Overcoming Spiritual ADHD

 

What Does It Mean To Love God With Your Whole Mind, Heart, Soul, and Strength?

Reflections of the Readings for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year B

Readings:
Deuteronomy 6:2-6
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 12:28b-34

A lawyer, a doctor and the parish pastor went hunting. When they saw a buck, all three of them shot at the deer simultaneously. But only one shot struck the buck. An argument broke out among them on whose bullet struck the deer and succeeded in killing it. A game warden came on the scene to see what was going on. The three men told him that they were arguing about whose bullet struck the deer. The warden said, “I’ll settle this.” Then he turned and walked over to the deer to examine it. After examining the deer, the officer settled the matter. “The pastor shot the buck,” he said with confidence. “How can you tell that it was the pastor’s?” inquired the three. “I can tell,” replied the warden, “because it went in one ear and out the other.” That can happen to us when the priest, who is acting in persona Christi, is aiming the Word of God at us, aiming for the heart. Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t make it to the heart, but goes in one ear and out the other. God is always aiming for our heart, whether it is when the Word of God is being proclaimed, or when the Word of God is communicating himself in every moment through the people and events around us. God aims for the heart, but we are moving targets. We have spiritual ADHD, as it were. God’s communication of himself to us is happening in every moment in some way, but his communication is not reaching our heart, but is going in one ear and out the other, as it were.

Speaking of ADHD, and going in one ear and out the other, one Halloween, in the Learning Center, during the Language Arts block, the students were each given a gift bag of candy and watched a movie. By the time they came to my block for mathematics they were on a sugar high and in a non-academic mood. Sugar multiplies ADHD! The students couldn’t stop talking. I was trying in vain to get them to focus. I kept telling them to stop talking to one another and focus on the assigned tasks. At one point, I spoke very sternly. They did stop talking, at least for a short time, but after a few moments, when I had turned around, I could hear a couple of students talking again. Feeling very frustrated, I turned around and said loudly, “Why am I still hearing voices?” One of the students spoke up, “I don’t know, Fr. Max. Maybe you should talk to Dr. Lamourt (the psychologist).” I responded loudly, “Well, if I am crazy, it is you guys who are driving me crazy.” That of course, got the whole class laughing and prompted further distraction. I felt like yelling some more, but I decided just to stand there quietly for a few moments and pray, as I often do, for patience and for God to give me the grace of recognizing his presence in the moment, and how he is communicating himself to me in that moment through the frustrating situation and through the very kids who are prompting my frustration. It worked, as it usually does. I eventually became more calm and got control of the classroom and did not have to call the disciplinarian. 

Speaking of going crazy, Dr. Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, during a lecture on mental health, was asked the question, “What would you advise a person to do if that person felt a nervous breakdown coming on?” Of course, everyone was expecting that Dr. Menninger’s advice to such a person would be to seek counseling or consult a psychiatrist.” To their astonishment, he replied, “If a person felt a nervous breakdown coming on, I would tell that person to ‘lock up your house, go across the highway, find someone in need and do something to help that person.’” That is the most effective psychological therapy: relieving the stress and anxiety of obsessive concern for self-preservation by directing our attention and energy into loving service. That is the greatest stress reliever. But this always comes with a challenge: we are called to love God with our whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength, but we are called to do it in a world that is full of challenges; in a world that is broken; a world in which we are constantly faced with the challenges of trying to love people whose brokenness can make them difficult to love. Because of this, we have a tendency to become like the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus often criticizes: who would build a protective wall of religious pretension around themselves as a way of protecting themselves from the challenges and difficulties of loving others.  

We can become like Ralphy. One Sunday the family was at mass. When the collection basket came around, Ralphy reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter and dropped it in the basket. After mass, Dad asked him, “Was that quarter all you had to give?” “No,” replied Ralphy, “I also had a dollar.” Dad asked, “Why didn’t you put in the dollar?” "Well,” Ralphy explained.” I was going to give the dollar, but then I remembered what the priest said: ‘God loves a cheerful giver.’ I knew that I'd be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, than if I gave the dollar." Love involves cheerful giving even when the challenges are the greatest. Loving God means getting my hands dirty, working, serving, and frequently getting frustrated as I engage in my relationships with other people.

