Enough is Never Enough
July 30, 2024
St Josemaria says in a Homily on The Conversion of the Children of God: “Conversion is the task of a moment; sanctification is the work of a lifetime. The divine seed of charity, which God has sown in our souls, wants to grow, to express itself in action, to yield results which continually coincide with what God wants”.
Each one of the speakers talks about her/his love story, encounter and relationship with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist. And each one has a unique encounter, conversion story and ongoing relationship with Jesus. It is awesome! One who listens cannot but identify, relate, feel with the speakers as they share their stories fired up with the love that is in their hearts, minds, and lips. What a joy to listen to each one of them! One ends up thanking God for His marvelous work on each one of His children and for the correspondence of each one to His grace.
I
am challenged to continue searching each of the speakers and listen to each one
of them. We can learn from them, from
Jesus, from each one of the instruments Jesus used to effect the conversion of
each one.
Five days
after the Eucharistic Congress the Paris Olympics opened, with a gross mockery of
the Last Supper showing so great a disrespect for our faith.
Respond with fasting and prayer. Personally I will not give dignity to any
portion of the Paris Olympics. I am not going to attempt to watch any portion
or any of the sports segments. I can use
my time better making acts of atonement and reparation.
Following
now is the continuation on Our Divine Longing for Dignity (From Broken Gods, Hope,
Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D.
Ch 5).
How Envy
Distorts the Longing for Dignity
Envy makes life competition that we either are always in danger of losing or have already lost. Envy whispers in our spiritual ears that if we could only have X we could be worthwhile, we could be complete, we could be “as good as” the next person. The problem with this is that even if we could be “as good as” our neighbor, our brother, our co-worker, or the person in the pew down from us, we still would not be the gods we were meant to become. That is why enough is never enough. Our longing for dignity can be fulfilled only by pursuing the dignity that is our destiny.
Envy causes us to confuse this ache for divinity with a desire for things that pass away. Wanting to acquire the good things this world has to offer is not bad. The sin of envy is not really about wanting things. We should never feel guilty for wanting to enjoy the good things God has made in this world. As the Yiddish proverb says, “God will hold us accountable for failing to enjoy all the pleasures he has permitted.” Or, as St. John Bosco put it, “Enjoy yourself as much as you like—if only you keep from sin.”
Envy is a sin because it means pretending that the pursuit of the things of this world is sufficient to satisfy our deeper longing for divinity. Remember that sinning means “accepting less than what God wants to give us.” Trying to backfill the void in our souls with acquisitions and accomplishments never satisfies, not because we are bad people who are naturally grasping and greedy, or because the things of this world that we pine for are necessarily bad, but rather because, at the deepest level of our being, we intuit that this is not what we truly long for.
Of course, we don’t just envy the material and temporal things we see in the store or peek at through our neighbor’s windows. Sometimes the things that drive our envy can seem quite good and even noble.
“If I have to go to one more bridal shower, I think I’m going to vomit,” Charlotte said. Charlotte’s fiancé broke up with her six months ago for another girl.
It’s getting to the point that I dread going to the mailbox. Every time I do, it seems like another friend is sending me a shower announcement or a “save the date!” I want to be happy for them, but I can’t. I can’t stand to be around them, look at their rings, listen to them chatter about their wedding plans. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but sometimes I have a hard time even turning on the TV. Seeing an engagement ring commercial can wreck my entire day. I just want to crawl into a hole. I’m so angry at God. It’s one thing to take away my dream, but does God have to rub my face in it?”
There are no easy answers for the kind of very real and very deep pain that Charlotte feels, but if she isn’t careful, the envy she is struggling with will only force her deeper and deeper into the darkness of her pain, where no grace can reach her and no hope can be found.
I am personally a witness of a similar situation. I know of a person who for almost three years could not accept an incident where her former team leader suggested to another person to take the lead in something she seems to be doing well. She resented that up to the present time when leadership was given to somebody else. And now she realizes the others around her after all wanted to follow and do the right thing. Pride of one’s freedom to lord it over the others makes one hard and suffer the hardness she has chosen to nurture. If she conquers her hardness soon enough she will be on her way to satisfying her longing for dignity.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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