As the depths of the moral and spiritual confusion in the hierarchy continue to be brought into the light, many in the laity are wondering what should and can be done in response? The Synod on Synodality has created much anxiety and confusion for many Catholics. A good many of us still do not have the slightest idea what synodality means. We find ourselves asking questions about the path forward. Our culture burns while we keep having meetings on meetings. All of it is deeply disconcerting. Even so, the answer for what we are to do remains the same in all ages: We need to become saints.
We need to become people of deep and never-ceasing prayer. If we are truly concerned about the state of the Church, then we should be putting aside our distractions and spending more time with Our Lord in His Real Presence. Lamenting and ranting on social media or at the dinner table is not prayer. We need to add in greater mental prayer, family prayer, and mortifications. We need to ask the Lord to show us the areas where we need to grow in holiness. One of the areas we all need to be pruned is from the desire for honor, acceptance, and the esteem of others.
The desire to be accepted is part of the problem with the issues we are facing in the Church. Instead of seeking Christ Crucified and a life of self-emptying, sacrificial love, we are embracing a cheap counterfeit. We have succumbed to sentimentality. We no longer want to do the deeply difficult work of living the truth and calling others to live the truth. We want to be liked more than we want to follow Christ. If we are honest with ourselves then we will discover this is a major stumbling block on our path to holiness.
I indict myself in this just as much as the rest of the Church. There are many sins of omission I have had to confess over the years because rather than speaking the truth in love, I talked around it or not at all. In my interaction with non-Catholics and fellow Catholics, I didn’t stand up when it was absolutely necessary that I do so. I have watched priests ignore the truth for the sake of reputation and comfort, so this is not only a problem within the laity.
We are all weak and fallen. We all want to be liked and loved, but in this life, that will not be the case. The Lord Himself at the Last Supper warns His Apostles of the world’s hatred:
“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.” (John 15:18-21)
We follow a Crucified Savior who was betrayed by His own, abandoned by those closest to Him, and brutally tortured and murdered. The Church is constantly living the Passion of Our Lord in her members. The present state of things is a part of this groaning and suffering of the Passion. It is painful to watch and live. It is distressing to experience, but we must deeply embrace the fact that we will not be loved in the world, even within the Church. The Lord was betrayed by His own. We betray him when we sin.
This means that one of the ways we can grow in holiness in order to weather the deep darkness we are presently in is to ask the Lord to set us free from self-love and the desire to be esteemed and loved by others. We need to beg Him to give us the graces to be willing to stand alone with Him before Pilate and to go all the way to the Cross even if we are abandoned by everyone else.
There are countless saints who walk with us on this journey. Saints who remind us to look away from the storm that is the state of the Church and to look at the loving gaze of Our Lord. To unite our rejections to Christ’s rejection. To seek to serve Him and Him alone. St. Faustina, whose feast day is today, suffered tremendously at the hands of others. Her sisters treated her cruelly at times. They did not believe her and thought her visions were mere fantasies. She went years without a spiritual director to guide her. She did not turn to bitterness, resentment, and despair. Instead, she flung Herself at the feet of Our Merciful Savior. She came to understand that only He can fulfill her and that rejection is a necessary part of the spiritual life.
Another saint for our times is Blessed Franz Jagerstatter. He was a simple Austrian husband, father, and farmer. After a bit of a wild youth, he began to take his Catholic Faith seriously. His Faith was at the very center of his marriage. When he was called up to fight for the Nazis, he made the decision to refuse. He could not in good conscience fight for a regime he knew was evil. He was hated by the people of his town, he was encouraged by his priest and bishop to fight for the Nazis, he was abandoned by everyone except his wife. Blessed Franz understood that this is not our home. Heaven is our ultimate home. He stood alone with Our Lord and entered into eternal life at the hands of a Nazi guillotine.
We can lament the state of the Church and the world. Anyone who serves in ministry and who keeps track of Church news knows the situation is dire. The only control we ultimately have is over the type of person we become. We can bring light into the world by seeking to become the saints the Lord is calling us to be. We can do so by joyfully and boldly living the truth, even when we are hated for it. Even when that hatred comes from our brothers and sisters in Christ.
We must honestly ask ourselves if we are truly willing to stand alone with Christ if necessary. If not, now is the time to begin the life of prayer, the Sacraments, and penance that we will need to undergo any tests that may occur in our lives. We need His guidance, so we can grow in self-knowledge of our weaknesses, so He can strengthen and heal us. Most people in difficult times flee. We should not delude ourselves. We are all weak enough to betray and abandon Our Lord under the right circumstances.
Now is the time to take the call to holiness seriously. Now is the time to cut away the distractions and worldly things that keep us from giving our entire selves to Jesus. We need to shut the news off and pray. We need to turn the technology off and love our families better and prayer together. We need to enter into silence before Our Eucharistic Lord. We need to very seriously ask the Lord to make us saints. We need to be willing to be hated by brother, sister, mother, father, neighbor, priest, bishop, so long as we are fully united to Christ and the truth. Now is the time to begin in earnest because the day is already far spent.
To help us begin, the Litany of Humility is sure to be an instrument through which to Lord will begin to prune away at our ego and desire for esteem, so that we rely totally on Him:
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being loved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being honored,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being praised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being approved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being despised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
Author: Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val y Zulueta
Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash
