Vanity (He Must Increase)

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.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Eccles. 1:2). The Church places before us once or twice a year this phrase from the Book of Ecclesiastes as though inviting our contemplation.

What is vanity? Vanity is the excessive pride or admiration of our own appearance or achievements.

It means thinking of ourselves, the elation of self, leading to judgments, criticisms, comparisons, thoughts of self-excellence, patting ourselves on the back, dwelling on successes, not seeing our own faults but seeing the faults of others.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says, “All is vanity” (Eccles. 1:2). We are full of it. That ego is there in all sorts of ways.

In another country many years ago, a lady used to come for spiritual direction, and she told me, ‘Every week I try and get one particular lesson or phrase from the things that you say.’ Last week she said, ‘The phrase that struck me was, the ego must go.’

I never remembered saying any such thing, but she said that's what she got. ‘The following day,’ she said, ‘I was having coffee with some friends of mine, and then they got up to go and I was left with a Buddhist friend. We were chit-chatting and suddenly in the conversation this Buddhist friend of mine said, You know, the ego must go.’

This lady said, ‘I always knew the Holy Spirit works through spiritual direction, but when this Buddhist friend told me exactly the same thing that I had heard in spiritual direction, I really felt the Holy Spirit was working overtime.’

When we focus on this business of vanity, we focus on the ego. We get down at that to the grassroots of our soul, to the basis of those ugly things that Our Lord says come out of every human heart: envy, jealousy, lust, pride, anger, all these sorts of things (cf. Mark 7:21-23).

Our Lord invites us to empty ourselves of all these things because we have been “called to participate in the divine nature.” It's a beautiful phrase from St. Peter: “called to be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).

God wants to fill us with His divine life. He wants us to be a branch of Christ the vine, receiving all sorts of good things, receiving that inflow of His divine nature, until we can say with St. Paul, “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Because He desires to live in us, it's necessary that His divine nature would identify itself with our soul, inhabiting us.

We will come and “make our abode in Him” (cf. John 14:23), determining our thoughts, our will, our actions. With His spirit of love, God wants to fill our lives, so that our words can be of love, our actions can be of love.

In this, God is constantly opposed by the enemy that's there inside us, the old person that He wants us to cast off. We have to try and get rid of that old person, in order to make room for that new person, that divine guest of our soul.

This enemy is not so much Satan, not so much the world; it's the enemy in ourselves, the enemy who was born when we were born, who, even before we attain the full use of reason, gets us into his clutches.

That old person retains a hold on us through our passions, through the dimness of our understanding, through our weak will and our sins, our evil inclinations, our bad habits.

The power of the ego over us can increase daily. We can become full of that vanity and that pride.

So, the Book of Ecclesiastes, with all of its experience of wounded humanity, says, “all is vanity” (Eccles. 1:2). Therefore, it's very useful for us to focus on that enemy of our soul.

This enemy boasts his conquests even when we've wrung victory from him. He can find nourishment in our virtues, being fed and strengthened by our failures.

This enemy rises with us in the morning and stands all day by our side, waiting for a chance to do us harm, poisoning and belittling all that we do and leave undone.

That enemy is our self-love, the enemy against which we must fight.

St. John the Baptist says, “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30). You could say that is the subtitle of this meditation: He must increase, I must decrease.

If we conquer that self-love, then the sovereignty of Christ in our soul is assured. Then we can truly say: “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me.”

We meet that self-love at every turn, in thousands of ways and guises.

That self-love can be well-dressed, versatile, charming, polished, full of seduction and persuasive art, full of sophistication, lies, and sham.

It's the voice that spoke to Eve: “You will not die; rather, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God” (cf. Gen. 3:4-5).

It's the same temptation that our vanity gives to us in a regular way. That self-love can be the driving force in the bustle of daily life, focused on self, personal profit, personal interest, egotism, selfishness.

We might do things for reasons that favor other people—very altruistic. We might tell ourselves that I'm thinking of the others, I'm doing this for the others, I'm living for the others, I'm generous. But that may be only a half-truth.

It may be 30 percent true. The 70 percent, we can find a reason that benefits me. That ugly face of our egoism can always be there. No matter how much we try to put it down, it can keep rearing its ugly head like a weed that grows in the garden.

