Loving the Lord With All Our Minds
July 31, 2024
Fr. John Riccardo
Brothers and sisters: I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Ephesians 4:17, 20-24
“All battles are first won or lost in the mind.”
St. Joan of Arc
These words come to me as I pray with what the Church offers us this Sunday from St. Paul. He is contrasting how the Gentiles think, that is those who do not know God, and how a disciple of Jesus is to think. Paul is – God is! – clear on the importance of the mind, on its ongoing need to be renewed, and on the battle that takes place within it. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul writes that we are to “take every thought captive to Christ.” In Romans 12:2 he exhorts us, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Jesus tells us to love God not only with all our heart, soul and strength but with all our mind (cf. Mark 12:30.)
There’s another translation of that passage from Romans that reads, “Do not let the world squeeze you into its way of thinking.” I don’t know about you, but that very accurately captures how I experience the daily struggle that takes place in my thoughts. The “world” – not the good creation God has lovingly made but the spirit and mentality that is hostile to God – is constantly trying to squeeze me into a particular way of thinking. It is constantly “evangelizing” we might say.
Because everything starts in the mind, what we put into our minds, what we feed our thoughts with, is probably far more significant than we realize. In the same way that what we put into our mouths impacts our physical health, what we put into our minds impacts our spiritual and emotional health. What we read, what we watch, and what we listen to matters. Frank Sheed, the great Catholic author of the 20th century, once said that most of us have mostly worldly minds with a few Catholic “patches.” I think he’s right. I know that’s true for me. Just take a moment and try to add up how many hours in the past week you spent looking at social media, watching Youtube or Netflix, listening to the radio, reading the news and various blogs, and compare that with how much time you spent reading Scripture or good spiritual reading? Is it even 100:1? And because what we put into our minds matters, the impact of this for most of us is anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, lust, and more.
This constant bombardment of our minds, however, and our often careless allowing of ourselves to be bombarded, not only impacts us personally, it weakens our ability to transform and recreate the world around us. And this transformation and recreation is a significant part of our mission as disciples.
You and I are commissioned by Jesus to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (cf. Matthew 5:13-14). He sends us into our neighborhoods, workplaces and schools, where those who do not know Him are starving and desperate for Him – though they do not know it (if you have not watched Monsignor Shea’s talk from the National Eucharistic Congress, please stop reading and watch it now!).
In his singularly spectacular commentary on Matthew, Erasmo-Leiva Merikakis writes, “Christians are not only to be ‘virtuous’; they are to be salt, that is, they are to raise the level of flavor of every human activity and thus transform it … Salt is one of those primary realities that can contribute to enhancing the quality of other things but that is itself hopeless once it goes bad … In saying that his disciples are the ‘salt of the earth’, Christ is describing the critical character of the Christian vocation. Either the Christian heightens the quality of human life and makes it more palatable, more delightfully nourishing, or he has no reason for being. Salt is not for itself, cannot be its own end; it serves a humble yet somehow indispensable purpose. Nothing can substitute for it. Insipid Christians, those who have lost their proper flavor, have forgotten their function as condiments of society … No doubt they let this happen by blending into the common environment, out of exhaustion, perhaps out of fear to introduce a jarring note—a sharp, pungent flavor—into the common endeavor.”
Perhaps something very practical we can do this week is to intentionally decrease the amount of time we spend in front of a screen and increase the amount of time we spend feeding on the Word of God.
St. Joan of Arc, pray for us. St. Paul, pray for us. Jesus, help us this week to be ever more vigilant with what we put before our eyes and into our minds so that we might be renewed personally and, by your grace, help make this world we live in more authentically human.
ACTS XXIX Prayer Intentions
July 2024
For the many leaders across the country who attended the Leadership Immersives on the ACTS XXIX campus in June, that seeds sown may flourish in their respective Dioceses, parishes, and seminaries.
For Father John, the ACTS XXIX team, and all those attending the Grand Getaway on Mackinac Island, that God's people would be inspired to be mobilized for the mission God has entrusted to them.
For the ACTS XXIX family, that their break from ministry in the first part of July will be a source of refreshment for them and their families.
For the ACTS XXIX Board of Directors, Episcopal Advisory Council, benefactors and prayer partners. May the Lord richly bless them for their leadership and support.
For God’s protection upon the ACTX XXIX team.