The Distraction of Worldly Concerns
Summary of Headings
The Nature of Distraction
The Importance of Serving God
Lent and Detachment
It's always rather astonishing to contemplate the idea that the people who witnessed this miracle that our Lord had just performed, he cast out the devil, the doves. And some man begins to speak. And immediately people begin to, A, doubt what he had done, saying that he had cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub, which is an obvious distortion of reason, to be able to arrive at a conclusion that they wanted to arrive at, namely that our Lord worked in cahoots with the devil. And the second is to show them more signs. Human nature doesn't change much. Because this is exactly how we always are. We tend to doubt what is evident to our eyes. We tend to look away from what is given to us to see. We tend to turn a blind eye to what is obviously God's attempt to help us, or God's attempt to work with us, or work in this world. And instead we tend to focus on something else. Agendas, politics, noise, whatever. All of those things. This comes particularly home in this day and age, where we have to deal with a world that is so polemically divided. Everybody is at each other's throats all the time. There is nothing but rage and outrage in the internet. There is nothing but noise and chatter from everybody all around us. People are constantly speaking about the latest scandals, the latest problems, the latest wars, the latest events of the day and the like. And then there's always the thoughts and conspiracy theories, and the digging for information about what is behind all of this. Who are the responsible people? Who is to blame, etc. And how far does it go? The problem is, the more that we dig into these things, and the more that we put so much emphasis or attention into this, and the more that we become filled with a justified outrage at these events, or at these situations, we overlook one very, very simple, and very important point, and that is, does it serve God? Does all of this serve God? The reason that the Jews got distracted by our Lord's miracle wasn't because they were looking for Christ to be God or to do miracles. They were looking for, they were looking to catch Him out. They were looking for what was really going on behind the scenes. Where did He really come from? How did He really do that? Like trying to investigate a magician's parlor tricks. I need to know how He did that, not just being marvel at the fact that He did it. They treat Him in that way, but they also treat Him as a political enemy, because they saw things through polemics. They saw things through politics. They saw things through their agendas, or through what they wanted to see, but they did not see with the simple eyes of faith. These things happened. Christ did this action because He is God, and because He showed mercy to a man who was suffering, because He gave him a faculty that he had been deprived of, thanks to this power of the devil. That is not what they focused on. They focused instead on trying to blame Him for doing what He did, on trying to accuse Him of something else, on trying to turn it to their advantage, to some way, to accuse Him of being demonic, which would undermine Him, so that it brings more power and influence into their camp, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, whoever else. That was what they wanted. That was all they wanted. And again, human nature doesn't change much, because our favorite pastime, very frequently, is either to scroll through the news feeds and read all about the latest things, so that we can get to the bottom of it, we can impose our agenda on these events and all these circumstances, or we sit around and collectively discuss them to try to either catch somebody out or to encourage some sort of an echo chamber of conspiracy theories where we can get to the bottom of all of this. But again, it all goes back to the same question. How does this serve God? There's always a tremendous amount going on in world events. Sometimes explosive, sometimes small. And it's always going to be problematic for some people and beneficial for some people. There's always going to be war and famine and death. There's always going to be politics and power struggles and everything else that goes along with it. This is part of the human nature, something we cannot entirely separate ourselves from. And it's not something we can disconnect from entirely. It's not something we should shut our eyes on. It's not something we should keep ourselves away from entirely either. However, we need to subordinate it to that all -important question. How does this serve God? Just as an example, the most recent events in Iran. We can ask ourselves, how does this serve God? And we can rage about serving other interests and serving our own interests and what politicians are really trying to, what games they're really trying to play. And what global policies are at risk, etc. Or we can focus on the fact that we need to serve God. And that this is an event that needs to be prayed about. It needs to be sanctified through our actions, through our intentions, through our prayers, through our efforts. And that's what it needs to be. What we can be assured of is that nobody in this game, particularly, is serving God. That is not their intention or goal. This country is founded on Masonic principles by Masons, not friends of Catholics. Catholics actually had to fight at the very beginning to get the ability to vote. Some of the founding fathers did not want that to happen. Muslims are not friends of the Catholics. Period. Full stop. Israel is not a friend of the Catholics. Period. Full stop. We can't sugarcoat those facts. And even in the condemnations of