Comfort

Catechumens: I said to the world: “My love, how I long for you. I know what the world is for. Entertain me. Comfort me. Satisfy me. Fill me. Be my reason for being. Do not be hard or difficult. Do not try my patience. Give me what I want now. Hide me in the warmth of your embrace; hide me even from my soul. There is no comfort like your bed. There is no pleasure like your food. Blot out my thoughts and surround me with sleep. My lover, my tryst, my true passion.”

And the world said to me. “Do not worry, love. I will keep you warm and comfortable. Your comfort will be my chief concern. I will slow your mind and excite your passions. You will be my plaything and lie upon my lap. You will have no purpose but me. I will be your whole life. Your all. Drink deeply of me. You will spend your days in comfort. You will spend them.”

So I thought only of that comfort. I wanted to be warm all the time. I never wanted to hunger or suffer. I wanted to feel good all the time. I wanted the fruit of slumber rather than labor. I did not want to be assaulted with difficult things. I wanted the world to tell me what I want. I wanted it to find things for me to enjoy. I listened when it told me I was bored, and that I should play with whatever it gave me. I said to the world, “Deliver me from pain. Let me live for pleasure. Have my mind. Have my will. O World, take my flesh.” So I pulled it around me like a blanket. I buried my face in its darkness. I slipped out of thought and ceased willing. Such was our union, that I ceased even to be.

Then God was found in the world.

I could not think when He spoke. I could not choose what I wanted. I could not feel a love beyond myself and my comfort. I called Him “Lord,” but then I turned and went back into the darkness. I went on and on. I went on until the world was all that was left. Even so, I looked back to make sure He was still there. That’s when I saw that I was in flames. All that was good had followed Him.

– Catechetical Letter 12/28/2005

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. St. Paul the Apostle

 

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