Be Your Own Best Friend
Lesson 6
Be Your Own Best Friend
We cannot fully love others unless we love our highest selves.
Question 6
Isn’t it sinful to love yourself?
Thomas answers that . . .
“Just as unity is the principle of union, the love with which a man loves himself is the form and the root of friendship.”
— Summa Theologica II-II, 25, 4
The Natural Form and Root of Friendship
In examining our second life lesson on focusing on what matters the most and our fifth life lesson about the love of our neighbor, we’ve seen twice before that Thomas told us plainly enough that “inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin” (I-II, 77, 4). “Inordinate” was noted to mean disordered, unrestrained, and inappropriate — the love of the lower, bodily, animal self over one’s spiritual soul, love of simple pleasures, of money, of false gods of every sort in place of love for God. Harking back further to the theme of our first life lesson, sin, the fruit of inordinate self-love, means accepting what is infinitely far less than the best. How then can it be that “the love with which a man loves himself is the form and the root of friendship?” Good question.
Let’s start with form. When Thomas speaks of form, he echoes Aristotle regarding two internal causes of anything, the material and the formal cause. Anything’s material cause refers to the matter out of which the thing is made, while the formal cause refers to that which makes a thing into what it is. For a simple example going back to Aristotle, consider an elaborate wax seal, like the kind that used to personalize and seal letters closed. The wax is the matter, and the engraved stamp has provided the form. There is no personalized wax seal without both, and indeed, far higher things than wax seals are also composed of matter and form. The Philosopher elaborated and extrapolated as follows: “We can dismiss the question of whether the soul and body are one; it is as though we were to ask whether the wax and its shape are one.”43
Take, for example, all the matter that composes a mature human body or even those original two cells from one’s mother and one’s father from which one’s body begins. The physical body is a human’s material cause. Human beings need bodies, as does every other life form on earth. Angels do not have bodies, but that’s another story we will tell in chapter 10. A dead person’s body, however, is not a fully human being, but is referred to as a corpse, from the Latin word corpus, “body.” The reason it is now merely a body and not a living human being is because it no longer has its form, that which transforms the flesh of the body into a human being, an inanimate body into an animate one. And the thing that is the form is precisely the soul, in Latin the anima, that entity with the first function of producing life. Indeed, the Church teaches that “the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”44
So, when Thomas speaks of the love of a man for himself as the “form” of friendship, he means that a person’s natural love for his own welfare is something indispensable to the formation of relationships with other people in which they are seen and treated not as enemies but as friends. We’ll elaborate aplenty in the pages ahead, but for now let’s look at that other key word, “root.”
What did St. Thomas consider the “root” of friendship? He told us explicitly: “Just as unity is the principle of union, the love with which a man loves himself is the form and root of friendship” (II-II, 25, 4). Self-love, then, is not only the form that gives friendship life, but the root of friendship as well. But what exactly does Thomas mean by a “root”?
Elsewhere in the Summa Theologica (I-II, 84, 1), when expounding upon the meaning of the word “root” in 1 Timothy 6:10: “The desire of money is the root of all evil,” Thomas explains that in the same way that the root provides sustenance to the whole tree, money serves as the means to satisfy all kinds of worldly desires for the greedy man. Self-love, then, we might conclude, is that which provides sustenance to the tree of friendship, serving as the solid grounding of friendship and as something absolutely necessary to serve the needs that arise in friendship.
When self-love also makes its striking appearance in the Summa Theologica as “the cause of every sin,” the key additional word that makes all the difference in the world and beyond it is “inordinate.” Thomas expounds in his treatment of the causes of sin that such inordinate self-love produces contempt for God, and while he notes there that “well-ordered self-love, whereby a man desires a fitting good for himself is right and natural,” it is in the examination of charity that he shows how ordinate, proper, well-ordered, or fitting self-love is indeed the root of friendship — of friendship with others and friendship with God. It is in this sense that our life lesson prescribes becoming one’s own best friend!
