Week one - Getting to know yourself - Day 2

Emotions

Prayer to the Holy Spirit 

O Holy Spirit, inspire me. God’s love, engulf me. Holy Mary, my Mother, guide me in the right ways, look at me, and together with Jesus, bless me. Keep me from all evil, from all delusions and all threats. Mary, The Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for me the grace of getting to know myself, repenting, and controlling my emotions. Amen!

The Word of God 

“And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’” (Matt 8:23‒27).

Meditation 

God gave us emotions as a gift that allows us to discover the beauty of life. Without them, the world would be less colourful. How poor we would be if we hadn’t received them. God created people to rule the world and control the self. Unfortunately, sin D 2 85 hurt them and struck us in such a way that we also lost control of ourselves. One of the domains where we need to regain control of ourselves is emotions. Henceforth, it has been our task to ensure that what we experience does not control us but that we control our feelings. Yet we cannot ignore them because they tell us about something really important that is happening within us. Just as our senses inform us about the external world, emotions communicate what is happening in our souls. They are like warning lights on a car dashboard that show us what is important to us.

It often happens that when emotions appear with great intensity, they are a sign of some wounds we carry within us. Simply put, the wound occurs whenever we expect love, and every lack of it hurts us. These wounds then influence our way of thinking about ourselves. They are like a snowball that touches emotions first and then engulfs human thoughts. These wounds may concern our lives at the very early stages. For instance, when a hardworking parent didn’t pay attention to me in childhood and didn’t have time for me, the time I needed so much, as a result of this suffering, there arose sorrow and a sense of rejection. Later, these emotions led to the rise of false convictions about myself: “no one loves me,” “no one is interested in me,” and “no one cares about my feelings.” Once I believed in such false convictions, I became a slave, and I lost the ability to think about myself otherwise. As Jesus said: “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn 8:34). So I may be stuck in captivity of this kind of thinking about myself and every situation that will somehow remind me of this will touch my wound, and I will experience strong emotional reactions. Because wounds should be dressed and healed. Otherwise, there arise complexes, suspicion, a sense of rejection and rebellion.

Another threat can be emotional immaturity. A lack of reflection and awareness of what the emotions are and how to cope with them may lead to creating immature defence mechanisms—walls behind which one would want to hide. It can be related to a childlike attitude—one will give in to the feelings and justify them, saying that it’s like I am, that’s just my character. This is the “action-reaction” principle. It often happens that in this attitude, there is a strict demand for the right to show one’s emotions without considering its painful effects.

Yet another danger is hypocrisy, i.e., creating oneself in a way that has no basis in reality. It is simply putting on a mask and pretending to be someone else. This attitude comes from the fear of revealing yourself and your wounds. This is a defensive reaction, although it gives the illusion that everything is all right.

We need a mature approach to the sphere of our emotions. So, how should we look at them? First of all, as a domain I should control. They should be disciplined, like a pupil who is being educated. When it comes to experiencing the feelings, they may be pleasant or not. But it doesn’t mean that pleasant feelings are good and unpleasant ones are bad. Emotions are neutral, and when it comes to moral evaluation, it depends on the intention of the will that is always good or bad as it is connected to a good or bad goal. As for feelings, we don’t describe them as good or bad because it is a moral evaluation, but rather we say that they are pleasant or unpleasant. And therefore, unpleasant feelings may lead to some good, like in the example of Moses, who noticed that the Israelites worshipped a golden calf, became angry, shattered the golden calf and ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the people who worshipped the calf drink it.

If a person gives in to emotions, it can lead to a kind of feverishness. Such a person acts on an impulse of will or emotion with no sagacity or adequate prudence. Pious people may be tempted by early zeal—the feverishness prompts them to quickly head towards being saints, regardless of anything. Initial curiosity and yearning for new sensations are satiated, but when a person feels burdened by the diligence and faithfulness to undertake duties, they may get into negligence and sloth. The big picture is revealed D 2 87 in time of trial when there appears a sense of despondency. This flash in the pan stems from the fact that a person puts human desires and actions in place of supernatural Divine actions. We can see it, for example, with James and John, the apostles who, led by feverishness, were ready to command fire to come down from heaven and consume the village where people didn’t want to listen to them. Christ called them “Boanerges,” meaning “sons of thunder,” to remind them that they have to be sons of God, waiting patiently for the sinners to convert. They learned the lesson because later, in their letters, we read multiple encouragements to love one another. Without losing their enthusiasm, they reined their feverishness to be able to serve the Lord better. Likewise, Peter the Apostle was humbled when first he said that he would never deny Jesus, and then Jesus foretold him his future sin. It made him repent and cured of his conceit. It happens that the feverishness under the guise of holiness can even tempt one to attain sainthood so quickly as if it was possible to skip some stages, including the disciplining of emotions. There may even come the idea of repeating after St. Maximilian Kolbe: “Let’s gain the whole world for the Immaculate Mother of God!” Yes, but first, we need to cleanse this sphere, not proceed faster than the Divine grace guides us. An unordered human nature tends to lag behind or to get ahead of the grace. It needs cleansing.

How does it happen? Through inner healing—by inviting Mary to my wounds, forgiving all those who hurt me, praying for blessing for them, and seeing the truth about ourselves in the light of the words of God so that we could get out of the captivity of false beliefs about self, God, other people, and the world. Then, remembering the past, we have to be mindful of the present and cautious about the future.

When the emotions are well-ordered, they lead to developing virtues: shame helps shape chastity, and compassion leads to acts of charity. Even the feelings that give negative experiences, i.e., sadness, may lead to something good, e.g., the firm resolve to avoid sin and convert. If the emotions are not disciplined or ordered, they become vices—disgust becomes envy, self-confidence becomes audacity, and fear becomes pettiness or cowardice. Mind enlightened by the faith should rule over and shape them.

Mary’s asceticism: she treasured all these matters in her heart with peace of spirit, completely trusting God from the moment of saying her “fiat” through the death of Jesus till the glorious resurrection.

Spiritual struggle: what does it consist in? To stop acting impulsively, not to make emotional decisions, and to see what’s behind particular emotional reactions.

Spiritual reading 

“I do not ask for visions or revelations, for sensible devotion or even spiritual pleasures. It is your privilege to see God clearly in perpetual light. It is your privilege to savour the delights of heaven where nothing is without sweetness. It is your privilege to triumph gloriously in heaven at the right hand of your Son without further humiliation, and to command angels, men, and demons, without resistance on their part. It is your privilege to dispose at your own choice of all the good gifts of God without any exception. Such, most holy Mary, is the excellent portion which the Lord has given you, and which will never be taken from you, and which gives me great joy. As for my portion here on earth, I wish only to have a share in yours, that is, to have simple faith without seeing or tasting, to suffer joyfully without the consolation of men, to die daily to myself without flinching, to work gallantly for you even until death without any self-interest, as the most worthless of your slaves. The only grace I beg you in your kindness to obtain for me is that every day and moment of my life I may say this threefold Amen: Amen, so be it, to all you did upon earth; Amen, so be it, to all you are doing now in heaven;  Amen, so be it, to all you are doing in my soul. In that way, you and you alone will fully glorify Jesus in me throughout my life and eternity. Amen.” 

St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of Mary, 69

Homework 

Today, I will ask for the light of the Holy Spirit to discern and name the desires and feelings in me which come from the old man and the new man in me. 

Prayer of consecration 

I am all Yours, and all that I have is Yours, O most loving Christ, through Mary, Your most holy Mother. Amen!