Self-emptying and St. Joseph

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.

“…something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).

In our prayer this morning, we could focus on the words, “He emptied Himself.” It's a rather expressive term.

Emptiness is something very clear. The bottle is empty, which means there's nothing left. It’s not half-full, or a quarter full, or there's a little bit left in it; it's empty. The cash box is empty; very clear and graphic. There’s nothing in it. The tube is empty.

We're told Christ did not just pour out a little bit of Himself, but “He emptied Himself.”

We're called to follow His example, to empty ourselves of ourselves, to empty ourselves of that greatest obstacle to our holiness which is our self-love, the love of me, selfishness, egoism, and ultimately pride. “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30).

There's no limit to that self-emptying. Our Lord invites us to examine our conscience, to look interiorly, deeply, to see, ‘Is there something there deep inside that I need to empty myself of, that I have not poured out or gotten rid of?’

“Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

There may be many things that we have tried to empty ourselves of over the course of time. The fact that we're here is a sign that we do practice the virtue of humility. We're trying to conquer our pride.

But yet there may be vast areas that are still there that we have not yet discovered. Domine, ut videam! (Luke 18:41)—what I'm not so aware of.

Possibly Our Lord wants to open my eyes to that reality little by little, and do something about it, because He wants me to be better. He wants me to improve. He wants me ultimately to be a saint.

“For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be raised up” (Matt. 23:12).

There may be certain little tell-tale signs that there is something there deep down that Our Lord wants us to do something about. One of those things could be rigidity—if we're rigid about certain ideas, or opinions, or ways of doing things, my reactions, or my likes and dislikes.

There can be subtle little symptoms that I haven't really given myself completely, or that I need to give myself a little more, because God wants to use my self-giving to bring enormous apostolic fruits all over the world.

That's why the apostolic fruitfulness of all the things we do, all the corporate apostolic activities, ultimately depend on our sanctity. God doesn't invite us to climb Mount Everest or Mount Kenya or Mount Kilimanjaro, but He does invite us to delve deep down into the inner recesses of our soul, to make it more Christ-like, so as to bring fruits that we never even dreamt of.

I went to visit a 95-year-old priest in a hospice in Tegio recently. I'd heard about him. He's an Irish priest who came here in 1952. He was the first priest to go to, I think it's called Otunu, Moko, some area like that. Amazing story.

He helped to start the first mission in Turkana, to negotiate with the British District Commissioner. A lot of problems. He was full of stories at 95 years of age. It would be interesting to record and tape him soon.

On my way out, I happened to meet the Sister in charge. I think this place is the first hospice in Kenya. Beautiful surroundings, beautiful settings. It was a small little place, but full of potential, and spotlessly clean and impressive.

The young nun in charge met me on the way out and we were talking. “Oh, you're a priest of Opus Dei. And how is Father Alphonse?”

Out of the blue, here in the middle of nowhere, this lady asked me about Father Alphonse. I said, “He's not too well at the moment, but how do you know Father Alphonse?”

“I used to attend the recollections in Eldoret. Two of my best friends are in Opus Dei.”

Amazing! She is a Daughter of Charity. She runs the place. Then you find that she used to attend the activities in Eldoret.

I'm sure from all the decades that activities have been taking place in Eldoret, nobody imagined that this lady now running the first hospice in Kenya could have been in contact in that particular way at that particular time.

We never know the fruits of all the things that we're running and what that brings over time.

But our Father does bring us back to our own personal struggle to be better, the basis for that apostolic fruitfulness. All the time, God invites us to conquer ourselves.

You probably heard the story of how our Father one time was obviously making some decision with Don Álvaro, as they probably had to do many times. Our Father suggested one thing and Don Álvaro suggested a different thing.

Our Father wanted to do what he thought was the right thing. But Don Álvaro was very much against it.

We're told that our Father went to the oratory, and he spoke to Our Lord in the tabernacle saying, “Lord, Álvaro is right. Álvaro is right.”

That little anecdote talks about how he saw very clearly that Álvaro's solution was much better than his, but he wanted his solution. He was praying for the grace to see and to put his will behind what Don Álvaro was suggesting.

‘Álvaro is right. Álvaro is right. I am wrong.’ Great interior battle. ‘Alvaro has the better solution.’ It was like an expression of our Father's desire to conquer that self that was there within him.

