Discernment

How To Overcome Obstacles in Discerning Consecrated Life & National Vocation Awareness Week

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 4 Comments

woman-571715_1920This week—from Sunday, November 1 until Saturday, November 7, 2015—is National Vocation Awareness Week. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops invites us all to dedicate this week to promote vocations specifically to the priesthood, diaconate, and consecrated life through prayer and education, and to renew our prayers and support for those who are considering one of these particular vocations.

With the recent Synod on the Family, the importance for young people to discern and be formed in their vocation to marriage is recognized, but there is one big difference. In our culture, marriage as we understand it as Catholics may be under pressure, but it is still considered a “usual” or “normal” path in life. Whereas ordained and consecrated life are the “hidden” or “forgotten” options for many young people. There could be any number of reasons for this, but in working with young people, I’ve found there’s usually just a few:

  • Out of sight, out of mind. A young person has never truly connected with a young priest, deacon, or religious, and so the thought that he or she could have a similar vocation never comes to mind.
  • Celibate chastity is so counter-cultural in our “do whatever feels right” culture obsessed with pleasure and sex, it’s immediately dismissed as “not possible.”
  • Similarly, the vow of poverty is absurd to someone immersed in the materialistic culture
  • The mistaken belief that true freedom means to be absolutely unencumbered by any form of restraint whatsoever, makes the priestly or religious vows unthinkable: like an unbearable lifetime of captivity.
  • Fear of commitment
  • Fear of unworthiness to be consecrated to God

National Vocation Awareness Week (NVAW) is especially helpful for highlighting consecrated life as a valid vocation to discern; NVAW can also help to address the misunderstandings that people often have about a life consecrated to God’s service. Great joy, beauty, love, and goodness flow from authentically living a priestly, diaconal, or religious vocation.

Of course, the greatest joy and love flow from living one’s own authentic call, so the point of National Vocation Awareness Week is not to put pressure on anyone, but to ensure that the full range of beautiful vocations in the Church are understood,  considered, and discerned.

Through the week, I hope to:

  • Answer the most recent questions about religious life that  have come in. Feel free to email, comment, or tweet me with your questions. (Note: I’m only on Twitter once or twice a day, so to reach me through Twitter, I believe you have to add a period in front of my name: put .@SisterMPaul at the beginning of your tweet, otherwise I might miss your question.)
  • Tweet resources that I discover through the week (and I’ll try to list them on the blog)
  • Highlight resources for nurturing vocations to religious life, priesthood and diaconate in the family, which is ideally the place where one can find the greatest support for discerning and taking the first steps to follow one’s vocation.

In addition, as I mentioned earlier, you can support NVAW in prayer by: downloading reflections for each day, a holy hour that you can pray for vocations this week, and a digital prayer card (PDF) that you can pray with and share, as well as other resources here on the USCCB’s website.

Discerning with Mary, the Mother of Jesus

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06_CC Sr Tracy

In Genesis, when God specifically promises to redeem humanity by sending the Savior, he speaks of Mary as “the woman” who is Satan’s enemy and whose Son will overcome the devil definitively. When we cultivate a relationship with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, we draw close not just to Mary but to Jesus. As our Mother, Mary wants us to be united to her Son, and she will clear the way of obstacles for us, most especially the devil’s temptations.

Many saints speak eloquently about Mary’s power over Satan and her ability to lead us to Christ. This is an excerpt from one of my favorite prayers to Mary by Blessed James Alberione:

“O Mary, grant that we may listen to, follow and love Jesus Christ the Divine Master! May sin never stain our souls consecrated to you. Immaculate Virgin, crush the head of that insidious demon of discouragement.

Live in our midst, Mary; blessed are they who dwell in your house.”
– Blessed James Alberione

In his beautiful apostolic letter On the Most Holy Rosary, Pope St. John Paul speaks about our entering into the “school” of Mary because “No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit…. Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word” (On the Most Holy Rosary, nos. 10 & 11).

Mary is both a wonderful model for our discernment and a powerful intercessor so that we can receive the light of the Holy Spirit in order to “see” or contemplate Christ’s presence in our lives. Mary is not just the Mother of Jesus, but our Mother, too, and her greatest desire is to lead all of her children to her Son. Praying to Mary regularly is life-changing.

