Feed my sheep

When those who are tending Christ’s flock wish that the sheep were theirs rather than his, they stand convicted of loving themselves, not Christ. And the Lord’s words are a repeated admonition to them and to all who, as Paul writes sadly, are seeking their own ends, not Christ’s.
 
Do you love me? Tend my sheep. Surely this means: “If you love me, your thoughts must focus on taking care of my sheep, not taking care of yourself. You must tend them as mine, not as yours; seek in them my glory, not yours; my sovereign rights, not yours; my gain, not yours. Otherwise you will find yourself among those who belong to the ‘times of peril,’ those who are guilty of self-love and the other sins that go with that beginning of evils.”

So the shepherds of Christ’s flock must never indulge in self-love; if they do they will be tending the sheep not as Christ’s but as their own. And of all vices this is the one that the shepherds must guard against most earnestly; seeking their own purposes instead of Christ’s, furthering their own desires by means of those persons for whom Christ shed his blood.

From a treatise on John by Saint Augustine, bishop

Although the audience of this writing appears to consist of pastors within the Church, this section from today's Office of Readings reminds me of an important and easily-forgotten truth. As a husband, I must think of myself primarily as shepherd of the flock entrusted to me: my family. It is far too easy to get wrapped up in what I think other family members should do and how their decisions affect me. It puts things in a very different light when I remember this other way of thinking of my loved ones and our roles in each others' lives.

A thought or two is also called for regarding self-love. St. Augustine is obviously using the term very differently from how we have come to embrace it today. We are seeing great emphasis on how important it is to accept that I'm a flawed human being and not hate myself for that. There is also a popular approach that suggests that I  must look to my own needs ahead of those of others. I have seen both of these perspectives applied appropriately and also misused. Living a life of healthy balance between my needs and others means that I will draw appropriate boundaries for both my benefit and the good of those I love, and an inner conviction of my lack of worth can drive me to many unhealthy types of decisions, both consciously and otherwise. Yet it's also possible to exalt myself, using self-love as a rationale for justifying my viewpoint in conflict with others. Augustine is obviously using the term self-love to refer to this type of self-indulgence by which the pastor places his own well-being over the needs of the flock, or his desire for personal glory above his striving to glorify Christ.

The importance of applying these ideas appropriately should be obvious, but I'm going to speak to them anyway. I must not interpret and respond to my family members' behaviors and needs primarily based on their effect on me. It's easy to think that it's all about me, when it really isn't at all. Yet this becomes a self-perpetuating thought-feeling-behavior habit that interferes with living and loving as we're called. It isn't that my family members are pulling my chain, or that they're inconsiderate. Yes, we may have some conflicts to resolve, but it's way easier to do that - to want to address them in the first place, and then to approach the situation in a helpful way - when I apply the proper perspective to my own thinking.

It is our underlying beliefs about ourselves and those around us that form the context in which we understand and respond to everything. These are the chief driver of our personal happiness (or lack), and the single area most directly under our control, as opposed to the circumstances to which we most often attribute it. Yes, our situations have very real repercussions on our emotional state, but these are often beyond our control and don't play as deep and lasting a role as our underlying beliefs do. When we focus on our happiness - the "outflow," to apply a concept from Oswald Chambers in a slightly different context - and on the way that others' actions directly and outwardly affect us, we fail to address our own foundational thoughts and attitudes, which most basically and profoundly effect our satisfaction with life and provide us the tools we need to deal with others' actions and our circumstances most effectively.

It's a bit like a sports team that focuses on winning to the exclusion of preparing to execute the actions that produce the greatest chance for victory.