When I was little, I loved going on errands with my dad on Saturday mornings. It didn’t matter where we went or what we were doing. There was just something special about hopping in his old 1965 Ford F100 truck, three-gear with a column shift, and going on an adventure.
Sometimes, we ended up at the hardware store. Other times, I’d sit and watch my dad get a haircut at the barber shop. The best times were when we’d stop at the local diner, where dad would sit at the counter drinking coffee and talking with people he knew; I’d sit next to him with a cup of hot chocolate and a glazed doughnut.
One of those adventures landed us at a lawn mower repair shop. My dad had brought the blade of his lawn mower to get sharpened. When I think about that, I realize that in 30 years of homeownership, I have never once had blades, on any of the lawnmowers I’ve ever owned, sharpened.
Did you know that dull lawn mower blades do not cleanly cut the blades of grass? Instead, the grass is ripped and torn, which results in a jagged edge. These jagged edges will brown within days, causing an uneven look to a recently cut lawn. The jagged edges are also an easy way for disease and parasites to enter the grass.
Origen, an early Church father from the third century, said, “In man, besides the bodily senses, there are five other senses which need to be exercised. Thus, the soul has a sense of sight to contemplate supernatural objects, a hearing capable of distinguishing voices that do not resound in the air, a taste to savor the living bread come down from heaven, a smell, leading Paul to speak of the perfume of Jesus, and also a sense of touch, which John had since he told us that he touched with his own hands the Word of God.”
Unless we keep our spiritual senses sharpened, we risk tearing our relationship with God and the edges of our faith becoming jagged, susceptible to the parasites of temptation and the disease of sin.
This is the key to living out Saint Paul’s words from his Letter to the Romans: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”
Given humanity’s inclination to selfishness and the desire for wealth, pleasure, comfort and prestige, it is not easy to live the requirements for the Kingdom of God. We often have one foot that we believe is safely planted in God’s world, but then we stretch out our other foot to another world, the ways of society that make us unbalanced, and we’re liable to fall.
While many of us Catholics strive not to conform ourselves to this age, as Paul warns, this age that we live in today has a way of dulling our spiritual senses.
How much are we a slave to our cell phones, to social media, to binge watching streaming shows – with, at best, questionable content – to sports, to instant gratification?
Greed, fascination of celebrity, covetousness, dishonesty, adultery, abortion, slander, hatred – all of these things that society not only accepts, but celebrates – all these things choke the voice of God and lead to feelings of deep dissatisfaction.
Such worldly ways do not feed our spiritual lives. It dulls them. It leaves us as worldly souls that walk in darkness, like a browning lawn, deprived of the necessary nutrients for spiritual growth.
When our spiritual senses become dull, we can actually feel it.
In the Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah tells God, “You duped me, and I fell for it. Now everyone is laughing at me.” Jeremiah is upset by how society is treating him because he was doing God’s will. He feels that since God forced him into being a prophet, he should be treated better by society.
Then he says, “I say to myself, I will not mention Him, I will speak in His name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” Jeremiah can’t help but to do the will of God.
We have all experienced this burning fire in our hearts from time to time when we find that we have somehow become more steeped in society than in our faith. Somehow, we stopped depending on God in all we do and started depending more on ourselves, on the lure and conveniences of society. We’re not even sure how it happened. It wasn’t anything deliberate, and there was no single moment it happened.
It was slow, gradual, unnoticed, that is until we begin to feel that burning in our hearts because our spiritual senses have dulled and crave to be sharpened.
When we slip into seeking to live the ways of the world, we are not much different from a dull lawn mower blade, leaving us with jagged edges, tearing us from our relationship to God.
Fortunately, we can keep our spiritual senses sharpened, even in the midst of the material world, by going to Holy Mass, participating in the sacraments, reading Scripture and other spiritual texts, and by intentionally and deliberately seeking God in everything we do, even when mowing the lawn.
Deacon Dean Johnson serves at Church of the Holy Family, Sewell.
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