Sixth in a Lenten Series

It is difficult for me to recall how I thought about personal growth when I was in college or a student in the seminary.

For many years, certainly since the time that I studied philosophy on the graduate level at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and at Marquette University in Milwaukee, I have thought of personal growth as coming about through relationships. My graduate studies took place 40 years ago. In the ensuing years, the insights that I had as a graduate student about personal relationships have grown and deepened. I hope they have.

It is fascinating that some reality, such as a relationship, which once did not loom as very important in my self-understanding or in my understanding of others, now seems exceptionally important.

I have come to believe that relationships are the most important realities in our lives. Religion is all about relationships. In “The Challenge of Jesus” (Image Books), John Shea is quite good on the important role that relationships play in personal growth. Noting that personal life is always relational and that a person comes to be through reciprocal and dynamic interchange, Shea writes the following:

“The reliance on the presence of others, indeed on their gracious initiative, is absolutely necessary for personal selfhood. Each person’s selfhood comes from internalizing others in a human way. This process of taking on another’s characteristics, values and behavior is especially evident in childhood. The child becomes himself by imitating the language and mannerisms of the parents. This process has many concrete manifestations.

“A young boy may have many toys to play with but nothing is more fascinating than his father’s golf clubs. A young girl may have many dolls but nothing is more important than to dress up in her mother’s clothes.

“The process of internalization continues into adulthood but becomes more complex and selective. The others that are internalized are carefully chosen, ‘significant others.’

“Also the situation becomes dialogic. The developing person becomes a personal internalized influence in the becoming of another. In this complex process of coming to be, it should not be forgotten that selfhood, before it becomes a fascinating project, is fundamentally a gift.”

There are so many insights in those remarks by Shea that I almost want to paraphrase the entire selection. I can recall playing with my father’s golf clubs as a small child. I can recall the smell of the canvas bag and the canvas covers on the clubs. The golf clubs were special to me though I did not play golf with them. In some mysterious way, they represented my father. Even today, more than 60 years later, though I never play golf, I have kept my father’s clubs. Amazing!

The gracious initiative of others is basic if we are going to grow as persons. Experts in child psychology stress the importance of the parents’ loving call if babies are going to grow in a healthy way. Unless babies are called they will not reach out for relationships.

I can recall one time as a young priest that I visited a nursery in a hospital. The nursery was filled with orphans. As I walked around observing all the children, I thought that each child was intellectually challenged. Every child seemed so lethargic, so unable or unwilling to respond to stimuli. Those in charge of the nursery explained to me that none of the children were intellectually challenged. The reason why the children seemed so lethargic was that the doctors, nurses and attendants did not have sufficient time to spend with the babies. There was no one to play with the babies, no one to “call” them. Consequently, the babies were turned in on themselves, unable to enter into relationship because no one was inviting them.

What I observed about the babies can be applied in an analogous way to all persons. We come to be through others. What I like very much about Shea’s comments is his emphasis that the entrance of others into our lives and eventually into our growth as persons is fundamentally gift. Because some people, in my life especially my parents and sister, have freely been gifts to me, I am able to be a gift to others.

Occasionally, some student at St. John’s or some priest whom I have taught tells me that I am a good teacher. Whatever truth is in their observation is there because of the teachers I have had whom I have admired. I tried to “internalize” those teachers. To the extent that I succeeded I was able to teach others.

Through Jesus we are invited into the most important relationship, a relationship with God Who is pure self-gift.