Am I being selfish by denying help to my family or friends? Part II of II

Q: Dear Father John, if Christians are called to charity, and we assume that our charity must cost us something (like time, comfort, or money), is there a time when we can justifiably deny a request without being selfish? I’m an at-home mom and my friends often ask me to babysit for their children.  I always say “Yes”, but only because it is difficult for me to do so, and I wonder if God is increasing my capacity to give.

In our last post we laid the groundwork for balance in self-giving. In this post we will dig into a few practical ideas.

Saying “No” and Saying “Yes”

With those distinctions in mind, I think we can answer your question: “Is there a time when we can justifiably deny a request without being selfish?”  Absolutely!  The ultimate goal is not to go around looking for things that are hard for us to do and to do as many of them as possible.  The ultimate goal is give ourselves to God and our neighbor, out of love, out of a sense of what would please them and be good for them.  This provides us with a hierarchy of values that enable us to discern when to say “yes” and when to say “no.”

For example, as a married woman your first arena of love is in your friendship with God himself.  That friendship requires you to hold dear what God holds dear, and so you will never disobey his commands.  If someone asks you to babysit on Sunday, when you know God wants you to be with him at Mass, you can say, “I am so sorry, I am not available.”

Your second arena of love is your relationship with your husband – that is your sacrament.  Through that bond God promises to send his grace into your lives and, through you, into the world.  If you and your husband have instituted a weekly or monthly date-night in order to help keep your communication channels healthy, you won’t be able to babysit that night – you will have to deny that request.  You might actually enjoy the date-night more than the babysitting, but that doesn’t mean you are being selfish.  You are actually being faithful; you are loving as God wants you to love; you are saying “no” to one very good thing in order to say “yes” to an even better thing.

Vanity Disguised as Love

In some cases, it is actually a sign of selfishness NOT to deny a request.  Let’s take a radical case.  Your girlfriend is having an affair.  She wants to get together with her lover while her husband is at work.  She asks you to babysit her kids so she can have her tryst.  Part of you may want to say yes to this request, because you don’t want to alienate this friend (who is popular and influential in your social circles).  But you know that you should not encourage her in her infidelity.  If you were to babysit to help cover up her adultery, would you really be showing her Christ-like love?  Or would you be putting your own social status ahead of your responsibility as Christ’s follower to help people leave sin instead of dive into it?

Discerning God’s Path

The principle underlying these examples is always the same.  It has to do with keeping God first in our lives, with loving him by finding and following his will for us.  That is the true measure of love.  Sometimes that path will be steep and painful, just like Christ’s path to Calvary.  But even then, in the depths of our soul we will find a spiritual resonance, an interior peace and assurance that comes from the Holy Spirit.

If we don’t, if we only find turbulence and confusion even in our hearts, it could actually be a sign that we are making a wrong turn, that we are operating out of vanity or pride instead of Christ-like love.  How can we tell the difference?  Usually it is clear.  When it isn’t, we need to turn to God in prayer (and it’s much easier to do that if we have already developed a healthy prayer life), and get solid advice from someone we trust, like a spiritual director.  And, like all things in the spiritual life, practice makes perfect: the more we engage in Christ-like love, the more easily we discern the real thing from its distracting counterfeits.

“How” vs “How Much”

As a final comment, I would like to make an observation about St. Paul’s “Hymn to Charity,” which we find in 1 Corinthians 13.  This passage summarizes the characteristics of Christ-like love (which is why it is so popular as a Reading during wedding Masses).  Notice that St. Paul is much more interested in how we do things and how we treat each other than he is in how much we get done.  In our world of maniacal overachievers and merely material standards of success, that is a very, very important distinction to keep in mind.  If we say yes to so many things that we end up doing them all angrily, resentfully, and bitterly, we have probably lost the balance somewhere along the line and need to pull back.  It may be costly to decide to give of ourselves, but once we have made the decision, we should be able to let our trust in God banish the emotional resentment: “Each one should give as much as he has decided on his own initiative, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7).   Let’s let St. Paul have the last word:

Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited, it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offense or store up grievances.  Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds its joy in the truth.  It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. Love never comes to an end. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Am I being selfish by denying help to my family or friends? Part I of II

Q: Dear Father John, if Christians are called to charity, and we assume that our charity must cost us something (like time, comfort, or money), is there a time when we can justifiably deny a request without being selfish? I’m an at-home mom and my friends often ask me to babysit for their children.  I always say “Yes”, but only because it is difficult for me to do so, and I wonder if God is increasing my capacity to give.

A: I know for certain that you are not the only reader of this blog who struggles with this issue.  We all experience the limitations of time and space (and energy!), and yet we believe we are called to be limitless in our love: “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).  How can we reconcile the apparent contradiction?