the church and the pope and people like that trying to say that we should just have peace, we should just strive for peace, even that does not come from necessarily friends of Christ either. Because while the Catholic Church is never supposed to be moving for war, shall we say, that's not their goal, that's not her point. Let me clarify that. Spiritually speaking, that is not her goal or point. But rather, she never shies away from war either. Peace, as the world defines peace, is not what the church is about. It's not a worldwide ceasefire. That's not going to help anybody. But neither is it war for the sake of war, war for the sake of political intrigue, war for the sake of just trying to expand empires. That is not something the church has ever approved of either. The only reason that the church has ever approved of war, encouraged war in any way, shape, or form, is for one simple fact. And that is for the greater glory of God, for the kingdom of Christ, to defend Christ the King. That is it. And that has to be our mentality also here and now. Christ is King. We know this. And if we don't know it, we better learn it quickly. And if Christ is King, that needs to shape everything. Every level of politics, every level of the strata within the church, every level of the church. Every level of our own lives and our families. That is what must be impacted. That is what must change for us. Christ is King, and therefore he rules over every facet of my life, every instant of my life. I belong to him. Every, each one of us belongs to him. Every country belongs to him. Every ruler belongs to him. Every authority belongs to him. He is the only solution to all of these issues. Now this is very basic in our catechism. We should know this and we should have known it all our lives. The problem is we don't often apply it. And most specifically in the world in which we have described, where it is full of distractions. The whole point of these conspiracies that the Jews were accusing our Lord of, was so that they could catch him out, so they wouldn't have to believe. So they would distract themselves from the reality of what they had just seen. Our Lord Jesus Christ had power over a demon, and actually had power over the faculties of a man. They didn't want to see that, so they tried to distract themselves with things that were of little to no importance. And so it is with us each and every day. Sometimes the focus on the news and on everything that's going on in the world is simply a distraction, and we have to be careful of that. We cannot let ourselves get distracted. We cannot let ourselves get distracted, especially by the world, the flesh and the devil. Those are our enemies. And those are the enemies we must fight each and every day. We must be willing to do battle for the soul of each and every person on this planet, but most specifically for our own. We must be willing to do whatever it takes, to serve our Lord Jesus Christ here and now on this earth, so that we may be able to be eternally happy with Him in heaven, because that is why we were created. And every part of our life belongs to that fact. And everything else is very probably just a distraction. If the world is pushing so much outrage and division and hatred and everything else, it is to ensnare us with the fact that we are not the only ones who are being distracted. It is to ensnare people into the material, superficial, divisive politics of our day. Nothing else. They are not trying to fix anything. They are trying to push an agenda, but more importantly they are trying to distract us from the things that really do matter. Namely our sanctification. Who wins the next election is not going to have a bearing on our sanctification. Who wins the next election is not going to have a bearing on our sanctification. Who wins the next election is not going to have a bearing on our sanctification. It will have an impact on the circumstances in which we strive for that sanctification, maybe. But that's it. The essence, the core of who we are does not change even remotely. The core of our goals does not change. The purpose for why we are here does not change. Serving God does not change. We are supposed to serve God in our private life, in prayer. We are supposed to serve God in the home and in our family. We are supposed to serve God at work or in school. Or just in simple friendships or relationships or anything else. We are supposed to serve God in all of them. And if we don't, then we are doing something wrong. God is going to do something wrong. The danger with these kinds of tactics that the media uses specifically of trying to focus so much on our passions and to try to make things a moral quandary for us, black and white issues of one side is good and one side is evil, pure good, pure evil, or at the very least pure evil and not so bad, distracted into the things that are of secondary or even less importance, and to distract ourselves from the things that are really necessary, to grow in virtue, to be better people. St. Paul points out that what we are supposed to strive for is that we are supposed to be an oblation, a sacrifice to God in an odor of sweetness. And he reminds us also that we are supposed to be, that among us, obscenity, fornication, and all these impurities are not even supposed to be named. Scorility, speaking badly of others, isn't even supposed to be named among us. Not so much like they don't even exist, we pretend they don't even exist, but that we are so far above and so far removed all of those things that people don't even think that we would commit those sins, that we would fall into those things. That is how far removed we are supposed to be. St. John Bosco, when he was... When he was a child, would oftentimes hang