Last summer when I was at home in Ireland, I was out walking with a priest friend one evening on the outskirts of the city. Part of the walk went through a wooded area and in one place, to our great surprise, we came across a pagan ritual going on, to celebrate midsummer’s night. There was a bonfire and a leader explaining what the whole thing was about. Perhaps what was even more surprising was the fact that almost everyone there was in their 20s and 30s. They were hungry for the spiritual, probably disillusioned with Church, but still searching for God. I would bet that probably most of those young people were baptized Catholic, but had drifted away. Here they were at a pagan ritual, because they were still searching for God. We search because we need something deeper than just the material things around us. We know instinctively that there has to be more than this.
What do you feed your mind with? What do you feed your body with? If you feed your body with unhealthy foods, you become sick. If you feed your mind with what is negative, you also become sick. Every day we hear hundreds of commercials, we listen to news programs and documentaries, movies, etc. All of these things affect how we see the world. If we hear only what is negative, it is easy to become cynical, or even despairing. Bad news is what sells. Good news doesn’t sell and so news programs focus on the awful things going on in the world. The thousands of commercials that we hear each week, tell us that we will not be happy unless we have enough material things. But if that is primarily what we feed our minds with, then we are going to see the world as a cruel, violent, place, where we need to focus solely on ourselves to survive, or we won’t be happy.
God speaks to us in a totally different way. In the Gospels it says that the first words of Jesus’ public ministry were, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Jesus was saying, ‘Focus on me, turn to me and you will find what will feed you, what will fulfill you.’ One of the ways that God speaks to us in a very powerful way, is through the Scriptures, the word of God. The more we hear the word of God, the more it forms our thinking and how we see the world. The ‘kingdom of heaven’, which Jesus speaks about, is a whole way of seeing the world. The more we focus on God, the more it changes our mindset, our world view.
A few weeks ago I spoke about Fr. Greg Boyle, who works in gangland in LA. What is most striking about his writings is that he show that when the young people he works with begin to realize that they are of value in someone’s eyes, that they are loved, they begin to change and change dramatically.
Of all the information you feed your mind with each day, how much of it is from God? Probably very little and yet God has a lot to say to us.
Pope Francis has asked to have this Sunday, the third Sunday of the Church’s year, to be dedicated to the Word of God, reminding us of how important it is. It is meant to be an integral part of what we do as Christians.
Do you have a Bible, a current Bible that is readable? Where is it? Is it important to you? Maybe it’s not that important. If we believe it is the Word of God, literally God speaking to us individually, then what could be more important of all the things we take in each day, than to hear what God has to say to us? If you read one chapter of one book each day, which takes about 3 minutes, it will begin to change how you think and how you see the world, because then we will begin to see the world through God’s eyes. That’s what Jesus did, he spoke to the people and invited them to listen to him and all who did were changed forever. The Scriptures are those same things that Jesus taught the people and still wants to teach us, so that we will have hope and understand why we are here. The more we hear what God has to say to us, the more it changes how we see everything. Then the kingdom of God begins to grow among us.
What do you fill your mind with?
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