The Difficult Good

Thomas Creen, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

It is so hard to change. As the great neuropsychiatrist Dr. Abraham Low noted, nervous patients do not like change. Most people do not. And one of the most common experiences of the difficulty of change is when someone starts a new job. It demands more virtue. It demands hope.

Recently, a personal friend started a new job. She had been working in the field for many years but now she had transferred to another place. She was doing the exact same job, but the change was very tough. I think it is because the person not only has to do the job, but also has to learn the new policies, procedures, and culture of the new place of work. Nevertheless, if the employee wants to succeed in a new place, he or she has to go through the discomfort of the change.

Spiritual writers talk about the difficult good (in Latin, the bonum arduum). It is the goal that is the reward of effort. And in order to reach any goal in a healthy and happy way, a person needs hope. Of course, there is a human, natural hope based on reason and experience. But for us Christians, in addition to reasonable hope, there is also the supernatural virtue of hope. And, as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange explains in his masterpiece The Three Ages of the Interior Life, “The formal motive of hope is not our effort, it is God our Helper (Deus auxiliator et auxilians), according to His mercy, His promises, His omnipotence.”

Therefore, knowing that God is our helper and is already helping us at every moment, we can go forward and tackle the difficult good that He calls us to accomplish, whether it is in our professional, family, apostolic, personal, or spiritual life.

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