We have to try and follow his example. Don Álvaro talked about standing on our own self-love, stamping it out. We know it's always there.

I was very impressed in another country, an 85-year-old lady told me how she realized she'd been thinking about herself, and worried about herself, and anxious about herself, and, ‘I have to stop all this nonsense,’ she said, ‘to forget about myself.’

It was rather impressive to hear the bellicose words that she was using against herself.

It's a never-ending battle. But on that battle lies hopefully the victory of our humility. St. Paul says, “We have to put on the new person” (Eph. 4:24). Put off the old person—that old self that's there all the time.

We have to see it, bring it out into the daylight. Discover the enemy, see the enemy. Unless you know who the enemy is and what the enemy is, you can't fight against it.

“You call me ‘Master’ and ‘Lord,’ and you say well, for so I am. If then I, being your Lord and Master who washed your feet, you also are to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also” (John 13:13-15).

Our Lord gives us an example in many areas, in many ways: examples of emptying Himself, forgetting about Himself, of serving, of conquering Himself.

There possibly are opportunities that Our Lord brings our way for us to respond with generosity to the divine graces that He places in our way to grow, to be better.

When we're not appreciated, when maybe we meet with rejection, our ideas, our opinions, our ways of doing things, or when we're corrected—it’s a litmus test of how attached we are to self. When we're corrected, we're shown a better way of doing things.

Lord, help me to accept with humility, with docility, whatever it is you tell me. Even if I don't like it, even if I think it's wrong, help me to watch that self-reaction that may be there, thinking this is too much.

When we get thoughts like that, that's our pride speaking. ‘Now this person is wrong’ or ‘I can't be spoken to in this way’—excessive sensitivity can be a sign of that deep love of self.

‘A person spoke like this, they used those words, they used that tone.’ Well, look at the message of what's behind that, without any judgments or criticisms. Otherwise, we might be in a situation where nobody can say anything to us.

We're so full of self-love and sensitivity that nobody can say anything—the very opposite of what our Father wanted, what Our Lord wants, to be “like clay in the hands of the potter” (Jer. 18:6).

If that person says something to us in that way or in that tone, what's my reaction? Do I have a sort of a grudge? ‘I don't want to talk to that person anymore.’ ‘I don't want to listen to them.’ ‘I don't want to live with them.’ ‘I don't want to work with them.’

We can maneuver ourselves into an impossible situation, and ultimately that's the devil working through our self-love, his greatest instrument.

Lord, help me to see it, to recognize it, to conquer it, to fight it, to declare war on it.

If I feel on some occasion that I've received some sort of a blow, Our Lord invites us to take the blows, like our Father took the blows.

There's a great phrase in Scripture that can be very helpful if ever we feel we've received a bit of a blow, and that is: “We receive fewer blows than we deserve” (cf. Luke 12:48). Sometimes our pride and our self-love receive a huge blow.

Somebody fell down the stairs once, and somebody asked them, “Oh, did you hurt yourself?” They said, “Only my pride.”

It was a very interesting little reaction: “Only my pride. My legs and my arms are in a good state, but my pride is in pieces.”

Sometimes the thing we hurt most is our pride. ‘Oh, that's very painful, very sore. It takes me a couple of weeks to recover.’

When we hurt our pride, oh, it's very difficult. But then it's good to remember, ‘I received fewer blows than I deserve.’ All the times I got away with murder. All my sins, all my negligences, all my lack of effort.

Lord, help me to open my eyes, to see. Help me not to say to you, “Yes, I want to serve you” but with a declaration of independence—to do things the way I want, to be spoken to the way I want to be spoken to, be told the things that I want to be told. Don't tell me things in this way or that way or the other way, because I don't want to hear them. I put up a wall around myself.

“God resists the proud, but He gives His grace to the humble” (James 4:6). When we go to the chat and sometimes, we are told deeper things that cost us, that invite us to a deeper change, we have to try and be open to those realities, even at the eleventh hour, because so many great things may depend on that.

Some soul somewhere, coming in contact with some apostolic activity, will see something clearer along the pathway of their vocation.

Make the world a better place because of that little battle that I have waged with my own self-love. “Whoever loses his life will save it” (Matt. 16:25).