A Gospel Paradox

First, we have to get somewhat theological.  Charity – Christ-like, self-forgetful love – is by nature sacrificial.  We give of ourselves to someone else, for their benefit instead of our own.  And that goes against the grain of the selfish tendencies deep within us, which we inherited with original sin.  Therefore, self-giving is often painful, or, as you put it, costly.  This is what Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta meant when she said, “This is the meaning of true love: to give until it hurts.”  This is also what Jesus had in mind when he taught that “the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14).  Following Christ, learning to love like Christ, involves a constant battle against our innate tendencies to self-indulgence (of any variety), which necessarily involves self-denial: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24).

But in a true gospel paradox, the initial pain of self-denial out of love for God and neighbor doesn’t last.  It is transformed into interior peace and deep joy: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), our Lord promised, and again “Give, and it shall be given to you” (Luke 6:38).  Love, Christ-like love, touches a deeper chord in our soul than selfishness.  And so, when we obey the law of Christ-like love, we experience a spiritual satisfaction and tranquility that can actually coexist with the discomfort caused by denying our selfish tendencies.  On the surface, we feel the pain of self-giving, and in the depths, we know we are doing the right thing; we experience interior peace.  In the end, this deeper level outweighs the more superficial, emotional tantrums.

Think of the mother whose young child is seriously ill.  She has to stay up night after night to care for and watch over the child.  At times she feels that she simply can’t go on.  Exhaustion is wreaking physiological and psycho-somatic havoc.  And yet, she would have it no other way.  In her heart she experiences a spiritual peace because she knows that this is what God is asking of her, that this is what a mother should do, regardless of the cost to herself.

Costliness Is not the Essence of Love

And so, although Christ-like love will always be costly, we cannot really equate the love with the costliness.  The costliness is more like a byproduct, which comes from the automatic resistance of our innate selfishness.  And it is not the only byproduct – interior peace and inner joy are also the byproducts of true love.  When we give of ourselves out of love, and not out of vanity or fear, we experience spiritual satisfaction, because that’s what we were made for.  We are created in God’s image, and God is love.

In our next post we will give some examples of our “yes and no” in relation to charity.

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).

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

Q: Dear Father John, 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: I am so encouraged to see that you recognize a need to develop your willpower! The first job the Holy Spirit has is to show us our need for God’s grace, so you are obviously in tune with the Holy Spirit!

And that’s the first point: We all need to remember that when it comes to pursuing spiritual maturity, our own efforts are never enough. (A heresy from the fifth century taught the contrary, and it was condemned by the Church; it’s called Pelegianism.) On the other hand, St. Thomas Aquinas reminded us many centuries ago that “grace builds on nature,” and that means that we can do a lot to create a propitious for God’s grace to be fruitful, to take root in our souls and bear abundant fruit, “some one-hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold” (Matthew 13:8).

The Shortcut (Ha!)
Forming the will, our capacity to make prudent, firm decisions and follow through with them in spite of opposition, temptation, or difficulty, is absolutely necessary for spiritual progress. A weak will inhibits our capacity to love, because love means self-giving, and self-giving is necessarily difficult in a fallen world, a world in which our fallen nature tends automatically towards self-indulgence. So you are right to want to form your will, to strengthen it, to develop it. Unfortunately, no flashy, romantic method exists for character formation. I can’t give you a short-cut. I can only share some recommendations that spiritual writers have given throughout the centuries. It will be up to you to put them into practice. But you will not be alone – three of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which were planted in your soul at baptism, are directed towards giving your weak and wounded will a supernatural boost (these are the gifts of fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord). So, if you make a decent effort to do your part, the Holy Spirit will surely give you a fantastic return for your investment. Your will has two jobs in the spiritual life. First it has to submit to God, to embrace and obey God’s will. Second, it has to govern your other, lower faculties (like your appetites), so that they don’t go off on their own and drag you into the muddy acid of laziness, lust, greed, and the other vices. You can do some practical things to train your will in both tasks.

Job #1: Embracing God’s Will
To embrace God’s will for your life – whether in basic things like following the Commandments and the duties of your state in life, or in extraordinary moments when he sends special inspirations – you have to be convinced that God’s will really is the very best option. This is the kind of conviction that drove St. Thomas More, for example, to give up the highest honors in the Kingdom, abundant riches, and an incomparable position of power and prestige, trading it all in for a few years in prison and a death sentence. He knew the answer to Christ’s question: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). The more deeply we are convinced that God’s will, God’s plan, and God’s way are based on his infinite wisdom, limitless goodness, and passionate, personal love for us as individuals, the more we will want to embrace it and follow it, no matter the cost.

Deepening Our Conviction
How can we deepen that conviction? There is absolutely no better way to do so than by making mental prayer a part of your daily life. Add to mental prayer a good dose of daily spiritual reading, a Rosary, and frequent reception of the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession, and you have a solid formula that will, gradually, deepen this conviction. It will become a solid, deep, granite foundation for a life of holiness and fruitfulness. But you have to avoid just going through the motions in those spiritual disciplines: be faithful to them, and be faithful to constantly striving to do them better. The help of a good spiritual director is useful here. Go over each of your prayer commitments with your spiritual director. Explain what you do and how you do it, and ask for advice and tips on how to do it better.

