Calming Words

There are days where anxiety seems to jump on our shoulders and beats us on our head.  It is hard to ignore.  And in our anxiety, sitting and not worrying does not seem to be an option:  We want to do SOMETHING!!  God put in my heart the sins He sees in the world; what should I do?

I try, in times like these, to pray not that I might figure out what to do, but to ask God:  What (if anything) do You want me to do?  And if I can be humble enough, I’ll take the time to read His Word.  There is where He often shows me His solutions to my anxieties, as he did today.

With thought about the state of the world and what should I do in my heart, I read the reflections on today’s Gospel in The Better Part (Meditation 187, Lk10:25-37).  The Gospel begins with the lawyer asking: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and Jesus responding with the commandments to love God and neighbor.  And when the lawyer persists: “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, who helped the injured man by the side of the road, when others had passed him by.

The words from The Better Part calmed my anxieties over what can be done for this sinful world.  These words from the Gospel meditations spoke to me:

  “But we are not satisfied with simplicity.  We pester Him for clarification.  “Yes, but who actually is my neighbor? …”  And He obliges us with further explanations, with the explanation given by the words and examples of thousands of saints, by the teaching of the Church in every age, by the nudges of our own conscience … And still we find it hard to learn the lesson.  One would venture to think that perhaps we don’t really want to learn it.  What holds us back from deciding once and for all to make Christ’s standard our own?  The complicated shadows of self-absorption have become too comfortable; the simple, bright light of Christ’s truth hurts our eyes.  But in our hearts we know what we should do.  The time has come to pack up our books and leave the classroom behind; the lesson of how to live only makes sense when we let it change the course of our life.”

“Jesus (says):  Life is so short….. Open your eyes and your heart to the people around you.”

(And we pray):  “How I yearn for clarity of mind!  Life seems so complicated sometimes, Lord.  I know it’s because I’m too self-absorbed.  Help me, teach me, send me the wisdom of Your Spirit, clean out the junk drawer of my soul.  I want to be completely free to live life as You created me to live it.”

Remember that the Christian life is one of action, not of speech and daydreams.  Let there be few words and many deeds and let them be done well. – St. Vincent Palliotti.