We Must Purify Ourselves of Affection for Useless and Dangerous Things


23: “We Must Purify Ourselves of Affection for Useless and Dangerous Things”
                It is a mistake to tell students that things like sports, parties, nice clothes, movies, or music are, in and of themselves, evil. It is often the nature of youth to test those boundaries and to experiment in spite of the words of their elders and teacher. Perhaps the better path is to teach the rational thinking skills needed to critically discern the usefulness of such things in the pursuit of Sainthood or Devotion. That is, if our affection for these things limits us to those things, themselves, then it is our attachment to material things that is the problem… not the thing themselves. Our job as teachers, then, should not be to warn them or punish them; instead, it should be to teach them to aim higher than the material thing itself. We are, after all, made for much more than the material world.

We have inclinations to gaze at Beauty and to Love it, but imagine the one who created that Beauty... in Him there is True Beauty. (photo. P. Smith)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Tenth Meditation: The Election and Choice the Soul Makes of a Devout Life

Image
18: “The Tenth Meditation: The Election and Choice the Soul Makes of a Devout Life” It is rational to desire Peace and harmony as opposed to discord and brokenness. Heaven, necessarily, is characterized by a unity of Peace that can only be achieved through the transcendent imagination and Love of God. (University of Portland. photo: P. Smith)                 It has been said before that Jesus is a gentleman and would never force Himself upon us in any way. An encounter with Jesus and the devout life will always, at the end, be a choice we make. Otherwise, we cannot “look like” God. God, after all, is rational and free, and if we are “forced” to choose Him, then we lose our rational thinking and free will. De Sales contrasts the pains of hell with the Peace of Heaven. He offers us an image of a rational choice we are free to make. It makes sense to habituate right action in our younger students, but we a...
Read more

Conclusion and Spiritual Bouque

Image
7: “Conclusion and Spiritual Bouquet” The conclusion to a meditation should always be done in humility...in awe of the one Whom you have encountered. (photo. P. Smith)                 These meditations must conclude with “the greatest possible humility”, and De Sales offers us three acts with which we must end and extend our meditation. If the meditation or encounter with Jesus was like a Beautiful garden through which we just walked, we should recall that one never leaves a Beautiful garden without carrying with them a few flowers to share with the world outside. As we leave our meditations, our three acts are thanksgiving, offering, and supplication. That is, we should be ever-thankful for His Grace, we should offer Praise, and we should implore His Mercy. The meditations we do are not simply so we can grow in the devout life; they are for the world to benefit from our transformation. As teachers...
Read more

We Must Purify Ourselves of Affection for Venial Sin”

Image
22: “We Must Purify Ourselves of Affection for Venial Sin”                 De Salles writes that “the inward light of the Holy Spirit brightens our conscience”, and as we let that light guides us, the “more clearly and distinctly we see [our] sins”. Sin disrupts relationship with Self, Other, Nature, and God, and as those relationships are disrupted, we stray from our True image and likeness. That is, as we sin, we look less and less like God who is perfect Loving relationship. We should detest the sins we commit because of the damage they cause, but De Salles recognizes that thought we may never be fully free from sin, we can practice to detest them. We cannot expect our students to be perfect and free from sin, but we can help them to see the damage that sin causes and to let go of any affection for those sins. That may be the beginning of a holy life. Venial Sin tends to be a fixation of a material ...
Read more