Listen to this story:
By Eric Clayton
Love your neighbour as yourself.
Love your neighbour as yourself. How can such an oft-repeated, tired old slogan be expected to meet the pressing needs of our world?
Here’s the thing: Too often we miss the key step. We forget to love ourselves. In fact, I fear too many of us have forgotten how to love ourselves.
In a world plagued by violence, injustice, hate and fear, we understandably look with suspicion at what might at first glance appear to be a day at the spa. But that all-important command — Love your neighbour as yourself — isn’t just a helpful piece of instruction, nor is it justification to shirk our responsibilities to others. It is in fact a cautionary tale.
“We ultimately fail to love our neighbour if we fail to appropriately love ourselves.”
We ultimately fail to love our neighbour if we fail to appropriately love ourselves.
Why We Judge Others
Here’s an example: The curse of the perfectionist is not limited to a driving desire to ace all things. The perfectionist — and here I’m talking about myself — holds himself to arguably unreachable standards and comes down hard on himself when he inevitably fails to reach them.
But something even more sinister occurs: The perfectionist turns that twisted desire for excellence on friends and family, colleagues and neighbours. Already floundering in his own foolish quest for unachievable greatness, he holds others to that same impossible standard. When they fall short, he looks down on them, judges them, ridicules and demeans. He tries to shore up the holes in his own broken self-image by exposing the cracks in others.
A Path to Inner Freedom
Ignatian spirituality offers us a way forward: cura personalis. The phrase is Latin and means care for the whole person. Why does this matter? We might go so far as to inject cura personalis into that old slogan from Scripture: Care for the whole person of another as we care for our whole self.
“A failure to love yourself is a stone tossed in a darkened pool: The ripples go out and go on and have unforeseen consequences.”
We start by turning inward to the fullness of who we are: body, mind and spirit. We check in with ourselves; we interrogate our desires and needs, our hopes and hurts, our successes and failures. Do we struggle with perfectionism, anxiety or fear? How do we care for and nourish our bodies? These questions demand answers and action.
Starting with Gratitude
St. Ignatius of Loyola has a prayer for exactly this moment in our spiritual lives: the examen. This prayer is an invitation to slowly, contemplatively review our day, week, month or year in the company of the Spirit. Taking perhaps no more than 10 minutes a day, we move through simple steps: We recall God’s presence; we give thanks for the many blessings we have received; and then, we walk through our day. We examine where we’ve gotten it right, where we’ve successfully manifested God’s love in the world. And we humbly admit that we are not perfect. At the end, we recommit ourselves to loving as God does.
The key to the examen is gratitude. When we begin in gratitude, we open up our inner horizon. We realize that, even on bad days, there are glimmers of grace. We remind ourselves of our inherent goodness, and our world expands with possibility. When we are sour, our world shrinks — and with it, any hope of manifesting peace, justice and compassion.
“When we begin in gratitude, we open up our inner horizon.”
And so, it’s necessary that we first turn to ourselves; we first love ourselves. We care for the fullness of who we are and then we discover that we are able to go to others and likewise care for them. In so doing, we look at their whole person; we act against any temptation to reduce our friends, families, colleagues and neighbours to their greatest mistake or biggest weakness. Instead, we see them — we love them — in their totality.
Love your neighbour as yourself. Care for the fullness of each person — and discover new possibility. Peace and justice grow. The roots of community are nourished. We see each other not for what we lack — or what we hope to gain — but for what we can all build together.
Looking to deepen this journey? Our retreat centres offer sacred spaces to explore these Ignatian practices of contemplation and discernment, helping to build God’s kingdom of peace and justice.
