Through the ages, the mystic tradition of the Catholic Church has offered to us all we need for personal growth, heightened wisdom, and enhanced interpersonal effectiveness. Through deep faith—lived consistently in a holy and devout life-style—common hassles and anxieties of life are transformed into true peace—and real love.
Yet, when asked about their basic psychological attitude about life, many persons will say, “I just want to feel good about myself. I want to feel loved. I want a sexual partner. I want to have fun and enjoy life. I’m not a bad person.”
On the surface, according to contemporary social standards, this attitude may seem benign and innocent. But it has deeper social implications that aren’t readily seen.
The fact is, in many of our attempts to enjoy ourselves we end up stepping all over other persons. In seeking wealth we envy and compete with our neighbors, and exploit and deceive the underprivileged. In seeking entertainment we encourage an industry that seduces our entire culture with frivolity, vanity, and pride. In seeking sexual fulfillment we spread emotional wounds and physical disease, along with abortion, child abuse, divorce, pornography, and prostitution. In seeking excitement we create addictions and brew a criminal underground to distribute the materials of addiction. In seeking happiness we’re like the eye of a hurricane, seemingly calm and peaceful, yet blind to the storm spreading chaos all around us.
And that’s what sin is all about. It’s about being completely blind to the bad things we do to others. And yet we’re not bad persons.
We are not bad persons. God created us as good beings to share in his great glory through our free will. Yet because of what theology calls Original Sin we find ourselves separated from a full knowledge of God—and from genuine love. After all, if we really knew love we wouldn’t step all over others and use them as objects for our own satisfaction, would we?
You could program your computer to say, “I love you” every morning when you turn it on, but that synthesized message wouldn’t be love, would it? A computer simply does what it is told to do, and, philosophically, if you cannot say “No” your saying “Yes” is meaningless. Therefore, love must be a free choice—an act of will. And so, when God created us to share in his glory, he gave us free will, so that we would be capable of love. But with free will comes the ability to renounce love. That is what sin amounts to: it’s a renunciation of love; it’s a turning away from moral responsibility to others that ultimately results in a separation from God.
So here we are. We’re not bad persons. And yet we do bad things to others without even seeing it. And, in the very midst of all our searching for satisfaction and contentment in life, we afflict ourselves with anxiety and depression. How, then, shall we ever see the truth? How shall we ever know real love?
Only God himself can show us. Because left to the blindness that characterizes our separation from God,we can see nothing but our own self-indulgent illusions. Left to ourselves, we have nothing but an empty world of social constructions to give us comfort. Left to ourselves, we are lost in slavery to sin.
Now, if God were to appear to us in his full glory, we would surely drop down before him in terror. But we wouldn’t necessarily love him. True love, after all, is an act of self-sacrifice offered in free will, not something engendered by fear.
Psychologically, fear refers to a narcissistic concern about possible damage to our pride and safety. In contrast, fear of God refers to our humble awe before God’s great glory and mercy. Thus, whereas psychological fear pulls us away from God, fear of God leads us directly into the embrace of divine love.
So, in order to teach us true love, God chose to show it to us through the life of a simple, poor man—a life which ended with the most humiliating execution known to humanity.
It was as if God said to all bystanders, those present and those yet to be, “If you can love him, my Son, this humble, broken man hanging in weakness on that cross out of love for you, you can love anything. And if you can love anything, you will finally begin to know me.”
After all, what, in all its blindness, does human culture naturally value? Well, look at politics, sports, and entertainment and you will see an insatiable thirst for wealth, glamor, power, and competition. So is it any wonder that to show us real love, and to bypass all human illusions, God came to us in poverty, simplicity, weakness, and gentleness? And he took all of the insults patiently and quietly, without retaliation, all so that we could see the truth of the sin in our hearts—and repent it, in sorrow for the pain we cause to each other. And that’s why Saint Paul said (1 Corinthians 1:23) that the crucifixion of Christ seemed like folly to the Greeks who valued the “wisdom” of natural philosophy; and to the Jews, who looked for powerful prophetic signs, the crucifixion was a stumbling block. For neither natural wisdom nor power can illuminate their own darkness.
Still, there are those who ask, “But why did he have to die? What does this have to do with love? Why was there bloodshed?”
The answer is twofold. First, the redemption worked in Christ’s death was an example to us. It showed us how we are capable of killing God himself in order to preserve our own self-interests. It showed us, in a way that no event in the world has ever shown before or since, how we, in our hearts—the very hearts God has created—and through our own free will, constantly injure others and defile, mock, and execute divine love in every moment of our lives. It showed us the ugliness and sin we nurture in our own hearts.
So unless we choose to accept the redemption offered in his sacrifice for us—and, in humble, freely willed obedience to the will of God, die to the self-indulgent worldly attachments that nailed him to the cross—we will never know purity of heart and true love.
Three times Peter denied Jesus before the Crucifixion. And three times, after the Resurrection, Christ asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Each time, Peter said “Yes,” and each time Christ told him to tend “my sheep.”
To love is to tend the sheep—not our desires, not our selves, not self-love, and not shadows. But Christ’s sheep. His glory, not ours.
This is a hard thing to accept. Many disciples left Christ because of it. Even today there are those who try to make the Church “relevant” to the modern world. But Christ never said that he came to make life convenient. He came to preach true life. He was not just a “good man”—he was true God and true man whose real presence remains with us always through the Sacraments. Only in the broken bread of the Eucharist can our psychological brokenness be healed. ...
... There will always be those who resist this, those who attack the Church from without and those who sabotage it from within. Yet the choice is simple: will you freely and totally accept the redemption from your own emptiness that is being offered to you, or will you reject it for the sake of your own convenience? If you fail to approach your salvation with fear and trembling (see Philippians 2:12b) because you aren’t willing to sacrifice everything for it—as in the parables of the treasure buried in a field and the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44–46)—then you probably don’t want it that much to begin with. But if you accept the work of your salvation, you will then, for the rest of your life, bear the sadness of a heart broken by the ignorance, apathy, and sacrilege that surround you. And yet, in the very midst of this pain, you will bear the joy of being able to say to Christ, “Thank you Lord; now I feel what you felt.” And that is true love.
My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you.
I ask your pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore,
do not hope, and do not love you.
— Fátima, 1917"
This, and more, can be found at: http://www.guidetopsychology.com/catholic.htm
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