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Friday, August 11, 2023

Of Soap Operas, Duties, and Charity!

Is your life like a soap opera? What will happen next?

I've come to the conclusion that everybody on the planet lives in a soap opera. And, in fact, that's probably the reason soap operas are popular. Focusing on the problems of your favorite soap characters takes your mind off your own personal, homegrown drama for at least a little while.

I've been in the midst of my own soap opera adventure the past few months with someone who's not in my immediate family. So I took the question of responsibility to my spiritual director and asked what my obligation was to the person involved? I'm a dutiful person and want to act in a way that I never fail to do my duty.  I've often talked to Father about the priorities of obligation. They begin with my obligation to God, then to my spouse, my children, my parents (even after death), and my grandchildren. The farther one gets from the immediate family the fewer the obligations. 

While Father said I had no moral obligation to act in the particular situation we were discussing, we all have obligations, he said, to perform the virtue of charity. It's the second of the two great commandments -- to love your neighbor as yourself. And when a person is part of your extended family, the sense of obligation certainly becomes more compelling even if you are not actually morally obliged to do anything other than pray.

There are limits, of course, based on the giver's age, health, finances, etc. And we can certainly express those limits to the people we help and explain where we draw the line. But, having said that, charity is still the moral obligation of every Christian.

While duty and charity are related, they are distinct from each other. The Catholic Encyclopedia has a long entry on duty which includes this:

Duty is a debt owed to the rational nature, of which the spokesman and representative is conscience, which imperatively calls for the satisfaction of the claim. But is this the be-all and the end-all of duty? The idea of duty, of indebtedness, involves another self or person to whom the debt is due.

Okay...so the obligations of duty require that a person, in justice, provides for the debt owed to another. If you owe someone something, it is not charity to give it. If I buy a car, the money I spend has nothing to do with charity. It's a financial obligation.

Charity on the other hand is, in one sense, obligatory because it is part of the commandment: to love our neighbor as ourself. But charity, in a particular situation, is a grace and a gift rather than a duty and obligation.

How one exercises charity and to whom becomes a matter of discernment. Of course we owe all persons, including our enemies, the charity of prayer and the desire for their good. But beyond that, how we exercise charity becomes a matter of conscience. 

In my soap opera life, I remember my mom's admonition that "Charity begins at home." And so, when I see a member of my extended family in great need, perhaps alone and abandoned, how can I not help?

I had an unfortunate brother who spent some times homeless and on the streets. I called him my "great" brother because for awhile he was living on a "grate." For a long time we didn't even know where he was. He was angry because we didn't contact him when our dad died. "How could we," I asked him. I called an aunt in California who had the last contact with him and she had no idea where he was. "What could we do, Tom, advertise in every paper in the country?"

Poor Tom died in his fifties, I think in 1996," of a sudden and massive heart attack the first of my nine siblings to die. I still grieve for him and treasure a letter exchange we had for a time when he was unjustly imprisoned by an evil psychiatrist who was using him to launder money. When Tom turned him in to the IRS, he not only had my brother falsely involuntarily hospitalized but had his son break into Tom's apartment. He also physically assaulted another doctor who had taken Tom's side. Talk about a soap opera! I'm committed to the charity now of praying for the repose of Tom's soul and often have Masses said for him. I beg your prayers for him as well. How much I long to see him again in heaven. 

But I have opportunities now to treat the living in unfortunate circumstances the same way Mother Teresa did, seeing in them Jesus in His most distressing disguises. And I will continue to try to do my best until the day I die. I know I will often fall short, but I will never do nothing because I can't do everything.

Please, Lord, don't let me fail in either my obligatory duties or the gratuitous "duties" of Christian charity. Let me do all for the love of Christ which sanctifies duty and raises the act of charity from the natural level to the supernatural level.

Our Lady of Charity, pray for us.


8 comments:

  1. As ever, I find your essays helpful to me as I attempt to live out my Catholic faith. Thank you for writing.

    Katie

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  2. Great topic. Very good observations and advice. I love the council received from SSPX Priests - consistent, dependable, charitable, demanding.

    What I have found in my own personal “sitcom dramas” is that my actions become easier as I disconnect myself from solutions and outcomes. I need not be frustrated when I am misunderstood or not listened to or mitigation strategies instead cause the problem to stay the same or become worse.

    It’s ok 👍. Do your duty (I tell myself) in the moment and give the outcomes over to God. To God be the glory, great things hath he done! Charity governs all. THAT is the one thing I can control (by God’s grace).

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  3. Thank you, Katie and Aqua, for your kind comments. I'm praying a Memorare for each of you in gratitude.

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  4. 8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another. For he that loveth his neighbour, hath fulfilled the law. 9 For Thou shalt not commit adultery: Thou shalt not kill: Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness: Thou shalt not covet: and if there be any other commandment, it is comprised in this word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 10 The love of our neighbour worketh no evil. Love therefore is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13

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  5. Hope to make a Rosary pilgrimage today during which we will remember Tom in our prayers.

    God bless

    Richard W Comerford

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  6. How readily we'll help a stranger but not one of our own because we know their story and perhaps their part in their latest troubles. If we didn't know we'd help. When we see tragic stories on the news we send money not stopping to wonder if the victims failed their families in some way and "probably deserve their unfortunate circumstances ".

    Of course, one must be prudent in what is given; never failing to keep in mind the hierarchy of obligation.

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  7. Mary I am confused by this.
    I considered our brothers Tom and John and our sisters Jeanne and Carol members of my immediate family.

    Of course when we will reach adulthood we supposedly take on the responsibilities for our own well-being And even sometimes have less contact with each other.

    I know mom said to me to be there for your brothers and sisters, and I heard your daughter Alice at your anniversary party say to her siblings and neices/nephews/cousins that we all have to stick together and be there for each other - So now I am wondering, when it is that maybe we become brothers and sisters 'once removed' and therefore less immediate?

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  8. The Bible is very clear that a man and woman leave their mother and father and "cling" to their spouse. Do you have an obligation to your siblings equal to what you owe your spouse and your children? Absolutely not! That doesn't mean we stop loving them, but it certainly changes the level of obligation we have to them. As adults our family of origin is no longer are "immediate family" in my opinion. They become part of your extended family.

    To abandon your spouse and children to whom you have obligations in justice to take care of a sibling 24/7 out of charity is misplaced and we've seen the effect of it. It's great if you can do it all, but obviously if you have a large "immediate family" you have limited ability to take care of your extended family. What you do for them becomes a question of charity and discernment.

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