These lines are from a hymn we sang this morning at
Morning Prayer:
Lord, make our hearts and bodies whole
lest earth’s enticements snare the soul.
Lest anger wound our inmost parts,
resentment hurt our fragile hearts. (From a 6th Century hymn
translated by Thomas Cooper)
Three points:
1.
There is an unavoidable connection between
materialism or the search for pleasure on the one hand, and the health of the
soul on the other hand. Pope Francis has had a lot to say about this over the
past year.
2.
Anger is toxic and destructive, inflicting the
spirit of the one who hangs on to anger. Even if no one else is hurt by my
anger, I am hurting myself both spiritually and physically.
3.
The same thing goes for resentments, which are
actually subtle forms of anger. I have
found that taking time every now and then to list people and situations that I
resent and then asking the Lord to heal the resentment does me a lot of good.
Unacknowledged resentments can be like a hidden cancer consuming the better
parts of our nature.
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