22 The Core of Catholic Resilience

Episode 22.  The Core of Catholic Resilience

June 29, 2020

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis:  Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.   We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before.  I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com.  Thank you for being here with me.  This is episode 22, and it’s called The Core of Catholic Resilience.  

Today we are going to the core of Catholic resilience, we are going to discover what drives resilience in the saints.  We are discussing the one central theme that is absolutely essential for the kind of resilience that transcends this natural world, that incorporates not just our natural gifts, but grace as well.  The saints are the most resilient people who ever walked the face of the earth.  What is the secret of the resilience of the saints?  That’s the question we are focusing on today.  What is the secret of the super resilience of the saints, the secret that allows them to rise up again when they fall under the weight of adversity, of persecution, of their own failings, weakness and sins?  We are getting to that in just a moment.  

I am a believer in spiral learning, especially for this podcast and for the online learning at Souls and Hearts.  So what is spiral learning?  Guess what!  It’s definition time with Dr. Peter. [cue sound effect]

In a spiral learning approach, the basic facts of a subject are learned, without worrying much about the details.  Just the main, plain concept.  As learning progresses, more and more details are introduced.  These new details are related to the basic concepts which are reemphasized many times to help enter them into long-term memory. 

Repeat.  That’s spiral learning.  Homeschoolers might recognize that from the way Saxon math works or the way some other programs teach.  

Why spiral learning.  I really want you to integrate what you learn in these podcasts into the whole of your being – not just have them go in one ear and out the other, but for you to really grip on to them, really hold them, even when times are tough, even when you are in a dark place, even when emotions run high.  

My self-defense instructor James Yeager, in a fighting pistol course I took several years ago taught the class that “The only things you really possess are those things you can carry with you at a dead run.”  He was referring to gear, including weapons mindset – he is really big on mindset, having your head right in crisis situations, and worked with his students to integrate his teachings throughout their whole beings, to have the right responses come up habitually, automatically, reflexively.  I want that for you.  So in these podcasts, we’re nourishing the mind, we’re focusing on the concepts, we’re starting there.  The experiential work will help with the rest of the integration into your heartset, your soulset and your bodyset.  

Since we are already on a hard road together in the Christian life.  I want to make the learning about Catholic resilience and growing in resilience as easy as possible for you.  

So we will spiral upward, coming back to the main themes in the podcast over and over again with new details, new data points, lots of examples, and of course, stories.  As a psychologist and educator, I want this to be really easy for you to take in.  Another benefit of that approach is that each podcast episode can stand alone – you can just pick this up the middle of this series on resilience can get the background you need for the topic of the episode.  I’m really thinking about you when I put these together.  

So let’s briefly review what we’ve learned in this series on Catholic resilience.  

In episode 20, two weeks ago, we discussed the 10 factors of resilience offered by the secular experts.  These were the ten essential aspects of resilience as summarized by Southwick and Charney, two writer for a general audience on resilience whom I respect.  In episode 21 last week we got into the three major ways that secular understandings of resilience are lacking from a Catholic perspective, three important mistakes that secular professionals make in understanding resilience, the things that they miss because of their non-Catholic worldviews.  If you have the time, you can check those two episodes out if you haven’t already, they help to put today’s episode into context, but suffice it to say for today, that Catholic resilience is very different than a secular understanding of resilience.

In the last episode, I offered a definition of Catholic resilience, comparing secular understandings of resilience to a Catholic understanding of resilience.  So now, just to get us all up to speed, let’s review that definition of Catholic resilience.  It’s definition time with Dr. Peter

Catholic resilience  “the process of accepting and embracing adversity, trauma, trials, stresses and suffering as crosses.  Catholic resilience sees these crosses as gifts from our loving, attuned God, gifts to transform us, to make us holy, to help us be better able to love and to be loved than we ever were before, and to ultimately bring us into loving union with Him.   

Today we are making a deep dive into the one essential requirement, the one prerequisite, the one necessary quality you have to have to be resilient as a Catholic.  All the other factors of Catholic resilience flow from this core, this central principle.  

Now you are asking, Dr. Peter, what is this core of resilience, this central principle of Catholic resilience?  I am glad you asked.  The core of Catholic resilience, the kind of holy resilience of the saint is…

Drum Role

A deep and abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providence.  

What I am saying is that resilience is an effect – it’s a consequence of the deep, abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providential care and love for us. .   Resilience flows from that confidence in God – confidence in God’s care and love for me, specifically.  So resilience is an effect of the spiritual life.  

OK.  Let’s break this down, to make sure we’re on the same page.  What do I mean by confidence in God?  

St. Thomas Aquinas defines it as confidence in God as “a hope, fortified by solid conviction.”  So confidence in God is Hope, but it is a hope fortified, not just an ordinary hope, which could be lost.  It is a higher level of hope, a hope fortified by solid conviction.  The difference between hope and confidence is only a matter of degree – they are the same, but confidence, because it is fortified by solid conviction, is hope supercharged, a super hope, as King David sang in Psalm 119 (118).  “In verba tua supersperavi” read the Latin.  Speravi is I have hoped – Supersperavi – I have hope to the highest level.  Typical translation  “I have hoped in thy word.”

Let’s look at solid conviction.  So solid.  What does that mean?  Firm, grounded, immovable, consistent.  Conviction  -- wh...