Wisdom for the Ascent – 1 – St. John of the Cross

THE soul must of necessity—if we would attain to the divine union of God—pass through the dark night of mortification of the desires, and self-denial in all things. The reason is this; all the love we bestow on creatures is in the eyes of God mere darkness, and while we are involved therein, the soul is incapable of being enlightened and possessed by the pure and simple light of God, unless we first cast that love away. Light hath no fellowship with darkness, for as St. John saith, ‘The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.’

John of the Cross, S., Zimmermann, B., & Lewis, D. (2010). The Ascent of Mount Carmel (15–16). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Struggling with Lenten commitments? A prayer of St. Teresa on mortification

“Why O Lord, should I be preoccupied with my fears and lose courage in the face of my weakness? You give me to understand that I must fortify myself in humility, and convince myself that I can do very little alone, and that without your help I am nothing. I shall put all my confidence in your mercy, and shall distrust my own strength, convinced that my weakness is caused by my self-reliance. You teach me not to be astonished at my struggle, for when a soul wishes to give itself over to mortification, it encounters difficulties on all sides. Does it wish to give up its ease? What a hardship! To scorn a point of honor? What a torture! To endure harsh words? Intolerable suffering! In short, it becomes filled with extreme sadness, but as soon as it resolved to die to the world, every anguish is at an end.”

Saint Teresa of Avila

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).