Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Self & the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Self & the Sacred Heart of Jesus

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us”
By: Eric Gajewski

The interior man plays careful watch over his heart to make sure that all he is doing is pleasing to God. As a man becomes more and more distracted he drifts off unto the surface wherein he loses touch with his inner self. He does not watch over his heart and thus his ego increases as pride goes unchecked. There is a constant war going on within over your heart. We have free will to decide which side we will choose. Ultimately, we have been so that our hearts cannot rest until they rest in His Sacred Heart. In order to do this we must first humble ourselves. We must get back to the basics of denying this self our arch enemy before we can grow enough in grace to carry a cross in Selfless Love. If the self is dominant a person stands no chance in following Christ and God’s Will. The interior life can be summarized by an old country and western movie slogan, ‘this town ain’t big enough for the both of us”.

Less Me more You. As we decrease He increases. As our tears flow his grace inflows. Therefore, what we lack on the natural level is aided by the supernatural. Love is greater than the Cross. We must constantly remind ourselves this. Christ, Who is Love, carried the Cross and not the other way around. He came to show us the Way as to how to decrease. We must seek silence and solitude. We must seek to empty ourselves out on a daily basis and not just on Sunday’s. Many saints have said that if we are not moving forward in grace to God then we are truly going backwards. How true! We need not seek the approval of men or other “traditionalist’s we only need to seek His approval. In order to be “decreasing” daily we must keep watch over our hearts. We must realize that it is the Cross which molds us. The “self” will defiantly resist, of course, to the divine operation in the soul but only the heroic few will push through. We have to have our spirit’s crushed in order for His Spirit to truly live in us.

Our heart is the town. We only have one town to govern thus we must be good stewards of it. Either we will cling to “controlling” everything via the self or we will freely hand over our hearts to Christ for His good use. Modern man has towns which are full of occupants and thus full of distractions. They are dirty and have graffiti. There is truly no place for Christ to lay His head down in these towns. This town is not big enough for both my ego and pride and Christ. Thus, there are two towns that can only exist. The one dominated by self or the one dominated by Love therefore Christ. St. Francis of Assisi said it is in by giving that we receive and how true! We must give ourselves away (in the proper context) in order to receive that which is from on high. If we boot out all of the distractions from our town we can then begin to rebuild a new in Christ. The process of purification and detachment is very difficult of course because men have been so accustomed to living a certain way that they don’t truly realize how lonely and empty they are within. There are many towns like Las Vegas full of distractions which would lead one to believe “I will be fulfilled there” and yet modern man typically only returns having compiled more sins thus leaving unfulfilled. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas they say. Well, as Christians, we too, have a saying, “what happens in my heart determines my eternal salvation”. We can either choose the carnal or we can choose the eternal. We must learn that a simple town houses a simple heart. We do not need anything other than Christ for our towns. O’ how simple life truly is but modern man loves to complicate life do to the self! Let us all pray for the humility to find ourselves alone with Christ in our towns. It will be He to give us a new name and a new beginning and not man.