Where do your hands, feet and eyes bring you? - Daily Reflections March 6,2014

LETTING GO

 

In the year 2010, a movie entitled 127 Hours starring James Franco hit the movie screens. It was about an adventurous young man named Aron Ralston who, on April 25, 2003, went mountain climbing in Utah’s Canyonlands.  He reached a spot where boulders are suspended, wedged between the walls of rock. As he descended, he slipped. Along with him a boulder fell and fortunately (or unfortunately) arrested his fall but pinned his right arm against the canyon wall, trapping him. He yelled for help but to no avail. After more than five days (127 hours to be exact), he decided to do the unthinkable. With his pocket knife, he began to slowly cut through his right arm to extricate himself from the boulder and from a slow and painful death. Today, Aron Ralston goes around sharing his inspirational story with a stump of his right arm as testimony.

       Listen to the words of Jesus: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit does he show who gains the whole world and destroys himself in the process?” Jesus is not legitimizing self-hatred. Jesus is saying we must be more than willing to do an act of spiritual amputation rather than persist in sin.

       In the writings of St. Augustine, sin is described as satisfying our longing for the eternal God with something less than God. God has placed in the human heart an ache for the Infinite. Sin is trying to fill this infinite vacuum with the finite. Bishop Fulton Sheen defined sin as trying to satisfy our thirst for the Infinite from the teacup of finite satisfactions. Holiness is preferring the whole, permanent and irreplaceable over the partial, temporary and replaceable.

       Isn’t that what Aron Ralston did? Faced with mortal danger, Ralston’s life flashed in front of him. In a dream or premonition, he saw a vision of his unborn son. This gave him the will to endure the pain of mutilating his own arm to free himself for the life and freedom he now enjoys. Fr. Joel Jason

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: With our hands, feet and eyes, we can soothe our ache for the eternal with the ephemeral. Where do your hands, feet and eyes bring you?

 

Fill me, Lord, and satisfy my longing for You. Help me to let go of those things which lead me to sin.