Sunday Meditation: You Can't Emote Your Way to Christ!

A guest meditation today from my sister Carol. Thanks for the reminder, Sis! 

If you think feeling and emoting are the way to Christ...well..that is a major error.
Feelings for the most part are very untrustworthy..Please note that fact..feelings are not always trustworthy....I can feel like bopping someone in the nose but I am not to act on that because one is supposed to "put one's brain into gear" and control the action that would be taken on that feeling if left to go unchecked...
One must fulfill duty despite the way one is feeling each day. Sometimes the Lord shows us our duty for the day by eclipsing our plans and giving us new plans....kind of a C. S. Lewis moment...you know -- "Life is what happens while we are making other plans." 
Golly, how patient God can be with us as as slow and stupid as we sometimes are!

A good example: You go out to the car and it does not start....You get frustrated...but for all eternity God knew that car would not start in that moment. He is showing you the beginning of a different plan for today's path...and yes you may be late for work but you are not late for HIS work. It is in that moment you can realize....It is ALL His work and ALL HIS time. 

Remember A.M.D.G...ad Majorem Dei Gloriam...the Ignatian motto? As a tiny child my classmates and I printed these letters at the top of our papers for every work we did for the day...whether penmanship, math, writing...it was all for the glory of God...not some of it , not part of it...ALL of it. 

Peace and prayers, 

Carol 

One of my favorite saints, Thomas Aquinas, is considered the apostle of reason, but he also appreciated the emotional sufferings Christ experienced in the passion. 

He suffered in all His bodily senses: in touch, by being scourged and nailed; in taste, by being given vinegar and gall to drink; in smell, by being fastened to the gibbet in a place reeking with the stench of corpses, which is called Calvary; in hearing, by being tormented with the cries of blasphemers and scorners; in sight, by beholding the tears of His Mother and of the disciple whom He loved.  (ST III, q.46, a.5)

Despite all those feelings of horror and pain that warred against his physical humanity, Christ chose God's will. May we go and do likewise today. Our feelings are both a gift and a temptation. They can move us to compassion for others or hatred. They can move us to sacrifice for others out of love and duty or ignore others out of selfishness and irresponsibility. Our choices ultimately define us. Will we be slaves to our feelings or place our feelings under the control of our reason and will? Will you do all today "for the honor and glory of God?"

Here's a great post that illustrates this meditation. Check it out here. (Hat tip to Creative Minority Report.)