Behind Closed Doors
Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
This gospel passage is right down our alley. Jesus tells his disciples not to “perform religious acts for people to see,” and not to pray “on street corners in order to be noticed.”
If there is anything most Catholics seem to prefer it is secrecy and privacy when it comes to their religious doings. Many seldom like to talk openly about God and their relationship with him. One might even suspect some Catholics are atheists when God is really the main one they live for.
If you are like that, Jesus is on your side today. He tells us to go to our rooms, shut our doors, and pray in secret and private.
Again, it is something deeper that Jesus is hinting at. It is our intentions, our reasons for our religious activities that he is trying to get us to purify. Are our prayers and Masses out of love for God, out of real love for people, or for less honorable purposes?
Jesus is trying to make us give thought to just why we pray, why we come to Mass, why we give to charity, why we do just about anything that we do.
An act might appear good on the surface; it might win us praise, acclaim, and a good name. But that which makes any act virtuous or vice-filled is the intention which motivates us to do it. God knows the secrets of our hearts. He knows what goes on behind the doors of our minds. He reads us all very clearly. We might fool others, we might even achieve great success in fooling ourselves, but never can we fool God.
Your intentions, your reasons for doing what you do! What are they?
