Saint Augustine's Sage Advice

JULY 4

LET OUR LIVES BE GOOD

Bad times! Troublesome times! This is what people are saying. Let our lives be good and the times will be good. For we make our own times. Such as we are, such are the times.

What can we do? Maybe we cannot convert masses of people to a good life. But let the few who do hear live well. Let the few who live well endure the many who live badly. (Sermon 30, 8)

PRAYER: O Truth, light of my heart, let not my shadows speak to me. Let me not be my own life, for I lived badly on my own power and was deadly to myself. In You, however, I live again. It is You Who speak and converse with me. (Confessions 12, 10)

(from Augustine Day by Day, Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 1986)

The Insufficiency of Self

It seems these days that there are far too many issues to count, too many topics to discuss, too many truths to defend. Where do we even begin anymore? The sanctity of true marriage which, as Christ defined it, has "from the beginning" been the one-flesh union between one man and one woman for life? Or should we pour all of our energy into the crucial effort to defend our most innocent and helpless brothers and sisters on earth, the unborn? Or what about our brothers and sisters who genuinely feel they ought to be recognized as a member of the opposite sex, even though no reassignment surgery could ever change the reality that at the chromosome level they are a man or a woman?

Many of us have experienced the seeming impossibility of discussing any of these issues from the basis of our faith, our firm commitment to the truth and reason, or our deep sense of authentic compassion without incurring hateful slurs, intellectual bullying, or angry ridicule.

Emotion, no matter how sincere, can never replace true reason and genuine love and respect for every human person, no matter what they believe. But emotion rules our society, and no reasonable argumentation can likely break through to hearts and minds that are so rooted in the soil of emotions and passions.

Love is not an emotion. It just isn't. Love is an act of the will. Love means willing someone else's good, that which is truly in their best interest, most especially their eternal life. It means choosing to think, say, and do whatever is right, regardless of how that person feels or how I feel about it. Love is putting someone else's needs before my own wants (or even my own needs!) Ultimately, love is always about the other, not about me.

Our culture is drowning in a sea of confusion that goes far beyond mere individual behavior anymore. Now the confusion has spilled over into the realm of trying to redefine reality itself, and I believe that it all stems from one deep wound that must be treated urgently. We have refused the true love in whose image we are each made. We have instead remade "love" in our image. We have allowed ourselves to believe that we can define love for ourselves. This can never work, and nothing but more pain, anger, heartbreak, and confusion awaits us if we don't recognize that.

Pope Saint John Paul II was one of the few people in the world brave enough to challenge our focus on radical self-assertion. It's our favorite activity (look at the popularity of "selfie-sticks"). We keep trying to go deeper and deeper into ourselves in order to find the answer to who we are, why we are here, why we exist, what love is, and how to be happy. But that's a problem, because my "self" is insufficient to answer those questions. No one is self-sufficient. We are made for love, for other. We are made precisely to go outside of self and to humbly receive the grace and truth that is never ours to define or declare on our own. When we dabble in redefining reality itself, like what "marriage" or a "human person" are, our first parents' sin in the Garden of Eden reechoes throughout the world, and the wound, the rift between us and our Creator, opens even more. In the end, to pursue only "self" is to self-destruct. 

I pray deeply that we will have a profound change of heart. I pray for a miracle.

Lord Jesus, teach every single one of us to joyfully embrace the great gift of humility. Teach us how to lay down our weapons of pride, hate, anger, and jealousy at the foot of your cross once and for all. Finally, Lord, I beg you to fill our hearts and minds with the truth, for you yourself are that truth. You are the truth that enables us to finally be our true selves, the sons and daughters of God the Father whose sole purpose in this world is to bear your love and glory to all creation. Protect your children throughout the world, and be with us now more than ever. I ask this in the name of Our Lord Jesus, for "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).