First Thoughts and Emotions

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“To them that love God, all things work together unto good,” says St. Paul (Rom. 8:28).

There's one particular type of temptation “that raises its head from time to time in the first thoughts and emotions that we are continually experiencing. Our first impressions, the moment we become aware of anything, can produce a natural involuntary reaction that can determine our later attitude” (Benedict Baur, In Silence with God, Chapter X ff.).

Sometimes it calls forth judgments that are unloving or rebellious thoughts based on self-sufficiency or vanity, or envy, jealousy, superiority, bitterness, anger, impatience, curiosity, sensuality, attraction, or repulsion; or a whole wilderness of involuntary thoughts and emotions that can take priority over our free will, and, generally speaking, can cause us a lot of trouble.

Our first thoughts and emotions are not sins because there's no full knowledge or full consent in those involuntary reactions. They're natural and necessary processes leading to the determination of free will.

And it's inevitable that because of our nature, which is not yet perfect, we would have certain impulses of different emotions or reactions from time to time.

These things can depend largely on the nature of the individual, particularly whether we're drawn to certain people or perhaps disenchanted with others. Some people are by nature quickly excited when anything goes wrong, when their will is crossed, or their plans or their wishes miscarry.

Each person might have to do their utmost to rise above physical desires to a more spiritual plane. And yet, one might continue to have disturbingly sensual thoughts and desires.

First thoughts and emotions can carry within them the germs of temptation. And they can be a true cross to be borne by somebody who aspires to virtue.

In some ways, they are trials sent by God in His divine love, to draw forth an abundance of goodness out of apparently evil things.

God may allow us to be subject to these reactions in order to reduce us to shame, or to show us our inner corruption, or to help us to get to know our inner selves a bit better, and to see how much there may still be in us of what is ugly, lawless, unworthy, perverted, or ignoble. He may use these things to let us see that we can be very mean and unspiritual in our thoughts, our judgments, our wishes, our impulses, our feelings, our attractions, and our repulsions.

This is God's purpose in the many painful and humiliating thoughts and emotions that He may allow us to experience. If we approach these experiences in the right way, we can draw healing benefits from our pride, from our self-satisfaction and self-love.

The cross can truly be a healing medium. And that healing comes about when we realize and recognize how selfish we can be, how small-minded, how ill-intentioned we may be by nature, and how greatly we stand in need of God's help and grace.

These experiences can help us to appreciate more and more the sacrament of Confession and help us to realize how much more we need on a regular basis that input of supernatural grace that comes to us through the sacraments.

Daily and hourly, these thoughts and emotions can give us renewed proof of our inner corruption. As we recognize what our faults are, we become willing to learn, and that fortifies us in the virtue that is the foundation and necessary starting point of all virtue, which is humility. The Psalm says, “It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn justification” (Ps. 119:71).

These thoughts and feelings can become indispensable aids to virtue and holiness. An emotion contrary to love may arise. No sooner are we aware of this than our will steps in to counteract the thought. And so, a blow has been struck for the virtue of love.

We might become aware of a prompting to impatience in traffic or in a meeting or in a conversation or in other moments. If we turn to Our Lord in that moment, telling Him that we're ready to submit to the unpleasantness with which we're faced, thereby we practice the virtue of patience.

A feeling of self-satisfaction might arise in us. It's a reminder to us that we're still in bondage to personal pride. But we can convert that thought into an act of humility. If we meet the first stirrings of sensuality with some little aspiration, a prayer for the virtue of chastity stands to our account.

In this way, our first thoughts and emotions become daily and hourly opportunities to strengthen ourselves in virtue and in grace. You could say that we would be deprived of endless opportunities if God did not send us those first thoughts and emotions. All that's necessary is to recognize these impromptu inner processes and to handle them in the right way.

Our peace of mind and also the development of our interior life and our striving for virtue can hinge largely on the manner in which we relate ourselves for practical purposes to those first thoughts and emotions.

