This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
Too often in our spiritual life, we live the life of skimmer bugs, scooting around on the top of the water held together tenuously by molecular cohesion. We find ourselves disturbed by every ripple and wave, and focused only on what can be seen on the surface.
To put a dramatic but accurate point on it, this is the realm of Satan, the “world” dominated by the “prince of this world” of whom Jesus speaks (cf. Jn. 12:31, Jn. 16:11). Satan’s most effective tools dwell here–such as his technique of both dazzling and terrifying through appearances.
Both the first reading and Gospel passage from today caution against different manifestations of an excessively surface-focused, or superficial, attitude. St. Paul warns against the terror that can come from expectation of apocalyptic cataclysm, based on false signs or utterances. And the Gospel warns against efforts to appear good or holy, all the while neglecting the attitudes of the heart.
A different kind of superficiality can afflict us as well: The tendency to focus solely on exterior habits of virtue, while neglecting the deep transformation of our hearts. We think that by practicing this or that aspect of self-discipline or asceticism, the habit itself will work the transformation from the outside in. Then, as we inevitably stumble and fall, or fail to remain consistent in these habits, we become discouraged and consider our spiritual life a lost cause.
This discouragement, which comes from too superficial a notion of holiness, is another arrow in the devil’s quiver that he uses to take advantage of a soul with too much focus on the external surface of things.
Of course, working on our habits of virtue and working against habits of vice is critical for a healthy spiritual life, but this effort should be the flowering of a transformation that works from the inside out. And how does the transformation begin from the inside? Through the formation of the greatest habit of all: Real time dedicated daily to God in prayer, and frequent reception of the sacraments.
False outside-in transformation becomes real inside-out transformation by the very fact that we give God this time, even if our prayer time is filled with involuntary distractions, even if we do not sense any immediate fruit from our prayer. It is not magic. It is something far more powerful, beautiful, and mysterious than magic. Magic is impersonal. What occurs in our hearts, imperceptibly and almost in spite of ourselves, is the action of the protagonist of our spiritual lives, the Person of God Himself, God the Holy Spirit.
When we build our efforts to become better people on this solid bedrock, we little by little defeat superficiality in our lives, with its terrors and bedazzlements; little by little, we plunge deep into the heart of God. Little by little, we are less shaken by the absurd atrocities that occur in the world at the political level, by “wars and rumors of wars” (cf. Mt. 24:6).
And we come to the deep conviction that God, the Lord of our hearts and of all of history, has not only the story arc of the universe, but also that of our own spiritual growth well in hand. And we fall in love with Him.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Talk with Jesus about the things in your own life and in the broader world that frighten and perturb you. Ask Him if, despite surface appearances, He has them well in hand, and to help you to come to trust this, deeply and practically. Ask Him to transform you so that that things that most move His heart become those that move yours, instead of the superficial realities in life that at times seem so potent.
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