Some physical things are kind of like the fictional blob from a couple of long-ago movies about an alien amoeba that consumes people and grows and grows and grows, seemingly unstoppable.

A lava flow that slowly advances and threatens a town, for example. Or a mint plant in a garden that spreads underground in all directions with singular determination. Oppressive and expanding political regimes at times become blob-like as they spread in a violent way.

And then there are spiritual blobs.

There’s an amusing and insightful saying that pride doesn’t leave until an hour or two after someone dies. I would put selfishness/self-centeredness into that same category — with an even-longer extension.

Selfishness is described by some as the key dilemma for souls in purgatory — that time when good souls are purged of what still keeps them from being perfect for heaven.

“(A soul’s) selfishness still enchains it,” says Father Maurice Zundel, a mystic featured in the Nov. 4 reflection in Day by Day for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, “and it must rid itself of this selfishness before going to God.”

It’s hard to fight the blob of selfishness. It seems like we can push it back with an heroic act of generosity of our treasure … and it blobs out again the next day or week. We punch into it by assisting someone with our time, doing something we don’t want to do, and soon it fills right back in with a new challenge.

Sometimes we are ankle deep in selfishness, other times we are wading deep in it, and yet again we might dive right into it, turning away from someone else’s needs and God’s invitations to help. The threat of selfishness never seems to go away, and it sticks with a gummy residue.

But the battle against selfishness is a worthwhile fight, and we do not struggle alone. God will help us, but first we must show that we are serious about this spiritual combat. We do that by developing human virtues, which are “habitual and firm” dispositions to do the good, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“Human virtues acquired by education, by deliberate acts and by a perseverance ever-renewed in repeated efforts are purified and elevated by divine grace,” it says. “With God’s help, they forge character and give facility in the practice of the good.”

The Catechism lists four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, along with three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity/love.

“The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity,” it says, and quotes St. Augustine: “Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works.”

Love is the motivation of our vigilant resistance to selfishness. The love of God so evident in Jesus’ life calls our hearts to respond. When we do step out in response to Jesus’ love, it is exciting to discover that we can shrink the blob of selfishness. We can become people of inner strength and light, and we can make a positive difference in our Church, in our families and in our communities.

Excitement is an emotion, so of course it will wane at some point. Temptations to selfishness in old and new ways will ooze out at us again.

As soon as we notice that renewed ‘blob’ attack, we can choose to welcome God’s love as the mainstay of our efforts. Love can revive us when our human spirits start to wilt and temptations to benefit and to please ourselves grow more persistent and louder.

Love – within us here now and more completely in heaven – will be our reward. And we’ll be free of all that horrible, spiritual blob of selfishness.

And unlike the 1958 movie that merely froze the blob, we’ll find God’s happy ending – forever.