What I’d like to draw attention to here is that the love we are commanded to enact is not mere tolerance, nor is it extraordinary acts of corporeal mercy as usually conceived (not that these are unimportant; they simply aren’t my concern here). The passages here are intra-communal and are not talking about feeding the hungry or clothing the naked (I lay such emphasis on this here because I myself find it easier to enact such works of mercy than I do to tolerate the bourgeois lifestyle of myself and my fellow Catholics). We are commanded to humble ourselves. This humility is love, just as Christ humbled Himself to become as we are. We are supposed to position ourselves such that our concern is not others and their idiosyncrasies, but our own manifest sinfulness (which again doesn’t mean there isn’t room for rebuking others, but how many of us are prophets for whom that is a major charism?). As Christ told us:
Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me remove that splinter from your eye,” while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
Again, my point is not to say that we can never counsel our brothers and sisters; rather, it is to indicate that humility ought always come first. That is how a community is built. Tolerance assumes the primacy of our own opinions and merely allows the other to exist with his “deficient” ones. Love springs from a sense of personal inadequacy, from the sense that Christ has come and will come again in order to redeem sinners, “of whom I am the first.”
What does all of this have to do with those considering leaving the Church? Well, it applies to both those wavering, thinking about going, and those of us whose tepidness and general misanthropy or “tolerance” make our communities uncomfortable places. When we get angry at others, even if we feel justly angry, even if we have been slighted or wronged, humility must come first. We must say to ourselves “this person is wrong, but how can I love them in spite of that?” Or, perhaps better: “how is my own pride getting in the way of helping me commune with my brother or sister?” For those definitely remaining in the Church, we need this reminder because it returns us from complacency to our fundamentals; it reminds us that we exist in community to uplift each other and to benefit from the graces God has given (separately and distinctly) to each of us as human individuals. We are only saved in the Church, that is, in community; we cannot go it alone. And, if we cannot go it alone, we must learn to love humbly.
This may soften all our hardened hearts and speak even to those whose primary concerns may, at first, seem political. For who can go wrong in returning to one of the most fundamental messages of the Christian faith?
Let me end, then, with the Litany of Humility, attributed to Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val:
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
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