Daily Reflections- February 23, 2012

THIS WILL MEAN LIFE FOR YOU

 

We all know how it feels — joyless days, dejection, disappointment, anger, resentment. We all know, too, where they lead us to — withdrawal from society, burying our heads in the sand of hate, hiding from friends, putting on a long face, and avoiding all forms of social interaction.

Henry David Thoreau wrote about going to his hideaway in the woods called Walden Pond. He wanted “to put to rout all that was not life!”

Yesterday, we entered seriously into our own, grander version of Walden Pond. We sort of retreated from the world. We paused awhile and considered how we may put to rout not only that which is not life but also that which causes downright death — the death of our soul.

How do we experience this kind of death? First in my list is the lack or absence of love. Two things are absolutely needed, Sigmund Freud says, for mental health: love and work. We need to experience loving others and being loved in return. Even neonatal and longitudinal studies have confirmed this over the past many decades. Newborn babies who were cuddled, exposed to a warm breast and placed near a beating human heart within 48 hours after being born, stood better chances of growing up psychologically whole and emotionally well-adjusted.

Second in my list is living like one is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong — behaving as if whatever choices I make in my unbridled freedom can never be anything but right. This means nobody outside of me has the right to tell me what to do.

The third in my list is going it alone, doing a Lone Ranger, and cutting myself off from others, including God.

Let us hear it from today’s First Reading. We are given a choice between life and prosperity, death and doom. The Holy Book gives us the antidote to spiritual death. In place of the three listed above, we are told to love the Lord, heed His voice, and hold fast to Him. “That,” the passage says, “will mean life for you.” Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: When tragedy strikes, do you embrace it as an opportunity to choose life? Or do you choose doom?

 

I choose You, Lord, over all things and persons. I open myself to Your work in my life.