It is particularly from Aristotle that Thomas concludes that self-love is the “root” and “form” of friendship, citing Nicomachean Ethics 9, that “the origin of friendly relations with others lies in our relations to ourselves.” And yet, characteristically for Thomas, even before this elaboration, he has cited a scriptural foundation: “It is written (Lev. 19:18): Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself.” Thomas then elaborates upon Aristotle’s description of what appropriate self-love is, that of love of our higher nature and the perfection of our reason rather than the inordinate self-love that seeks merely to serve our sensitive, animal wants and needs. Further, Thomas elaborates that love of self is the model of love for others, and as models are more excellent than their copies, in that sense the appropriate kind of love of self is more excellent even than the love of neighbor.
When Thomas addresses how sinners do not truly love themselves in II-II, 25, 7, expounding upon Psalm 10:6: “He that loveth iniquity, hateth his own soul” (Douay-Rheims), he draws from Aristotle’s insights that the five things proper to friendship are what build upon a man’s appropriate self-love:
1. A friend desires his friend to be, to exist.
2. A friend desires good things for his friend.
3. A friend does good deeds for his friend.
4. A friend takes pleasure in his friend’s company.
5. A friend is of one mind with his friend, rejoicing and sorrowing in almost the same things.
These are five things that virtuous friends wish for and do for their friends. We can preface them by noting that the noblest, most virtuous friendships have a long history in Western philosophy through the writings of Aristotle and others, as treating a dear friend as “a second self,” or “one soul in two breasts.” Our love of a “second self ” is founded upon our God-given, fully ordinate and natural love of one’s “first self,” so to speak.
The first element of true friendship can be clearly seen in cases of the loss of a good friend, in the anguish we experience when a good friend no longer exists. When a friend dies, we can feel as if we’ve lost part of ourselves. Indeed, the love of a dear friend would later form the foundation of the Roman Cicero’s entire dialogue on friendship, known as the Laelius.
The second element, goodwill, is necessary for the development of new friendships. It builds upon the very nature and essence of every person’s will — to desire the good for oneself. When we have goodwill for our friends, we wish for them the same kinds of good things we wish for ourselves, and we rejoice together when we achieve the good and share in each other’s sorrow when evil comes our way.
Of course, if we truly wish good things for our friends, we will take action to try to achieve them, just as we act to achieve good for ourselves. Beneficence, the third element, the giving of benefits or doing of good deeds for our friends, is truly something fine, noble, and pleasant. The giver of benefits, therefore, feels pleased with the person he has been able to benefit (the fourth element of pleasure). The friend has afforded him the opportunity to exercise his beneficence. In that sense, the benefactor has also benefited himself.
Thomas, building on Aristotle, notes that the true, virtuous friend desires the spiritual goods of the “inward man” for his friend, and their wills do not conflict since they desire the same things (the fifth and final element of true friendship deriving from proper self-love).
The wicked, on the contrary, do not preserve the integrity of the “inward man” and wish spiritual goods for themselves, they do not work toward that end, and they do not take pleasure in their own company, because when they examine their hearts, what they find there of the past, present, and future is evil and base. Further, they do not even agree with themselves because of “the gnawings of conscience.” The wicked love themselves according to the corruption of the “outward man,” but their self-love is not true, but only apparent, since they think themselves good when they’re not. Sadly, an unrepentant sinner is not really a friend to others or even to himself. As Thomas sums it up: “The wicked have some share of self-love, in so far as they think themselves good. Yet such love of self is not true but apparent; and even this is not possible in those who are very wicked” (II-II, 25, 7).
If we are to seek out the form and the roots of the appropriate kind of self-love that equips us to love others, the kind of self-love of the higher “inward self” that seeks to raise others higher as well, we must learn to weed out and pulverize the roots of false forms of self-love, one of which we will consider next.
Vainglory and False Self-Love
A very common form of inordinate love of one’s lower self that makes us false friends to ourselves, poisons our relations with others, and contaminates our culture at large, is the ages-old vice of vainglory. Inani gloria (inane or silly glory), in Thomas’s words, refers to the desire to be known and praised by others for attributes of our lower selves.