And yes, you get at the root; it will keep coming back. It's deep. It's the secret roots of a brutal vice, and sins that drive the whole of mankind to destruction: our laziness, our weakness of character, our disloyalty, untruth, greediness, avarice, sins of the flesh and of the spirit.

A lady in another country told me once how she wanted to do something about her pride. She realized there was a lot of pride and vanity there, and the Holy Spirit had given her the grace to see this.

She said, ‘Every year I get an excellent appraisal from my boss.’ She knew that that moment was always a moment of great pride and vanity when we're complimented, when we're told good things.

Sometimes we can say, ‘You know, praise doesn't affect me. I can wade myself through praise. People say nice things or give me compliments, but really it's me, it's like water off a duck's back.’ But then somebody pointed out that ducks love water.

So those sorts of moments when people say nice things or compliments, or we've done a good job and they tell us, she realized, ‘When I get that appraisal, that's the moment when my vanity just takes off, like a rocket going into orbit.’

She saw: ‘I have to try and live humility at that moment. Give all the glory to God, not glory to myself, not patting myself on the back, not thanking myself for being such a wonderful person and capable of such great things with all my wonderful talents.’

For months she was preparing for this, asking God for the grace to be humble at that moment, to give all the glory to God, give Him thanks, recognize that any good she could do really came from the graces that God gave her.

That moment came, she got her perfect appraisal, and she put all of this into practice. And it was going very well, she said, ‘until…I was driving home that evening and suddenly there was a voice deep, deep, deep down inside me that whispered, You must be good.’

She was describing what we all experience, that voice of the devil that's deep down there inside us, that self, that old person.

That self-love can be the mother of all wrongdoing in mankind, of historic injustices that cry to heaven, of uncharitable-ness, of wars, the destruction of our own happiness and that of others.

Self-love can tear at our faith, tear it out of our hearts, and rob millions of their hope of heaven. They get stuck with their self-love. The emptying out of that self-love can take a bit of a process.

That's why all the great saints talk about the importance of humility, of growing in that virtue.

St. Augustine says: If we want to grow in holiness, then we have to focus on three things. Humility, first. Second, humility. Third, humility (cf. St. Augustine, Letter 118).

“Though he was by nature God, he did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to, but emptied himself” (Phil. 2:6-7). The self-emptying of Christ is a model for our own self-emptying.

“You are humble,” we're told, “not when you humble yourselves, but when you are humbled by others”—humbled by circumstances, humbled by life, humbled by health, by finances, by blood family, by all sorts of things—“and you bear it for Christ” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 594).

Lord, help me to embrace those moments and to see this as a bonanza time in my spiritual life. Occasionally in our life, Our Lord may give us real bonanza times.

He wants us to make a real sprint in growing in authentic perfection, in truly being united to the vine (John 15:4), in learning in a deeper, more serious way what it means to be Christ-like; and to grow therefore in that effectiveness as a pillar where God has placed us, truly bringing things forward with all the spiritual means that God has given to us.

Side by side with that pursuit of self, there will be even a more refined variety of self-love that's called the pious, spiritual self-love, where we shall gloat a little bit on our virtues.

This can be present daily in the heart, the thoughts, the impulse of the words and the actions of those who are trying to be holy.

For the soul who ardently desires virtue and perfection, behind that zeal, there can be a secret desire to be admired, to amount to something, to glory in my own perfection, to marvel at oneself with secret pride.

The devil is very effective in catching us in these furtive ways. The soul does its best to fly from sin, but self-love creeps subtly in.

What a good job I'm doing in this business of sanctity: in fulfilling my norms, in getting to Confession regularly, in finishing this job well.

That's why our thoughts have to be directed. Rectified. That's why we hear so frequently about the importance of rectification of our intention: doing things for the right reason, with the right desire, because the devil may come along and twist all those desires.

We might do a great job, we might live with intensity in our work, we might finish things very well.

But if it's all for the glory of me, or for that self-satisfaction—that I can look back and see how well this floor has been polished, or this table has been laid, or this piece of clothing has been ironed, or how well this room looks after I have passed through—then, all the glory does not go to God.

We're full of that weakness. With great reason, the Book of Ecclesiastes and the Church remind us, with a certain regularity: “vanity of vanities.”

