Tu Es Vita

Some time ago I happened by chance on a YouTube video – I can’t remember the exact circumstances – in which a priest was talking about the nature of merit and our prejudices and misunderstandings on this topic. I found his points very interesting because I realized I too was laboring under some common misconceptions. 

In particular, he argued that many Catholics equate doing hard things with gaining a lot of merit, and that this was the foundation of a sort of puritanical rigorism in their thinking that had nothing to do with the traditional Catholic faith.   

This idea – that doing hard things will gain you a lot of merit – seems intuitive at first. After all, in the world, we reward those who achieve great feats with medals and honors. It takes an uncommon effort to climb a steep mountain, discover a new cure for cancer, or write a brilliant novel, and those who manage to do it are praised and glorified above the rest. 

At first glance, it would seem that supernatural glory works in much the same way. After all, saints are known for their heroic virtue. They most certainly did very hard things. Some, like the desert fathers, are known for their rigorous, other-worldly asceticism. Others, like St. Vincent de Paul, for their superabundant generosity to the poor, others still for their extraordinary mystical life, such as St. Theresa of Avila. Perhaps most obvious of all, we cannot fail to remember the numberless martyrs who shed their blood for Christ, undergoing all manner of terrible torments for His name. These are all extraordinary accomplishments. 

Yet if we look beyond the scope of our Catholic religion, we will see that there have been examples of people doing “hard things for God” nearly everywhere in the world. One example is the Hindu spiritual “masters” who lived lives of intense asceticism in their pursuit of ultimate spiritual wisdom. Some of their extreme practices indeed rival those of our own Catholic monks and nuns in the first centuries of the Church. 

Another (controversial) example is that of Buddhists who set themselves on fire to protest the suppression of their religious traditions. In 1963, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire, maintaining his meditative posture as his body burned. At first glance, he seemed to demonstrate a sort of superhuman “indifference” towards death comparable to the holy indifference of Christian martyrs. 

But we do not canonize these ascetics and we do not revere them. We do not hold them up as models to be followed. Why not? The answer, of course, is that they were not doing any of these things for Christ. Their “hard feats” really had no supernatural value and held no merit for eternal life, because they were missing the key ingredient, namely supernatural charity. 

And this is the point the priest in the YouTube video was trying to make. It is our degree of charity that determines our degree of merit, and not necessarily whether we are doing something difficult or easy. The priest rightly observed that Our Lady gained more merit while she was diligently sweeping the floor of her Nazarene home than all of the martyrs combined in the history of the Church. This is because her degree of charity was higher; she swept the floor with such unimaginable love of God that this alone raised her high above all the saints in the Church. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that doing “hard things” has no value. It’s true that if we do something difficult, under the inspiration of God, we can gain a lot of merit. But we often over-focus on the things themselves rather than the intentions we do them with. There is much more merit in saying one “Miserere Mei” with a truly contrite heart than fasting a month on bread and water with a prideful one.

Some saints were called to extraordinary acts of virtue, and God ordained that they perform them for His greater glory. But what makes them saints is not the hard things they accomplished, but the fact they obeyed the promptings of His grace and did His Holy Will with a heart full of charity. Had they done the same hard things for their own self-aggrandizement against the Will of God, they would have accrued no merit at all.

This is the lesson taught to us by saints like St. Therese of Lisieux. Her “little way” does not consist in doing conventionally “hard things”, but in doing ordinary things with great love. It takes a lot of courage to face the mundane, everyday requirements of life with a true love of God and neighbor. It is actually no small thing to do many small things well. If we focus on the purity of our intentions, we shall become saints even if we are never called to perform incredible feats. 

God will send us trials, crosses, and tribulations. He knows better than us what we can and cannot sustain. It might be a little and it might be a lot. This depends on the way He made us and on the degree of glory He wants to raise us to. In all things, we should dispose ourselves to receive everything with supernatural charity and to do what He asks of us.

If this means doing something very difficult, then He will give us the grace to accomplish such a feat, and we should take care to do it well, focusing most of all on our interior dispositions. If we are not asked to do difficult things, then we should focus on doing our ordinary duty with great love, and we shall become saints nonetheless. 

This focus on equating doing hard things with gaining a lot of merit can lead us to unconsciously assume that God is only happy with us if we’re suffering. This is why it can produce a mindset that closely borders on puritanism. We can start to think that if we’re enjoying ourselves, we are somehow “wrong”, or that activities that are pleasurable for us are ipso facto bad. 

It isn’t usually something we will admit overtly, but rather a more subtle orientation, not easily recognizable. One example that comes to mind is what happened to a certain priest, now deceased, who was somewhat of a celebrity in Traditionalist circles. His name was Father Hesse, and he was known for his passionate defense of traditional Church doctrine against modernism. 

This priest was rather fond of wine, and he often held conferences or talks while sipping on a glass of his favorite stuff, although he was never drunk or improper as a result of this habit. Regardless of his composure, he received much criticism from Catholics listening to his talks about his drinking, as if it were inappropriate for a priest to drink alcohol at all for the simple pleasure of it. Fr. Hesse responded by calling them heretics for their puritanical anti-Catholic sentiments. 

This is the kind of thing I meant when I said that some Catholics risk falling into puritanical rigorism as a result of bad theology. Can we merit while we are enjoying a glass of fine Bordeaux? I would say the answer is definitely yes, if we thank God humbly for the gift of such a pleasure and give Him all the glory for creating grapevines. Again, we will gain merit in this way because we are united to God through charity, and that charity can gain us merit in all circumstances, provided we avoid sin.

All of this is not to say that mortification is unnecessary or useless. That would be just as anti-Catholic as saying pleasure is always suspicious, if not downright bad. The real question we should be asking ourselves is not whether we should do this or that thing, but whether God wants us to do this or that thing. We have to become skilled at discerning spirits (and put ourselves under the care of a spiritual director, if possible) so that we can know if an inspiration comes from God or not. 

Doing the Will of God with a heart full of charity is the real secret to gaining merit, regardless of our own grandiose fantasies of what it means to be a saint. All the saints became great in this way, following the holy inspirations of God. Uncommon fidelity to God’s Will is what makes saints truly extraordinary.