Wednesday of Week 31 in Ordinary Time
Rm 13:8-10
Lk 14:25-33
Avoid getting into debt, except the debt of mutual love. If you love your fellow men, you have carried out your obligations… Love is the one thing that cannot hurt your neighbour; that is why it is the answer to every one of the commandments.
My younger daughter will be receiving the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist next year. As I did for my older daughter, I am preparing a small booklet for her to take her through Reconciliation. In looking up an examination of conscience in order to adapt it for a child’s use, I came across a section called “Sins against Charity”. In this case, charity refers to love, and the sin against charity is basically withholding love, or willing bad, on someone. Yes, this sounds terrible. Against the backdrop of today’s first reading from Romans, I got to reflecting and came to the conclusion that, despite the many exhortations to love, it is very easy to sin against charity.
Charity is a virtue. This means we have to cultivate it, practice it, or risk losing it. So just what exactly is Love? What does it mean to be loving, and what does it look like to choose the loving option? At the very basic level, to love is to recognise that every single person is made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore every single person deserves the same respect because we are all equal. This does not mean we are all the same and identical – of course not. But we are identical in dignity and worth.
So, knowing our sameness in dignity and worth, how should we go about treating people, including our own selves, with love and charity? An examination of conscience sheds light on this.
Since God is love, sinning against love is sinning against God. Frequent, sincere prayers, attending Mass, discernment. These are some of what we are called to do as Catholics. But, how many of us actually do these prayerfully and whole-heartedly? How many of us gripe about Sunday Masses and days of obligation? How many are too tired or busy to pray, or are simply not in the mood for it? How many of us jump into making decisions without recourse to the Holy Spirit to guide us? To cultivate a sincere heart for God is not easy, but it is not impossible either. If we constantly and conscientiously make an effort to do so, we will begin to see positive changes in ourselves. Having a like-minded community, or even just 1 like-minded friend, can be a great help and a source of support for such a journey.
Sometimes, we do not love ourselves. We do not exercise temperance. We indulge ourselves and make excuses for ourselves. We tell ourselves we are being kind to ourselves that way. In no way am I saying that self care is not good. It is good and absolutely necessary. But when overdone, it can do more harm than good, like spoiling a child when that child is yourself. Ultimately, what we do in private will show up publicly. If you take enough time out for some self care, your inner peace will show. If you overindulge and call it self care, your lack of discipline and self control will also show. Temperance goes a long way in ensuring we stay healthy — not just in body, but also in mind, and in spirit.
We also fail to love others when we are lacking in prudence and justice. We treat others with outright disrespect and disdain. How many times have we caught ourselves flaring up in anger, and unleashing that anger on someone else? Sometimes, that someone else is a loved one, even a child. And then how many times do we feel ashamed of ourselves because of that? It can be hard to keep a hold on our reactions when something negative happens. It is not enough to say we shall try to do better to be fair and prudent in dealing with wrong doing. We need to look deep inside ourselves to find out why we react in such a way.
I have come across an internet meme of a ‘conversation’ where a wise person asks, “When you are holding a cup of coffee and someone bumps into you, why did you spill coffee?” And the answer is, “because your cup contained coffee”. This is to say that whatever you are holding inside you will come out the moment someone bumps you. If it is anger, spite, malice, then these are the things you are holding inside and which are hurting you. So in order to learn to love others, we must first learn to love ourselves and find out what hurts us so we can heal. If we are bumped and we spill out love, then we are already filled with love, and we just need to keep at it.
At times, we also fail to love because we lack courage, and fail to come to the aid of others because we are afraid of consequences. I do not refer to heroic acts like giving your life for another, or entering a war zone to provide relief. I am referring to the everyday relationships we have. To love is to balance truth with compassion. Often, people swing to either extremes — we either hand out too much cold hard truth, or we hand out too much sympathy. In the first instance, we may feel a need to correct a wrong. But harsh words may not only be ineffective at correction, it may lead to despair or rebellion. In the second instance, too much compassion can become permissiveness and absolution of wrong doing. There will always be a need to correct, especially when you are a parent, or you work with youth. The right way is to make it clear that it is the behaviour that is being corrected, and it is also important to ensure the relationship is still secure and strong. This requires a great deal of respect for the other person; yes, even a child, especially a child, and a lot of temperance and prudence, as well as humility to not allow the urge to control take over.
Sins against Charity are sins against Love. These are sins that present a lack of piety and faith, a lack of respect for others, and a disordered love for ourselves. It is quite easy to commit this kind of sin and make excuses for the way we behave under a poorly conceived notion of ‘love’. It is not impossible to fix, however, but it does take an incredible amount of effort to look deep inside ourselves and find out what exactly is hurting us so as to make us act uncharitably. In this respect, a lot of sincere prayer and counsel will help, as will healing sessions and retreats that can help us to see ourselves as God does, which is his beloved child. This, my dear brothers and sisters, is true charity to oneself — to start to love ourselves the way God loves us and wants us to be loved.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Felicia Zou)
Prayer: Dear Lord, we pray for the courage to turn back to You when we have strayed. We pray for those who despair, that they may find hope in You. We pray for those in healing ministries, that they be sustained with your strength.
Thanksgiving: Dear Lord, we thank You for Your unending love and patience for us, even when we fall so many times.
OXYGEN 
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