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Destructive Habits Often Overlooked
“Even if you ceased to love Me, I should always love you. Even if you no longer listened for My voice in the silence, I should still make it possible for you to hear Me. This is how every sinner finds Me waiting. Who could ever weigh My love, or set a price on it, or measure it? And who could ever dream of the immensity of My tenderness? For My love is tender. When you hear Me say, ‘I am thirsty; I’m calling your tenderness.” . . .
Bossis, Gabrielle. He and I (p. 174).
Pauline Books and Media. Kindle Edition.
There are habits that we can develop that will keep us back from making any real progress in our journey toward union with God. These destructive habits, because they are so common, can be overlooked when we examine ourselves.
When reading St. Paul, for instance, he brings up habits, or attitudes, that would cause great harm to the early Christian community, and I believe they still do today.
These habits are serious sins because over time they can destroy our ability to love others, especially those outside our intimate circle. It can lead to a very slow death of our relationship with Christ.
I would say that the human predisposition to gossip throughout history has caused a great deal of pain and even destroyed lives. It is no different today. Gossip is very easy to fall into, and I certainly do.
Gossip is one of the most unloving actions that we can commit against another human being. Gossip often flows from ‘hearsay’. Evil spreads easily, so once the lie is out, no matter how many times it is taken back, does little to change the damage done. Even if gossip is based on some truth, it still should not be spread, since the ones who need to know are those who can do something positive about it. That is what law is all about.
No one wants to be gossiped about, yet most of us have been victims of gossip, and for some, it was detrimental to their lives.
If you have a friend who gossips about others most negatively, and you partake of it, know that when you leave you too will be hurt by their venom. If you repeat, you are no better than the one who passed it on.
Yet it is so easy to do, and our conscience will not rebuke us, perhaps to our shame. If our conscience is not operative it means that we have moved very far down the road of destroying our ability to love others, to accept others, and even to love God. Love of self, God, and others are one package.
In the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians St. Paul tells us what love is:
Quote-13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. -Unquote
Do not fear self-knowledge since it is the key to unlocking the torrent of grace and mercy that the Lord wishes to lavish us with.
To pray to receive a loving, merciful heart is scary since it brings us face-to-face with our poverty. In that however, we learn to embrace the poverty of others without the need to make ourselves above them, that is a lie that can have dire consequences. -BrMD.
