Ninth in a series
FOR VARIOUS REASONS I recently have been thinking about self-love and trying in my mind to distinguish it from the sin of pride.
At this point in my life I am very aware that memory plays tricks on us and just because I don’t recall something, that does not mean that it didn’t happen. For example, I cannot recall ever hearing a homily on love in my six years as a major seminarian. I don’t recall ever hearing in any of the six Catholic schools that I attended being told that we should love ourselves. That the importance of self-love was never mentioned seems incredible even to me so I suspect that this may be a memory failure rather than an accurate comment on my educational experience.
However, once we gain insight into the power of love – and the almost overwhelming truth that God loves us unconditionally – we cannot stop thinking about it and eventually talking about it. I find it difficult to stop writing about it.
The Catholic Catechism has the following statement: Sin is thus “love of oneself even to contempt of God.” Of course loving oneself to the point of going against God is a sin. Perhaps there is an element of pride present in every sin in the sense that sin is choosing one’s own will even when it goes against God’s will.
Loving Self Is Doing God’s Will
The words from the Our Father, ”Thy will be done,” if sincerely spoken, reveal an enormous love for and trust in God. I have come to believe that there is a kind of self-love that not only does not go against God’s will, but is actually doing God’s will. In God’s plan, we are supposed to love ourselves. If God is unconditionally in love with us, why should we not love ourselves?
I think that reading personalist philosophers, especially Gabriel Marcel, has helped me to broaden and deepen my notion of self-love.
In his book, “Gabriel Marcel” (South Bend, Indiana: Regnery/Gateway, Inc.) Seymour Cain’s treatment of Marcel’s view of self-love is well done. He writes:
“For Marcel, human existence is communal in two senses – with others and with oneself. In entering into community with others, we also establish community with ourselves….
“I can love myself, but self-love is not the egocentric obsession of the indispensable man – the egolatry which takes the self for a plenary and self-sufficient reality. It is rather charity toward oneself as potential being, as seed or bud, a possible point of contact with the spiritual or divine. True self-love is not self-complacence or self-infatuation but a creative patience and lucidity that strive to bring forth the highest self-realization. Like every act of charity, it involves both distance and nearness – the capacity to see ourselves as we really are and yet to remain intimate with ourselves. When I love myself in this way it is not only myself I love, but all beings, just as the artist creates for all mankind, not for himself alone.” (pp. 82-83)
An initial attempt at justifying love of self might be to think of any talents that an individual might have. For example, a good singing voice, or talent with a musical instrument, or skill as an athlete. I think we should be more radical in trying to see why we should love ourselves. I think what makes us lovable is that God loves us and has created us out of love.
The fact of our existence is all we need to justify self-love. When God loves, being appears. God’s love is literally creative. We exist because God loves us and we continue to exist because God continues to love us. God does not love us because we are lovable; we are lovable because God loves us. God’s creative loving act puts into existence what is lovable. Where there was complete nothingness, there is now reality that is lovable, namely we ourselves.
I confess that I have difficulty understanding why Marcel says that in loving ourselves we love all beings. Perhaps he means in seeing our potential and loving ourselves as potential being, we are preparing ourselves to grow and develop and be gifts to other beings. Also, he might be suggesting that as we enter more deeply into ourselves, we discover the presence of God within us and this links us to all those God loves.
I suspect that to the extent that we do not love ourselves that makes it very difficult for us to love others. In God’s plan, we need one another and to the extent that we experience being loved we are liberated to love ourselves and to love others. God is love. Experiencing God’s love can be the most liberating experience.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Profound Personalism and Poverty” (Resurrection Press).