It’s essential for lives of wholeness and holiness that we grow in communion with the Lord, personal integration, and charity toward others. We like to encapsulate all these concepts with the simple term ‘connection’. The principles are the same in all of these relationships, being chosen, known, valued, protected and provided for.
Today’s conversation focuses on peace, freedom, and gr
eat relationships particularly through personal integration and charity toward others. This is particularly done through having mercy toward ourselves and toward others, which has been a continual theme of the last few popes. It’s really essential to our holiness and well-being.
Ironically, we need to make sure we are charitable toward ourselves before we can have the charity to extend toward others. We can tend to skip over this concept, falsely viewing it as selfish, but it’s Scriptural. “Love your neighbor as yourself”(Mark 12:31). That becomes our mode of operation. If we have a mode of charity and love, that is the mode through which we relate to the Lord and by which we reach out to others.
Charity toward ourselves requires us to be patient and intentional in our relationship to ourselves. We need to intentionally choose to relate to ourselves from the basis that we are ‘very good’ based on our dignity as children of God. This allows us the sense of safety by which to operate out of a deep sense of safety and peace. It sets us in a place of being able to really conceive that the Lord loves us deeply and then to be able to truly receive His love. Relating to ourselves out of a contrary attitude sets us up to be lied to by the evil one and to fall into discouragement. Self-talk is so crucial because it reveals those attitudes we have toward ourselves. We need to respect our own boundaries in our self-talk, not overextending ourselves, running ourselves ragged, and stressing ourselves out beyond what is healthy.
Boundary setting with others is important because it helps to establish rules of engagement so we can give each other the opportunity to love and respect each other. They are a gift by which we can work towards common ground for relating in freedom and mutual respect for each other’s needs. They can free us up and help us avoid undue and unspoken expectations, resentment, and conflict. Peaceful and healthy relating doesn’t have to be complicated.
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