Lenten Reflection 1, Finding Rest

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” — St. Augustine of Hippo

These words of the great saint call to mind the very word of God, as revealed to us through the prophet Jeremiah:

“… I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will no longer teach their friends and relatives, ‘Know the LORD!’ Everyone from least to greatest, shall know me — oracle of the LORD — for I will forgive their iniquity and no longer remember their sin.” (Jeremiah 31: 33-34)

Those who place their trust in God and follow His precepts find peace. Those who do not, can never be satisfied and therefore can never rest:  gluttons keep eating, lusters keep lusting, the avaricious keep acquiring, the envious keep envying, the prideful keep asserting their superiority, the hateful keep hating, and so on. All these sinful things give us only the illusion of happiness, and the more we pursue them the less happy we are. This remains true whether or not we acknowledge God.

St. Augustine knew what he was talking about. He was not always a saint. In fact, he was a terrible sinner in his younger days. So his words are not the sanctimonious preachings of a hypocrite; St. Augustine learned the hard way that there is simply no escaping the fact we are creatures made in God’s image, and thus fulfilled by doing good, not evil.

It is curious to see, especially in our time, how the sin of pride has grown so bold as to attempt to make virtue out of vice. Capitalism made selfishness a virtue, and we have gotten vast riches in the hands of the few, human welfare and our environment callously sacrificed for profits, and widespread spiritual emptiness, to name only three of the more dire consequences. Communism and fascism turned their backs on God and made the state superior to the individual, giving us world wars, mass murder, economic misery, and spiritual despair. Many today demand carnal sins to be applauded as virtues, racism applauded as fairness, and revenge applauded as justice.  But it doesn’t matter how many adherents capitalism or communism or progressivism or globalism attracts. If the underlying principles of these movements contradict the law that is written upon our hearts, the results cannot bring peace to the individual or the culture.

Reflection

I don’t think Einstein actually said it, but to define insanity as repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is indeed quite accurate.  So during Lent I ask myself, what false gods am I pursuing over and over again, expecting to reach a happiness that never comes or leaves in an instant? How do I feel when I put my trust in God, and bend to his will? How can I do more of what gives me rest and less of what makes me restless?