The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
We can know all the theology about God, be able to defend the Church and her teachings and yet still not know God. You can run charities and have platforms speaking about the God of the universe, and yet still be envious, arrogant, greedy, and unchaste. It’s easy to think that because we do the things FOR God, we KNOW Him. We could have grown up hearing all the Bible stories, homilies, preaching, singing the worship songs, and yet our hearts can be far from Him. We can be excellent hearers of the word, but not actually doers.
I struggle with gossiping and judging people pretty harshly. One day, a friend and I had just gone to confession where I was telling the priest my struggles in not being able to tame my tongue. The priest responded, “if you constantly judge people, you have no room left to love them.” I work for Jesus! I’m a missionary disciple! I’ve followed Jesus for as long as I can remember and yet, my heart was far from Him! “This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me….” I can get so caught up in my own self-righteousness that I lose love of my neighbor.
See, I think the issue is that we allow the words and love of the Lord to become so mundane in our lives that we forget the meaning of it. If you say the word “spoon” over and over again, it loses its meaning. It’s called semantic satiation, where you lose the meaning of the word after repeating it over and over again. With little things like “spoon” it can be humorous. But with bigger things like, “Jesus loves you,” or “God is the perfect giver of gifts,” when lost of its meaning, becomes more serious. My prayer is that you allow the Father of Lights to once again move your heart to repentance; that His deep love would burn away all impurities and things of this world that stop you from loving your neighbor as yourself and God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Ali Hoffman has a passion for Jesus, the Catholic Church, her family, and investing deeply in community. She served with NET Ministries for two years and after graduating from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota with a degree in Catholic Studies and Family Studies, she moved back home to the great state of Texas where she was co-youth coordinator at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic church in Carrollton, Texas for 6 years. She now travels the globe full time, preaching the Gospel and making disciples.