out with, shall we say, children of bad reputation. And his mother once warned him and said, I don't like you being around those boys. They could be bad for you. They could do you wrong. And he said, but when I'm with them, they're better. That is how we should be, each and every one of us. Obviously, we're not St. John Bosco, not even as a little child. But at the same time, that is the level of virtue we should strive for. That. That people can actually be better because of our presence. That sin and dissipation and obscenity and everything else dissipates around us. St. Dominic Savio, when he was a child, of course, being something of a prodigy of St. John Bosco and St. John Bosco's hero, when he was a child, apparently the other boys would immediately clean up their language and never say anything bad when he was near. Not because they were afraid he was going to tell on them or whatever, but because he was so good. Because he was so innocent, they did not want to be, to, in a certain sense, be around something that good and innocent when they were being bad. So when he was around, instead, they became better. That is something we should strive for. That is something that we should look for. And that's hard in this world where profanity and purity and all these other vices are so predominant. And we need to be careful not to fall into the same ourselves. But how do we do that? Well, the first step is to not let ourselves be distracted by the mundanities of the world, by the things that are distractions and secondary. All of those things have their place, but their place is at the service of serving God, which is what our apostolate is. Growing in virtue, becoming better people, becoming stronger Catholics, having clearer and more pure hearts. Having a pure faith. All of those things that we must do. And here is where we need to tie that into Lent. Lent is a time of purification. Lent is a time of detachment. Lent is a time to refocus what we are doing and why. And so, therefore, it's crucial for us, absolutely crucial for us in these last weeks of Lent. We're getting very close to the halfway point. It's time for us to detach more from the world. Less time on phones and devices. Less time on news feeds. Less time worrying about what the world is doing and what is going on in the world. More time focusing on offering things for Christ, our everyday things. We go to work with Christ to serve Christ. We get up in the morning with Christ to serve Christ. We eat a meal with Christ to serve Christ. We take our medication, etc., etc., etc. Everything about our lives should be in the presence of Christ, and it should be in the presence of God. It should be to serve Christ. And we cannot do that while we are worried about the 10 million things that the world, the flesh, and the devil present before our minds to distract us from the necessary thing of our life, the only necessary end of our lives. So for these last weeks, those devices, absolutely keep them on. But use them for very specific things. Phone calls, emails, work, business. Necessary activities. For the rest, leave them alone. Leave them alone. Maybe you can set a certain time limit for headlines if that is something that is very important to you. But that and no more. Don't get emotionally involved in any of it. Start breaking yourselves away from it. Become independent of it. Overcome it by giving it all to God. By using your life to serve God rather than to worry about everything else that is going on all around us, all the time, everywhere. Because that's never going to change. And it's only going to distract us the more attention that we give it. Silence comes from just eliminating those distractions, staying focused, eliminating, cleaning the mind of all the noise. Silence. Which is 90 % produced by ourselves. We don't need any help from the outside world to be distracted and noisy and confused. But we shouldn't help that noise and confusion. We need to let go of all of it. So these last weeks of Lent, this last half of Lent, let's focus on silence, but true mental silence where we are offering everything to God and letting Him take full possession of our lives so that we may faithfully serve Him here on earth to be in the presence of God. And we may be eternally happy with Him in heaven. In the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Summary
It's always rather astonishing to contemplate the idea that the people who witnessed this miracle that our Lord had just performed, he cast out the devil, the doves. And some man begins to speak. And immediately people begin to, A, doubt what he had done, saying that he had cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub, which is an obvious distortion of reason, to be able to arrive at a conclusion that they wanted to arrive at, namely that our Lord worked in cahoots with the devil. The reason that the Jews got distracted by our Lord's miracle wasn't because they were looking for Christ to be God or to do miracles. They were looking for, they were looking to catch Him out. They were looking for what was really going on behind the scenes. Where did He really come from? How did He really do that? Like trying to investigate a magician's parlor tricks. I need to know how He did that, not just being marvel at the fact that He did it. Lent is a time of purification. Lent is a time of detachment. Lent is a time to refocus what we are doing and why. And so, therefore, it's crucial for us, absolutely crucial for us in these last weeks of Lent. We're getting very close to the halfway point. It's time for us to detach more from the world. Less time on phones and devices. Less time on news feeds. Less time worrying about what the world is doing and what is going on in the world.