This past week, Luke’s Gospel spoke of the importance of the ¨heart¨, or the interior life. Luke, following his sermon on the mount, continues to instruct that “a good tree cannot bear rotten fruit no more than a bad tree can bear good fruit.” (cf Luke 6:43-45) He goes on to say: “A good person out of the store of the goodness of his heart” produces good. In similar fashion, it is out of the store of evil in one´s heart that leads to the evil which is put into action.
Matthew in his Gospel (Chapter 23) has much to say as well about hypocrisy, all of which comes from the lack of correspondence with what some claim only in words and give no evidence of in action. We must first pay attention to the quality of the interior of our hearts if the quality of the life that is lived is to have any real worth or value.
The heart must first receive the WORD of God, before it can act upon it. Even then, it is not good enough to only listen to the WORD if we do not take the time to allow it to take profound and deep root within us. This is surely accomplished in several ways, but none more important than in the quiet space of prayer.
In our very active world; a world that puts great value on activity, we need the wisdom which comes from silence, which comes from the WORD of God. We need the integrity of correlation between our exterior actions which flow from our hearts, which are continually reposed in the presence of Christ, through the power of His Holy Spirit.
We are all called to continual conversion. This is the manner in which the mission of the Church is continued through each and every one of our lives. May we cultivate the interior life, the life of the Spirit, which conforms us more and more to the person of Christ, that we may all be capable of bringing others to Christ, and Christ to the world.
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