Come back to earth. Focus on brass tacks. Be aware in your spiritual life of that great enemy.

If we want the world to improve, we're told many times, we have to try and improve ourselves.

G.K. Chesterton was asked, “What did you think was the greatest problem of the Catholic Church and its development?” And he said, “Me.” There’s a lot of wisdom in that.

Our spiritual life and our formation lead us to focus on the self, to bear our soul each week in Confession or in the chat.

Let ourselves be known. And let’s be known these aspects of that old person that's there inside, because when we bring that old person out into the light of somebody else's judgment, then the enemy is seen.

Remember when the enemy becomes visible. After a fight, a war, or a battle, we have to be able to see the enemy. Know whom we're fighting.

Self-love demands revelations and compensation, particularly showy graces and gifts. Self-love likes to compare its own gifts with those of others, leading us to envy, jealousy, comparisons.

It misleads the soul as to the actual goal of spiritual zeal. Instead of recognizing things simply as God's will in all and above all, it looks upon the improvement of life's conditions and personal perfection as the main things to strive for.

“Be you perfect as your heavenly Father was perfect” (Matt. 5:48) becomes the goal to satisfy my own ego.

This false claim can pervert our motives. Self-improvement can become a delusion or another form of self-glorification. It puts the soul into a bit of a bother about our sins and our failures: How can I have done this? We’re disappointed at our own weakness.

“Vanity of vanities” because we haven't yet learned that “I am nothing, I can do nothing, I have nothing” (cf. J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 215).

Every ounce of goodness in me comes from God, and therefore I have to humble myself before this great God of ours, like the publican: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). He had the right attitude.

The Pharisee was full of vanity. All the good things he did in life, patting himself on the back: I pay tithes of all that I owe. I do this, I do that.

Vain thoughts lead us to look at all the good things we do. There could be a lot of pride in our prayer, like the Pharisee. Our prayer could be the prayer of the Pharisee.

But we have to try and make it the prayer of the publican, so that we don't become discouraged and cast down by our own limitations, and not put off by the sight of our own insignificance, or that we don't get impatient with the slow working of God.

It’s a very subtle temptation from the devil: to be impatient with God. Why does the world not change now? Why does everybody not become more honest immediately?

Why do all the apostolic works that we are involved in, that take so much effort and time and grace and prayer, not produce abundant fruit immediately?

Maybe God just wants us to sow seeds and to wait. Maybe to wait for decades. Lifetimes.

We are coming to the hundredth-year anniversary of Opus Dei in the world. And you sort of look back and say, enormous things have been achieved, but at the same time, sometimes the pace of God is a very slow pace.

God wants things to grow slowly and to happen slowly, as though telling us that that's His way of doing things. Little by little.

There was an article in the paper last week about Cardinal George Pell saying how Pope Francis wants to do things slowly. He wants to improve the Church slowly. I heard the same thing said by Blessed Álvaro about Pope John Paul II.

There's a fast way and there's a slow way. Sometimes God chooses the slow way, as though inviting us to have a deeper patience.

I mentioned before how a priest in the Philippines, Father de Torre, used to say, “Patience is a great social force.” God wants that social force to be present in our life.

We learn to be patient. Patient with the plans of God. Patient with ourselves. Patient with our improvement, our growth in authentic virtue.

Patience in our apostolate. Patience with this person and that person, with this situation and that situation.

Patient with our battle against our self-love, as though Our Lord is saying to us, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). I am in control. I am working on things.

Self-love might lead us to aim too high. We want to be saints immediately. We may try to hit a high target. We keep the example of Christ in view, vaingloriously aiming to imitate those patterns.

But we can't quite grasp why I fall short. I don't seem to make the grade. The saints and Christ seem to be a bit further out of my reach, not able to get there what I see in Christ and in the saints.

Discouragement can set in. It’s the slowness of God—the slowness of God that can get on our nerves, the nerves of our own egoism. Why don't I change? Why doesn't that person change? Why doesn't the world change?

Self-love can lead us to keep our own good deeds constantly in sight. A scorecard. A scorecard of all the good things I've managed in my life, or last week, or this day. A scorecard of our good deeds and a scorecard of other people's wrongs.