This is where we may come to the parting of the ways. Should we take the left-hand road, which leads to self-indulgence and self-love, or the right-hand road of self-humiliation and loving submission to the cross that is laid upon us?

Many people may allow themselves to be confused by those first thoughts and emotions. They might regard them as sins that can't be overcome or become discouraged and give up the struggle before it has really begun.

Others may believe that they can eventually rid themselves of these thoughts and emotions and imagine that perfection will have been reached only if they can accomplish this task. They might become unhappy and angry that such feelings keep recurring, so beset with self-love and secret pride that they may be.

And most of us may not be quite clear in our minds about those thoughts and emotions and adopt a defensive attitude toward them. That can make us excited or nervous.

We might live in daily apprehension in case a feeling of self-satisfaction, an impure idea, an unloving thought, or a momentary impulse of impatience should overcome us. Without knowing it, we could increase our tendency to those reactions by our very effort to repress them.

We are obliged to fight our rebellious feelings, but in the right way. The most important point is to see them in true perspective, as things sent by God to spur us on to perfection and virtue.

We don't desire them, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. But we have to submit humbly and patiently to the recognition of our failings and acknowledge our unworthiness.

We might often go to work at them in the wrong way by asserting ourselves and seeking forcefully to repress them.

We take pains to knock on the head everything that awakens in us. It's almost as if our piety demanded to be shielded against all annoyances; as if we had no right to experience waves of impatience, displeasure, sensuality; as if we were in some way superior to such weaknesses.

And that's why we can become a bit nervous or excited when we become aware of those stirrings and seek every means to protect ourselves against them.

But the more we might fight against them, the more obstinately they might remain entrenched, plaguing us with their persistence. We might see in them only temptations, troublemakers that bring us to a halt.

Instead, we have to try and see God behind these things and turn to Him at once, taking the cross from His hands, saying to Our Lord, “Lord, if it's your will that I should bear this cross, your will be done.”

“If this is your will, then it's my will also” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 762).

And so, the correct course is not to be on the defensive against these thoughts and emotions, seeking to exterminate them by force, but to accept them and turn them to our own use.

We can use them for strengthening virtue in a spirit of humble self-examination. ‘How ugly I still am in my thoughts and judgments, full of selfishness and sensuality!’

We can acknowledge the fact that we're still corrupt and perverted, bowing quietly and patiently under the cross of spiritual poverty. And from this act of humility, we proceed to an act of trust in Him who is so near with His grace and help.

That's how the first thought, the first emotion, can become a means to humility and to prayer, an act of virtue. Virtue is awakened, strengthened, confirmed, and fulfilled through those first thoughts and emotions.

We can go a step further and daily renew our resolution never to give way to those first feelings. A lot depends on the fundamental attitude of our will.

If we give our will a strong, firm, clear direction, then in a daily way it becomes better able and more resolved to avoid the wrong path as soon as we recognize it—more resolved to seize upon any aid that will keep it at peak level, more positive in striving for virtue, more resolute in attrition and in embracing the sacrifices and efforts that a pure God-informed love demands.

Such a will avoids anxiety and nervous unrest when wild thoughts and various emotions agitate it. It doesn't allow itself to be drawn into combat with them, nor waste its strength fighting every single stir of thought. It lets the hounds bark and, without taking any further notice of them, passes them by.

St. Benedict says, “Smash rebellion, perverted thoughts, on Christ as soon as they arise” (Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict). It's a valuable precept. Instead of paying heed to these thoughts and suggestions, halting, granting them admission, and occupying ourselves with them, we turn, almost without noticing them, to the opposite side, to Christ. “I belong to Thee,” says the Psalm, “Do Thou help me” (cf. Psalm 119:94).

The thoughts and emotions that sought to plague us actually lead us to Our Lord, directing our eyes to Him, prompting us to renew our surrender, our loyalty, our love to Him.

A golden rule, simple and reliable: instead of torturing ourselves with errant thoughts and sensual emotions, we learn the divine art of turning them to our advantage. And so, in this way, they not only teach us self-knowledge and humility, but they impel us again and again towards Christ, bringing Him our trust and asking His help.

