Spiritual Reading
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” (Luke 15: 25-32)
 |
| FIGHTING PRIDE. Praying the rosary can help remind us to be humble. |
Allocutio
You have been working hard, staying at your office even after working hours. You have done everything your boss asked. You have remained loyal to your company for many years. Do you think your company should give you a well-deserved promotion? No.
You have read all the assigned texts. You have participated well in class discussions. You have spent sleepless nights to work on your projects. Do you think your professor owes you an A? No. Not really.
We are all familiar with the spiritual reading above, a passage often cited to describe God’s love and mercy. But I chose it for a slightly different message, for this parable puzzled me the first time I heard it.
The older brother, I thought before, was right in feeling hurt. He stood by his father all the while, and yet when his brother, who had done so many wrongs, decided to come back, his father decided to have a lavish party. Isn’t that unfair, I thought? Surely, the older brother, the good son, deserved the party more than the prodigal son. So I thought.
But I was wrong.
And until know, I am trying hard to get it right.
The older brother’s anger came from a sense of entitlement. He felt that after working hard, and being loyal to his father, his father owed him an acknowledgment that the older brother felt he never got.
This sense of entitlement refers to feeling that others owe us something. It is something I, and many of us, grapple with on an almost regular basis. Of course, knowing our rights is not a bad thing. But rights are different from obligations. When we feel that others are obligated to do something for us, to provide us with what we want, we get into the trap of entitlement.
Why is it a trap?
Entitlement opens the door to negative emotions and can lead us to sin. Here’s why:
1. It can make us feel frustrated. It lets us create expectations that make us vulnerable to disappointment. This can lead to anger. For example, when we message our friends, and they don’t respond immediately, we get disappointed and start thinking that our friends owe us to respond quickly, since we have been good friends to them. But that might be an unreasonable explanation.
2. It can make us dependent on others by making us more focused on what we deserve than on what we can and should do. This can lead to sloth.
3. It can make us think we deserve what others have, and this can lead us to comparing ourselves with others. For example, we might start asking: If we work as hard as others, why do they make more money than us? This can lead to envy and jealousy.
4. It can make us ignore that others also have their own free will by focusing just on ourselves. Love, for example, becomes more of a trade, that if you love someone this much, you expect to be loved back just as much. Love is felt, not imposed. Love should be multiplied, not divided. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (Corinthians 13:4-7).
5. It can make us ungrateful. We think what we have is because we deserve it. We mistake pleasure for joy.
6. Finally, it can make us challenge our faith. For example, it might lead us to think that because we have prayed this much, we have done good things, the Lord owes us something. He does not. The Lord does not owe us any obligations. His love for us is much bigger than that. But with a sense of entitlement, we might fail to see that.
So how do we deal with it?
1. We should focus on gratitude. We must be thankful for what we have. We have to remind of ourselves of this all the time. Sometimes, when we pray, we focus too much on asking for what we need, that we forget to offer thanks. The Lord does not owe us anything, but He continues to bless us every day. We have to be constantly grateful.
2. We must remind ourselves to always be humble. Thinking that we deserve something from others is being prideful. See, even the Lord, who is all powerful, shunned feelings of entitlement. Mother Mary, since she was to carry the Lord in her womb, surely deserved a comfortable life. She could have obligated God to provide her with a nurse, or a helper, or a comfortable place to give birth, or with a nice dress, so that she can always look presentable as the mother of our Lord. She did not. She embraced humility instead.
3. We must remind ourselves that we are all blessed with free will, and obligating others contradicts this. Our rights are not more important than others. Our rights end where others’ begin.
4. We must constantly remind ourselves that we are not special. A cliché goes to describe someone as being “one in a million” to mean someone is special. That’s still not special. There are how many one million in six billion? Some 6,000. So one in a million isn’t special. Because we are all special. And if we are all special, one of us cannot be more entitled than the other.
It is not easy, and this is a personal battle I deal with almost every day. But the next time I hear the parable of the prodigal son, I will remember not how the older brother felt, but how we should trust the Father to know what we deserve, more than we think we do. (ET, 16/11/15)