Love, Not Willpower

Dr. Lillis: "The problem wasn't that you didn't try hard enough. The problem is that you didn't love Jesus enough." Mortification without love is just self-torture. With love, it becomes a gift — like a parent enduring sleepless nights for a newborn. You don't grit your teeth and white-knuckle it; you offer it with love. "Jesus, I give you this discomfort because I love you." (Ep 643)

To appreciate the full significance of this teaching, it helps to situate it within the broader framework of the Catholic spiritual tradition. The great masters of the interior life — Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, and Ignatius of Loyola — each brought their distinctive charism and experience to bear on questions like this one. Their convergent testimony, spanning centuries and diverse vocations, gives this teaching a depth and authority that goes far beyond any single author's perspective.

Understanding "love, not willpower" requires attending to both its doctrinal foundations and its practical implications. The Catholic tradition insists that authentic spiritual knowledge is never merely theoretical — it must be tested in prayer, refined through experience, and ultimately verified by its fruits in the life of the soul. This is why the Church's greatest teachers on the spiritual life are not only theologians but saints — men and women who lived what they taught, and whose writings carry the authority of verified experience.

At the same time, the tradition is careful to anchor experiential testimony in sound doctrine. The Doctors of the Church do not simply report their own experiences; they interpret those experiences in light of Scripture, the Fathers, and the Church's magisterial teaching. This integration of experience and doctrine is one of the defining characteristics of Catholic spiritual theology, and it is what gives the tradition its remarkable combination of depth and reliability.

The richness of the tradition becomes apparent when we listen to the voices of the masters themselves. Each brings a distinctive perspective to this teaching, yet all converge on its essential truth.

St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

Here he overthrows at once the insane notion of the Manichaean, who says that the world is the work of a malignant creature, and the opinion of the Arian, that the Son of God is a creature. AUG. But what means this, The world was made by Him? The earth, sky, and sea, and all that are therein, are called the world.

(Source: catena_aurea_john.txt)

St. Teresa of Avila writes:

Dominic, and either of them, having first administered the sacrament of penance and confession to our most dearly beloved sister Teresa of Jesus, mother of the nuns of S. Joseph’s, to release her from any vow she may have made, or to commute it as to them it shall seem.

(Source: book_of_foundations.txt)

St. John of the Cross writes:

No creature, no knowledge, comprehensible by the understanding, can subserve as proximate means of union with God. ° . = 93 Faith is the proximate and proportionate means of the understanding by which the soul may attain to the divine union of love. Proofs from the Holy Scriptures ‘ . ° . . . ° A . 99 The divisions of the apprehensions and acts of the understanding . «+ 103.

(Source: ascent_of_mount_carmel.txt)

St. Francis de Sales writes:

Francis has done for the general people. He ever seems to have little ones in his mind, to be speaking and writing for them. We see in this Treatise the leading of the same spirit which made him love to preach to children, and to nuns, and to the poor country people ; which made him keep in his own establishment and teach with his own lips the poor deaf-mute of whom we read in his Life.

(Source: 03_catholic_controversy.txt)

St. Ignatius of Loyola writes:

Finally the Lord gave him health. He came out of the danger safe and strong with the exception that he could not easily stand on his leg, but was forced to lie in bed. As Ignatius had a love for fiction, when he found himself out of danger he asked for some romances to pass away the time. In that house there was no book of the kind.

(Source: autobiography_oconor_1900.txt)

The Church Fathers writes:

Thou lovest, and burnest not; art jealous, yet free from care; repentest, and hast no sorrow; art angry, yet serene;.

(Source: Confessiones_english.txt)

St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

But in another sense, the lovers of the world are called the world, of whom he says, And the world knew Him not. For did the sky, or Angels, not know their Creator, Whom the very devils confess, Whom the whole universe has borne witness to? Who then did not know Him? Those who, from their love of the world, are called the world; for such live in heart in the world, while those who do not love it,.

(Source: catena_aurea_john.txt)

The Church's doctrinal tradition provides authoritative grounding for this teaching. Proposition T4.G.007 (de_fide) states:

God gives sufficient grace to all the just for the observance of the divine commandments. God does not command the impossible, but by commanding admonishes us to do what we can and to pray for what we cannot.

• Scripture: ['God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be...

• Councils: ['God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes thee to do what thou canst, and to pray for what thou canst not, and aids thee...

Additionally, proposition T4.G.009 (de_fide) affirms: The justified person can truly merit an increase of sanctifying grace, eternal life, and an increase of heavenly glory by good works performed in the state of grace and under the influence of actual grace.

For the engaged learner, understanding "love, not willpower" opens a path to deeper prayer and more fruitful cooperation with grace. The sources cited above show that this is not abstract theology but a lived reality that has shaped the spiritual lives of countless saints and ordinary Christians across two millennia.

The practical challenge is to take this teaching into one's own prayer and daily life. This might begin with reflective reading of one or more of the sources quoted above, followed by prayerful consideration of how this teaching applies to one's current spiritual situation. The tradition consistently emphasises that spiritual growth comes not from accumulating information but from allowing truth to penetrate the heart through prayer, sacramental life, and faithful practice.

As St. Francis de Sales reminds us, the devout life is possible in every state — what matters is not extraordinary circumstances but extraordinary love applied to ordinary duties. This teaching invites precisely that kind of response: a deepening of one's relationship with God through understanding and practice, sustained by the rich resources of the tradition.