Third Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
25th June 2017

Learning to Use and Control Our Feelings
by Fr. Narciso Irala S.J.
 

Feeling is a force God gives you for willing and working with greater energy and constancy. But, like steam in a locomotive, it is a chaotic force. If well channelled by reason, it will be exceedingly useful to you. 

Do not let feelings govern you.

Make no change under the influence of feelings. To have as a norm of action 'because I like to' is the same as to take a trolley without bothering about where it is going or only because it is more comfortable or is shinier than another. Likewise, to stop working 'because it is a bother' is to renounce success, joy, glory and even your own salvation. To want something only because there is no other way out is the way a slave acts. To want something because it is no trouble (following likes or impulses) is the way an animal acts. To want something in spite of the bother (guided by reason or duty) is the way a rational human being acts. To want something even regardless of the difficulty of it (with your eyes on the ideal or on God) is the way a hero or saint acts.

Governing our feelings.  Restrain the exaggeration of feelings.

Do not give too much importance to them, or to what pleases or displeases you, or to what you fear or desire. For experience tells us that feeling heightens things, exaggerates good or evil, obscures and alters truth.

For example, do the words or behaviour of another irritate you? Then your feelings will make you tend to think that he has a deliberate bad intention (whereas he probably acted without full reflection etc). They will even persuade you that he has worse plans for the future. Do you feel a little unwell? Your uncontrolled thought will tell you, 'it must be tuberculosis, or heart trouble, or the beginnings of insanity'. In all these cases you have lost control of your feelings by letting them become exaggerated. Convince yourself that the real situation is much better than your emotional reaction to it.

Control Your Thoughts.

Do not give free rein to their deceptive arguments. Avoid their exaggerations and transfers to other fields. Think about something else and, above all, do not change your plans or make important resolutions under the sway of feelings. Let a day go by. Let a night go by, too. "Consult your pillow." Then, when your feelings are calmed, you will be disposed for work and you will see that 'the lion is not so fierce as he is painted'.

With his fine sense of psychology St. Ignatius traces out for us three very wise rules for governing ourselves when a depressing feeling comes over us. First, in time of desolation (that is when you are discouraged or sad, without peace or when temptation blinds you), make no change, but continue with the plans you made when you had peace, light and consolation. Secondly, think of the fact that this state will pass and that light and joy will return. Encourage the thoughts and feelings you had before the desolation came. Thirdly, act against the very desolation. Do the opposite of what you feel yourself inclined to do. Lengthen your prayers, for example, or perform even more acts of mortification.