A reflection on the daily readings, for Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, by Father Perry.
+Genesisis setting us up for the answer to the questions: “Why do we get sick?”
Why do we die? Why is there evil in the world? Why are we arrogant, and why do we disobey?
Later on we will even hear an answer to the question: “Why are there so many languages?” (Get ready for Babeling.)
These biblical stories are meant to wrap our minds around these questions and to come up with some answers to accept and then move on.
The real answers are spiritual and interior answers — something more like what Jesus tells us in the Gospel.
Continuing his remarks about clean and unclean, he widens the issue to clean and unclean foods, and in effect he even declares that no foods are unclean.
But then he goes deeper, as usual, and focuses on what indeed makes us clean and unclean.
It’s not about food and stomach but rather heart and soul.
Deep within our interior, in our hearts and souls, is where both good and evil come. Of course, the list Jesus gives is not complete, but it is a pretty darn good list.
And because he claims it is in the heart and soul where these things develop, it behooves us, of course, to pay great attention to the condition of our hearts and souls.
Our feelings are what we usually give much attention to. And sometimes, without realizing that they come and go, can be reasoned with by our intelligence and our spiritual formation.
And they can be controlled.
To only notice our feelings is to allow “the tail to wag the dog,” so to speak.
Once we correctly name our feelings, and even perhaps get some idea as to why we are feeling that feeling, it is to set us up for the real work and the real spiritual task.
This is the beginning of all that evil and sin or that good and love out there. We must wrestle in our hearts and souls with those feelings and then decide what will reign in our hearts and souls.
This is what Antoine de Saint-Exupéry tells us in his novella “The Little Prince.”
He shows why this heart and soul stuff is so difficult and important. He says it like this: “The greatest distance between two points in the whole world is the distance between the head and the heart.”
In scientific terms, it is only about 14 inches. In spiritual terms, it is so distant that some people almost never travel it.
Stuck in the head and stuck in feelings, the negative can sink deep into the heart and soul and can truly defile.
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.
