Magnanimity – ElPropósito4 min de lectura

The greatness that doesn’t need to be at 100 percent all the time

I recently watched a video by Father Ignacio Amorós on his channel Se Buscan Rebeldes, and it’s the reason I’m writing about this today. Father Amorós points out that anxiety goes deeper than discomfort. It’s a shrinking of the soul, a disordered fear of the future, an attempt to carry today what only God holds tomorrow. His answer to that shrinking is magnanimity: reaching out toward what is great. The word comes from the Latin magnanimitas, from magnus, great, and animus, soul. Greatness of soul. The pressure to be at 100 percent all the time is a myth. The body has limits, and so does the mind. Faith doesn’t ask for a permanent mood. It asks for a disposition: refusing to shrink when life won’t cooperate.

Uncertainty comes with the territory. Challenges don’t ask permission. What we can look at is needless worry: bracing for disasters, running scenario after scenario, confusing vigilance with dread. Worrying and taking charge are two different things. One wears you out and gets nothing done. The other looks at the problem, decides and moves on. Father Amorós puts it in words worth remembering: God gives us grace for today, and the grace for next year’s cross will come next year. Trying to be your own providence will choke you. A clear purpose won’t lift the fog, but it puts things back in proportion. It separates what deserves your attention from what’s merely loud.

I’ll say where I stand: I’m Roman Catholic. I believe God doesn’t put us in the world by accident. He sends us to fulfill a purpose (which is why my blog has the name it does), and finding it is an obligation. It is no optional self-improvement exercise. You won’t sum it up in a catchy phrase. You discern it through prayer, work, the sacraments, everyday life and the honesty to look at what you’d prefer to avoid. We don’t make up our direction because it suits us. We receive it and come to recognize it over time. Today’s mission, being a father, a husband, a professional and a Christian in the concrete reality of these hours, is exactly what keeps the soul from shrinking altogether.

In that discernment, the Virgin Mary teaches what real spirit looks like. Her "let it be done to me according to His will" was an act of surrender. Nobody asked her to be radiant. She was asked to be available. There’s a kind of enthusiasm that looks nothing like constant elation: the faithfulness of someone who keeps going after a rough day. The peace you feel at the end doesn’t prove everything went well. It comes from having stayed, as best you could, with what was asked of you.

A life of purpose doesn’t promise nonstop happiness. What it offers is more sober and more solid: the chance to end the day at peace, even when things are hard. The pain doesn’t go away, but it no longer holds the compass. People who only chase feeling good break when life squeezes them. People anchored in a reason why (and for a Christian, in Someone, and that Someone is God) can be sad, tired or worried and still not lose their way. That’s a quiet kind of greatness.

We also need to talk about the times we get it wrong. I don’t mean the small slip you can explain away in five minutes. I mean what truly knocks you off course: the hurtful word, the thing left undone, pride, real harm. Owning it doesn’t mean beating yourself up. It means looking at it honestly, apologizing where you owe it, going to confession if there’s sin, and correcting course with actions. Think of this Sunday’s Gospel: a father sends his two sons to work in the vineyard. One says yes and doesn’t go. The other says no, thinks better of it and goes. The son who did what was asked is the one who changed course, whatever he promised first. Purpose helps because it won’t let us settle into guilt, or into the pose of those who always said "yes" and never budged. It sends us back to the vineyard.

So keeping up your enthusiasm has little to do with manufacturing a feeling. It’s about tending a direction. Magnanimity accepts that you won’t be at 100 percent and still refuses to hand the day over to complaining. It asks God and the Virgin for what you can’t give yourself. It does the work. It makes amends after a failure. It keeps going. In the end, peace comes from sticking with today’s task, uncertainty and all.

Is there something you already know you need to fix and keep putting off in the name of an enthusiasm you don’t really have?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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