Soul Archives - Meditate Like the Saints

TRANSCRIPT:

Good afternoon, and happy feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

This week I’ve been thinking about unity with the Divine Will, and we all know that that’s only really possible through detachment from things of this world. But it also means detachment from internal things. So, it’s not just material goods- my truck, my car, my house, my golf clubs, whatever. It’s also detachment from internal things. And that means our passions, the things that we love, we enjoy, but also our preferences, and that can manifest itself in many ways.

And I’ve also often thought about our spiritual life as sort of a chalice, right? We have been given this beautiful chalice by God: our soul. And it’s our job to keep it clean and to enlarge it through corporal works of mercy, spiritual works of mercy, prayer, fasting, penance, but also to keep it full of the grace that God bestows on us, because he’s pouring out more grace on us every moment of the day than we could ever imagine.

And so, we want to enlarge that chalice and we want it to be full. And when we sin, of course, it’s like we’re dumping everything out and we’re filling it up with muck. But it occurred to me this last week, thinking about detachment, that it’s not just a question about keeping it free of filth, but it’s also keeping it free of all sorts of other things. All of those attachments that we have to the things of this world, whether it’s a love for food or drink or things that are by themselves not sinful, but that we become attached to. It could be human respect, it could be getting our way, it could be having people treat us the way we always want to be treated.

Whatever that attachment is, it’s like when you see those science experiments where they fill up a glass or vase with rocks, and then they fill it up with gravel, and then they fill it up with sand, and you keep putting more and more in, and then finally you’re able to pour a little bit of water into that chalice. But it’s a tiny amount of water compared to what it would be if it were just free of all of those external things.

So I’ve begun looking at myself and saying, “I want to get all those big rocks, all that little gravel, all of that sand that, yeah, I’ve crammed it in there, but I want to get it out so that there’s more room for the grace of God, so that I have more capacity to absorb what it is that He’s trying to send me.”

Maybe you’ll laugh at this, maybe it’s a simplistic sort of thing, but it’s a visual that’s really helped me to understand the degree to which my attachment to things of this world- even my own preferences for things that are not necessarily evil- poses an obstacle in my relationship with God. Have a great day.

TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning gentlemen. So, my insight video for this week is talking about what we really mean when we are rating our activities. What really is a ‘3’ when we’re evaluating our efforts towards something? And one of the things that we talked about on our call today was that my ‘3’ is not someone else’s ‘3’.

So, when I look at the lives of the saints and I see them bilocating or levitating, well, that that’s probably not where I am in my spiritual life. So, I need to make an honest, humble evaluation of where I am.

What does the soil of my soul look like? If my soul is the soil in which God the Sower is going to work, what does that soil look like? A gardener is focused on aerating his soil and fertilizing it and making sure it’s the best possible quality and that it’s fresh and that it’s ready for that seed to do what it’s supposed to do.

So, what is the condition of my soul, the soil? What have I done to it that might make it uninhabitable for the seed? What have I done to it that would make it not be as productive and as fertile as it should be? So, evaluating the ‘3’ of any given activity- have I really done my very best? Am I pursuing that kind of accountability and measurability with the same zeal that I would in business, where many of us are accustomed to measuring? We have metrics, we have goals, and we’re very precise with those things.

So, how am I really doing there? And what score really is appropriate for my activities and where I really am? Taking that same kind of approach to my spiritual life that I might to my health or my business. That’s my reflection for today, and I hope that it was helpful for you.