Don't pay the ransom

I haven't been kidnapped. I think my sister blogger is in the same boat, but work has overwhelmed my life right now. I am trying to keep my prayer life from becoming the shambles my personal life is at the moment. Just because my refrigerator only contains a lemon, one raw egg and some very old milk doesn't mean that my spiritual life should, too, and Mass nearly every day has helped.

I'm trying to discern a lesson in this overload of work, some just a part of life, some unfairly imposed by a panicky boss. It's pretty easy to see how I can walk more closely with Christ when I am emotionally neglected or attacked or misunderstood or rejected. But how can I find the Cross in a big old pile of paperwork on my desk, a work pace that threatens to cause a mistake with someone else's (major) money, and deadlines running up and smacking me in the face? I have to look at people who distract and hurt me with the love that the Lord gives to me and to them, but work?  You can't love work, so how can you grow in this challenge?

 

Body and soul

Tomorrow is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene (this blog product links differently, so, sorry, no links, look her up yourself). To all those sillies who say the Church has suppressed her "true" story (such as the Dumb-Vinci idea that she married Jesus, or at least shacked up with him), I say pfeh.

What I especially love about this saint is that, no matter what the actual facts of her sinful life before she met Jesus, her few recorded words and actions in Scripture are those of a woman passionately in love. The sensualists of today presume that therefore she must have acted sexually in response, but we know as Christians that she loved Jesus with all her soul. Interestingly, another place I hear such passionate love glowing in Scripture is in many of the psalms of David.

The transforming power of God didn't rob her of her passion! Her former life may have been all about the passions of the body, but after she met Him, she didn't have to change; she was still passionate, but it was the passion of the soul, the Bride, for its Bridegroom. 

One of the choices of the first Mass reading for the day is this

Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer.
"I will rise now and go about the city,in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves. "
I sought him, but found him not.
The watchmen found me,as they went about in the city.
"Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"
 Scarcely had I passed them,when I found him whom my soul loves.
 
Canticle of Canticles 3:1-4 

Lucky me, I'm the lecter. I hope I don't cry.

UPDATE: Now my brain insists on singing the 1940's standard "Body and Soul." I grew up hearing relatives with a couple of Manhattans in them choosing this number to sing around the piano (only because our piano was too small to climb up on, or they would have done a Helen Morgan). Here're the lyrics. Some of them work kind of well as prayer, don't they?

My heart is sad and lonely
For you I sigh, for you dear only
Why haven't you seen it
I'm all for you body and soul
 
I spend my days in longin'
And wondering why it's me you're wronging
I tell you I mean it
I'm all for you body and soul
 
I can't believe it
It's hard to conceive it
That you turn away romance
Are you pretending
It looks like the ending
Unless I could have one more chance to prove, dear
My life a wreck you're making
You know I'm yours for just the taking
 
I'd gladly surrender myself to you body and soul
My life a wreck you're making
You know I'm yours for just the taking
I would gladly surrender myself to you body and soul

(composed by Paul Whiteman, Johnny Green et al)

Will and sin

I kept running across EWTN Live while watching TV last week. It featured Fr. Thomas Dubay as the guest talking about a new series he filmed called "Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer." During his conversation with Fr. Pacwa, they discussed, in response to audience questions, the difference between emotions and will in reference to sin.
 
In summary, a felt emotion is not a sin. A willed dwelling on it can become sin, as well as the acting-out of the emotion. So, I can feel impatient, and snap at someone. Sin. I can feel impatient, and think murderous thoughts about the person, reviewing the "shoulda woulda coulda's" of how I think the conversation should have gone. Sin. Or I can feel impatient and set it aside or offer it up or blow it off. No sin.
 
I realized a mistake I've been making lately. While I'm at least mature enough not to ask God to make the other person not so thoroughly irritating (!), I have not asked God for help to recognize the emotion and deal with it internally, instantly and in charity. Instead, I have been asking Him to make me not impatient. It's as though I feel unable to control the progression of emotion-to-will-to-action.
 
Better it would be if I would recognize that I will be impatient, and to see it, smile at it (internally, or I'd be smiling like a loon all day) and set it aside in gratitude for the Peace that passeth all understanding. 

How do you short-circuit that path in yourself?


 

Coals of Kindness

Here's a puzzle in Christian charity for you:
 
Somebody has been unfairly short, sharp and crabby to me. Trying to emulate my patron saint, I've tried to speak mildly and kindly in return, with some success. 
 
At the same time, I have piles of kind things I have done for this person, that I think they've forgotten were coming,  ready to unload over the weekend. That will chap their hide big time and will probably make them even sharper and crabbier in guilt and retaliation.  Humanly speaking, it also won't hurt my ego any to be the giver of so many good deeds, but since I didn't set up the situation, I can give them freely and cheerfully and step back and watch the effect. Right? Wrong?
 
Somewhere in there is sin.
 
I don't know how to change this pattern. I am tempted to hold back the good deeds, so that the bad behavior can be ignored, passed by without my giving in to returning bite for bite. But shouldn't I be able to give what I already had ready to give? How can I avoid the smugness that will come with the giving?
 
Solve that, my friends!
 

Which yoke was that, again?

Today's gospel reading is a doozy --

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Well, I'm surrounded by yokes. Which yoke is Jesus' yoke? There are a couple of good ways to answer that question:

1) It's the yoke he tells me about, revealing it either through direct revelation or through Scripture.
2) Even better, it's the yoke that I see him already shouldering. It's like trying to deduce which is my friend's car -- it's the car where I see him sitting behind the wheel.

But how do I avoid the seduction of taking on yokes that aren't His? There are lots of good yokes out there, things that are good and beneficial to do. But it's important for me to stay away from yokes that are assigned to someone else (ah, the pride of supposing that everything is up to me). It's also important to steer clear of yokes that God wants to shoulder on His own. Again, I fall into believing that if I see a need, it's up to me to fill it, even if it's something that only God can do.

Easy to say. How do I know, in this "more is better" culture, what to stay away from so I have the resources to do what God is really sending my way?