glorifying God and building Christ’s Kingdom just by making a decent effort to serve him better: “But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved” (Matthew 24:13).

Finally, remember that discouragement never comes from the Holy Spirit. Rather, it’s a trick of the evil one. We know that, because, as Scripture assures us, “with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), and “His mercy is everlasting” (Psalm 11:5).

Pope John Paul II and self-mortification

STUNNER! Pope Practiced Self-Mortification by Jimmy Akin

So various circles have been atwitter about news reports that Pope John Paul II practiced certain forms of self-mortification or, in the immortal words of the Associated Press, “John Paul II used belt to whip himself.”

It is not surprising that our pleasure-obsessed culture would find this unusual, nor is it surprising that latent anti-Catholic tendencies in the culture would cause people to read it in a negative light—as something shocking or repulsive.

So what can we say to those who have this kind of reaction?

Let’s start with what we can say to fellow Christians (Catholic or not) who find themselves thinking this way: While not every person is called to the kind of self-mortification that John Paul II practiced, self-mortification is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition with roots going all the way back to the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

We read in the Old Testament, for example, of people fasting, wearing sackcloth (which abrades the skin; the Old Testament equivalent of a hairshirt), putting ashes on their heads, and lying tied-up in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time (Ezekiel 4:4-8).

In the New Testament we also read of such practices, and of particular note are Jesus’ own remarks about (and personal practice of) fasting. If Our Lord himself practiced fasting, then self-mortification could scarcely fail to find a place in Christian spirituality. Note also that in the Sermon on the Mount he doesn’t say “if” you fast but “when” you fast—implying an expectation of his followers.

Once we have recognized this, the issue of self-mortification becomes one of degree and occasion, for the fundamental principle has been established. If a particular Christian’s faith tradition (or personal view) hasn’t made room for self-mortification then he needs to conduct an open-minded re-examination of the issue.

He might be helped in that re-examination by what we can say to a non-believer, which goes beyond establishing that self-mortification is biblical and deals with the underlying principles.

The first thing to point out is that this isn’t masochism. It’s not the case of wanting the pain out of some sick craving. While there are masochists, anything they do along these lines is not a genuine spiritual exercise. The whole point of self-mortification is that you don’t find the pain attractive but are willing to submit to it anyway for a higher goal.

And the non-believer, unless he is a unthinking hedonist, should be able to acknowledge that it can be legitimate to endure pain for a higher goal (i.e., that there can be higher goals in life than just avoiding pain). For example, the pain that soldiers undergo to defend their country, the pain that parents undergo to help their children, and the pain that absolutely all of us must shoulder in order to achieve important goals.

So what goal was John Paul II, and other practitioners of self-mortification, striving for?

Holiness.

Specifically, virtues like humility, compassion, self-control, the ability to say no to your body in the pursuit of a spiritual goal.

A close analogy is the athletic saying, “No pain, no gain.” In order to get your body in shape, you must be willing to endure some hardship, and the same is true of your soul (or your personality if the person doesn’t believe in souls).

Self-mortification teaches humility by making us recognize that there are things more important than our own pleasure. It teaches compassion by giving us a window into the sufferings of others—who don’t have a choice in whether they’re suffering. And it strengthens self-control.

As well as (here’s the big one I’ve saved for last) encouraging us to follow the example of Our Lord, who made the central act of the Christian religion one of self-denial and (in his case) literal mortification to bring salvation to all mankind.

Even if a non-believer doesn’t buy the religious premises involved, he should be able to see the nobility of the principle of shouldering hardship for the sake of others and for the sake of learning virtues like humility and compassion rather than focusing exclusively on one’s own pleasure.

Hopefully he can see why a pope, as the vicar of Christ and as the leader of the Christian world, would be called to personal mortification in a way that goes beyond what most people are.

NOTE: Any form of significant self-mortification must be done under the guidance of a competent spiritual director. Do not try this at home on your own.

Published with permission of Jimmy Akin and the National Catholic Register