I am not shy to admit that in my early twenties I had what I call a people problem. Everyone in my inner circle had betrayed and hurt me. I felt as though I could never trust a human soul again. I resolved very ardently that never again would I allow a person to get close to me, not even in marriage, I vowed to myself that not even a man I loved would ever have my heart. I set out to make myself an island. I didn’t trust people, I didn’t fully open up to people, I kept many secrets, I questioned people’s motives, couldn’t give people the benefit of the doubt, was unable to communicate even on a basic level with my employers, for example. Hence I always seemed a little suspicious and “mousey.” I was not authentic. I was scared and bitter.
It was me fighting against myself really because at the same time, I knew in my heart that God wanted me to love people. Incidentally, someone from my high school had given me a book written by a priest I had worked for as his organist. it was called “Love People” by Rev. Albert Shamon. I read this book at least threee times over hoping maybe something would sink in.
I didn’t want to not trust people. On the contrary! Deep down I wanted relationships, I wanted friendships, I wanted to be a great employee, I wanted to help everyone I could. I just didn't know how to do it. Simple wishing thinking and hoping was not good enough and overcoming the pain of what people close to me had put me through would take a long time. I needed a solution and I needed one quick.
I had already been a fan of Mother Theresa. Having read some of her books by then, I had been exposed to the Mother Theresa school of thought. One of her most famous quotes is “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.” I had remembered this quote somehow and I began putting it onto practice. Each person I’d encounter became an encounter with Jesus I told myself. I’d say in my head, “This is Jesus I’m talking to” no matter who it was-my boss, a stranger, a professor, a fellow classmate.
It didn’t make me instantly love people at all, instantly good at communicating, instantly better at listening, instantly pious, or even remotely instantly good at telling people how I really felt, but what I didn’t realize at the time, is that this little act, what one could call a virtue, or “a good habit”, was setting myself up for the beginning of grace to act on my heart and replace the bitterness in there with CHARITY.
When we are in kindergarten, we used to play a game where you’d go around the circle saying one nice thing about another person. We could do this very easily as children and then somehow we become adults and we stop being able to do this. Why? Where have we faulted when we stop seeing the good in each person? I had stopped seeing the good in each person and I needed to bring that child-like way of seeing back into my heart.
Charity replaces your own perspectives and prejudices, bitterness and resentments, pain and fear. It replaces it with a different understanding of people. Instead, with charity we recognize that each person has something good that they can teach us that can make ourselves better. We can learn from each other. When we listen to a person for understanding not for a defensive remark or combative conversation, but sheer listening to understand, for example, we can grasp that person’s way of thinking in order to work with each other more effectively.
But charity doesn’t just happen. It can’t be thought into the heart. I can’t be woke into subconscious. It can’t be suddenly there where it wasn’t. Charity is an action. Love is an action. You gain charity by doing charity. And charity doesn’t always happen in giant acts (like martyrdom or dying for your comrade in battle). Most of the time, it takes little acts of purposeful intention to love consistently over time. I had over time lost the ability to trust people. Likewise I had to overtime re-learn how to trust people again. The things that hold us back from true charity are things that we have gradually put there.
It is much easier for me to love people today then back then. Since then I have created many habits to instill charity, but I do not congratulate myself. Even though I’ve come a long way holiness is won with humility. I am a work in progress and I can always learn from others how to be better tomorrow than I am today.