For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/091907.shtml
The devil loves it when we are fixated on what we do not yet possess. Materialism is at its root a devaluing of what we do possess and an overvaluing of what we do not yet possess. Materialism is a lack of gratitude. It is the disease of one who has not learned how to say thank you for gifts received and how to make use of what one has before going searching for what one does not yet have. The Gospel today presents the situation of children who are never satisfied with the song that is being played, and compares these children with those who are fixated on who Jesus is not rather than on who He is. Pope Benedict gives a great indictment of such people in his new book Jesus of Nazareth, people who spend too much time fixated on showing Jesus as merely a man of history.
There is an evil more invidious than materialism and mechanism, however, and the devil is especially glad when we move toward this evil. It is the evil of being fixated on the spiritual heights that we have not achieved rather than thanking God for the wonderful work He has begun in us, and for giving us the gift of faith in His Son that is more precious than any plan of piety we can write up for ourselves. Even more joyful is the devil when he can get us to blame a person or an outside circumstance for our lack of spiritual progress, for he can easily erect new barriers to frustrate us once the current ones are gone. As long as he keeps us fixated on what we have not done, rather than grateful for what God is doing with our lives, and for the holiness that has been his gift to us, Satan is in the driver’s seat.
It was a great breakthrough in my vocational discernment when I could get up in the morning and begin not by devising ways around the obstacles that got in the way of my piety, but by thanking God for choosing a life for me so much bigger than what I would choose for myself, and for giving me the joy of serving him in the simplest ways.
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