Finding Healing in the Divine. True Love

We have turned for solace towards a cult of feelings that has amplified societal narcissism.

As Christians we struggle with the understanding of suffering. We love the glory of the resurrection and we are delighted by the wonder of the transfiguration, but we struggle with the implications of the Cross, for this is the cross of folly, of self-abnegation.Somehow, we have turned for solace towards a cult of feelings that has only amplified this societal narcissism.

MANKATO, MN (Catholic Online) -  I was reading a fascinating and book titled: Leave your Life Alone by Hubert Van Zeller. Most surprising was that fact that despite being written in the 1970s, a time of turmoil and descent from the Church, it had a rock solid prophetic outlook about how modern pop-psychology, consumerism and the purging of religion from the schools and public places, were setting American society up to become narcissistic.

He writes: "In spite of its concern with outward things, western society has ever been so concerned about its inward troubles. Escape into materialism has shown itself to be a boomerang and we are all more locked up inside ourselves than ever: the boomerang has come back in the form of a ball and chain. That is why we bore one another so incessantly: we are fellow prisoners whose recreation is to talk about ourselves. We revel in our prison sentences while preaching freedom, we are so eager to outdo one another with our permissiveness that the only real freedom worth having is missed."

Indeed, it seems that the pop-psychology approach of caring for ourselves first, has led us into an obsession about self that has taken the form of "self-consciousness", "self-determination" and self-evaluation".

The evidence, right now, points towards this separateness pervading the American landscape and causing isolation and a notable increase in depression and anxiety. The National Institute of Mental Health reported in 2004, that approximately 26% of adult Americans suffered from a variety of mood and anxiety disorders, representing close to 58 million Americans.

There is indeed a malaise sweeping through American society, causing a restlessness of the soul and compromising the individual's ability to cope with the demands of daily life.
 
A data health management firm, IMF Health, estimates that, in 2007, pharmaceutical sales of antidepressants in our nation topped $11.9 billion, an amount that should cause alarm. The talk of treatments and remedies for depression remain centered on the prescription of antidepressants, on coping mechanisms for getting through the day and on a self examination that unfortunately encourages the exploration of feelings.

Somehow, we have turned for solace towards a cult of feelings that has only amplified this societal narcissism.

There is something to an inward examination of conscience that is good, but Van Zeller cautions the reader that there is a danger, when seeking knowledge of self with too much zeal, that the individual can be led into discouragement and confusion.

Van Zeller claims that when an individual looks inward and asks the question: "what do I feel about the problem?" rather than "what does God feel about these things?" or better still: what does God will?, he ceases to be a spiritual person.
 
He further writes "Among the first fallacies of today is the one which believes that worry and fear and guilt can be exorcized by talking about them. Do you wonder that we all become bores?"

This contrasts greatly with Church teaching which has always extolled the importance of the rationale over the feelings and emotions.

Father Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges (*1948), a renowned Dominican preacher, apologist and philosopher, situates the will of the individual at the core of all virtues and merit.
He writes:"Religiously and morally, I am precisely what I will, in the measure that I will it and as long as I will it. On that alone does God judge me."

Fr John Grou (*1803) writes in his masterpiece, Manual for Interior Souls, that self-annihilation, not self-discovery or self-empowerment is the remedy for "peace of heart, a calm of our passions, a cessation of all the agitations of our mind, of all murmurs and interior revolts."

But here lies the problem: Dying to ourselves implies weakness, and the prevailing pop-psychology theories of the day advocate empowerment and strength.

Fr Grou reminds us however, that this contemporary exercise in building up self, is ".what really agitates us, and makes us indignant, and renders our life bitter and insupportable" when others fail to recognize our greatness or uniqueness. Fr Grou writes: "In all the contempt we may have to suffer in all calumnies and humiliations, the thing which really hurts us and really makes them hard to bear is our own pride; it is because we wish to be esteemed and considered, and treated with a certain respect."

He emphasizes that the goal is to surrender to the suffering, forgetting, as it were, ourselves, our pleasures, self-esteem, self-love and pride, and to joyfully aspire to attain a blessed state, for it is in the state of dying to self that the soul finds sweet repose.

As Christians we struggle with the understanding of suffering. We love the glory of the resurrection and we are delighted by the wonder of the transfiguration, but we struggle with the implications of the Cross, for this is the cross of folly, of self-abnegation.

Fr Tugwell OP, points out "it is the cross and only the cross that provides a constant point of reference in the chaos of our world, because there is all our poverty and helplessness and pain, all our yearning and all our mutual injustice, taken up into the stillness of God's everlasting love and made into the instrument and revelation of his unchanging will.".

The life of Saint Germaine Cousin, a virtually unknown Catholic saint (click here to view the movie short produced by Our Lady's Tears Production) is a paradox for our time. Her beauty and surrender to God's most holy will is counter culture, even counter intuitive for a culture deeply in love with self.

Fr William of Saint Thierry, a 12th Century Cisterian abbot, theologian and mystic, rightly discerned the things that hinder the human spirit from understanding these mysteries that only angels seem capable of contemplating joyfully. "The unclean soul, the impure conscience, the proud mind, and curious conceit are rightly kept at a distance from the quest of the divine sacraments and mysteries. For the spirit of discernment flees anything false and will not dwell in a body subject to sin. Wisdom will not enter into an ill-disposed soul."

Grace and purity are necessary to comprehend suffering, to approach that cross that so many tend to flee from. Approaching this cross is like getting close to fire for indeed there is a fear that we will be consumed by it.

The theology of human suffering, within the context of a morally bankrupt North American society, focused on self, is discussed in a 96 minute documentary produced by Our Lady's Tears Productions.

This documentary explores the connection between a dysfunctional populace and deep moral, physical and spiritual sufferings which have now insidiously found their way into the lives of Americans.

The consequence is a youth that engages in lifestyles that rob them of the flame of purity and innocence, corrupting, as it were, their very souls and casting a shadow that blocks their access to life giving joy and to a mystical life that they deeply hunger for. They are unfortunately left isolated within a culture guided by a dictatorship of relativism, for which no moral standards exist, and in which the cult of feelings dominates and erroneously draws people into believing that if it feels good then it has to be right.

This is the inevitable outcome of a societal perversion in which the individual is ever more preoccupied with his own self-interest. Is there any wonder that we have become obese, depressed and promiscuous?

In truth, the inordinate love of our selves is certainly the most significant enemy to the love of God which is the love that heals all things.

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Dr. David Bissonnette, PhD. RD is a professor for the Dept. of Family Consumer Science Dietetics program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota.  He is the founder of Our Lady of Tears Productions.

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