There is a phrase, almost a cliché, that keeps coming up in spiritual direction, in conversations with friends (if you are lucky enough to have friends with whom you can have such conversations) and even in the confessional: “Be kind to yourself.” It makes me uneasy and, sometimes, cross.

It makes me uneasy in a number of ways. At the centre of them is the extraordinary idea that we must see ourselves as somehow “worthy (or deserving) of love”. This feels profoundly unchristian to me. The whole glorious point of Christianity is that we do not need to earn or deserve or be worthy of love, we simply receive it – grace upon grace, a lavish free gift, the cup running over and the sweetness of the Lord like honey in the mouth. We are not worthy, we cannot be deserving, but we are indeed loved.

This is deeply liberating; it helps free us from the twin evils of endless introspection and the judgement of others. There are, I’m sorry to have to say, a number of people in my life whom I really struggle and fail to think of as “worthy” of love; but I do not have to compare myself with them – like me, they are not deserving but nevertheless they are loved by God (who is simply a great deal better at loving than I am).