Sunday, April 23, 2017

Fire in the Heart

Father Donald Haggerty
“Sometimes those who seem most peaceful and secure in religious belief lack a deeper engagement with its truth. There is an absence of fire in the heart for the real mystery of God. The result is a kind of impermeability of the soul to the actual difficulty of seeking God in his personal presence during a lifetime. Certainly the possession of correct belief and fidelity to it are indispensable for religious living. They are ordinarily a source of peace and inner certitude in the soul. But it is the passionate engagement with God that not only makes the life of faith costly but allows it to deepen.”
The Contemplative Hunger

To believe we are further along on the journey than we are is a dangerous, impenetrable and deadening situation. As it has been said, you cannot awaken a person who pretends to be sleeping. It is useful to ask: Why am I into the spiritual life? Is it for the sake of a lovely, consoling image of myself, an identity of holiness? Or am I driven by a ‘fire in the heart’ to know God? 

Have you ever had the experience of being with someone close and familiar to you, perhaps someone you see every day, and suddenly you realize that, although your face and perhaps even your eyes are turned toward that person, you have not really been seeing them. If, upon noticing that, you suddenly ‘open your eyes’, bring yourself to them and to the present moment in a real way, then you have the sense of what is required to regenerate the “absence of fire in the heart for the real mystery of God”. God awaits that moment.
PM

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