FORGETTING ABOUT SELF
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?[1] Our Lord’s invitation is clear and compelling: Christ’s follower must be ready to give himself unconditionally.
What Jesus asks of Christians is made easier by his wonderful promise. It is not sufficient, however, merely to give up certain material goods or benefits, or to be ready to do as much as possible to spread the saving influence of his message. Jesus asks for much more than that: he asks for everything. The Christian who truly wishes to live out his baptismal calling to follow Christ must not keep anything for himself, not one thought, not one desire, which is not that of following him. He must give him his life so that he might live for God wherever he happens to be.
Killing off our selfishness
The disposition to give oneself to God and live our Christian vocation to the full is ultimately based on a humble attitude of forgetting about self. We should actively seek the holiness of others. Of course we must pursue our own sanctity. But we must be careful, for even the pursuit of holiness can be motivated by a selfish desire to see ourselves perfect. We do not love God if we think only about our own holiness. We have to think about others, about the holiness of our family our friends and all souls.
You fulfil a demanding plan of life: you rise early, you pray, you frequent the sacraments, you work or study a lot, you are sober and mortified, but you are aware that something is missing.
Consider this in your conversation with God: since holiness, or the struggle to achieve it, is the fullness of charity, you must look again at your love of God and your love of others for his sake. Then you may discover, hidden in your soul, great defects that you have not even been fighting against. You may not be a good son, a good brother, a good companion, a good friend, a good classmate. And, if you love your “holiness” in a disordered manner, you are envious.
You sacrifice yourself in many small personal details, and so you are attached to yourself, to your own person. Deep down you do not live for God or for others, but only for yourself.[2]
The obstacles to following Christ can be many and varied, but they all ultimately stem from a disordered love of self. When this is present it gives rise to an interior monologue where one’s own interests and aspirations run wild: conflicts are imagined or blown up, objectivity is totally lost and the self is always given undue importance.
The soul aspiring to holiness has to immediately snap out of this stifling, subjective attitude. It is important for it to open up, which is not the same as getting lost in externals. It has to seek the interior presence of that divine friend, the Blessed Trinity, dwelling within it through grace. It is not possible to follow Our Lord without first renouncing self: If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.[3]
Another sign of self-centredness is excessive concern for oneself: health, professional matters, rest and relaxation, what the future has in store. This attitude makes no sense in a Christian. If we truly love God and have given ourselves to Him, we should trust that he will always send us what is best for us, even though this may at times be a cross that is difficult to bear.
Let us have a firm and general determination to serve God wholeheartedly, all our life long. Let us not ask to know any more than that there is a tomorrow about which we need not be unduly concerned. Let our concern be, rather, for the good we can do today. ‘Tomorrow’ will soon become ‘today’, and then we will give it our attention. We need to gather our provision of manna for today, and no more. We should never doubt that God will send another shower of manna on the following day, and the next one, and the next one, as long as the days of our pilgrimage last.[4] God will not fail us
Life in Christ
Renouncing self is indispensable for holiness. God asks us to fill our hearts with apostolic zeal, to forget about ourselves in order to be concerned, in earnest sacrifice, with the whole of mankind. Without this disposition we would not attain real holiness nor would we be truly effective. No one should be wrapped up in self or carry around personal worries. We should be concerned solely with the glory of God and the good of souls.
St. Josemaria at times spoke about those people whose interior life drifts aimlessly along, constantly reacting with frustration, anger and bitterness to the difficulties and setbacks that inevitably arise: they suffer uselessly because they never manage to discover the secret of true serenity and peace of soul.
Almost all those who have personal problems, have them because of selfishly thinking about themselves. What we have to do is to give ourselves to others, to serve others for the love of God: that’s the way to make our sorrows disappear. Most of our trials are caused by forgetting about the duties we owe the rest of mankind and getting too caught up in our own ego.[5]
Forgetting about self is not simply an ascetical technique. It is a divine gift that radically transforms the soul, making it understand and love, for God, with God and in God. To forget about self means gradually to displace our ego in accordance with that motto of John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must decrease.[6] This substitution is brought about by our own response to grace and by the motions of the Holy Spirit: every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.[7]
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.[8] Baptismal grace imprints on the Christian soul an image and likeness of its Lord and Master. Frequent reception of the sacraments, the eager desire to imitate Christ’s example, the practice of Christian virtue and the use of the means most suited to one’s own vocation, all help to deepen and improve this image.
