Faith, Hope and Love vs. Doubt, Discouragement and Narcissism
Opposing the Theological Virtues
The three theological virtues of faith, hope and love often meet resistance through their opposites—doubt, discouragement and narcissism.
The evil one is always trying to lure us toward discouragement. When we’re unwavering in our spiritual faith and the evil one realizes he can’t pry us away from God, he attempts instead to get us to doubt ourselves—our abilities, our worth, our God-given talents, our ministry, our ability to love and to be loved. If he can entice us to doubt those things, he can lead us away from doing the will of God.
For example, a man discerning his vocation to the priesthood begins to be obsessed with doubts about his ability and worth because of his faults. If he gives in to the doubt rather than taking his concerns to prayer and to the guidance of his spiritual director, he’ll be straying from the will of God and allowing temptation to overwhelm him. This happens often in the spiritual life, and we must be ever-vigilant in the proper discernment of spirits.
Discouragement is in opposition to the theological virtue of hope. In “Avoiding the Trap of Discouragement” I wrote about the temptation of despair, and how the evil one loves to disrupt and uproot the faithful by this means. “One of the devil’s biggest traps—a temptation he employs frequently—is that of discouragement. When we become discouraged, emotional exhaustion and spiritual apathy settle in. If we don’t recognize discouragement for what it is—a temptation to be avoided—and if we don’t fight against it through means of constant humble prayer, we are likely to sink lower into despondency.”
You know that discouragement is completely at odds with what you’ve always been taught. It’s a leprosy that dries up the soul and body and keeps us in continual torment. It ties the arms of holy desire and keeps us from doing what we would like to do. It makes us unbearable even to ourselves, with our spirit open to all sorts of assaults and imaginings. It robs us of supernatural light and obscures even natural light. And so it brings us to all sorts of unfaithfulness because we don’t know the truth with which God has created us—that in truth He created us to give us eternal life. With living faith, then, and with holy desire and firm trust in Christ’s Blood, let the devil of discouragement be vanquished.
(Saint Catherine of Siena, Letter T178 to Neri di Landoccio Pagliaresi, between September and November 1379; Vol IV, 264)
“So faith, hope, and love abide, these three: but the greatest of these is love.”
If the greatest virtue is love, then that which is most in opposition to the greatest virtue is narcissism.
