Catholic Self Care

You should love some people more than you love others.  While this may seem an odd claim, it is actually common sense.  You should love your spouse before strangers, and your child in need before your child who not in need.  In Catholic theology, this is called the order of love. 

The order of love first explains that we can love people objectively or affectively.  Objective love recognizes the real level of goodness in the other person – how close to God they are.  Affective love recognizes that we feel our love for some people more strongly, and this is for people who are more closely united to us.  Objective love is our recognition and admiration of others - we should be drawn more towards better people.  Affective love is our concern for those regularly in our lives. 

The order of objective love is simple.  We should love more objectively those who are better.  So, in objective love, we should love first God, then the saints, and then all other people based on how holy they are.  The order of affective love is a bit more complex.  First, we should love God because He is closer to us than we are to ourselves; He made us and knows our innermost thoughts better than we do.  Thus, we should love God first both objectively and affectively.  Second, we should affectively love ourselves before other people.  We must love others as ourselves, but that implies a previous love of self.  Third in the order of affective love is the love of other people, and we love those more who happen to be more closely united to us by the accidents of life: our spouse and children, those we spend our time with and live closer to. 

So, as Christians we are obligated to love ourselves.  God loves us as He loves Himself, He wants us to share in His divinity.  And we must love others as we love ourselves, so we cannot love others unless we first love ourself.  So, how should we authentically love ourselves?  What is authentic, Christian, self-love and self-care?

We must will the good for ourselves.  But the good is not simply pleasure and comfort.  Instead, the good is holiness and virtue.  Christian self-care is making time for our own prayers.  Christian love for others cannot lead us to neglect our own spiritual lives.  Famously, whenever Mother Teresa or her sisters were especially busy, Mother Teresa would instruct them to do an extra holy hour, not skip prayers to make more time to help people.  Authentic self-love places one’s spiritual life before that of others – we cannot love others or aid their spiritual lives if we do not have a rich spiritual life first.  Likely, we would not ask others to skip their prayers and spiritual reading to help us with the dishes, should we then skip prayer and meditation to perform extra works of mercy?  By no means. 

There can be a temptation for Christians to love themselves badly by focusing too much on others and not on themselves.  While it seems especially selfless, this can become self-destructive.  Christ healed many sick people, taught the crowds, and admonished the sinners.  But He also took time to pray alone.  As Christians, we are obligated to practice authentic self-care, to value our own relationship with Christ before others and their needs.  Instead of conflicting with works of mercy, keeping this order of love proper actually empowers our works of mercy and makes them bear fruit, but it is incalculable according to human economic terms.