Detachment, Obedience, and Your State of Life (S11, EP05)

The Challenge of Detachment: Why Listening is Key

Are you afraid that letting go might "break" you? Detachment isn't just about strength; it's a test of listening. In this episode, we explore the link between detachment, obedience as "listening," and how to discern what to hold onto and let go of, to grow in holiness, no matter your state in life.

Key Takeaways

• The True Definition of Obedience: Understand why obedience is not blind submission, but a form of "radical listening" to God through the people and circumstances around you.
• Navigating State in Life: Learn how to prioritize your vocation (such as marriage) over personal attachments, using the specific example of balancing hobbies with family obligations.
• The Role of Perseverance: Discover St. Teresa of Avila’s concept of "determined determination" and why getting back up after a failure is just as important as the success itself.

TRANSCRIPT

The Challenge of Detachment

Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Midnight Carmelite. Today I want to talk about detachment, what that means, and how we think about it. One thing I really want to say is that if you're trying to become more detached, you're going to be worried about breaking yourself. In other words, you're worried about having the will to make it through, to endure, and to persevere, because you start cutting away "creatures"—meaning things you're attached to that aren't healthy for you. That is an important distinction: harm versus health. We have to remember that attachments come from yourself, not from God. God won't attach you to something that will keep you away from union with Him. So, when we think about detachment, we have to think about what small things we can do to start picking away in this "active night of the sense," and how to go through mortification to really enter into it.

Defining Obedience

There are a couple of things I want to share today. The list isn't exhaustive, but let's start with obedience. Obedience comes from ob audire, which means "to listen to." It is a focus wherein you listen to authority or, in your state in life, to the other person. It is listening for God through the things in your state in life, those who have authority over you, and those you are being charitable toward. This is all obedience; it is being passively receptive and beholden to the Trinitarian life through the circumstances of your life, governed by your state in life as the guiding principle. This will allow you to follow God more closely.

A Practical Example: Marriage and Priorities

I feel like this is where people get tripped up, so let's take an easy example. Let's say you are a married man and you have a hobby. If you are spending more time on your hobby, obviously, you're going to have to ask yourself: is spending this time on my hobby serving God's will in my life? That's your first question because everything is God's providence. The first obvious checkbox should be to check with your wife. Why? Because you and she are responsible for each other's salvation by growing in holiness together. Your holiness is built into your state in life as a married person. So, you talk to your wife about it. She might say, "I'm glad you like your hobby, but it's taking away from me and the kids." She might say she really needs you right now and ask you to cut back or get rid of it for a period of time. You may feel you need this to be better for your family, or that the hobby is important to you or others, but ultimately she comes first because there is priority in obedience. While you serve God first in the abstract, your state in life dictates that the indirect way to love God is through your wife.

Obedience in Positions of Authority

If you say, "Okay, you're right, let me scale my hobby back," that would be listening and being receptive to God speaking to you through your life circumstances. Obedience to God can also happen when you are in a position of authority. If someone comes to you with a complaint or even positive feedback, the person in authority has an obligation to radically listen. Since you are responsible for an employee, a child, or whatever the group relation implies, you have to pay attention to the need of the other. Sometimes the best critics of us are people we know closely because they are the ones looking at us from the outside when we're blind to our own faults. That is what I am saying with obedience: it allows you to hear from others what you don't see and then trust and follow what you hear—hence, obey.

The Necessity of Perseverance

Back to detachment: detachment requires obedience. It's not simply about your desires, like wanting to keep silent. It goes a little further. It is about listening to things in your life and knowing what is going on. Maybe it will divert you to something you don't want to do, or something that doesn't feel good, but it is calling from this criteria I've laid out for obedience.

Finally, you have to ensure you persevere. It's not simply solving a problem or doing things measured on our own terms of success. You have to persevere in both success and failure. In the case of success, you can't stop doing the right thing just because you feel like that's enough; you have to complete the act. In the case of failure, you have to pick yourself up and realize that God and others will bring you along if you are willing to obey and listen. Perseverance is a key to holiness. Teresa of Avila called it determinata, or "determined determination." That's what we need. We have to keep getting back up, recognize our faults, apologize to those we've wronged, go to confession, apologize to God, and move forward. That's all for this week. See you next time.