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The Holy Madness of Love

This Rock Volume 18, Number 4   April 2007     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   The Great Divorce: The Evil Fruits of Henry VIII’s Divorce By Christopher Check   Quick Lesson in Canon Law   Further Reading   Lady Anne Boleyn   Repugnant to the Laws of God   "Enslaved by Your Passion for a Girl"   A Philosopher with Heart By Dietrich von Hildebrand   Dietrich von Hildebrand, 1889-1977   The Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project   Should We be Indifferent to Everything but God? By Alice von Hildebrand   Noble and Ignoble Feelings   The Holy Madness of Love   Seven Principles of Cathoilc Social Teaching By Christopher Kaczor   Rich in Poverty   For Further Reading   What You Do for Them You Do for Him   Damascus Road The Other Side of the Mirror By Scott McDermott   By the Book Not by Scripture Alone By Jim Blackburn   Truth be Told They Sang All the Way to the Guillotine By Matthew E. Bunson   Classic Apologetics The Supernatural Kinship of Catholics By Rev. Paul van Kuykendall Thomson   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Preview (pdf; 3MB)    Subscribe    Permissions

When St. Ignatius recommends indifference, he not only tells us to eliminate subjective habits, but goes further: He tells his disciples that they should be disposed to "glorify God in riches, in honor, in poverty, in humiliations." This advice implies a deeper degree of freedom: freedom from both subjective ties and freedom from good habits when there is a call for it. In this case, it is the freedom to follow St. Paul, who could live in abundance and in poverty with equal supernatural joy. We should be indifferent to health and sickness. Which one of us does not know how bitterly disappointing it is when sickness prevents from giving a talk, attending a beautiful concert, going on a long-planned trip? Ignatius goes still further and even recommends that we should give preference to poverty and humiliations because in this we follow more closely the path chosen by Christ (Genelli, The Life of St. Ignatius, 141). To prefer humiliations to honor and poverty to riches truly calls for a supernatural spirit. Secular eyes will view it as madness. Supernaturally speaking, it is the holy madness of love.