“In all truth, I tell you, unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest” (John 12:24).

We have come to die, to die to ourselves, to be like little children who know how to bounce around the place, bounce out of bed every new day, hit the day with a bang.

“Indeed all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom. 8:14). With this virtue we de-complicate ourselves. We keep things simple, clear, very wonderful.

A telltale sign that there is some deep self-love there is if we are easy to annoy if we have a fast temper, which is fast pride, lack of rectitude of intention.

St. Benedict says, “If humility is truth, then a significant part of its practice must involve bringing out into the daylight of another's judgment whatever is hidden and therefore subject to delusion” (St. Benedict, A Guide to Living in the Truth).

Hence our Father speaks about the importance of sincerity, bringing out “into the daylight of another's judgment,” not the darkness of our own, the hidden darkness.

Aspects of our self-love can be hidden in the deep recesses of our soul “and therefore subject to delusion.”

If we don't bring these things out, if we don't listen, we can end up on the wrong track. We can be barking up the wrong tree. We can have a completely distorted vision of reality—what I should be doing differently is to humble myself and listen.

What are the things that are being suggested to me? Maybe they are being suggested in a very calm, peaceful, sweet, gentle manner.

But if we are humble, we have to catch the breeze, catch the Holy Spirit, and it doesn't matter what's being suggested to us. The important thing is that it's being suggested, that particular thing.

So okay, I'm available. I do this, I do that. Even if I don't feel like it, I'll accept that advice. I do this thing, because that's what's being said to me. I'll allow myself to be demanded in this particular area.

We've come to give an unconditional self-surrender. Unconditional. Emptying ourselves. “Though He was by nature God, He did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to” (Phil. 2:6).

There may be moments in our life when this action and this reaction becomes more important, because there may be something deeper there, some bit of surgery that needs to be done in our soul.

We come with a spirit of docility to let ourselves be molded. We could ask in the chat, ‘Look, is there something you think I should work on? Or something you think I should take a bit more seriously? Or something I'm not seeing? Or something that's being suggested to me that I haven't quite grasped in its importance?’

We let people tell us things clearly, sicut lutum in manibus figuli, “like clay in the hands of the potter.”

In a letter in 1975, Don Álvaro said, “Let us seek only the glory of God. Deo omnis Gloria. Let us live according to the constant lesson of the life of our Father: ‘Mine is to hide and disappear.’”

We hide and disappear in all sorts of ways. Sometimes, an excessive rigidity can be a sign that in that area we’re not hiding away and disappearing.

It can be sort of an acid test. ‘I refuse to change.’ ‘I refuse to mellow in my opinions and the decisions I have made about what I will do, what I will not do.’

“Let each one fulfill the work of God,” he says. “Spend themselves in service to the others, knowing themselves to be last. My sisters and brothers, I am writing this to you with all the love that our Father has taught me to have for you. Let us be very humble. Let us not forget that our Father has always forewarned us that the great enemy is hidden in pride, in self-love.

“I think that it is time to ask Our Lord, through the intercession of our Father, to give us this grace: a holy hunger to disappear, to be the last, to obey with more finesse than ever.”

Yesterday was the first Sunday of St. Joseph. In this Year of St. Joseph (January 1, 2020 to December 8, 2021), we have a chance to take a deeper look at St. Joseph. We have special graces to do so.

It is difficult to find any trace of self-love in the life of Joseph, a beautiful, lovable character. Our Father had such great devotion to him.

We could ask him in a special way in these weeks and months to lead us to a deeper grasp of that self-love so we can do something about it, can follow more in his example. His plans were always changing.

Our Lord was always making demands on him. Go here, go there. Don't ask for this, don't ask for that, don't complain. Just follow the path, the signals that I give you. Always be available. Conquer your own plans.

All the things that Joseph was asked to do—none of them were in his plans. He didn't plan to go to Bethlehem or to fly off to Egypt or to go here or to go there. They had no place to stay. All these things were all outside of his plans.

Yet he was there and so, Ure igne, Sancti Spiritus–Enkindle in us the fire of your love. We can see those aspects of our pride and want to do something about them.

There was an architect in England once who constructed the first lighthouse in a place called Eddystone, close to Plymouth in the south of England in the year 1700. On the lighthouse, he had etched the words: Winstanley, the best architect in England.

