What is In Your Heart

What is in your heart? How is your conversion progressing? Are you pleased with your spiritual life? Do you feel that God is pleased with your spiritual life? Each day I pray that we all are able to continue moving forward. Each day I pray for more holiness to find and guide us. I know there is not enough goodness in this world. Sometimes my heart is filled with hope and love.

We allow ourselves to be tortured by all types of sins and all types of temptations each day. We allow ourselves to swing on a pendulum between vice and virtue. One minute we’re filled with such virtue and hope, the next we are consumed by vice and debauchery. We often defend our vices with such elaborate erudition that the offense disappears; our minds might accept these rationalizations and justifications but our hearts don’t and God doesn’t. As Christians we must remember to make God the priority in our lives and in our hearts. We must accept our individual faults, failings, and weaknesses. We must continually offer them to God. With prayer and patience we will learn from them. As Catholics we go to Confession, receive God’s absolution, promise not to sin anymore, and yet there we go sinning again. Sinning is easy. The secular world has made it easy to sin; the secular world has made it acceptable to sin. We spend so much of our lives captured within an ever tightening pop culture filled with images and stories of decadence, debauchery, and devilishness. We are hypnotized by stories of marital deceit, sexual scandal. There is nothing new in these stories. They contain the same wreckage and pain; and yet, our pop culture uses these stories of heartache and betrayal to entertain us, to caution us about love.

We need someone to caution us about our pop culture. We need to be reminded about our journey on the path made by Christ. We need someone to remind us to check our progress each day to see where we are in living a life following the ten commandments and the Beatitudes. We need someone to ask us about loving our neighbors.

It is so easy to sin, to abandon God. We do it everyday. Sin is so attractive, seductive, sexy. We live in a society where everything is for sale. The true cost is not always monetary. As Christians we must always remember to guard and protect our souls. Pop culture gives sin the illusion of being powerful, desirable. We must always be willing to confront sin, to avoid it for ourselves and others. We must educate our minds and our hearts against the attacks and abuses of sin. We must not allow our hearts to be corrupted by sin. Each day we receive new models of sin, new examples of vice all pleasantly presented to us in the most fashionable and palatable terms. With prayer we must learn how to reject them.

God offers us mercy and love if we simply, loving obey him. We know what God’s expectations are.

We must avoid vice and sin; we must find goodness and holiness in our hearts and in our lives.

An Observation

Within my heart I sometimes feel a slight hint of inferiority or a twinge of mediocrity when confronted with conspicuous vulgarity and rudeness.

During the last couple of years earnest prayer has entered my life. Praying benefits both the human face and the human soul. Each day my suspension and contempt for commercialism grows. I try to add more fairness and social justice to my life. I am amused and bewildered by the rhetorical games used to try and influence me into buying this product, supporting this cause. Almost every day I confronted with canvassers on the street asking for help to feed the children, save the Chesapeake Bay, save the environment. Everyday I am polite, keep walking. We live in a society where being an impetuous baby, enthusiastically, bombastically is encouraged and where we hope there is someone to keep us out of dangerous mischief. I attend Mass daily because I like how I feel while I am there and immediately after as I leave the sanctuary and return to the brutish world of consumerism and selfishness. Society now is concerned with fetching this objecting, creating that spectacle. Manners, morality, propriety are discarded or labeled hypocrisy by many. It is a time when profanity dominates our lives; violence defines us; our world has duplicated the informality and lawlessness of a toddler’s nursery. Commercialism wants us to be impatient, impertinent fools, buying and wanting recklessly without thought or consideration. Commercialism rewards us by reminding each item we purchase will immediately be out of date, need to be replaced. Commercialism encourages selfishness and jealousy.

I have been foolish: I think a Christian can learn much when we stop talking and simply observe ourselves and people around us with an open mind. I am contrite: I ask myself if I remembered to ask God for forgiveness. Incorporating Christ’s social justice teachings into daily life is easier said than done sometime. Every block there is some new need which asks for a response, monetarily or human acknowledgment. The love which Christ encourages us to develop and share is difficult and in many ways in direct opposition to this culture. It is amazing that after two thousand years Jesus Christ remains a radical, a rebel.