They make us vigilant in contrition and faithful in little things. Far from being a hindrance to our progress, they become our reliable road to virtue. “All things work together for the good, for those that love God” (Rom. 8:28).

“We need to be on guard not only against God's enemies, but also against the complicity proffered by our evil inclinations” (Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God, Volume 1/19 ff. ).

We're told in St. Matthew, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41).

We're alert when we make an effort to improve our personal prayer, which in turn increases our desire for sanctity and helps us to avoid lukewarmness. We will also stay awake to the things of God by living a spirit of mortification.

We strengthen our vigilance through doing a careful examination of conscience, so that we don't fall into the situation described by St. Augustine, as though spoken by God: “While you give yourself up to evil, you come to consider yourself good, because you do not take the trouble to look at yourself.

“You reproach others and you do not take stock of yourself. You accuse others and you do not examine yourself. You place them before your very eyes and you place yourself behind your back. So when the time comes for me to reckon with you I shall do the opposite: I will turn you around and confront you with yourself. Then you will see yourself and you will weep” (St. Augustine, Sermon 17).

Our vigilance needs to be in the little things that fill our day. St. Josemaría says, “That supernatural mode of conduct is a truly military tactic. You carry on the war—the daily struggles of your interior life—far from the main walls of your fortress. And the enemy meets you there: in your small mortifications, your customary prayer, your methodical work, your plan of life: and with difficulty will he come close to the easily scaled battlements of your castle. And if he does come, he comes exhausted” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 307).

So in our examination of conscience, we can consider the little things of each day, those first thoughts and emotional reactions. We will find the true way and will discover the root causes of our failings in love of God. Little things generally open the way to big things.

Our daily meditation can keep us on the lookout for the enemy who never sleeps, and will give us strength to bear and to overcome temptations and difficulties. In that meditation, we will find too the means to struggle against the ‘old person,’ those less than upright tendencies that remain latent within us.

To achieve the necessary interior purification, we need to practice constant mortification of the memory and the imagination. If we do this, we will be able to eliminate from our understanding those troublesome things that prevent us from carrying out God's will to the full.

We can try to get rid of anything that goes against or does not belong to our way. Then our mind will no longer have in it anything that does not belong to Our Lord.

We're told in The Way, Point 173: “That joke, that witty remark held on the tip of your tongue; the cheerful smile for those who annoy you; that silence when you're unjustly accused; your friendly conversation with people whom you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in the persons who live with you…this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.”

Purification of the soul through interior mortification is not something merely negative. It's not just a matter of avoiding what borders on sin. Quite the opposite. It consists of knowing how to deprive oneself, for love of God, of things that it would be quite licit to have.

This mortification, which tends to purify the mind of everything that is not of God, aims in the first place at freeing the memory from recollections that would oppose the way that leads to heaven.

Those recollections can assault us during our work or our rest, and even while we're praying. Without violence, but promptly, we should apply the means to get rid of them. We will struggle to make the effort which is necessary for our mind to fill itself once more with love, and a longing for the things of God.

Something similar can happen in the imagination. It can often upset us by inventing all kinds of novels, weaving fantastic fictions which are quite useless.

In The Way, Point 173, we're told: “Get rid of those useless thoughts which, at best, are but a waste of time.” And also, we have to react quickly and return serenely to our ordinary task.

In any case, interior purification does not end with emptying the understanding of useless thoughts. It goes much further. The mortification of our potencies opens up to us the way to contemplative life, in whatever circumstances God has wanted to place us.

With that interior silence towards everything that goes against God's wishes and is improper to His children, the soul finds itself well disposed for a continuous and intimate dialogue with Jesus Christ.

In this dialogue, our imagination helps contemplation—for example, when we contemplate the Gospel or the mysteries of the Rosary.

It is then that our memory recalls the wonders that God has done for us, and His abundant goodness; and this will cause our hearts to burn with gratitude and ardent love, just like Our Lady did when she said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW