Not feeling charitable

[fosgrove]

It it wrong to try to do the right thing or charitable thing but still not have an inner feeling of joy or charity? I try to do what’s right…to say yes to those who ask for help yet inside…I often just want to say no because I don’t want to be inconvenienced…even though I don’t ever end up say no. Then I feel guilty and selfish for even thinking about saying no or for having no charitable feeling in my heart despite the fact that I ended up doing the right thing anyway. Maybe it’s because life is so busy…lots of pushes and pulls demanding my time. I just feel sometimes like I wish I had more of that inner joy of simple giving that a lot of people have and without that feeling…I feel like I am failing in my Faith somehow.

Take for example being asked to help in Church. Most every week I am asked during mass to help with collection. A lot of times I would like to say no because I simply want to sit in my pew and concentrate on Mass or pray quietly. Yet…I always end up saying yes but feel selfish for even thinking that I really didn’t want to help and just wanted to stay seated.

Maybe I am just over-thinking things but am wondering if anyone else sometimes feels the same way I do

 

[ClearWater]

It it wrong to try to do the right thing or charitable thing but still not have an inner feeling of joy or charity? I try to do what’s right…to say yes to those who ask for help yet inside…I often just want to say no because I don’t want to be inconvenienced…even though I don’t ever end up say no. Then I feel guilty and selfish for even thinking about saying no or for having no charitable feeling in my heart despite the fact that I ended up doing the right thing anyway. Maybe it’s because life is so busy…lots of pushes and pulls demanding my time. I just feel sometimes like I wish I had more of that inner joy of simple giving that a lot of people have and without that feeling…I feel like I am failing in my Faith somehow.

Take for example being asked to help in Church. Most every week I am asked during mass to help with collection. A lot of times I would like to say no because I simply want to sit in my pew and concentrate on Mass or pray quietly. Yet…I always end up saying yes but feel selfish for even thinking that I really didn’t want to help and just wanted to stay seated.

Maybe I am just over-thinking things but am wondering if anyone else sometimes feels the same way I do

I think it’s normal not to always feel like taking up the collection. Also, it’s good for this responsibility to be shared, that it not always fall just on your shoulders. Others need to help you, pitch in. That’s fair, but I guess I’d also feel like I had to do it, have difficulty declining even from time to time.

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

Almost every good thing I can think of doing, I can have mixed motives.

Do I want to do X because: a) I am God’s worker and it needs to be done, b) I want to feel proud about myself, c) I want others to see how great I am, d) maybe it’ll come back to me somehow and pay off for me, e) I honestly want to help and don’t like all these mixed ideas, and so on.

Finally I decided to take the Nike slogan and “just do it.” If it is good and will help someone, go ahead and do it. If I waited until I was sure my motives were crystal pure before doing good works, I’d never do them.

MS

 

[Isca]

I was interested to read your post, OP as I said something similar in Confession a couple of weeks ago. I try to say the kind thing, I try to do the kind thing but sometimes I don’t think it.

I’m a new Catholic, and the priest advised me to ‘be gentle with myself’ on my journey of faith, which I thought was wise counsel.

 

[Dorothy]

It it wrong to try to do the right thing or charitable thing but still not have an inner feeling of joy or charity? I try to do what’s right…to say yes to those who ask for help yet inside…I often just want to say no because I don’t want to be inconvenienced…even though I don’t ever end up say no. Then I feel guilty and selfish for even thinking about saying no or for having no charitable feeling in my heart despite the fact that I ended up doing the right thing anyway. Maybe it’s because life is so busy…lots of pushes and pulls demanding my time. I just feel sometimes like I wish I had more of that inner joy of simple giving that a lot of people have and without that feeling…I feel like I am failing in my Faith somehow.

Take for example being asked to help in Church. Most every week I am asked during mass to help with collection. A lot of times I would like to say no because I simply want to sit in my pew and concentrate on Mass or pray quietly. Yet…I always end up saying yes but feel selfish for even thinking that I really didn’t want to help and just wanted to stay seated.

Maybe I am just over-thinking things but am wondering if anyone else sometimes feels the same way I do

This reminds me of the great saint, St. Therese of Lisieux and her “little way of love and self-surrender.”

In order to become more perfect in charity out of love for the Lord, Therese would go out of her way to be with a grumpy nun and smile at her and help her in various ways. She had no feelings of love, but acted with her will.

Feelings come and go, but our will counts!

 

[ready]

It it wrong to try to do the right thing or charitable thing but still not have an inner feeling of joy or charity? I try to do what’s right…to say yes to those who ask for help yet inside…I often just want to say no because I don’t want to be inconvenienced…even though I don’t ever end up say no. Then I feel guilty and selfish for even thinking about saying no or for having no charitable feeling in my heart despite the fact that I ended up doing the right thing anyway. Maybe it’s because life is so busy…lots of pushes and pulls demanding my time. I just feel sometimes like I wish I had more of that inner joy of simple giving that a lot of people have and without that feeling…I feel like I am failing in my Faith somehow.

