How to Heal Your Relationships this Christmas

We all have a tendency to “activating our faults” when we are in stressful situations—trying to impress old friends and relatives, re-create familial harmony and traditional Christmases past, or avoid stepping on anyone’s toes. A gathering of old friends and relatives during December is the sort of situation that can bring out the worst in us—just when we most want to be good!

We are trying to live the season of Advent as a holy time of preparation for the birth of our Lord…and then we run into Aunt Sally, whose very presence makes us want to scream and run away—thereby losing the opportunity to grow in our spiritual lives. Sometimes the temptation to spend the holidays alone is overwhelming. But, as Our Lord tells Saint Catherine of Siena: “Every virtue is obtained by means of thy neighbor, and likewise, every defect.”

Close Encounters

So, how can we prepare ourselves for these close encounters of a holiness-making kind?

Know ourselves first. Know our own weaknesses—both on a human and spiritual level. For example, humanly, we want to be alert to those times when we are most vulnerable, perhaps through lack of sleep (for example, driving 10 hours straight through the cornfields to see Great Grandma in Chicago) or emotional stress (e.g. getting together with extended family for the first time in many years). We can know our own tendency to becoming overwhelmed or emotionally overwrought or angry. We can take a hard look at our own boundaries: Am I too isolated or inflexible? Or am I overly diffuse, going in every direction until I am worn out and resentful? We can also look at our spiritual defects, whether we are prone to vanity, envy, sensuality, or pride.

Generally speaking, however, we all are prone to self-love, to thinking that our perspective on things is the only possible perspective. We want things our way, we want others to recognize this fact, and we want everything to be perfect—especially this time of the year. We are all prone to this self-love which is ultimately what keeps us from being truly happy. God’s grace can overcome our self-love and move our hearts toward him. But there is one major obstacle: our pride. We can become so prideful, so inordinately full of ourselves, that even God cannot move our hearts.

Think of all the miracles where Christ healed the sick and forgave the sinners. He dined with the chief tax collector Zacchaeus, healed the lepers, and forgave the prostitutes. He allowed the woman cured of seven demons to lavish attention on him. But he was angry with the Pharisees and he remained silent with Pilate. In Nazareth Jesus was unable to perform any mighty deed (Mark 6:1-6).

Even God’s infinite power cannot penetrate where pride has barred the door. Pride is the root of all evil, from large scale holocausts and schemes of world domination to the insidious evil that strikes at the heart of a family, tearing loved ones apart and crushing the innocent. Father Eugene Boylan, a Trappist monk, quotes Tanquerey’s definition of pride: “an inordinate love of self, which causes us to consider ourselves, explicitly or implicitly, as our first beginning and our last end.” Father Boylan goes on to explain that pride not only causes me to imagine that I am greater than I really am, or to despise others to exalt myself, but also makes me think that my life is my own, and I live my life for my own sake.

First Step to Healing

Pride is the ultimate form of self-love and St. Catherine says it “destroys charity and affection towards the neighbor, is the principle and foundation of every evil. All scandals, hatred, cruelty, and every sort of trouble proceed from this perverse root of self-love, which has poisoned the entire world and weakened the mystical body.” It was, after all, pride that caused Lucifer to fall and Adam and Eve to rebel against God’s goodness.

Pride encourages us to be attached to our own perspective, our own pet theories, our understanding of the truth. “You will be like gods who know!” (Gen 3: 5) Does it really matter that everyone understands that you are right? How many times have you heard someone say (after you have presented your arguments), “Oh, now I get it!

If we can humbly admit to the fault of pride, we have taken the first step toward improving all our relationships—with God and with those near me. Humility will admit that we cannot change anyone else, but can certainly work to improve ourselves. We may begin to eradicate divisions (whether great or small) that threaten to usurp our joy during this blessed season. When we cease seeing ourselves as the central attraction, the one whom it is all about, and instead focus on the One whom it is all about.