Almighty God is the conductor of the most beautiful symphony. This
eternal melody reaches to the earth, enfolds us, causes us joy, lifts up
our hearts and minds and souls to Him, our Father.
However, our finite ears do not hear this incredibly melodic symphony.
Not that we are incapable of hearing Heaven's song, for we are. If we
were still within, in the core of our soul, in the beat of our heart, and
constant churning of our brains, we would hear this symphony-we would hear
God's voice.
In this last week I have meditated and contemplated on the "why" of our
inability to hear the song of Heaven, so that we are then motivated to join
in the symphony through our own joys, and more particularly, through our
daily sorrows.
It has been given me to understand that we are not an "advanced"
civilization as we pride ourselves on being. Rather, we are more ignorant,
more distant from God, than our ancestors, than the men and women of other
centuries who did not have the benefit of all the modern conveniences that
we have at our command today.
Our soul is the breath, the life of God. Without the soul, we would not
live. We live and move and think and speak and walk, feel, and every other
emotion you can name, because we are alive! Now, whether we are alive with
God, or without realizing that it is He who gives life, we are literally
living, breathing "computers", for that is the very likeness of our human
brain. The more that the brain is occupied, the greater the drain on the soul's
life and harmony with Almighty God. If we occupy ourselves day and night
with TV, newspapers, motion pictures, videos, video games, computers,
telephones, fax machines, cellular phones and the like, then we put a
mighty drain on the brain which needs to be recharged.
Think of a great big 8 cylinder car whose battery is being drained because
its occupants are using the air conditioning, running the radio, the CD
player or the like, but the car's in park, and the key points to
accessories. If you keep the power going to all of those things for too
long, the battery is going to sputter and die if it is not recharged. The
battery needs to be plugged into another electrical source to regain its
full potential. We are so much more than a battery, but we act as if that is all we are.
We let the modern "toys" of our day and age drain our spiritual life out of
us, because our soul, the very life of our body, cannot be re-charged since
we've blocked off the door for God to reach into our souls.
Eventually, my dear friends, the life of grace, God's life, drains away
and there's nothing left but a walking, talking computer run amok.
We are the victims of our own technology, and we are much worse off for it
than those who lived a century or more before us. We "believe" we're so
progressive, but in reality we've lost touch with the purpose we are on
this earth - we've lost God.
You think not?
This goes far, far beyond the fact that the present crisis in the White
House, the bombings of embassies, the bombs we've used against terrorist
camps in the Mid-East and Africa, are a concern only if they threaten our
good economy. Certainly, the polls (if one puts any credence in those
things) indicate that the vast majority of Americans prefer the status quo
as long as their pocketbook, checking account, savings account, etc., is
humming along with profit.
This is about doing what our Blessed Mother wants us to do, and that is to
turn off the world and turn on God.
It's about that battery/computer of a brain we all have, and the thousands
of things that drain it every day, with no thought whatsoever for
re-charging our soul's level of grace to offset the evils of the world.
It's this drain of soul-energy that is the real crisis, and the fact that
we are faced with numerous crises around the globe only underscores this
fact. Were we in tune with God, with His Most Holy Will, we would not be
in the mess we are in. In fact, I strongly believe that Our Lady's
Immaculate Heart would have already triumphed, and we would be in a totally
different situation-one of holiness on earth, where all men have "good
will" toward God, and not the protestant version of that line referring to
God's "good will" toward men.
God's will is always Good. Ours is not.
In short, what we've done is put ourselves into satan's trap by numbing
our minds and enticing our brains to think up newer and more clever devices
that are supposed to save lives, give us more leisure time to do what we
want, while our cash flow just goes on and on in an endless line of plastic
credit.
What good does any of this do? None!
We need to go back to Sacred Scripture, to the messages given by our
Blessed Mother over many centuries, and take them to heart. We need to
take our toys away from ourselves, and quit draining the energy that God
gives to us, and wants to give in even more abundance.
How do we do this?
Fasting, prayer, frequent Confession, frequent Holy Mass and the reception
of the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion. Everything Our Lady asks at Medjugorje and elsewhere.
We need to think seriously about the fact that many of the youth in the
Church today are not Confirmed, and there's so much emphasis put on the
"social" aspect of the Sacrament, that it has lost any trace of being a
Second Pentecost for the candidate. We let our youth spin out their
teenage years without benefit of this sacrament, which brings to
fulfillment the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit we received at Baptism.
We are left, then, with a decreasing population of men and women who are
old enough to know better than to fall for the silly modernism that is so
often spouted from pulpits. We are left with more than two generations
that are ignorant of the tenets of their faith, and if they are ignorant,
how can they, in teaching in our Catholic schools and RCIA programs,
properly instruct the youth? We are blind, we are leading the blind, and
the generations coming up now are blind, deaf, and dumb to the truths of
the Roman Catholic Church.
Ask a Catholic child who does not attend a parochial school to recite the
Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. Ask that same child to say the Ten
Commandments. Ask the child to recite the Beatitudes, the Cardinal
Virtues, the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Odds are that the child
can't do one of the above, and if pressed to say why, wouldn't even have a
reason.
We are a sorry lot today and God is not pleased.
It would do the world so much good if we were to turn off the TV, the
radio, the CD, the tape machines, stop all the presses, and listen to God.
We need to go into the desert of rejecting the world, to fast and pray as
Christ prayed for forty days and nights, to purge ourselves of the need we
have, the addiction we have, for our technology, and then we would hear God
speak, we would hear that Heavenly symphony, and having heard it, we would
join with it in our daily life in a way that would bring us to Heaven in a
heartbeat!
It would be difficult to do this. There's no doubt about that. Still,
isn't it worth a try?
In this next week, I will be cutting down on the amount of TV I watch,
(which is very little now, that's true), and I will seek, through prayer
from the heart, to go deeper into the mystic life where God speaks, and the
symphony is ecstasy, and the sufferings that we all have can be made into a
most beautiful melody, all of which will bring the Triumph of our Blessed
Mother's Immaculate Heart all the sooner to this poor, befuddled world caught in
satan's lies and snares.
Bill Clinton and his lies, the terrorist camp bombings, the embassy
bombings are perhaps nothing more than "Wag the Dog", but even if they are
fabricated, that in itself is a very sad commentary on this society. Let
us join in prayer that shouts to God, "Enough" of this sinful world filled
with lies and manipulation, terrorism and its ilk. "Enough" of being
deceived by our fellow men. Let us seek to live in harmony with His Will,
let us be His best friend, for dog spelled backward is GOD!