Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,
This Sunday the Church of St. Paul hosts the annual St. Patrick’s Ham
Dinner at the Zumbrota VFW. I encourage all of our parishioners to
support this wonderful event! Along with a fabulous meal, you can
check out several great items on our silent auction. Come and enjoy
the hospitality of the Church of St. Paul!
This coming Wednesday, March 19, is the Solemnity of St. Joseph! I
encourage you to attend Holy Mass on this day! The month of March
is dedicated to increased devotion to St. Joseph, the Spouse of the Virgin
Mary and Foster Father of our Lord Jesus. Let us go to St. Joseph,
with open hearts to his love for us and experience his great kindness!
This weekend I share with you a reflection on the power of Conscience
present in each of us. I encourage you to reflect over this message a
few times this week:
“Conscience - the Light of the Soul. Conscience throws light on all
of one’s life. It can be deformed and hardened: O that today you
would hearken to His voice! Harden not your hearts! (Divine Office,
Ps. 94:8) The liturgy repeats this to us every day of this liturgical period.
And each day, in very different ways, God speaks to the heart of
each one of us.
Our prayer, during Lent, aims at awakening consciences, at making
them sensitive to God’s voice. ‘Harden not your hearts,’ the Psalmist
says. In fact, the numbing of consciences, their indifference to good
and evil, their deviations, are a great threat for man. Indirectly, they
are also a great threat for society, because in the last analysis the level
of morality of society depends on the human conscience. (St. John Paul
II, Angelus, 15 March 1981) Conscience is the light of the soul, of
what is deepest in man’s being; and if this light is put out, man is
thrown into darkness and can commit the most dastardly abuses
against himself and against others.
Your eye is the lamp of your body (Luke 11:34), says the Lord. Conscience
is the lamp of the soul, and if it is well formed it lights up the
way, a way which leads to God, and man can make progress because
of it. Although he may weaken and fall, he can raise himself and continue
onward. But one who has allowed this interior sensitivity ‘to
drowse’ or ‘to die’ to the things of God, is now without signposts and
is lost. It is one of the great misfortunes in this life which can befall a
soul: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness
for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter! (Is. 5:20-21) proclaims the prophet Isaiah.
Jesus compares the function of conscience in our life to that of the eye.
When your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is
not sound, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the
light in you be darkness. (Luke 11:34-35) When the eye is healthy,
things are seen as they are, undistorted. A sick eye either does not see
or it distorts reality; it deceives its own subject and he can come to
think that events and people are in fact as his defective vision views
them. When one makes a mistake in ordinary life, having falsely interpreted
some facts, it can lead to problems and difficulties which are, at
times, of little importance. But when the error refers to matters regarding
Eternal Life, its consequences have no limit.
Conscience can be deformed through our not having used the means to
get to know the Faith, or through an ill will dominated by pride, sensuality,
laziness… When Our Lord complains that the Jews were not receiving His message, He particularly notes the deliberate nature of their decision - they did not want to believe (cf. Luke 13:34; John10:38) - and He in no way accepted that the cause lay in a difficulty
outside the will: this is a consequence of their refusal, freely chosen.
Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear
to hear My word. (John 8:43) Passions and a lack of sincerity with
oneself can come to force the intellect to think in a way more easily
adapted to one’s way of life, or to some defects or bad habits one does
not want to give up. In such a case there is no good will; the heart is
hardened, and conscience begins to drowse, for it no longer points in
the right direction which would lead it to God. It is now like a broken
compass which not only disorientates its owner but can also affect others.
The man whose heart is hardened and whose conscience is degenerate,
even if he is in full possession of his strength and physical capacities,
is sick spiritually, and everything must be done to restore him
to health of soul. (St. John Paul II, ibid.)
Lent is a good time to ask the Lord to help us form our consciences really well, and for us to examine ourselves to see whether we are being radically sincere with ourselves, with God and with those people who in His Name have the mission of advis-ing us.
A well-formed conscience. Doctrine and life. Example: The Light which is in us does not spring up from within ourselves, from our subjectivity, but from Jesus Christ. I am the Light of the world, He has told us, he who follows Me will not walk in darkness. (John 8:12) His Light brightens our consciences; but even more, it can turn us ourselves into a light that will illuminate the lives of others: you are the light of the world. (Matt. 5:14) The Lord puts us Christians in the world so that, with the Light of Christ, we can point the way to others. We will do so by word, but especially through our behavior as regards professional, family and social obligations. We should therefore get to know very well the limits beyond which we cannot go with respect to our honor and Christ’s morality: we should become aware of the good we can do and are doing, know clearly how an honest professional and a good Christian cannot permit himself to act, and to avoid any such action; if we have made a mistake we should know how necessary it is to seek pardon, to make amends for it, and reparation also, if such is needed. The mother of a family, who has the running of her home as her sanctifying task, ought to ask herself in her prayer if she is exemplary in fulfilling her obligations towards God, if she lives sobriety, if she is managing to dominate any tendency to ill-humor, if she dedicates the necessary time to her children and to the home…The businessman ought frequently to consider whether he is using all the means necessary to get to know the social doctrine of the Church, whether he make the effort to put this teaching into effect in his business dealings, whether he pays just wages…
Christian life is enriched when the teachings Our Lord conveys to us through His Church are put into effect in daily life. Doctrine then assumes all its inherent power. Doctrine and life are realities for a well-formed conscience. When, through a more or less culpable ignorance the doctrine is not known, or when although known it is not put into practice, Christian living becomes impossible, and real advance along the road to sanctity is out of the question.
We all need to form for ourselves a true and refined conscience, which readily listens to the voice of God in everyday matters. Doctrine (as regards the knowledge of moral and social teaching) and life (the ef-fort to practice the Christian virtues) are two essential requisites for educating one’s conscience. On occasion, faced with the ‘grey areas’, that are not unfamiliar in our professional work, we have to consider the situation in the presence of God: whenever necessary we should insist on receiving the best and most opportune advice from those who can clarify such matters for our conscience, and then put into practice the decisions we have made on our own responsibility.
We learn to be sincere with ourselves in the general and particular examination of conscience, to call our errors, weaknesses and faults against generosity by their real names, without masking them with false justifications or disregarding them as non-issues. A conscience which does not recognize its faults leaves man at the mercy of his own caprice.” (From In Conversation with God, by Francis Fernandez)
Through the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of Victory, St. Joseph, the Terror of demons, St. Michael, St. Paul and our Guardian Angels, may our good Lord grant us the grace to possess well-formed consciences!
In Christ through Mary,
Fr. Kasel