The soul not only becomes likened to God, however. It actually becomes divinized: joined to Christ. It begins to live like Christ. He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may...become partakers of the divine nature.[9] The soul is thereby formed in its way of thinking, feeling and loving, according to the model of the Only-begotten Son. The natural faculty of knowledge is not lost, but rather is perfected by faith and supernatural outlook. The natural inclinations of the soul are not suppressed, but purified and placed at the service of God and of our fellow men. The will is not annihilated, but on the contrary, is strengthened and confirmed in goodness. As St Paul said to the Philippians, God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.[10]
The conclusion I come to every day at the examination of conscience is always: a poor and humble servant! That is, when I don’t have to say instead: Lord, Josemaria is not very happy with Josemaria. But since humility is truth, it also happens that very often I have to add, as no doubt you do too: Lord, today I haven’t thought about myself at all! I’ve been thinking only about you, and for your sake I’ve been concerned only about working for others! Then our contemplative soul exclaims with the Apostle: (Gal 2:20); it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.[11]
The immediate result of really living in Christ is to forget about ourselves. For if the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God,[12] then my ego, my own personal affairs, everything that is not Christ, no longer count. Any plans, ambitions or feelings I have are mine only insofar as they are Christ’s. This radical transformation is rich in consequences. It shouldn’t matter at all, then, to become as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things[13] if I have no other reason for happiness and glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.[14] Not even the experience of one’s own limitations can take away the inner joy of a person who doesn’t think about self. As St Paul said: I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.[15]
Charity and humility
In order to foster and accelerate this whole process our personal cooperation is needed. Managing to forget about oneself is a gift from God, but it is also something that is laboriously won day after day through the ascetical struggle, inspired and sustained by Christ’s grace. And so, as well as frequent reception of the sacraments—which have the power to divinize the soul according to the dispositions with which they are received—we have to practice the Christian virtues, especially charity and humility.
Why charity? Because the perfection of love consists in going outside oneself in order to become identified with the person loved. As St Thomas says, in the love of friendship, the lover is in the person loved, insofar as he considers the good things or the bad things of the person loved to be his own, and insofar as he considers the will of the person loved to be his own, in such manner that he suffers the same evils as his friend and enjoys the same good things.[16] This change in the centre of gravity of one’s joy and sorrow implies a forgetfulness of self which is the clearest sign of love of God, and of others for God’s sake. If any of you wants to know if he or she really loves others, I’ll tell you the touchstone. Charity, holy affection, consists in forgetting about self and being concerned about others. You are nothing; the people around you are everything in Christ.[17]
How well are we doing as regards charity with our family, friends and colleagues? If our charity isn’t warm-hearted then it’s meaningless. We need have no fear of being kind and affectionate with people as long as it all passes through the heart of Christ. Besides, kindness is shown by sacrifice. So we should ask ourselves what we do to put ourselves out for others. We should work at it every day, and it should be a recurring point of our examination of conscience.
In addition to charity, we especially need to cultivate the virtue of humility. As St. Josemaria has told us, without humility we can never serve effectively, because we wouldn’t feel compelled to abandon ourselves trustingly to the action of grace and to have constant recourse to God as our only source of strength; nor would we succeed in obtaining from him his favours for our own sanctification and that of our companions.[18]
Besides, humility leads us to acknowledge that there is nothing good in us that does not come from God, and that it is the personal element that keeps getting in the way. It is the soul itself that is the principal hindrance to its becoming identified with Christ. Consequently, humility leads us to want to give ourselves, to deny ourselves completely, to make way for supernatural life according to Our Lord’s promise: whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.[19]
We have to learn to disappear, to forget about ourselves. We need to practice self-renunciation. We only succeed in being totally God’s when we forget about ourselves and learn to serve others. This way is indeed a divine way, because it is based on humility. And God rewards it.