Job #2: Self-Governance
The will’s second job consists of governing your lower faculties. Your appetites always want to go towards their proper object, the particular pleasure associated with their exercise – food, sex, rest, entertainment… To strengthen your will, then, requires disciplining these appetites until, like a well-trained thoroughbred, they have learned to channel all their power in the direction that your will points them. This may take a long time. Our culture trains us in just the opposite way. Our consumerism actually debilitates the will in favor of the whims of emotion. Sometimes it takes prolonged periods of taxing effort to free the soul from the slavery of sentimentalism.

In our next post on this topic we will talk about a few secrets and tips to help you to be more effective as you face this important challenge.

Penance and Mortification – What is the difference?

Q: Dear Father John, OK, now I have a better grasp of what we mean by “mortification,” but that has raised another question. Is there difference between mortification and penance or penitence.

A: This is a very interesting question. The distinction between mortification (synonymous in most spiritual writers with self-denial, abnegation, self-renunciation, dying to self) and penance (synonymous with penitence, sacrifice or self-sacrifice, and “reparation”) has to do with the interior motive behind the action. In other words, the exterior action (fasting, for example, or taking a cold shower on a cold morning) can be exactly the same, but depending on the reason why I am doing the action (my intention), the spiritual nature of the act can be either mortification or penance.

The intentionality of an act of mortification is to “punish [i.e., discipline] my body [i.e., self-seeking tendencies] and bring it under control, to avoid any risk that, having acted as herald for others, I myself may be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). In other words, I freely deny the satisfaction of a normal and healthy desire in order to grow in my spiritual maturity, to learn to govern the self-seeking tendencies built into my fallen nature. For example, I purposefully mortify my perfectly legitimate desire for dessert on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent, so that I am better able to control an illegitimate desire to get drunk whenever that desire happens to surface. Mortification is spiritual training, tempering of the willpower in order to be able to better govern our passions and instincts, starving the bad plants in the garden (vices and selfish tendencies) so the good plants (virtues) can flourish.

The intentionality of an act of penance is to “make up in my own body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). I am doing penance for sin, making up for an evil, destructive deed, just as Christ did by dying on the cross. He offered his obedience as “payment” (or atonement) for our disobedience. This is how he repaired (made “reparation” for) the breach between God and man created by original sin. He sacrificed himself (made himself into an offering to God) on our behalf. Penance, therefore, is done as a way to tell God we are sorry for our sins, or for the sins of others, and to make up for them. Thus, my teenage son refused to go to Mass on Sunday, and so, to make up for this ungrateful offense against the majesty and goodness of God, I do penance on his behalf – perhaps making a Holy Hour on Monday evening instead of watching a favorite television show, or not listening to music during my morning commute this week, just to show God that someone (I) does indeed love the Giver more than the gifts. A good dad would do something similar if his son broke a neighbor’s window by throwing a rock; he would make up for it himself, if his son refused to do so. When we do penance, we are repairing for sin, reversing the self-indulgent act of sin by replacing it with a self-giving act of mortification.

Two other points remain on this issue. First, the only way that mortification and penance really help advance Christ’s Kingdom is if we are united to Christ. We must be living the life of grace – Christ must be alive in us – in order for us to unite our actions to his, so that they share in his merits. It’s like having a bank account with co-signers. The check only draws from the vault of merit if it is signed both by me (junior partner) and by Christ (senior partner). We cannot save ourselves by ourselves; we cannot grow in holiness apart from the source of holiness: “for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Second, the concept of sacrifice also includes an element of intercession and petition. Offering God a sacrifice can be a way of intensifying a prayer of intercession. Thus, when St. Therese of the Child Jesus was interceding for the conversion of a criminal condemned to death, she and her sisters joined sacrifices (acts of self-denial) to their prayers. In the same way, we can offer sacrifices (acts of self-denial, obedience, patience…) to God in order to benefit other members of the Body of Christ who may be in need – those in temptation or sorrow, those in prison or suffering persecution. We are connected to them through our membership in Christ. It’s like a tug of war. We are all on the same team, pulling in the same direction. But sometimes someone on our team stumbles, loses their balance, or stops pulling as hard as they can. In those moments, we can pull harder, making up for their momentary lack, picking up the slack, so that they can have a quick breather and then get back into action.

We can draw a whole host of conclusions from these observations, but I will finish by pointing out just one. Since the distinction between mortification and penance is in the spiritual intention, not the physical action, the same physical action can serve simultaneously as both an act of mortification and of penance. We can do one action with multiple intentions. So don’t worry too much about whether your Lenten sacrifice is for mortification or for penance – make it for both!

Yours in Christ, Fr John Bartunek, LC, ThD