All or Nothing!

Good Morning Jesus…I know I ought to worship You because morning has broken. I hear the birds singing…they are praising You. But I cannot stop, you see…I have to get the family out the door on time and then I have to wash the dishes, make the beds and put on a load of laundry.

Just a few more minutes, ok Jesus? I know you’re there, but I know you’ll understand. After all, I want to go to Church this morning. I don’t have time to give you right now…you’ll just have to wait until I get there.

The stupid neighbours who blocked me in… the stupid driver in front who wouldn’t go beyond 20 mph this morning! Now, I’m late and I won’t have time to reflect before Mass starts and I won’t get the seat I want.  Grumble, grumble…. I’m on my knees, yet I cannot focus on You.   Sorry, Lord…please take away my distractions.

“Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and I shall be healed”

Not worthy…not worthy!  Is my heart a fit place for You Lord? Even when I ask you to come and make it so? 

Am I giving you my all…my everything?

I have gone to Church, I have said prayers, I have received the Eucharistic Lord…yet what of my heart?

“These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” Matt 15”8-9

For me, this is the main focus of my study of St Paul’s letter to the Colossians this week.  Colossians 2:16-21 is all about St Paul’s warning to the people about losing their focus on Jesus and concentrating on the externals…the feast days and the legalities of the law on appropriate food and rituals.

The Jewish Law had many rules and regulations, which were all so burdensome and did not encourage the people to render their hearts, but to perform some outward action that supposedly demonstrated their devotion to God.

St Paul is very clear in stressing that no external action must be superior to the glorifying of God with the heart!

I am reminded of how Jesus reprimanded the Pharisees and warned people not to act as they do. See Matthew Chapter 23. Further on in this chapter in vs 27, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but inside full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean!

Do you remember the story of the rich, young man in Mark Chapter 10? When he asked Jesus what he could do to enter the kingdom of heaven, he couldn’t do the one thing Jesus asked him to do...to give up everything and follow Him.

This young man obeyed all the commandments, in his own words “from my earliest days”, yet he would be denied heaven because he would not give his everything...his heart.

What does this mean to me? Well, look back at the beginning of my post.  If I am going through the motions, routines and, yes, even going to church, if I am obeying every commandment but my heart is lukewarm…then I am only honouring God with my lips. I am no better than the Pharisees whom Jesus chastised. I am no better than the rich young man… it’s a bit scary to think that heaven could be denied me!

Jesus wants my all...with Him its all or nothing. Lukewarm doesn't cut it! Halfway is midway to nowhere! In her diary, St Faustina writes that Jesus cannot bear a lukewarm heart. It offends Him even more than a cold one.

Well…today is a beautiful new day! A new chance to begin again, to try harder, to lean heavily into His grace. If you find yourself, like me, struggling to keep the fire burning in your heart for Him…do not despair.

 Let us take St Paul’s advice in Colossians 2:6-7 “So then, just as you received Christ as the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness” and  in Colossians 3:2 “Let your thoughts be on things above, not on the things that are on the earth.”

May Jesus fire us up with love for Him so that our hearts may never be lukewarm, but always on fire, a blaze that never goes out.