When the soul really becomes aware of all the limitations of the human condition and surrenders itself totally to God, that is when Our Lord stretches forth his all-powerful hand and gives it its holiness, its heaven of love.
For me, love seems to mean more than heaven. They’re really the same thing, but to me love sounds better, and I lay hold of God’s love with all my strength. It’s worthwhile forgetting about ourselves and instead being truly concerned about others.[20]
We should realize that one of the main functions of the ascetical struggle is to get us to forget about ourselves in order to have time only for God, for his things. Not only must we avoid harbouring vain or useless desires, but we must also make the positive effort to fill all our thoughts and affections with God.
When life revolves around God’s things, then our natural reaction is to tend towards others and we have no time to get absorbed by personal problems. This was the example St. Josemaria always gave us. On one occasion he wrote: I think that all your personal problems are solved if, at the time of the examination, you can truly say: ‘Jesus, I haven’t been worrying about myself, I haven’t been thinking about myself at all.’
If we did this, just think of all the distress we would be spared and all the frustration we would avoid! Lord, I have been concerned about others, for You, for your Love, for your Glory. We can then say those words of St Paul: it is now no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. If you do that, you are a contemplative soul.[21]
All these methods for keeping selfishness in check are embraced much more easily and spontaneously when we are truly ready to be last in everything … and first in Love.[22]To aspire to be last means to accept wholeheartedly and cherish as treasures all the humiliating and hurtful experiences that come our way. Even more, it means seeing them as something we actually deserve, since we have so much to be forgiven and so little to forgive. To want to be last means not wanting to have any rights other than the right to love God, who alone is worthy to receive glory and honour and power.[23] If sometimes you feel this is the way you live your life, which is the life of Christ, then thank God for it.[24]
Interior mortification
In order to rise above ourselves in a surge of love for God and souls, we need to foster a spirit of mortification. You have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.[25] It is impossible in this mortal life to free ourselves completely from our old nature and its concupiscence. Self-worship, the disordered love of self, will always have to be fought. Still, even though there may be many failures along the way, we can be certain of final victory if we work at using the weapon of interior mortification: that is, not to consent to any thought, image or recollection that makes us the centre of our own or others’ attention. We should be very quick to get rid of anything that smacks of self-satisfaction, as well as any feelings of resentment or bitterness which have more to do with wounded pride than with true humility, and which rob the soul of its inner peace.
Brooding over personal problems is not only a waste of time. At times it is a concealed form of self-indulgence, much more difficult to eradicate than impure thoughts because it is more difficult to admit its existence or to recognize its evil origin.
Thinking about oneself is, at the very least, the cause of insensitivity of heart and the origin of many omissions in the service of souls. If self-centredness is not rooted out, it leads to a kind of hypocrisy which is all the more difficult to unmask the more it covers everything with a veneer of apparent righteousness.
Our interior mortification has to be something solid, sacrificed and constant. In his bedroom St. Josemaria had the following inscription put up, as a perpetual ‘alarm clock’: Separate from me, O Lord, anything that separates me from You. The goal may seem difficult, but we mustn’t forget that we’re not fighting alone: we have the grace of God, the loving protection of the Blessed Virgin and of St Joseph, and the assistance of our Guardian Angel.