Vainglory is a perversion of the love of charity both for others and for ourselves and may grow within us as a spiritual weed intertwined with the terrible tare that is envy. Sometimes we envy the honor and glory that others receive because we are frustrated that we do not have it. The more vainglorious we are, the more likely we are to feel envious when others sing the praises of someone besides us! Still, we are called to strive to do things worthy of praise, to glorify God through our actions, to let our lights shine before men. What, then, is the glory we seek in vain? Vainglorious light says, “Hey, look at me!” while the light of true glory shines “that they see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16).
According to Thomas, there are three ways glory can be vain:
1. The things for which one seeks glory are vain or petty.
2. The persons from whom one seeks glory are uncertain and lacking in judgment.
3. The end for which glory is sought is not to magnify God’s honor or to help the spiritual welfare of one’s neighbor, but to glorify oneself (II-II, 132, 1).
In a nutshell then, the glory we seek is vain if we seek glory for the wrong things, from the wrong people, or for the wrong reasons.
Thomas, like St. Gregory the Great before him, saw pride as the “queen of the vices,” the source and font of the seven deadly sins, with vainglory as its most closely related offspring. Pride spurns God and glories in one’s own excellence, and its spawn of vainglory glories in things far too petty to be truly excellent. We can examine our consciences for vainglory by seeking out its various daughters, from a tendency toward boasting about our accomplishments or possessions, to the kind of obstinacy, discord, and contentiousness whereby we try to project our perceived superiority toward others by failing to yield when others make valid points contrary to our own, by refusing to admit we are wrong, or by stubbornly refusing to change our minds even when proven wrong. We can also search our souls for disobedience, whereby we fail to obey directives from our bosses or disregard traffic, civil, or canon laws because we believe we always know better.
And speaking of canons, unfortunately, in many ways our modern society seems to have canonized the vice of vainglory in the public arena. Look at many celebrities today who are “famous for being famous,” or who become influential public figures for performing inane and sometimes even despicable deeds, especially, in our day, if they do so in some form of “protest,” thereby signaling to all their politically correct conception of virtue, while demonizing others and casting them in the worst light. Simply turn on the news any night for all kinds of outlandish antics courtesy of those four death-dealing daughters: obstinacy, discord, contentiousness, and disobedience.
Indeed, merely turn on one of your Internet social media platforms to see a fair measure of the same, and indeed, not boatloads, but entire oceans of fleets of that vainglorious daughter boasting! In fact, you will need to check your own account (and I, alas, mine) for the literally “telltale” signs of that last daughter. How much time and energy do we take sharing things that we hope will be “liked”? Does it smack of “inordinate self-love”? Do our posts point too often to the fancy feathers in our caps or to the things of the inward and higher self, the things of the true, the good, and the beautiful?
On Building Great Souls to Love in Ourselves
There is a virtue that directly counters vainglory by disposing us to seek out things truly worth of glory and praise. Aristotle’s reason pointed toward it 2,300 years ago, and St. Thomas, aided by revelation, transformed it through Christ about 1,600 years later. Thankfully, this virtue has no expiration date and is waiting for us to start building it in our souls today.
Aristotle noted that we do not criticize the person who strives above all to act justly, through self-control, and in accordance only with virtue. Further, this sort of person rewards himself with the greatest of rewards, because he gratifies his rational intellect, the highest controlling aspect of the soul, through acting voluntarily only for what is noble and excellent. This person most truly loves himself, because this part of the soul truly defines what we are as human beings. Therefore, the man who truly loves himself will busy himself with praiseworthy actions, not in search of praise, but because of the worthiness of the actions in themselves. The virtue that equips us to act in ways that are truly worthy of honor and glory was called megalopsychia by Aristotle, magnanimitas by Thomas, or in plain English, magnanimity, literally meaning “greatness of soul.”
