Mortification: Love Properly Ordered

One of the practices of holy Lent is mortification. It comes from the Latin root “mortificare,”which means to put to death. Some corollary words from this root would be mortuary and mortician. Through our Lenten penance we are encouraged to put to death whatever is not holy, does not help us to become holy, and pulls us away from our relationship with God and with others. We guard against temptations coming from Satan, the flesh and the world, and open ourselves completely to the working of God’s Spirit as he transforms us and makes us agents of transformation in the world. This week I want to propose putting to death” inordinate self love.” Love of self is not a bad thing. In fact, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39). The presupposition is that one can only love others if one has first loved oneself. It therefore follows that a person who does not love himself/herself cannot love others. And if they purport to love others while despising themselves, they would not be sincere with themselves. The love for others flows from an appropriate measure of self love. My proposal to mortify inordinate self-love begs some questions: What is inordinate self-love? How can one love oneself in an inordinate manner? What does inordinate self-love look like?

The adjective “inordinate” suggests something disproportionate, something not properly ordered. It speaks about something being excessive and unusual. While love of self is encouraged, it seems to me that there should be a proper way to love oneself without eclipsing or undermining another kind of love that should be the foundation for every other kind of love. This is, love for God. Love for God should be primary, and the ground for all other love. To love God above all else is a scriptural injunction. Jesus said it is the greatest of all commandments (Matthew 22:37). This is the purpose for human creation, to love God, serve God and to be happy with God in this world and forever in the next. To substitute this love for God with self-love is to love self in an inordinate manner. Diadochus of Photiké sees self love as opposed to love of God. In his treatise On Spiritual Perfection, he writes, “Whoever is in love with himself is unable to love God. The man who loves God is the one who abandons his self-love for the sake of the immeasurable blessings of divine love. Such a man never seeks his own glory but only the glory of God.” The love of God prompts us to keep God’s commandments and to continually strive to give all the glory to God. But to love oneself inordinately entails seeking only pleasure and self glory. This leads to vain pursuit of the world’s good: comfort, riches, pleasure, fame, knowledge for its sake, etc. The vain person does not submit to the majesty of God; instead, they seek to enthrone themselves. The vain person seeks increase at all cost, even if it means that God decreases.

So, take an inventory of the past week. How much “Me time” did you assign to yourself for your job, business, family, fun, etc? How does that stand in relation to the amount of time you allocated for “God Time.” How did your time of prayer go? What did you learn in your prayer this past week? What is your attitude to prayer outside of Mass or public liturgical celebrations? My prayer is that this Lent we will order our love for self properly so that we can love others well, as Jesus commands us to.
 
Fr. Julius