Countless Marian prayers and traditions can help us to grow in our relationship with the Blessed Mother. The Rosary is especially fruitful as a prayer to help us grow in a spirit of discernment because when we contemplate Jesus by praying the Rosary, we do so with Mary, the first and truest disciple of Jesus who most closely sought and lived the will of God. When we pray the Rosary, we meditate with Mary on Jesus’ life: how Jesus lived the will of his Father while on earth. We can also meditate on how Mary recognized and responded to God’s invitations in a spirit of faith and obedience. The subjects for meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary are endless.

The saints are eloquent about how devotion to Mary changes our lives. If you are looking for more resources on growing in your relationship with Mary, here is a short list of new titles that introduce devotion to Mary and the Rosary, and a few of the classic books on Mary that foster devotion to her.

Discernment in Times of Temptation

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 2 Comments

06_EE Pixabay (2)Sometimes people raise the question how to distinguish the voice of God from the voice of the devil. It’s a good question because the devil truly is the father of lies and an expert at deception. The devil often preys upon our deepest faults, and because of this, his voice can sometimes be hard to recognize.

God allows the devil to tempt us, but God never allows us to be tempted beyond our strength. Jesus has already conquered the devil, sin, death, and all consequences of sin. So in our discerning, we seek to make sure that we are attuned to the voice of God, and not deceived by the voice of the devil.   

The closer we grow to Christ, the more subtle the devil has to become in the ways he tempts us. If we are truly discerning God’s will, the devil may not be tempt us outright, but manipulates us by using our worst faults and sinfulness—especially our negative thoughts—to try to draw us away from intimacy with God. This is where the expertise of an experienced spiritual director can help us recognize a temptation more quickly than we would on our own.

The devil is not privy to our private thoughts and our conversations with God. But the devil is a keen observer of both human nature and our behavior, and thus can deftly nudge us towards thoughts that lead us away from faith and into self-doubt, discouragement, and self-righteousness—thoughts that we might easily fall into or have on our own—without our even realizing what’s happening. And the devil often uses the subtlety of our thoughts to deceive us.

A basic criteria to discerning the devil’s voice is the question: Does this [thought, choice, action] help me to grow closer to Christ and keep my focus on him?

If the thought focuses my attention on myself in an unhealthy or discouraging way, then it is most likely a temptation.

* * *

Here is a personal example of how the devil uses one of my weaknesses—my perfectionism and tendency towards being overly self-critical. For years I thought that this was actually humility, so it took me a long time to recognize the pattern of temptation that happens to me repeatedly:

  1. Relying on God’s grace, I work hard to accomplish something in our mission—for example, perhaps I wrote an article. I know that the article is not perfect, but I did my best with the time and resources I had, and I entrust the results to God, praying that the readers of the article will be touched and feel God’s invitation.
  2. Afterwards, I’ll reflect on the article. How was it received? When I re-read it, what do I like about it? What is missing? How could I have written something that would bring more people to encounter the Lord?
  3. It’s during this reflection—which is actually important to do if I want to improve what I’m writing—that the devil jumps in. Rather than noticing what I could improve for next time and then humbly offering the article and its readers to God’s loving care, I’ll start to focus on the fact that I didn’t do a perfect job. My feelings of dissatisfaction that the article wasn’t perfect will start to grow, and then quickly spread to other areas of my ministry and of my life.
  4. Pretty soon, I’m dissatisfied with everything I do, and with myself overall. All I can see is my faults, my omissions, and what I’m not doing well. Once I’ve started riding this train of thought, I’m focusing not on what actually happened but on myself and everything I haven’t done. This is an express ride to discouragement.
  5. If I don’t recognize that I’ve jumped onto this train of discouragement, I may stay in a discouraged state focused on myself for days or even weeks. This kind of discouragement prevents me from taking risks in my ministry because it has sapped my trust in God and my self-respect. Worst of all, I end up focused on myself rather than on God, even though I started with the good intentions of growing in humility, and of trying to improve in my ministry.

