A retreat priest once asked our Sisters to reflect on the fact that if we are honest with ourselves, perhaps we are not so much afraid of failing to be great as of our very calling to greatness. Indeed, it can be overwhelming to realize that, weak as I am, I am meant for greatness. In what does this greatness consist, and how can we possibly achieve it? And indeed, why should we desire it in the first place?

During one of his World Youth Day talks, Pope Francis encouraged young people to “get off the couch” and to be willing to do great things for God in the world. He warned against seeking happiness in the comfort and ease that can be found by “escap[ing] to the world of video games and spend[ing] all kinds of time in front of a computer screen.” He told the young people: “When we opt for ease and convenience, for confusing happiness with consumption, then we end up paying a high price indeed: we lose our freedom.”

What a powerful statement! If we live our lives seeking what is comfortable and easy, if we refuse to seek the greatness and holiness for which God made us, we choose ultimately to sacrifice our own freedom. We become enslaved to our own comfort and worldly enjoyments. We lose the freedom to be in intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, who, as Pope Francis said, “is not the Lord of comfort, security, and ease,” because we allow ourselves to be consumed by things that distract us from Him. We can prefer the easy unreality of our technology to the reality of our own need for conversion in Jesus Christ.

Since we can so easily fall into these trends of the surrounding culture, how can we overcome a tendency in ourselves to the vices of mediocrity and pusillanimity (“smallness of soul”)? The antidote is the virtue of magnanimity, which literally means, “having a large soul.” It means to seek to do great things in and for God, recognizing our abilities, gifts, and talents as a gift from God to be used for His glory, not squandering them like the one talent coin buried in the field in Christ’s parable (Matthew 25:14-30). This virtue goes hand in hand with the virtue of humility because we recognize the truth that everything good in us is a beautiful gift entrusted to us by God and that He is able to raise it to a level of supernatural greatness and glory.

The confidence that magnanimity brings allows us to live in the freedom of a life lived for God and not solely for ourselves. And in the depths of our hearts, do we not all desire to live in freedom rather than in fear? If we allow ourselves to be stretched by God through continual conversion in the life of virtue, if we refuse to drift through life by seeking only easiness and comfort, if we let Christ draw us into a deep and lasting intimate relationship with Himself and His Father, we will find ourselves desiring more and more to live for Him. We will seek greatness rather than mediocrity for His sake and not solely for our own. And living our life for Him, even in difficulties, we will find the freedom, joy, and peace for which we had always desired.

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Sr. Mary Martha Becnel is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.