I repeat the challenge: We are called, as we heard in the Gospel today, to love God with our whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength, but we are called to do it in a world that is full of challenges; in a world that is broken; a world in which we are constantly faced with the challenges of trying to love people whose brokenness can make them difficult to love. It seems to me that loving God is easier than loving one’s fellow human beings. Why can’t I just love God and get the credit for that?!!! It is easy for me to sit and meditate before the Blessed Sacrament and pray the Rosary. I love to go to mass, and to preside at mass as a priest. Isn’t that loving God? Well, the answer of course is: not if I want to love God with my whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength. These exercises support my effort at loving God, but loving God means getting my hands dirty, working, serving, and frequently getting frustrated as I engage in my relationships with other people. Love involves relationship. Sometimes I am more passive while God engages my heart, soul, mind and body in the solitary activities of prayer and meditation, but most of the time, the way that he is engaging my mind, heart, soul and body in divine interaction is in the context of my active engagement in my relationships and interactions with other people. Most of the time, I am more active than passive in my communicating with God and engaging myself in relationship with him. During most of my day, the way that I am communicating with God is through my loving service to others, and I am allowing him to communicate himself to me through my openness to his presence in the events that are demanding my engagement, and in the people with whom I am engaged and whom I am serving. Whenever I am engaged in loving service I am communicating with God. I am worshipping him and communicating my love for him as I carry out my daily service with the awareness of God’s presence in the others whom I am serving. I am communicating my love for God when I carry out my service to others with the very care and concern that is demanded of a relationship with God. Since God demands that I love him with my whole mind, whole heart, whole soul, and whole strength, then I must therefore carry out my loving service of other people with my whole mind, heart, soul, and strength engaged. Love is a divine interaction. It is an engagement of the mind, heart, soul and body together. God’s way of engaging us in this divine interaction in our daily lives is by engaging our mind, heart, soul and strength in the interactions between those whom he created for divine interaction: those whom he created in his image and likeness; those whom he created precisely for this divine interaction: you, me and every human being that I come in contact with. Let us not be like the Pharisees like those whom Jesus criticizes: They felt that they could love God by engaging in worship, prayer and sacrifice, and not have to care for those around them in need. Just as he did to them, he wants to jolt us out of our comfort zone, not just once but in every moment as he presents himself in each moment with the demand to love him with our whole mind, heart, soul and strength, not just when we pray, but always.

Wakeup Call

A spiritual writer once said: “To live with the saints above, that is the highest glory. But to live with the saints below, that is another story.”

The scribe in today’s Gospel reading came to Jesus and asked, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied by juxtaposing two commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. He connected the Shema Israel: to love God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength, with the command to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus was acutely aware of how the Scribes and the Pharisees had separated the two precepts in practice. They felt that they could fulfill the Shema Israel, to love God completely, without engaging in the effort at loving your neighbor. They felt that they could love God by engaging in worship, prayer and sacrifice, and not have to care for those around them in need. They also felt that they could seek reconciliation with God and forgiveness from God and not have to seek reconciliation and forgiveness between their fellow human beings. But Jesus seeks to disrupt their feeling of comfort about this. He wants to jolt them out of their comfort zone by making clear to them that you cannot love God without loving your neighbor, and you cannot gain forgiveness and reconciliation with God without seeking reconciliation and forgiveness with your neighbor. We hear this is the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We hear it in Jesus’ portrayal of the Last Judgment: “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters you did for me.” There is no loving God independently of loving our neighbor. St. John makes this even more explicit: “If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (John 4:20-21)

I remember going a whole year avoiding a confrere in the monastery who offended me. I wouldn’t sit near him at table or other social settings to talk. During that year I received Holy Communion daily and would engage in my usual morning meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. One day, as I was meditating before the Blessed Sacrament, that passage from John, which I just quoted, came to my mind and I suddenly felt a deep crises of conscience: I was receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist every day and adoring him in the Blessed Sacrament while at the same time holding a grudge toward a confrere. That day I sought him out and we got together to talk. What was so funny (or perhaps I should say, sad, and even embarrassing) was that I could not for the life of me remember just what it was that caused me to feel so offended. He couldn’t remember either.

That was really a wakeup call for me!

All for Jesus,

Fr. Max