The devil knows that being hyper-critical of myself is a place where I am vulnerable, and so preys on this weakness. Over the years, with the blessings of God’s grace, spiritual direction, and good friends, I can often recognize what’s happening pretty quickly. I still evaluate my apostolic work and efforts, but I’m careful to always conclude by offering each effort and my littleness to God, and even to rejoice in my littleness. In these times, the temptation to discouragement is transformed into an opportunity to grow in true humility.

* * *

Our Catholic traditions of the spiritual life are all helpful in drawing us closer to the Lord and away from the devil. But three guides that are particularly helpful for growing in a spirit of discernment are: Jesus’ gift of himself in the Most Blessed Sacrament, our relationship with Mary, our Blessed Mother, and praying with the Word of God. All three of these topics deserve their own books…but in upcoming posts, we’ll look briefly at them in light of discernment.

How Does God See Us?

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAA second way to grow in our true and deeper understanding of ourselves is to pray with Scripture passages that help us to understand who we are: who we are created to be, who we are called to be. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is full of God’s understanding of who we are, God’s love for us, God’s invitation for us to grow into “other Christs.”

If we have been praying with the Scriptures for several years or more, we might find it helpful to look back at our spiritual journey and make note of the Scripture passages that were foundational for our journey in Christ. These key Scripture passages resonated with us in part because they told us who we are in God’s eyes, and how God is inviting us to become our best selves in Christ. Picking 5 or 6 of these Scripture passages to go back to and pray with can be very helpful in reaffirming our true identity: as children of God, as disciples of Christ, as sent by the Spirit.

For those who’d like, here is a short list of passages from the Bible that affirm our identity in God, in Christ. Please add your favorite passage to this list in the comments below, and I’ll add them in!

  • Isaiah 43:1-7
    God speaks to us: “You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.”
  • Psalm 139
    “O Lord, you search me and you know me.”
  • Ephesians 1:3-10
    “He chose us in him before the world began.”
  • Ephesians 2:4-5
    “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
  • Zephaniah 3:17
    “The Lord your God is in your midst,
         a warrior who gives victory;
    he will rejoice over you with gladness,
    he will renew you in his love;
    he will exult over you with loud singing.”
  • John 15:15
    “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
  • 1 Corinthians 6:19
    “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
  • Ephesians 2:10
    “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
  • 1 Peter 2:9
    “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

SeeYourselfCoverFor guided meditations on discovering who we are in God’s eyes, you can check out my book, See Yourself Through God’s Eyes: 52 Meditations To Grow in Self-Esteem.  You can also check out the app (free on iTunes, .99 on GooglePlay) or other free resources here.

Discovering Our True Identity: Essential for Discerning

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06 AA Sr EmmaualIf our “false self”—the self driven by sin and by a false identity—is sometimes our greatest obstacle on our discernment journey, our “true self” is one of our greatest allies in our discernment journey.

The closer we grow to Christ, the more we start to see the world, others, and ourselves, with the eyes of Christ. What is our true identity? As discussed earlier, we find our true identity in God. Two ways to come to a truer sense of ourselves immediately stand out: Seek self-knowledge and learn to see ourselves through God’s eyes.

1. Seek self-knowledge

Getting to know ourselves—without false vanity, without the shadow of sin—is true humility. Self-knowledge is often marred by two opposite tendencies—sometimes simultaneously. Either 1) we ignore our faults altogether and become prideful, attributing our gifts to ourselves rather than God, or 2) we fall into the slump of seeing ourselves too negatively, only seeing our faults and limitations.

Genuine self-knowledge comes through prayer, living reflectively (especially through the examen), and openness to discovering the truth about ourselves.

Humility is knowing ourselves as graced and weak, blessed and sinful. If we can become comfortable in this truth about ourselves, then we are much less likely to get in our own way on our discernment journey. Humility can be uncomfortable, especially when our illusory image of ourselves as overly powerful and in control is shattered. In these moments, it can be helpful to cling to God’s love, in which we can find the true anchor of our identity. Isaiah 43:4 is a great reminder: “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

We can pray for self-knowledge to the Holy Spirit, asking especially for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In his Confessions, Saint Augustine offers a prayer for self-knowledge: “Let me know Thee, O Lord, who knowest me: let me know Thee, as I am known” (Confessions, Book X). The following Petitions of Saint Augustine is a beautiful and powerful prayer that is helpful to pray regularly. I’ve adapted it slightly for today’s usage.