Take for example being asked to help in Church. Most every week I am asked during mass to help with collection. A lot of times I would like to say no because I simply want to sit in my pew and concentrate on Mass or pray quietly. Yet…I always end up saying yes but feel selfish for even thinking that I really didn’t want to help and just wanted to stay seated.

Maybe I am just over-thinking things but am wondering if anyone else sometimes feels the same way I do

What comes to my mind is that God loves a cheerful giver and that supernatural charity involves our doing good works not to please men but for God and to please Him. If you are not doing your good works for God but only to please people, then your work is not supernatural and will not gain you merit for heaven. You do not have to get a warm and fuzzy good feeling when you do a charitable act – no, not at all – you just need to will to do the good work for God and to please Him. What you* will *is important, not what you feel; although if you are not cheerful in giving, then you must work on changing your disposition. God bless you.

 

[Tigg]

This reminds me of the great saint, St. Therese of Lisieux and her “little way of love and self-surrender.”

In order to become more perfect in charity out of love for the Lord, Therese would go out of her way to be with a grumpy nun and smile at her and help her in various ways. ** She had no feelings of love, but acted with her will.**

Feelings come and go, but our will counts!

Yes to this. Also, OP, the saints have said there is greater merit when we do that which is the hardest and the most repugnant to us. (John of the Cross comes to mind.) We should never judge our spirituality on emotion.

 

[JRKH]

It it wrong to try to do the right thing or charitable thing but still not have an inner feeling of joy or charity?

Just this morning I was thinking about this sort of thing and the thought came to me about how often our “feelings” can betray us. I think this is why we, as Catholics, tend to stay away from them in trying to measure our faith or our state of grace and sanctity.
Yet - we can’t really divorce ourselves entirely from feelings because they certainly can be markers of our spiritual state.

The problem with “feelings” is that they can, and often are, influenced by things outside of us. They are a “reaction” to some influence. In the case you offer about being asked to help with the collection, you did not come to church feeling a lack of charity. The feeling and the guilt came about as a reaction to being asked to help when you were not expecting to - and your “head” was in a different place.

The flip side of the issue of “feelings” and emotions is that they will inevitably ebb and flow - even if everything else remains the same. For example we have all heard - and probably experienced - a period of dryness. The emotional high of becoming Christian, or of rediscovering the faith in some way tends to wear off. Then we can even feel slightly depressed. We wonder what happened to that wonderful joy and what we are doing wrong.
Yet - in such a case - all that has happened is that we have “gotten use to” our new spiritual state. It is like sitting in a nice warm house in the winter. After a time we don’t really notice the warmth and might even actually feel “chilly”. Yet the temperature has not changed. If you were to go outside for 5 or 10 minutes and come back in, that “chilly” room would suddenly feel wonderfully warm again.

So it goes with emotions. They can be useful measures but we must recognize them for what they are. They are transient things that come and go and may be a reflection of our spiritual state - - or not.

Not sure if this really answers your question…or if I am just rambling…but I hope it helps some.

Peace
James

 

[ClearWater]

I agree with the above post about feelings.

For example, a lot of people say they are “in love” with someone, swear it upside down and sideways, but then, they get married. Some difficulty comes about, and they divorce, saying they have “fallen out of love”.

Then, they may “fall in love” again, could be even with someone who is already married to someone else, but they feel like they are “in love”, that this is their “soul mate”.

So, you have all kinds of scenarios occurring, all because of what people say they feel. Now, when a mother gets up in the middle of the night to feed a screaming baby, it’s love. She may not feel very loving at that moment, but that’s what it is.

Likewise, someone can feel like he is in love, but you can tell if it’s really love by actions. Love is more of a commitment than a feeling.

I don’t think Christ felt like being crucified. It was painful in the extreme, disgusting, and humilliating. He didn’t want to do it but did it anyway.

My father was not very demonstrative with us kids in his affection, but my mother always said that she knew he loved us, because he would “do” for us.

He would get up on the roof, get into the septic tank, under the house, be out sweating and all. I was once married, and I remember asking who was my husband at the time to help me with all kinds of things. I changed out the interior car door handles.

I would ask him to just hold the door, because on the first set of instructions, it said to remove it. He was there for a moment and said he couldn’t do that.

I’d ask him to hold the ladder when I went into the attic to put up insulation, and he couldn’t do that.

I asked him to dig a hole, once. I had everything else ready and a neighbor to help, but he wouldn’t do that, either.

However, he tried to tell me he loved me, every day and how glad he was that he had married me.

My father never told me he loved me but would have dug that hole, would have gone up on the ladder, himself (whether he felt like it or not), changed out the handles, himself.

Love is doing things when you DON’T feel like it.

In my first marriage, my husband actually abandoned me when the going got tough. I see that love will stay at a time like that, sickness or health, feeling like it or not. Doing something when you don’t feel like it separates the wheat from the chaff.

Feelings are very deceptive, fleeting. Try not to go so much by them. They change from moment to moment, day to day, year to year. Love is doing things we don’t want to do, actually.

In a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, you can begin to distinguish love from infatuation in that infatuation is when it does things only when it feels like it whereas as love will do things when it doesn’t feel like it in order to help someone else, denying oneself, sacrificing.