Everyone knows the feeling of working while their heart is secretly somewhere else. “Being there” requires more than bringing our body along. Our life isn’t just shaped by where we go, what happens to us, or even what we do. Most of life is defined by what we attend to. This means attention is not just a peripheral feature. In fact, it is central: What holds our attention reveals what we love, what we serve, and ultimately who we are becoming.
I propose attention as a lens to interpret and integrate Catholic perspectives on the human person. It does not replace the standard categories like intellect and will, but shows where they converge. Attention is an act of the heart: Love, values, habits, dispositions… they all become visible together. It is diagnostic and integrating, revealing how the person is ordered, toward what, and by whom.
Attention begins with a simple but demanding truth: you cannot give what you do not have. To be present to God or to another person requires that one possess one’s attention in some real sense. But this possession can’t be confused with absolute ownership or mastery. Attention is never fully under our command, nor should it be. To claim total control over attention is to misunderstand both the human person and the moral life.
When attention is imagined as entirely self-governed, it collapses inward. It quickly becomes an isolating hell. Absolute attentional control fosters self-absorption, distortion, and closes our horizons. On the other hand, charity requires interruption. God and neighbor must be able to break in! A child’s cry, a beautiful sunset, a moment of grace… These all redirect and demand attention from our self-directed life. This interruption is not a failure of our personal agency, but the very condition for love! A fully Christian life presupposes the self is not sovereign over its field of concern.
This is how attention parallels the will. As Aquinas notes, it is directed politically rather than despotically. Likewise, attention cannot be mastered directly. We may find moments of intentional focus helpful and even necessary, but long term possession of our attention can only come through formation of the person as a whole.
By formation I mean the acquisition and internal ordering of values: ordo amoris. Formation is not behavioral or procedural. It is ontological. To be formed is to take on Christ’s loves so they reorganize the interior. This ordering determines what naturally draws attention, what holds it, and what can rightly redirect it. Attention, as the orientation of the heart reveals our true values, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Attention follows love, it does not lead it. This is Augustin’s insight: amor meus pondus meum. Love is the weight that inclines the soul. Attention falls where love inclines.
From this rightly ordered love, presence becomes possible. Presence is not produced by technique, discipline, or introspective control. It is the fruit of attention that has been correctly ordered. It is this ordering that allows us to live in the moment with our full attention, but without self-absorption. We can be open to interruption without the risk of fragmentation. Presence, in this sense, is not just self-possession but availability according to ordered values.
