Sunday, April 8, 2018

How do we care for the quality of peace in our inward places?

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” – Philippians 4:8

Possibly, yes, I do believe possibly, this popular verse is still a verse sparsely applied. We love the noble sound of the words, but do we take it seriously to heart? We find it to ring with truth, yet how intentional are we in making it habitual in our day-to-day living? If you are like, and I think you are much like me … now and then we do, too often, we don’t.

Read slowly through the list. Whatever is true. Whatever is honorable. Whatever is just. Whatever is pure. Whatever is pleasing. Whatever is commendable.

When I was a lad we planted a large vegetable garden. I think I may have been at the age of five, maybe, six. I remember plating the long furrows with seeds that came in small white paper packages. On the front was a picture of the harvest of those particular seeds: carrots, parsnips, cabbage, lettuce, peas, string beans. When we complete one of the long furrows, my Dad would take that now empty package, place it on a popsicle stick, and plant at the end of the row. In time, that empty expanse of plowed and raked soil turned in to bountiful even beautiful harvest. Some look at that harvest garden as rows of this and that … but I saw the garden in its whole and its dream fulfilled.

Recently I have made a commitment to tend the garden within my soul by making the time, a time set aside, to practice thinking upon each virtue on this list. I am praying that over time the exercise will become a manner of thinking, a habit of the heart… yielding a harvest of inward wholeness.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz