Growing Your Soul
Here’s something amazing that you will never hear about in a homily or a talk or a parish mission or anything like it: You don’t always have the power to change the circumstances of your life but you always have the power to expand your soul to such heights that you can make the most of whatever comes your way.
The saints focused their attention, not on outcomes or shortcomings, but on God’s ability to expand their soul through a relationship with Him. And, in the process, expand their capacity to meet the demands of their life with love and generosity.
St. Teresa of Avila, a doctor of the Church wrote, "Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. He who has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices. Lift your thoughts, seek Him. Let your soul be at peace. Let it be big enough to encompass the world."
In other words, as life comes at you in waves, the problem is rarely that the problems you face are too big, too overwhelming, or too hard. It might just be that your soul isn't quite big enough to embrace it.
John Paul II said, “We are called to have great souls, capable of giving everything and doing great things."
There are people who rise to the occasion of life and people who don’t.
Ok, that’s an oversimplification, yes, but it’s important to point out nonetheless. So is this: the difference between those two groups is that those who make the most of life stand on the shoulders of something I call, “A moral code of being”.
A moral code is a set of principles and a system of accountability that represent a path to a daily expansion of your soul.
Mother Teresa was resolutely determined to answer the call to make her life a gift of love to the world around her. She literally called the order she established missionaries of love. You can’t get any more blatant than that.
And she lived up to that vision, didn’t she? She became a symbol of God’s love to a world that desperately needed it, didn’t she? She brought love to every encounter and every person she met, didn’t she?
Well, it didn’t happen by accident. Mother Teresa held herself accountable to a strict moral code, a system that, if it was followed directly, would lead directly to such an expansion of her soul that she could be a symbol of Christ’s love to the world. And that code was a poem found above her bed in Calcutta.
It read:
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you’re kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God; It was never between you and them anyway.
Mother Teresa wasn’t born with the capacity to endure all she endured to love the people of Calcutta. She wasn’t born the Mother Teresa that became famous and seemingly superhuman in her ability to love. She had the potential for it but that potential had to be risen to. She literally practiced the art of loving the unlovable for years through this moral code of being, slowly expanding her soul until she was ready at 42 to start the missionaries of charity.
Now, here’s the catch. It wasn’t good enough to simply have a moral code of being. She also had to live it. So she combined the code with a habit of examining her day each night in light of the poem.
She’d ask, “Did I forgive, was I kind, was I honest, did I give the world my best,” and so on. She did this each night for decades, slowly but surly expanding her capacity for love. Starting off in less extreme circumstances, building up a strength to be more and do more as God called her to, and eventually starting her own religious order.
Those who rise to the occasion aren’t afraid of confronting who they are, on a moment by moment basis, relative to who they want to be. In fact, they find it is essential to do so. Their code of conduct allows them to do just that. They don’t have to wonder how they are doing in life or where they are going. They can tell. At the end of each day, they have a context to examine their state of life. And you have no idea the value that brings to a person’s life until you try it.
In my mentorship practice, one of the most common questions I get is, “How do I know if I am making progress?” When you’re going through a therapeutic process or trying to build a strong interior life, it can be hard to find something tangible that lets you know where you stand. The right code of conduct takes care of that for you. You can think about your interaction with a friend, co-worker or family member and self-evaluate based on the code: “Was I kind”, “Was I honest”, “Did I overindulge” and so on. You won’t need anyone to answer those questions. You’ll know and you cannot possibly overestimate the power of simply knowing.
Systems drive behaviors and the code of conduct will result in the kind of behaviors that are strong enough to massively increase your capacity to give and receive love.
The point of this isn’t to intimidate you. The point is to say, if you want to become who God made you to be, then don’t waste the precious time you have by approaching life casually. Be serious about something as serious as this. Answer the upward call of your life with a commitment to a code of conduct that can actually get you where you are called to go.
Notice too that Mother Teresa didn’t develop her own code of conduct. She used one from someone else because of how it impacted her.
Today’s invitation is to pick a moral code of being to work with. To try and live it. And then watch as it expands your capacity to rise to the occasion of your life.