LORD JESUS, may I know myself and know You, and desire nothing else but You.

May I hate my [false] self and love You.

May I do everything for the sake of You.

May I humble myself and exalt You.

May I think of nothing except You.

May I die to myself and live in You.

May I receive whatever happens as from You.

May I banish self and follow You, and ever desire to follow You.

May I fly from myself and fly to You, that I may deserve to be defended by You.

May I fear for myself and [be in awe of] You, and be among those who are chosen by You.

May I distrust myself and trust in You.

May I be willing to obey on account of You.

May I cling to nothing but to You.

May I be poor for the sake of You.

Look upon me that I may love You.

Call me that I may see You, and ever and ever enjoy You.  Amen.

What Do We Need To Be Freed from To Discern Well?

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06Z Pixabay

One of our biggest obstacles in discerning God’s will in our life is ourselves. Because of original sin—the sin of Adam and Eve which has marked every human being—we are prone to sin. In our discernments, we want to “sort through” our desires, distinguishing between disordered desires which can lead to sin and genuine desires that well up from deep within and reflect our true identity.

Sometimes when we find ourselves in difficult situations, we’ll discover that our main difficulty is really ourselves. We might think that if we just didn’t have to deal with this situation, or this person, or this challenge, we’d be fine. And then we end up in a new situation and we find that it’s not the situation that was the problem, it’s ourselves and how we deal with the situation.

* * *

I remember one time as a younger sister when I found myself in what I thought was a really difficult situation. Another sister and I really clashed, and it made community life really challenging for me. At the end of the year, I was transferred to a new community. At first I was thrilled, thinking everything was great. Then I started running into the exact same difficulties that I had run into before!

Gradually, I realized that although the circumstances of life would never be perfect, what made them unmanageable was me. My particular faults—in this case my high expectations, my desires for perfection, and my impatience with others—were really at the root of my problem in getting along with the other sisters. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a wonderful opportunity to get to know myself better. I realized that sometimes—perhaps more often than I’d like to admit—I am my own worst enemy!

* * *

In discernment, we spend a lot of time seeking greater freedom. (This is why sometimes we need to take a longer time to discern.) In our discernments, we seek freedom:

  • from our ego
  • from our tendency to seek ourselves or to put ourselves ahead of God
  • from our disordered desires
  • from the world’s materialistic and secular perspective
  • from others’ expectations

When Saint John the Baptist was pointing to Christ as the Messiah, he made a wonderful statement that fits this aspect of discernment: “He [Christ] must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30). Discernment is about giving Christ and his will for us more and more space in our life, so that our true identity as disciples of Christ can clearly emerge.

Back from Hiatus

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

hand-226358_1280for being so patient with me these past few weeks!

I’m back from my blogging/mostly offline hiatus. It is a real joy to be back online and blogging again! Posting three times a week has really pushed me to  come quite far writing the book on discernment, but it’s also proven to be quite challenging to keep up with. By the end of summer, I know I was barely hanging in there. I think I finally went into “overload” mode these past couple of weeks—in part because I’d fallen behind posting, but also because of other responsibilities that have arisen.

One benefit to all of this is that out of sheer necessity, I’ve been trying to live in the spirit of discernment even more than usual during these past couple weeks. So I have some more personal experiences and stories to share with regard to discerning day-to-day. Another (probably the best) benefit to you is that when I miss a blogpost, I pray extra for you, that you will receive the insights and graces that you need for your next step in your discernments! You have been in my prayers more than usual.

But I’m really excited to be back here writing. I’m trying to plan things out so that if it once again becomes impossible to blog regularly, I can at least post once or twice a week until I’m able to make time again.

From November 1-7, 2015, we celebrate National Vocation Awareness Week here in the USA. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (the USCCB) designated this week to encourage a culture of vocations specifically for priesthood, diaconate, and religious life. (In general, a vocational culture also includes discerning a possible vocation to marriage or single life.) Here are some recommended resources for parishes, families, and religious education–click on the link for National Vocational Awareness Week, English or Spanish. During that week, I hope to highlight a few other resources for encouraging openness to the call to consecrated or ordained life in the family that I’ve recently come across.