A conscientiousness with which my soul fulfills its duties. I get my rosary done. I get my prayer done. I live this virtue.

Look at the zeal with which I enter into my prayer and other norms and customs. So, the incense of self-praise can swell the soul with pride. You can forget that “we're useless servants” (Luke 17:10).

St. Peter said to Our Lord, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Here was the making of a great saint, with all his nothingness, with all his failures, all his weaknesses.

While Our Lord places these goals in front of us and teaches us how to get there, He also gives us figures of enormous encouragement and the profound humanity that Peter represents, so that we don't get discouraged, so that we can identify when our self-love agitates our soul and makes it impatient or discontented.

When we find we have wandering thoughts; or interrupted concentration; or temptations in prayer; or when our prayer is not followed by the glow of satisfaction; when there are spells of weakness, or spiritual aridity, or rebellion.

That egoism can lead to touchiness and impatience with our fellow man and make us unyielding, angry, aggressive, stressing our own personality and our own rights, when we don't have any rights.

We've come to give everything, to leave everything at the feet of Our Lord, relictis omnibus.

That self-love can make us cold and indifferent, reserved, unjust in judgment and speech about our neighbor. It delights in dwelling upon our own experiences, inspirations, difficulties, sufferings; the wounds we may have acquired along the way; the hurts, the injustices of this world; the feelings that have been walked on.

Look at all that I've gone through or suffered, instead of looking at the wounds of Christ.

Self-love likes to compare our own doings and its own piety with those of others, watching, pronouncing judgment, when it's not our role to judge. It leads us to see the wrong things, to mind other people's business. It doesn't give other people credit; it sees only their faults.

“Lord, open my eyes”–Domine ut videam! (Ps. 119:18).

Help me to see that I live with people who are striving for sanctity: wonderful people who've done wonderful things, who've been so generous.

Thank you, God, for such a privilege. Imagine if we were on our own in this oratory, all on our own here in the whole world, striving for sanctity, and we didn't have the example of other people to help us, to lift us up in low moments, to encourage us.

How far would we get? We would be nothing without the others.

In spite of all our piety, our self-love can lay us quite open to being easily wounded. That word, that tone, that gesture—and so our ego can be put out, repelled, offended, or not taken seriously enough, not made as much of as we might expect.

That egoism can lead to a great observance of rules and regulations. It's interesting how St. Josemaría was a lawyer. He was full of rules and regulations. He laid down the law in many ways.

But very often he was the first person to break those laws when the time was right. Enormous flexibility. The things were very serious, on the one hand, but they weren't the most important thing.

The punctilious or over-excessive observance of rules and regulations is not what we're after. It's sort of a vicious control, critical of people who may be in charge of us at a certain stage, complaining they're too slack or too lenient.

Self-love identifies with self-will—I want what I want; things should be as I say they should be—hindering us from giving our loyalty blindly and performing what we're required to do without question.

That self-love can lead to bad temper, fault-finding, discontent, want of charity towards others. Fast temper is fast pride, fast vanity.

Lord, help me to open my eyes to see all these aspects of my inner personality, my inner character, so that I can use my spiritual reading or my prayer to learn more about these things.

So I can identify the enemy better.

So that I can have deeper desires of authentic personal holiness.

So that the Holy Spirit can lead me along authentic spiritual pathways.

As Blessed Álvaro was saying in one of his letters, Do I go deep? Do I hit the right spots? Do I allow you to shape me as you want to shape me?

Christ wants to make us into a masterpiece, so that He can be seen in each one of us. That's what sanctity is.

He wants to make us a most faithful copy of His beloved Son, His only begotten Son; a child of God reproducing His own likeness and reflecting His beauty.

Que sola Jesús se luzca. May only Jesus be seen, so that all the love that He bears towards His children may live again in us in the highest possible perfection, so that all of our life can transmit the message that “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16). Christ is love. The Church is love. The spirit of the Work is love.

We look to the greatest masterpiece, she whom John Paul II liked to call the first Opus Dei, the greatest masterpiece that God could have made: His Mother.

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38). Because of that, Our Lady was able to say, “My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47).

Mary, may you lead us along the pathway of authentic spiritual growth, so that we can come to model ourselves on you, and like you, reflect Christ your Son in a better way all the time.

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