THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING HEART
Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Scriptural Readings: Genesis 1:20-2:4a; Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Mark 7:1-13.
My dear encountered couples:
Jesus makes us think today. When he tells the Pharisees that they carried out the externals of the law but lacked the love that should be the basis of everything they did, he might also be speaking to us.
It is so easy to carry out our religious practices without thinking of what we are doing, without having any heart in it. Saying our morning and night prayers, praying before meals, praying the rosary, even offering Mass can all become rote things that we carry out like robots.
Are we thinking of what we are doing, is our attention upon the God we are doing them for, is it love that moves us to do it? Or have habit and feelings of obligation taken control? Do we do what we do out of love for God, or for a multiplicity of other reasons?
We all know it is possible to look like we are doing something well while inside we aren’t paying attention to what it is that we are doing. We are professionals when it comes to daydreaming about something other than what we are engaged in doing.
Lent is fast approaching. It is a good time for us to examine our actions and our motives. Is Jesus speaking to us when he quotes an Old Testament passage to the Pharisees?
“This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.”
