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Maybe your heart needs some cleaning! Tips to start Advent the right way Escrito por: Pablo Perazzo |
Now that we are beginning Advent, a special liturgical time of preparation for Christmas, it is worth examining our conscience.
It is important to ask ourselves how much we strive and allow Christ to be present in our hearts, in our interior, in our spirit.
That’s what Christmas is all about, the birth of baby Jesus in our lives! Ask yourself, is your heart a temple of God, or is it a den of thieves? Do we pay attention to the promptings of the good spirit, or do we listen to and are guided more by the evil spirit?
Let us remember what St. Ignatius teaches us in his rule of discernment of spirits and reflect on these five points that can help us all to clean our hearts!
1. Could it be that my heart is a den of thieves?
«Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were buying and selling in the temple; he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he said to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21:12-13).
This well-known passage shows us Jesus, driven by holy anger, throwing out all the money-changers and merchants from the Temple who had turned a place of prayer into a street market.
We too often let these bandits, who profited from the piety of pilgrims, take over our hearts. And little by little, we no longer leave room for the Lord.
2. What has stolen peace and light from my heart?
Ask yourself: who are those bandits who have stolen your heart? Maybe money and material goods? The easy pleasures of this hyper-sexualized world that exalts comfort and well-being at all costs?
The insatiable need and hunger for power, wanting to dominate and be above others, trampling on and taking advantage of other people, in order to achieve one’s own personal interests…?
Perhaps you find it difficult to recognize them, because you haven’t looked inside yourself for a long time and you have lost that connection with your inner world. You live in the frenetic routine of work and a thousand responsibilities, which are constantly overwhelming you.
Captivated by the “colors and the bubbles” of a world that constantly takes us out of ourselves and dazzles us with an absurd amount of propaganda and information (most of which is useless).
We must be masters of ourselves, capable of giving ourselves lovingly to others. We must go out to meet others, living a dynamic of communion in love, which is the only thing that can satisfy our deep longings for happiness.
3. How to expel these bandits from my heart?
Do not forget that in the spiritual world we always need the help of grace. Our fight for holiness involves our personal cooperation with the grace of the Spirit, who gives us the strength we need for this fight against the enemy.
Furthermore, if we go back to the passage where Jesus drives the merchant bandits out of the Temple, it is clear that it is He who drives them out of the sacred precinct. So, in our personal case too, it is Christ who removes from our hearts any harm, ambition, pain, resentment or wound.
We must pray and ask the Lord to free us from the Enemy, and to open wide the doors of the interior so that we may once again be those “Temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
Let us not allow Satan and his minions to steal the peace and tranquility of our hearts. Let our interior be dedicated to prayer, to loving communion. Let us not allow the enemy to penetrate the walls and main door of our inner castle, as Saint Teresa of Jesus taught us so well in “The Mansions.”
4. We must be vigilant, let’s not let our guard down
«Be sober-minded and vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brothers who are in the whole world» (1 Peter 5:8-9).
St. Peter warns us very clearly that the devil is constantly stalking our hearts, waiting for the right moment to seize and take away the love from our hearts. He wants us to immerse ourselves in the darkness of his lies, to live deceived by his proposals for happiness.
That “roaring lion” is precisely the devil, who wants to take away our faith, to distance us from God and to lead us into the world of death. We must be very cautious and attentive, let us not forget that the devil knows very well our weak points, those crutches of our “old man”, as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians 4:22.
We must always be aware in order to anticipate, as far as possible, the traps that the enemy wants to set for us. With a spiritual path under our belt, each one of us can also recognize our weak points.
That thing I always confess, that it seems like I’m hardly going to change… obviously, the devil knows that that’s the easiest way to steal your heart.
5. The devil is very cunning… don’t relax!
«When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds it empty, swept and put in order.
“Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more depraved than himself, and they go in and live there. The last state of that man is worse than the first. So it will be with this wicked generation also” (Matthew 12, 43-45).
The devil is very cunning, and he recognizes the ideal moment to take us by surprise, off guard, with our guard down. If we are going through a peaceful personal and spiritual moment, in which everything is going well, full steam ahead, let us not forget that the enemy is still lurking.
This is not to frighten us or make us live in anxiety, but rather to provide the means to always remain in communion of love with God, cultivating our life of prayer and always living in charity.
Let us take advantage of this time of Advent to prepare our interior, and allow Jesus Christ to reign in our hearts. May we have hearts filled with the Holy Spirit, and may we serve as beacons that illuminate the hearts of other brothers.