St. Thomas tells us that “magnanimity by its very name denotes stretching forth of the mind to great things” (II-II, 129, 2). Further, magnanimity is about honor, great honor. Indeed, its subject matter is honor, and its end is great accomplishments. This implies not seeking out displays of honor from others but doing great and honorable acts, whether or not any kind of accolades are forthcoming.
Magnanimity is also closely allied with the virtue of fortitude, or courage. How so? Thomas tells us that while fortitude strengthens us in respect to confronting great and difficult evils, magnanimity strengthens us in respect to obtaining great and difficult goods. Fortitude itself becomes strongest when fueled by the vision of great good. The person of true fortitude can endure great hardship because his focus is on great things, such as obeying the will of God, and developing his abilities to their fullest. The person who appropriately loves his higher “inward,” self seeks to stretch forth his soul to the good while helping his neighbor’s soul to a good stretch as well.
The connection of magnanimity with fortitude is also clearly seen in our day, because it takes true courage and greatness to seek out worthy and difficult achievements even when they are not glorious in the eyes of the world, and indeed, when they may be despised. Many who would seek spiritual goods may be ridiculed and scorned by others who seek glory for themselves through things that the world sees as good. Virtually our entire modern advertising and entertainment industries prompt us to try to obtain happiness through material things and through fame for hollow deeds. It is ingrained in our popular, secular culture. Let’s ask ourselves how we can work up our ire against the fact that we so often let these cultural trends lead us by the nose. Let’s use our noses instead to smell that rat of vainglory, of inordinate self-love, and fortify our spirits to chase it from our souls, as we stretch our hearts and minds toward the things that matter most.
Proper Prayers for Ourselves
While I think my Irish ancestors had a good point about avoiding “stingy prayers” that are all about ourselves, it is, of course, appropriate to pray for our own good too, especially since the greater our souls become, the more generous and loving we can be toward others. Now, to love our neighbors as ourselves, is of course, the second Great Commandment, according to Jesus, so we are called to pray for both and we’ve noted before how “us” appears in the petitions of the Our Father, and in the Hail Mary as well.
As a prayer to counter the vice of vainglory and the sins that it spawns, a straightforward recommendation is the Glory Be:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
This prayer places glory where it belongs and should remind us that any glory we seek should not be for vain things, but for truly meritorious deeds that will give glory to God and inspire others to do so as well.
Christ’s Great Commandments are commandments of charity, which includes love of both self and neighbor. Therefore, another traditional prayer that can help us grow in the charity that disposes us toward appropriate self-love is the Act of Charity:
O my God, I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou art all good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me and ask pardon of all whom I have injured.
Might we pray this prayer with this chapter’s life lesson in mind, so that we might become true friends to ourselves, to become truer friends to our neighbor and to God?
No Greater Love Than This Sacrament
All the sacraments come to us through Christ’s loving gift of Himself, but let’s briefly highlight three of them that bear quite directly on how a proper love of oneself is the form and root of charitable love of others.
We’ve seen how virtuous friends treat each other like a “second self,” each regarding the friend’s welfare as highly as his own. In describing the nature and depth of the profoundest of friendships, even Thomas’s pagan philosophical mentor Aristotle would turn time and again to the friendship between a husband and a wife, and between parents and children. Indeed, the man who defined man as not only the “rational animal,” but the “political animal,” would write that “man is an animal more inclined by nature to connubial than political society” (ST, Supplement, 41, 1).45
Thomas knew well that families are the earthly models of proper self-love and love of neighbor, and that they are formed and perfected through the heavenly sacrament of Matrimony. Through Matrimony each spouse not only acquires a “second self,” but the two become as “one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mark 10:8; Matt.19:5; Eph. 5:31) in the deepest, most intimate bonds of friendship. Have those of us who are married thought about how fostering the proper love of what is highest in ourselves will overflow into love of our spouses? Have we reflected on the ways in which generous acts of love from our spouses have stretched our own souls toward higher things? Of course, God has willed that marital love can also produce new generations of “other selves” we can love — our children in some sense literally being our “second selves” (and third, fourth, fifth, or so on, according to how many God has blessed us with).