Let us not be fooled. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.[26] Some thoughts that come to us may seem very good: ‘I’m being useful, I’m effective, I’m becoming a saint, I can’t do anything about my limitations … ’However, if they don’t lead us to God and cause us to be better, but rather make us close in on ourselves and become self-centred, then they have to be seen for what they are: a temptation from the devil. In these situations it can help us a lot to consider that, even though we see ourselves as weak and crippled, we are nevertheless of service to Our Lord, or at least he does manage to find some use for us. That thought should be enough for us to keep going full of peace and joy. Moreover, the same thing is true in relation to other people: what we have to do is to ask Our Lord for the one thing we hold dear, namely, to help other people to be holy and remember that we ourselves are not important at all. This form of behaviour is indeed love with no ulterior motives. Let me stress this: the solution I have for all personal problems is to forget about oneself and be concerned about others, for God’s sake. That’s how we have to travel along the paths of the earth, building the paths of the Lord.[27]
The source of joy
When the soul obtains from God the gift of forgetting about itself, the things that once led to bitterness now disappear. It is not a question of becoming insensitive, but of being so much in love that it is always able to rest in the loved one. I love you, O Lord, my strength (Ps 17:2). for you, O God, are my strength (Ps 42:2). I rest in You! I don’t know how to do anything, big or small, if You don’t help me—and if I do them for Love then nothing is small! But if I really try, God’s strong arm comes to strengthen, to temper, and to carry that sorrow; and then that weight no longer overwhelms us.
Think about it carefully. Consider your own personal circumstances, and see how the things that apparently don’t work out and that make life difficult, are far more valuable to you than the ones that seem to work effortlessly. If we don’t have clear ideas about this, when difficulties do arise they will leave us bewildered and distressed. On the other hand, if we absorb this whole spiritual psychology properly and learn to see the will of God precisely in those circumstances, even if it is hard, and if we love Jesus Christ, realizing that we are co-redeemers with him, then we will not lack understanding, peace of soul and the strength to do our duty.[28]
Lord, since what invigorates our life, and gives us this wonderful sense of duty and the ability to forget about ourselves, is the effort to serve You, then nothing and nobody can take away our peace, our serenity and our joy.
It is worth while being firmly resolved to fight on, to take hold of Christ’s Cross. In that extraordinary suffering whereby he gave up his life in order to give us Life, Christ offers us the ultimate proof of love. There too we find the safe embrace of our Holy Mother Mary, who knows how to make everything easy and agreeable for us. It is worth while because, despite all your own weaknesses and failings, the divine weight of caring for the holiness of others falls on each of you, the duty of defending before the world the Christian honour of all your fellow Catholics, and the sublime obligation of cooperating in the task of winning souls for God, a work which is so great that in the beginning it is hardly noticed, but which has no limits. How many great things depend upon us![29]
We have to fill the world with light, because ours is a service that has to be performed joyfully. Wherever a son of God happens to be he should have a sense of humour, which is the fruit of interior peace and of dedication. Giving oneself to the service of others is so efficacious that God rewards it with a humility full of spiritual joy.[30]
[1] Matt. 16: 24-26
[2] St. Josemaria Escriva, Furrow, 739
[3] Matt. 16: 24
[4] St Francis de Sales, Letters, fragments 131, 766
[5] St. Josemaria Escriva, Letter, March 24, 1931, 15
[6] John 3: 30
[7] James 1: 17
[8] Gal 3:27
[9] 2 Peter 1: 4
[10] Philippians 2: 13
[11] St. Josemaria Escriva, Letter, January 9, 1932, 90
[12] Gal. 2: 20
[13] 1 Cor. 4: 13
[14] Gal. 6: 14
[15] 2 Cor. 12: 9-10
[16] St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., I-II, q. 28, a. 1
[17] St. Josemaria Escriva, Meditation, January 20, 1967
[18] St. Josemaria Escriva, Letter, January 9, 1932, 90
[19] Matt. 16: 24
[20] St. Josemaria Escriva, Meditation, October 13, 1963
[21] St. Josemaria Escriva, Meditation, October 13, 1963
[22] St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, 430
[23] Apoc. 4: 11
[24] St. Josemaria Escriva, Meditation, October 13, 1963
[25] Col. 3: 9-10
[26] 2 Cor. 11: 14
[27] St. Josemaria Escriva, Meditation, January 20, 1967
[28] St. Josemaria Escriva, Meditation, March 3, 1963
[29] St. Josemaria Escriva, Letter, June 16, 1960, 27
[30] St. Josemaria Escriva, Letter, March 24, 1930, 22
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