Cleaning Your Room

Ever since I made that post yesterday with the note about cleaning my room, this passage has been in the back of my mind:

When an unclean spirit goes out of a person it roams through arid regions searching for rest, but finds none. Then it says, 'I will return to my home from which I came.' But upon return it finds it empty, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings back with itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they move in and dwell there; and the last condition of that person is worse than the first. (Mt 13:43-45)

This bit of teaching has always fascinated me, and I guess I've always given it a psychological interpretation. If we begin (or begin again!) to pursue the interior life seriously, there is often a little euphoria as we try to let go of sins and negative patterns. But if we keep at it, we will soon uncover the more awful demons that we were previously medicating ourselves against.

Inner & Outer

I'm always fascinated by the inter-relation between the inner and outer person. On the one hand, I've often known people whose circumstances are dire, or whose bodies are falling apart, but who have robust and fruitful spirits.

On the other hand, if I need to get a fresh start with prayer, it always helps to clean my room first.

Anxiety

One of the brothers showed up the other day with a great piece of advice. Instead of delegating tasks, he said, concentrate on delegating anxiety.

In other words, if something is someone else's problem, let them worry about it.

Treasure

Old friend Don has had some good posts on mindfulness and living in the present moment these past few days, and they have helped me to think about the Gospel for today, in which the Lord teaches us that where our treasure is, so will our heart be.

For me it's a good examination of conscience for mindfulness to ask myself where my heart is at some point in the day. What are my preoccupations that day? Where do my thoughts seem to drift automatically? How charged are the feelings that follow upon the thoughts? By doing this, I can figure out where my treasure is, and whether it's with the Lord and his work, or with something else.

St. Aloysius

One of the brothers told me that the collect for St. Aloysius is his favorite one of the whole year:

Father of love,
giver of all good things,
in St. Aloysius you combined remarkable innocence
with the spirit of penance.
By the help of his prayers
may we who have not followed his innocence
follow his example of penance.

The prayer admits that we are not yet saints, but that we hope for it.

Death

Yesterday morning I went over the parish grade school to try to drum up some altar servers for the summer months. It's the last few days of school, and the kids were all full of joy and anticipation.

Rightly or wrongly, they see before them nothing but empty time and freedom from care and toil. They long to be freed from all the constraints of the classroom.

I know it's a little morbid, perhaps, but when I left I was thinking about how the children's anticipation of the last day of school would be a beautiful model for how to make the final journey to death. To see nothing before you but peace and freedom and the eternal Silence in which God speaks his one Word.

Enlightenment?

The author of the book of Wisdom speaks of his desire for wisdom:

And I chose to have her rather than the light

This line came up twice in the liturgy yesterday, for the feast of St. Anthony.

Insight is certainly important in the spiritual life, but we can't count on it. The Light of God is so brilliant that we often experience it only as darkness. In prayer we are purified even of our ideas of God, sometimes coming out feeling as if we understand less than before.

This is all against those folks who say that religion is something we use to feel better, at best an exercise in unjustified optimism and at worst, an "opiate of the masses." Anyone who has given themselves to prayer and the obscurity of faith in a real way knows that it leads to its own anguish and struggles.