As for the ultimate model and example of natural love, old Aristotle has argued that it is seen in the love of a mother for her child. We see this in the natural protectiveness of mothers in many animal species. Some human mothers have been willing, under dire circumstances, to give away a child to be raised by another, content to know that the child is living and thriving, even if they are never to see the child and receive his love in return. Indeed, we see this in Scripture as well, when a true mother was willing to give her baby away to a false claimant rather than have the child split in two (1 Kings 3:16–38). Wise Solomon knew well the nature of true motherly love based on the love of one’s higher, inward self, the capstone of which is God’s charity, which protects and nurtures the innocent. Of course, Blessed Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, is the foremost human exemplar of the power of motherly love.
Those who are called to the sacrament of Holy Orders are certainly called as well to an appropriate love of the very highest parts of the self, whereby, through God’s grace they strive to conform themselves to Christ, to act in His person in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and are empowered to administer the sacraments to others. In accepting Holy Orders, the priest forgoes the physical goods of sexual intimacy with a spouse in order to embrace more fully the spiritual goods of God. It is especially grave and heinous when priests embrace their sinful sexual passions and abuse in any way another person, and even if in the context of relations with a “consenting adult,” such acts may be legal, but never moral. Let us pray that those in Holy Orders will live out holy lives and that their ecclesiastical superiors will never actively shield or turn a blind eye toward them and their victims. Let us pray as well for the untold number of priests, who, though sinners like us all, truly strive to honor their vows, to seek and to promote holiness in others by loving the highest parts of themselves, the intellect through which they seek to know God, and the will through which they seek to make their wills in perfect conformity to His.
It is the ultimate sacrament of the Eucharist, of course, that teaches us to love the highest part of ourselves above even life itself. “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and His love for us was manifested most fully when He sent His Son to become one of us and to die for us. Thomas tells us that “out of the love of charity with which we love God, we ought to love our bodies” (II-II, 25, 6), and yet he agrees with St. Augustine that “we ought to love our neighbor more than our own body” (II-II, 26, 5). He knew, too, what John made clear: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay his life down for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus displayed perfect self-love in His human and divine natures, never sullying his “inward man” with sin. While He was on earth, His love reached out to His friends, to His disciples, including the beloved disciple, John, to the repentant sinner Mary Magdalene, and to so many others. He also came that we all might be no longer servants but friends (John 15:15).
Of course, Christ is God Himself, but through Christ’s loving action and the grace of the Holy Spirit, if we love one another and testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, “God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
The highest form of self-love, then, is to love how God abides within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and through the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. We should express the highest of gratitude that Christ gave us the awesome sacrament through which we who eat His flesh and drink His blood take Him — Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity — into our own bodies through the Holy Eucharist. In the Traditional Latin Mass, after Communion the priest prays that Christ’s Body and Blood that he has received will adhaeret visceribus meis (“cleave to my innermost parts”). If we are to become “our own best friends,” we must never forget that we will never love ourselves more fully than when we love Him who so willingly cleaves to the innermost parts of our bodies and our souls.
Life Lesson 6 Summa
Since we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must love what is highest and noblest in ourselves in an appropriate way. It is this appropriate self-love of the rational and spiritual potentials of the “inward” man or woman that grounds our abilities to reach out and love others. We must search our souls and weed out the vice of vainglory and seek to glorify God and enrich others through magnanimous thoughts and acts truly worthy of praise. Let our prayers glorify God, and our actions, in whatever our state of life, do so as well. May those who are married truly come to love their spouses and children as other selves. May those in Holy Orders love what is highest within themselves, so that they can best share the graces of the sacraments with others. May we all recall that Christ gave His sinless self so that we might become His friends, and that the highest forms of self-love are to love how God dwells within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and how Christ Himself cleaves to our innermost parts in the Holy Eucharist. This is how we become our own best friends in the way God intended.
43 On the Soul, bk. 2, chap. 12, cited in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 657.
44 CCC 365, citing the Council of Vienne, 1312.
45 Citing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 8, 12, “connubial” referring to the married state.