At
Friday morning Masses I usually have a good number of people in
attendance. Once in a great while that is not the case; today was one of
those days. In fact, today, I had only one of the faithful in
attendance. There is something significant about this, especially today.
Today, you see, is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is
the day in which we are supposed to deepen our devotion to Christ
because we recognize the great love He has for us. Yet, the low
attendance at Mass was quite vivid. No, I do not think it was anything
more than mere coincidence, but it was definitely an illustration of the
state of things in the Church today.
All
over the world, the faith of Catholics is weakening; both laity and
clergy. It seems that most are going about their daily lives with little
to no recognition of the things of God. I wonder just how many Catholics even know that it is the feast of Sacred Heart today? There are
liturgical calendars that they have, there are numerous sites on the
internet that can point it out, it is not hard to discover this.
Besides, the celebration of Sacred Heart is always the second Friday
after Trinity Sunday. Yet, it seems people are not paying enough
attention to our faith to notice important days like this one.
I
am reminded of the passage in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus is giving
the prediction of the destruction of the Jewish temple in the first
century and He says, "because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love
will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12, emphasis mine). This is indeed what we are experiencing
today. No one doubts that there is an increase in wickedness, both
inside and outside the Church. Yet we do not always make the immediate
association that an increase in wickedness also leads to weakening of
our love for God and neighbor. The cause is simple: the only reason we
"increase wickedness" is because we are enjoying it. Whenever we are
enjoying wickedness the result will be spending less time enjoying
righteousness, and all righteousness comes from love of God and
neighbor.
It would be comparable to a
husband and wife's marriage going bad. First something draws them away
from their commitment to each other. Second, they grow in their devotion
to that "other" thing. Third, their love for each grows even colder, to
the point of where they likely say "I don't love you anymore" (because
they have chosen to love something else more). Fourth, they end up in
divorce. The same pattern is followed in our relationship with God.
Attracted by other things (and there are a million of them out there
today to do this) we are drawn away from our commitment, and then our
love grows cold.
Here we arrive at a moment of necessary honesty: let us each admit (and say it out loud if you can), "I
do not love Jesus as much as I should, and it is because I do not fully
appreciate His love for me." What better day to renew our love and
commitment to the Lord than on this solemnity? We are told in Scripture
that we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Yet, the
inverse is also true, if we do not truly know His love for us, we will not
truly love Him. With the fact that there are extreme consequences to ignoring
this great need (remember that "Hell" thing?), we absolutely must not
say "yeah, that's important, but I don't need to increase my commitment to the Lord".
I
am not a "big and famous" blog writer, but I do have a number of people
who read these posts quite regularly. Once in a while something touches
people a bit more and they send it out to others. I once had a post get
almost 5000 views in a few days! I wonder what this one will do (I
suppose if I get another 5000 views it will say people do care about
it). After all, if it is true that "the love of most is growing cold" today,
then most who read this will not consider it to be very important. I will admit it
will be heartbreaking to see the spiral of waning devotion continue, and
I do not think that I alone can stop it. But we, together, can. You can
commit yourself to renewing your devotion right now (in actual behavior, not just in word!). You can tell
others about it (and maybe sending them a link to this post will help?).
Not all will respond, but for those who do, we can have an impact on Christ's Church and the whole world.
