Educating our emotions and passions

IF we are truly serious with our faith, then we have to

realize that our faith should not just be an intellectual affair,

lived and pursued only in the spiritual world of good intentions and

right doctrine. It has to involve a basic element of our humanity, and

that is our feelings, our emotions and passions.

  

            Our Catechism tells us that our emotions and passions are

“movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to

act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.”

(1763)

  

            As such, we can say that our emotions and passions play an

important and crucial role in our life. And that’s why we have to take

pains in forming them well. We just cannot be complacent with this

responsibility.

  

            In fact, the Catechism tells us that our emotions and

passions are “natural components of the human psyche; they form the

passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses

and the life of mind.” (1764)

  

            Our emotions and passions therefore serve as a link

between our body and soul. They are where we materialize what is

spiritual in us, and spiritualize what is material in us. As such,

they create a rich texture in our lives. They create the consistency

proper to us as a person and as a child of God. They also help to give

focus on our judgments, modulate our will, and add sensitivity to our

reasoning.

   

            In other words, they play a decisive role in achieving a

happy and fully human life. They contribute to achieving the full

potentials of our humanity. But given the wounded condition of man,

our emotions and passions need to be purified and thoroughly educated.

  

            They should not be allowed to just develop at the instance

of our hormones and instincts, for example, and the many other blind

or short-sighted impulses and trends in our social, cultural,

economic, or political environment. They need to be reined in, to be

guided and given direction.

  

            Obviously, the guiding principle should be our faith, hope

and charity which truly define us as a person and a child of God. In

other words, our faith, hope and charity tell us who we really are,

what the purpose of our life here on earth is, how our freedom should

be sourced and oriented, etc. They provide us the moral principles

that should guide the way we use our emotions and passions.

   

            The common problem we have in this regard is that many

people are not clear about where we can have the ultimate source of

knowledge and wisdom about ourselves. Some rely on some ideologies,

fashions and trends. Others just seem drift to wherever the world

currents would take them.

  

            Of course, given our wounded human condition, to educate

our emotions and passions properly we need to ask for grace and rely

more on the supernatural means without belittling in any way all the

human means we can avail of.

             We have to pray, offer sacrifices, avail of the

sacraments, have devotion to Our Lady and the saints. Then we truly

have to study a lot and go through the process of developing virtues.

             This is how our emotions and passions help us in achieving

an interior freedom in all our actuations. In this way, our emotions

and passions get purified and are elevated to the spiritual and

supernatural level.

  

            This is also how our emotions and passions would know what

is truly important and necessary in life, what brings us to our

eternal joy. This is how they avoid getting stranded in our merely

bodily and worldly conditions.