I fretted a LOT before I published my last piece, Training for Trust. I could feel the desperate, crying need from so very many people who were dealing with agonizing personal and family issues. Many of those suffering are people I, personally, like and admire. I often use examples from my own life – both positive and negative – to illustrate a point; to give people a frame of reference they can relate to or that hits home viscerally. I am pretty candid in both the positive and the negative because I think that, though people have not had the exact experiences I have had, they have had to struggle with the same types of issues in deciding what to do and how to live.
I worried that this piece, though, was just too expansively and intimately personal. I fretted that, when all was said and done, it might just be a bunch of self-absorbed navel-gazing on my part – when so many people desperately needed some fortification to carry on, themselves. By your response in the comments, private emails, and private calls I got I can see it helped a bunch of people. I am grateful for that.
We do such terrible damage to our souls when we aspire to demonstrate to others that we are a superior specimen of mankind. It is one of the devil’s more subtle – and effective – means of culling people from the herd – by means of that deadliest of sins, vanity. For those who aspire to show everyone else how superior they are to the common herd, their reward inevitably ends in a desperate loneliness that they foolishly self-imposed. To believe we are unique in our sufferings is a particularly subtle form of vanity. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen!” It’s true, but irrelevant if you are just trying to show how special you are. While the details vary, each of us has suffered deeply at times. If we are wise, it can give us a largeness of spirit by seeing real solidarity with our fellows. I think a lot of how, even as He carried the cross, Jesus spent much of that physically agonizing time comforting and consoling the women who were weeping on His way of the Via Dolorosa. He was showing us that we are all walking a via dolorosa – and how we should act to others as we do. My son once told me that one of the most valuable lessons I taught him was how to hearten and encourage others without letting it be eclipsed by the cross we are carrying, ourselves. I was and am grateful for that.
Each of us is a unique blend of strengths and weaknesses, of frailty and prowess. How cursed the man who allows himself to be convinced that his particular strengths make him a superior specimen of humanity! I have known a lot of people with Down’s Syndrome. Many pity or look down on them. Sorrowfully, our sadly shallow temporal society has treated them with such casual revulsion that the abortion culture made so many of them victims of a genuine, progressive genocide. Yet who exceeds them in candid love for others and wonder at God’s creation? None that I know of – and every family I know who has raised a Down’s Syndrome child or is caring for such an adult tells me candidly how hard it was, but how very much that person taught them about love for others. Frankly, I think that Down’s Syndrome children are a gift to humanity, a way for God to bring to mind all of our diverse gifts and what, even so, is the purpose and actual meaning of this life: solidarity.
This is not to say we should go on a bender of false modesty to correct our false bombast. It was either St. Therese of Lisieux or St. Teresa of Avila who wrote a brief passage on false modesty, saying it would be foolish and pitiable for one of God’s gorgeous flowers to say its colors were wrong or its leaves were droopy when it knew full well it was otherwise. Rather, what God wants – and what we need – is candor about ourselves. I don’t try much to pretend I am not a very smart fellow, at least as far as my head is concerned. (Okay, I may have pulled the old, “I’m just an old country lawyer” routine on occasion. One woman I was dating some years back was furiously mad at me about something. Before I could begin defending myself, she angrily finished by saying, “And don’t you, ‘Shucks, ma’am’ me, either!” But when I have done it, people generally know I am just, “Shucks, ma’am”ing them.) My hands, though, are dumb as a stump (except, when I was much younger, for when I had a baseball bat in them. They were pretty smart at that). It’s a bit of an embarrassment, because almost all of the rest of the family has the gift of turning a wrench to excellent avail. My Dad was gifted at DIY home remodeling in all aspects. While he was putting in a tile floor once, meticulously measuring, cutting and re-cutting to get it just right, I lamented that I just did not have the patience, the talent, or the knack for it. He looked at me sharply and demanded, “How many times have I seen you spend three hours on a single paragraph to get it just right? We all have patience for the things we ARE talented at. Knock it off.” (Dad and I both loved rebukes and insults that carried a compliment in them in getting to the candid truth – a trait I am glad to have passed on to my children.)
The point, of course, is that we did not give ourselves our own strengths. God did – and for His purposes and to build up His Kingdom from this world. We have the responsibility to hone and refine our strengths, but we are not author of them. The actual Author of them intends for us to use them to live solidarity with those around us to help bring more to His Kingdom. A candid examination of what strengths God has endowed us with – and what strengths He has not – is not what sets us apart from our fellows, but is both an invitation by God and a clue from Him to see what He intends for us. He has a mission for each of us. When you assess yourself from that standpoint, it draws you closer in solidarity with the rest of mankind, rather than setting you apart. You are a member of a community – and you are called to build it up, just as God, Himself, is a Community; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – with the love that processes between the three persons of the Trinity creating the fruit of abundant creation. But the satan uses these gifts to confuse us…and once we succumb, we begin attributing to ourselves gifts we do not have – because we are a superior order of being, don’t you know.
If I don’t pretend to not be smart in temporal terms, I also understand how little it means in eternal terms. The sum total of all intelligence in history is equivalent in Heaven to so much Monopoly money here. So the question clearly is, since we cannot deposit any of the strengths we have been given to a Heavenly account, what is their purpose? Surely, it is that they are the tools God has uniquely given us to accomplish His will and hearten our fellows during this, our brief sojourn on the mortal plane. Using them for that purpose is like using a hammer and saw to build a dwelling that will provide warmth and shelter. Using them to aggrandize ourselves is like using that hammer and saw to dismember our victims.
I know many of you are wondering when I am going to weigh in on the news of the day, the dramatic shift in trajectory in world events – and even in the Church – in the last year. I will, soon enough. It is just vital to approach the year with a mindset that brings honest life instead of quiet desperation. So I am holding up a prism that you may see the vivid colors actually contained in the full light of your life. Neither waste talent by mere preening nor suffering without offering it up for your fellows. Live that well and you will be on the path God intends for you – and you will be extraordinarily happy even in the greatest of trials. The peace He gives us is a palpable thing that brings warmth and light. It is not like the mere absence of open conflict the world calls, “peace.”
Peace be with you, now and always.
If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.
Find me on X at @JohnstonPilgrim
The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)
18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552
Dallas, Texas 75252
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