Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ash Wednesday and a Restless Heart

Today we begin our return to God.  Turning from what distracts us from Him, His will and, in the end, our own joy.

This we need to remember - our joy, our deep interior joy comes only from doing His will and fulfilling our vocation as defined by Him.  When we chose to ignore that, defy that or prevent it from happening we are in truth hurting ourselves.  But this is hard to accept and believe, isn't it?

We 'think' that by doing what makes us happy, by keeping ourselves and our needs and desires met and fulfilled we will be happy.  And we are - for brief moments - but then we ache again.  This ache in our hearts, our souls and our minds comes from the prayer of St. Augustine's Confessions - "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee".

Too often we create this restless heart ourselves.   We know what we should do but refuse to do it.  Let this Lent be one of seeking Him before ourselves, His will above our own and knowing that in doing so, we will be restless no longer.

Consider reading Uniformity with God's Will by St. Alphonus de Ligouri this Lent.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is lovely - I plan to read this every day of Lent to keep myself on track! Thank you :)