We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, which means, we are to love ourselves. “ Let us,” St. Caesarius of Arles wrote, “possess such great charity, brethren, that we can love all men with our whole hearts. If you love all mankind as yourself, there will not remain a door whereby sin can enter into you.”[1] We are not to be selfish, nor are we to be prideful, thinking ourselves to be greater than all (or most) others. We certainly should not believe ourselves to be more worthy of our own love than everyone else, for if we do, we certainly will not be loving our neighbors as ourselves. Humility is a part of the Christian way of life, not because we are to lower ourselves, not because we are meant to think poorly of ourselves, not because we are to think there is nothing good in us which God could love and would desire to save, but rather, to make sure we see and discern the good in all, including ourselves, as well as understand our need for God and God’s grace in our lives. Pride and vainglory undermine our relationship with God, and with others, as they interfere with our ability to love, even as they end up making us think we can do all things ourselves, so that we do not need God and God’s grace.
It is imperative that we do all that we can to discern the good in others, for then, we will be able to better love and appreciate them. We also need to be able to see the good which exists in ourselves, so that we also find in us what makes us lovable, not only by others, but by God, so we do not end up hating ourselves, and our lives. Sadly, many of us either look down on our neighbors, ourselves, or both; and, while, many times we are reminded we are to love our neighbors, such that, even if we look down upon ourselves, we are able to still show our neighbors some love, we are not often enough told we can and should love ourselves (in a proper fashion), so that many of us, when we try to be humble, do so with self-hatred. Indeed, we are often told that self-love is sinful, and certainly, it can be, if we exclusively love ourselves, or at least, place ourselves so above others, we do not know how to properly balance our self-love with love for our neighbor. We should be taught to distinguish the unhealthy self-love which leads to sin and the healthy self-love which has us accept and value the good in us, and in doing so, recognize there is something in us which God can love. One way to do this is to look at ourselves in the third person, treating ourselves the same way we treat our neighbors. Or, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, we can look at ourselves as our own friend:
I understand a friend who comes to me as none other than myself. No one, surely, is dearer to me; no one closer. Therefore, a friend comes to me from his journey when I abandon transitory things and return to my heart, just as it was written: ‘Return, transgressors to [your] hearts.’ Then at last one is truly a friend to oneself when one returns from the journey, because ‘he who loves iniquity hates his soul.’ And so, from this day of my conversion, a friend has come to me from his journey. [2]
There is no one closer to us than ourselves because we can know ourselves more, and better, than anyone else. We should be able to find who we are in God, and love ourselves based upon what we discover, becoming, as it were, our own friend. However, we should not use such thinking to persuade us to ignore others, but we must treat all as ourselves, that is, as friends; this way, our self-love does not undermine our relationship with others, but rather serves as a foundation by which we know how to treat them. Bernard, therefore, should not be misunderstood; his suggestion should not be used to justify selfishness but rather, the reverse, which is why he said the best way to take care of ourselves and treat ourselves with proper self-love is to deny our inordinate passions. For, if we embrace such passions, they can lead us to sin, and in and through such sin, create a false self which hides from us our true selves, the self which should be loved. Therefore, when we love ourselves, we must make sure we know who we are in God, and love the person whom God loves, not the false self which seeks to supplant and override our true selves.
We need God, and God’s love, to sustain us. Our true self exists in and with God. It is preserved by God and God’s grace, even when we hide it in the construction of a sinful self, a mask which we place over it and impede it from being all that it can be. When we cut away the false self, we can let our true self, the self which is to be loved, free, and in its freedom, we will then be able to better interact with God, and find, in the end, our true selves will grow in grace and become deified. We need to accept that we cannot do all things, but also, that we have a role which God gave us, and a freedom which allows us to embrace God’s love and grace to make something of ourselves.
When we do not know ourselves, our true self, we will either prop up our false self, and so love that which should not be loved, in a way which is outside of all propriety, or else, we will hate ourselves because we do not see the good in us, as that false self has obscured it from our vision. Learning to love our neighbor, therefore, can be a way to help us love ourselves, for we learn to love others, despite what they have done or continue to do, because we see in them the good which God has given them. When we see the good in others in this fashion, we will learn to see the good in ourselves in the same way, and when we see it, we will be able to love it, and work to promote it in the same way we do for our neighbors. For the goal is not to love others above ourselves, or ourselves above others, but to love everyone equally, so that we end up wanting the best for all, including ourselves
[1] St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermons Volume I (1-80). Trans. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, OSF (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1956), 146 [Sermon 29].
[2] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons for the Summer Season. Trans. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and James Jarzembowski (Kalamazoo, MI.: Cistercian Publicans, 1991), 27 [Rogation Days: The Three Loaves of Bread].
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