Developing and sharing Christ’s love and fellowship takes time, effort, patience. Charity, Humility, Obedience are difficult to learn and practice. But, they provide a wonderful foundation for a loving relationship with God; they provide a wonderful framework for considering a vocation; they provide an outline to refer to when we prepare for confession.

Christ encourages us to use our hearts, minds, souls to search out the divine within each of us, to seek the good in each of us, to share our goodness, our hope, our faith. The imagination can and should be a tool used to move each one of us closer to God; all that we do should promote this. With adequate contemplation Christ’s social teachings can help improve our lives.

Before the piano sounds, before the wisecrack always remember to pray.

Wednesday In the City

Wednesday afternoon was quite interesting. The weather was pleasant, the sky clear. It was a moment animated by a slowly building hope. At last it seemed as if winter was finally over. Each second seemed to pull the warm temperatures of spring closer. The Cathedral asked the faithful to stop by for Reconciliation.

How patiently the sign waited on the sidewalk as pedestrians walked by searching for office supplies, searching for food, searching for newspapers and magazine. Every now and then a pair of eyes would notice the sign. Some would slow down, others look up the steps.

And there were fire trucks and taxicabs speeding by. And there were people talking of health care, talking of salad, talking of confession. And there were people talking and laughing about office politics, Spring Break, pub food.

There were people protesting this and that. How wonderful it was to see the plump pink pig standing near the water fountain at the corner of the street. How amazing what a difference one plump pink pig could make as several people stopped to taking photographs and videos with their cell phones, with their cameras.

Restaurant windows were filled with individual characters, colorful and animated and yet―

This was a time of motion, of anxious activity. This was a time of looking around, thinking of times past, listening to honking horns, listening to chattering voices, listening to the soft breeze blowing gently, sporadically into some faces.

And some people take time out to sit by and observe the mid day parade.

How great it is to live in the city! How great it is to praise the Lord with all of this activity! How great it is to offer all of this to God! To offer all that eyes see, all that the ears see, all that senses feel―all these and more to God. Lucky are those who find ways to glorify the Lord while doing the ordinary things in their lives. How blessed their lives must be.

The sidewalks are filled with people, people moving, people standing, people gazing, people grazing.

There are people and signs everywhere, signs neon, signs painted, signs handwritten. At times there seems to be more signs than anyone can read and yet―

The need for hope and prayer waits at each intersection, waits within each face observed, each face not observed. The need for peace and love remains constant, remains universal.

And with all of the noise, all of the activity, all of anxiety, all of the angst there is always time to praise and glorify God. There is always time to listen for his call. There is always time to listen to his call.

Remember to praise and glorify the Lord as you walk around the city.

reviewed

Yes, I did go to confession. I was a little apprehensive, a little anxious. My imagination created all types of scenarios. I looked at different areas of my life, examined my mistakes, my sins. I looked at the things that I wanted to stop doing. I tried to forgive myself, tried to tell myself that it would be easy for me to change by myself, that I could avoid sinning again by myself and then there was a great realization, but it occurred softly, gently that I was being manipulated by myself.

I reviewed my life but put certain actions under the remnant of my ethical and moral microscope. Sin pretends to arrive with exceptions; sometimes called explanations, rationalizations, justifications.

Confession rests upon the hearts of faithful men who both love and are in awe of God.

It is unfortunate, considering all the technological advances that humans have not advanced beyond sin.

Confession is not to be avoided; it provides understanding, absolution, and hope.

And since this is the season of Advent with Christmas slowly approaching and several remaining holiday parties to attend, I probably will have to go to Confession again, soon.

Confession is a resource of the faithful; and the faithful are happy to often use it. Thinking is required; silence is required; and after a couple of moments speaking is allowed. Our minds, hearts, and souls are relieved by confession.