I don’t mean to make him look like a fool or make him look incompetent. He is competent. But there are limits to competence. It’s not magical. We just think that it is sometimes. We think that we can draw a little circle around ourselves and nothing bad will ever happen. That we’ll have no close calls, but it isn’t true. What people in Lake Wobegon didn’t say when they were remembering all their close calls with blizzards and the rest of it was what everybody knows whenever that happens. And that is that each other is the only thing that we have in this world that is really important. You know that when you’re in big trouble. That we really are devoted to each other. You kind of know it the rest of the time, but it takes real trouble to bring it out. And love has brought a good many people to safety when competence was exhausted and could do nothing. Including the competence of fathers.
Garrison Koeller, Tales from Lake Wobegon
A holy friend of mine once told me the story of how Saint John, in his old age, would sometimes walk down to the local parish and preach. He would always preach “love one another.” He was once asked why he didn’t talk about anything else. He replied, “When you get that one right, I’ll move onto something else.”
This may be apocryphal, but it illustrates an important point. What Our Blessed Lord admonished us with the second great commandment, what Saint Paul told us in his first letter to the Corinthians, and what Pope Benedict XVI explicated in his first three encyclicals is that we must love one another, especially people we don’t naturally love.
If even the pagans love their families, we are not engaging in the kind of virtuous charity Our Lord directs us toward if we only love our families. If we are to love our enemies, what would that look like?
Well, it would not look like Israel failing to defend itself against those who wish to push all the Jews into the sea. We are not required to commit cultural or familial suicide to meet this standard.
We are also not required to submit to abuse. If a parent or spouse is abusive, we must not allow them to engage in this sin toward us. We must separate ourselves, but firmly pray for their salvation.
I believe that it first step of it looks like patience with ourselves and others.
One of the most powerful works of charity we can do in modernity is not answering back. I do not mean that we should not engage in fraternal correction. I mean that I so often want to have the last word that I occasionally forget the dignity of the person with whom I am speaking. This temptation is at least as corrosive in social media as it is in person. Governing my tongue – in person and in a virtual environment – has proven to be the work of a lifetime.
When I was in 7th grade I was required to complete shop class. I was required to make a wooden stool and a metal box, and generally learn how tools worked. Like many young people that age I was miserable but would never have taken that misery out on my peers, lest they be in some similar personal misery to mine. So I acted out on my shop teacher. He was a nice man, but he used “ain’t”. I considered this a high crime against the English language, so I would correct him during class. When he protested that it was in the dictionary, I told him that only uneducated people used such language. He started sending me to the office for this insubordination, but the school secretary was a friend of my mother’s. She never sent me to the assistant principal for consequences.
Looking back on this experience, I wish that the consequence had assisted me in growing in humility and modesty. Authority figures could have discussed with me the many passages in the Bible about how to become a better person, how to let go of the anger that caused me to behave that way and embrace the joy that comes from loving people where and how they are while striving to help them become better.
But it was public school in the late ‘70s, so none of that was terribly likely. What I learned from this experience, though, was that being cruel to someone did nothing to help me feel better about myself. In fact, it made me feel ashamed as I sat in the small chair next to the secretary’s desk, reading my book. Being cruel to someone else did nothing to mitigate the effects of the cruelty of which I had been a recipient.
I continued to answer back and be sarcastic sometimes after this experience, sadly. But I continued to learn that these interactions always left me feeling further away from Jesus. They never made me feel like I had done well in a conversation. The times I didn’t say the unhelpful funny thing were the times I felt like I had done the right thing. The times I said the kind thing, even if it felt embarrassing in some way, assisted me in seeing Jesus in each of those people. This was the first step for me on the long path toward loving others the way Christ asks us to.
This may sound like a simple, easy task. For those humbler than me, it may well be. Everyone reading this may be perfectly able to allow people to say ridiculous, ill considered, or unreasonable things without responding with sarcasm. When I am in online fora, though, I do not see lots of charity between people. When I am in line at a store, I also do not see considerable charity. And don’t get me started on bad behavior behind the wheel.
One method that has helped me is holding a picture of the Infant of Prague in my head at all times. He makes me smile, and I have found that smiling assists me in being more charitable and assists others in being less irritable with me. Because the Infant is there with me, I am more inclined to see everyone the way He sees them.
I have also let go of the idea that my competence is the most important thing about me. I was always able to work hard and smart, and I thought that would make people like me. While it is true that I think my employers have tended to value my competence, I think it is equally true that they value my positive attitude and willingness to get along with everyone.
I regularly tell Tom that I do not deserve the love my grandchildren lavish on me. They jump up and down and scream when they see me, they are so filled with joy. I am completely unworthy of such love. Yet, that is how I love them, too. If I were in a little better health I would be jumping and screaming when I saw them as well. I hope to never lose that feeling, as I think that kind of love is what prepares us for the love we will receive on the other side of the mortal coil – a love so intense it will just blow our minds that it is lavished on us.
Like the characters in Garrison Koeller’s story that opens this essay, we should always remember that love is more important than competence. So the person who annoys me most should receive my greatest batch of charity. The person who gestures at me in traffic should receive a Hail Mary for his or her intentions. I should genuinely forgive those who have hurt me and my loved ones and put to bed all malice.
Each other is the only thing that we have in this world that is really important.
Indeed.