Soon afterwards, a storm toppled the lighthouse into the sea. Years of building were washed away.

Some years later another architect constructed another lighthouse on that very same site. He engraved on the stones the words of the Psalm: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). And that lighthouse is still standing today. We have to allow the Lord to build the house.

Our Father says in The Forge, “What really makes a person—or a whole sector of society—unhappy, is the anxiety-ridden, selfish search for well-being, that desire to get rid of whatever is upsetting” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 767).

God may permit things in our life that are upsetting: irritations, people, places, circumstances, events. We might have the immediate reaction to want to get rid of that thing, but our Father has taught us that's the pathway to my holiness.

That particular person, that particular irritation, that particular difficulty—I have to face that thing; I have to learn how to handle it. I have to conquer my own self-love in wanting to get rid of that thing, to get that obstacle out of my path.

“That acquaintance of yours,” he says, “very intelligent, well-off person, used to say: ‘You have to do what the law says, but within limits, doing what is strictly necessary without going too far.’ And he would add, ‘You shouldn't sin, of course, but there's no need to give up everything.’ How sad it is to see people who are mean,” said our Father, “calculating, incapable of making any sacrifice, of giving themselves wholeheartedly to a noble ideal” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 12).

We may discover these sorts of sentiments deep inside our heart and soul. We've given ourselves, yes. Possibly there are years and decades to prove that.

But God is asking us for more: unconditional dedication, a total self-emptying, a rising to the challenges.

St. Paul says, “Charity endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). Sometimes that's what Our Lord brings us to: a situation where He wants us “to endure all things” because that's what charity is, that's what love is.

God is love (1 John 4:8, 16) and Christ is love, and our vocation is all about love. We're called to grow, to be the aristocrats of love, so that the love of God can flow through us and be seen by other people and be attracted. Other people can be attracted by it.

He says in the Furrow, “If your selfishness leads you away from the ordinary desire for the holy and healthy well-being of mankind, if you count the cost or if you're not moved by the wretched material or moral condition of your neighbor, you force me to reproach you strongly, so that you can do something about it.

“If you do not feel a holy fraternity with your fellow men, and you live in the margin of the great Christian family, you're just a poor foundling” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 16).

Often our Father's words are very challenging. They challenge us at a late stage of our life, at a mature stage of our life, so that we don't remain halfway along the road. We go the whole hog; we commit ourselves completely.

God wants everything, that total self-emptying.

“You feel lonely, everything annoys you, and you complain. —That is because you're isolated from your sisters by your selfishness, and because you do not come closer to God” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 709).

You could say, ‘Wow, I've given up this and I've given up that, and I've done this and I've done that, I'm doing okay.’ Our Father encourages us to do more, to be better. If you want to be more, be better.

“You fulfill a demanding plan of life: you rise early, you pray, you frequent the sacraments, you work or study a lot, you're sober and mortified...but you're aware that something is missing!

“Consider this in your conversation with God: since holiness, or the struggle to achieve it, is the fullness of charity, you must look again at your love of God and your love of others for his sake.

“Then you may discover, hidden in your soul, great defects that you have not even been fighting against: you may not be a good daughter, a good sister, a good companion, a good friend, or a good colleague. And if you love ‘your holiness’ in a disordered manner, you are envious.

“You ‘sacrifice’ yourself in many small personal details, and so you are attached to yourself, to your own person. Deep down you do not live for God or for others, but only for yourself” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 739).

Very demanding and challenging words, but words written for those of us who have been around for a while, who have put up with the heat of the day. Our Father holds that goal of complete self-emptying before us.

“It is impossible to love God with perfection, and at the same time to let yourself be ruled by selfishness—or by apathy—when you're dealing with your neighbor” (Ibid., Point 745).

“Your charity must be adapted and tailored to the needs of others...not to yours” (Ibid., Point 749).

We could ask Our Lord that we might rise to the challenge of St. Joseph with Our Lady, to use these weeks as we prepare for March 19, renewing our fidelity and our dedication, that this year, that might be characterized by a deeper self-giving, that deeper Yes to whatever it is that Our Lord is asking of us.

St. Joseph, may you obtain from Our Lady the grace for us to accomplish this task with the quality that Our Lord and our Father are asking from each one of us.

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.

RK