And just a reminder, please feel free to share your insights about discernment and your discernment journey with other readers through the comments. I love hearing from you, and also receiving your questions! The best way to reach me is here on the blog or via email. (Although you can find me on Twitter and Facebook, I am not able to maintain a consistent enough presence to be sure that I will receive your messages in a timely manner.)

Discernment Tip: Fix Our Gaze on Christ

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment
Fixing our minds and hearts on Christ, our Way to happiness

Fixing our minds and hearts on Christ, our Way to happiness

How can we avoid sin and grow in the spiritual life? Blessed James Alberione, Founder of the Pauline Family, offers helpful and practical strategies. He encourages us to avoid sin especially by replacing sinful attitudes and behaviors with the opposite virtue. His “take” on spiritual growth includes both dealing with the negative—vigilance in avoiding sin, and the positive—focusing on the virtue we most need to grow in.

Alberione’s integrated way to grow in the spiritual life helps us to acknowledge our sinfulness and do what we can to avoid sin in the future, while not allowing us to stay focused on the sin. Ironically, when we concentrate too hard on avoiding a particular sin, we can actually make it harder because it keeps our attention focused on ourselves and on our weakness. Blessed James encourages us to focus our gaze on Christ and how Christ lived the virtue that we need to acquire. This way, we keep our gaze on Christ, even when we are confronting our own sinfulness:

Our resolutions and real spiritual work should have a negative side and a positive side.  For example: fight against pride to replace it with humility; fight against concupiscence of the flesh to replace it with mortification and chastity; fight against avarice and the spirit of ease to replace it with charity and poverty.  It is a matter of taking off the old Adam in order to put on the new man, Jesus Christ (cf. Eph. 4:24)

So if we’re struggling with a particular sin that we give in to often, Blessed James offers us this practical strategy: begin to focus on the positive virtue we most need to grow in.

1) Whatever sin we are struggling the most against, we look for the opposite virtue.

2) We read through one of the Gospels and note down passages that show how Christ talked about and lived that particular virtue.

3) Over the next few weeks and months, we pray daily with one of those Gospel passages:

  • We read through each passage, reflecting on how Jesus lived the virtue we want to grow in: how did Jesus speak and act? How does this Gospel passage challenge my thinking? Did anything surprise us about Jesus’ words or actions?
  • In light of Jesus’ words and example, we examine our conscience daily, especially how we have lived this virtue in the past day: in our thoughts and attitudes, in our choices and actions, and in our desires. We look at both our successes and failures, thanking God for the graces and successes, asking God’s forgiveness for the ways we did not live this virtue.
  • We conclude by praying for the grace to grow in this virtue, and in love. What might we need to change so that we can live this virtue as Jesus did? Remembering Christ’s love for us, we stir up our desire and fervor to live more closely united to Christ by growing in this virtue.

4) We can repeat this over time with each of the Gospels, and with the Letters of the New Testament.

We don’t have to wait to become sin-free to discern—or none of us ever would make a discernment!—but we want to be growing into an always fuller life in Christ, so that we can not only listen to God’s invitations, but freely and generously respond to God’s call. Keeping our gaze fixed on Christ is something we want to do at every stage of our discernment!

The biggest obstacle to discernment

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

sad-505857_1280The overarching, biggest obstacle to discerning God’s will in our lives is sin, because sin is directly opposed to doing God’s will. Sin is a rejection of God and seeks to put self in the place of God, to seek one’s own will above God’s.

Striving to live a good moral life is a prerequisite for making a good discernment. When we are trapped in a cycle of serious sin, God’s will for us is clearly to convert and enter (or return to) the state of grace, which is a sharing in God’s own life. Even venial sins, which do not disconnect us from communion with God, but weaken our relationship with God, compromise our ability to hear and respond generously to God’s will.

Sinfulness affects our discernment because sin is slavery, setting limits to genuine freedom. Sinfulness deafens us to God’s invitations, blocks our openness to God’s voice, and prevents us from responding wholeheartedly to God’s call. Sometimes, our motivations in discerning could be mixed between good intentions and sinful ones. For example, when we discern whether or not to do something, we might choose to do a good thing out of selfishness or vanity, rather than a desire to serve God. We may still end up doing God’s will–because God can use even our weaknesses to bring about good–but not because we discerned well!

The best preparation for discernment is to live fully our Catholic Faith, to live in continual conversion so that gradually we are freed from the claws of sin. Helps to living a good moral life include:

  • Prayer
  • Reading and praying with the Word of God
  • Receiving the sacraments, most especially Reconciliation (or Penance) and the Holy Eucharist
  • The examination of conscience
  • Acts of charity for others (e.g. the works of mercy)

None of us are exempt from the necessity of examining our lives and our moral choices, repenting of and confessing our sins, doing penance, and praying for the grace to live in conversion and avoid sin in the future. Perhaps you noticed that many of the very means that we use to grow in holiness are the same means that we are encouraged to use in discerning. That’s because discernment is part of the journey to holiness, a specific way of growing spiritually. The more we grow in our life in Christ, the freer we become interiorly, and the more receptive we are to God’s graced invitations.

Is detachment a virtue?

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

06W Sr Ann

Years ago, “good young Catholics” were often discouraged from expressing what they liked and what they didn’t like. “This is so you can grow in detachment,” the young person was told. 

Detachment was considered hugely important because it helps someone put aside their own will, likings, preferences, abilities, etc., so that they can wholeheartedly embrace God’s will. But for some people, never expressing one’s preferences seemed to dull the world and crush healthy individual autonomy.

Nowadays, many spiritual directors talk about how to live in a spirit of detachment differently. The gifts of each individual—sometimes expressed in personal preferences—are greatly respected in the spiritual life. Personal preferences are not only expressed but encouraged (although always in moderation). However, detachment is still important to nurture because it helps us embrace God’s will.

What do we seek to detach ourselves from? Anything that distracts us from God, or that could prevent me from embracing God’s will. It could be material objects (like a favorite blanket), certain food or habit of eating, our way of doing something, a talent, or habits. These things or preferences can be good in themselves, but when we grow too attached to them or give them too much importance, they can start to interfere with our freedom. Sometimes we don’t even recognize when we’ve become attached to something, so giving up something that we prefer can be good practice to keep us attentive to the movements of our hearts.

* * *

In my own life, I find that giving up a personal preference—especially for the sake of another person—is a very helpful spiritual practice that helps me remember what is truly important. I’ve also found that detachment is more fruitful when it’s a choice made intentionally by the individual each time, rather than a rule imposed on everyone. In my community, detachment is often practiced by accepting what we receive and by avoiding complaining, trusting that our situation is an expression of God’s will for us.

In my own spiritual journey, when I’ve neglected to cultivate detachment, I’ve noticed that my priorities tend to get a bit muddled, and I can start to cling to things that aren’t even very important to me. I become more taken up by daily concerns, rather than about living my relationship with God and bringing about God’s Kingdom.

* * *

Is detachment truly a Christian virtue? It’s not specifically mentioned in any of the beatitudes, it’s not a theological or cardinal virtue, nor is it listed as a gift or fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, that is a trick question. “Detachment” is specifically alluded to in several of the lists of virtues mentioned above. First of all, the beatitudes—especially poverty of spirit—require detachment from the things of this world. Temperance, as one of the four cardinal virtues, warns against our becoming too attached to or abusing this world’s goods by using them immoderately or to the point of harm. Self-control, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, also presupposes a certain detachment from whatever excesses we might be tempted to.

* * *

For me, the easiest way to understand detachment is in light of the foundational call that we have all received in our Baptism to die to self and to rise with the Lord. Dying to ourselves is in truth detaching ourselves from our own thoughts, opinions, prejudices, ways of doing things, and from seeing or using created goods in a way that doesn’t bring about God’s glory. Dying to ourselves means dying to anything that could prevent us from fully living in Christ.

Detachment doesn’t mean totally disconnecting ourselves from all material goods or all the things of the world. (Which is mostly impossible anyway.) We can and should marvel at the wonder, joy, and beauty of God’s creation. But detachment means that we do this by giving everything its rightful place—not making something more important than someone, not making any person more important than God, and not allowing any of our desires to become more important to us than the desire to live God’s will.

Detachment frees and empties us from sinful and unhealthy attachments, so that our minds, hearts, and wills are free to cling to God, to discover God’s will, and to wholeheartedly embrace it.