Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe

Author:Jacques Philippe [Philippe, Jacques]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, spiritual
ISBN: 9781594170966
Publisher: Scepter Publishers
Published: 2010-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

The real harm is not outside us but within us

At times of struggle we need also to recall the conversion we should be concerned about is not our neighbor’s but our own. Only if we take our own conversion seriously do we stand any chance of seeing our neighbor converted too. This point of view is realistic and encouraging. We have little real influence on other people, and our attempts to change them have only a very slight chance of success, since most of the time we want them to change in line with our criteria and aims more than God’s. If we are concerned first with our own conversion, however, we have more hope of making a difference. It does more good to seek to reform our hearts than to reform the world or the Church. Everyone will benefit.

Let us ask ourselves this question: “To what degree can the evil in my surroundings affect me?” With apologies to those I am going to scandalize, I say that the evil around us—the sins of others, of people in the Church, of society—does not become an evil for us unless we let it penetrate our hearts.

The point isn’t that we should become indifferent. Just the opposite. The holier we are, the more we will suffer due to the evil and sin in the world. But external evil only harms us to the degree we react badly to it, by fear, worry, discouragement, sadness, giving up, rushing to apply hasty solutions that don’t solve anything, judging, fostering bitterness and resentment, refusing to forgive, and so on. Jesus says in St. Mark’s Gospel: “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him!”57 Harm does not come to us from external circumstances, but from how we react to them interiorly. “What ruins our souls is not what happens outside, but the echo that it awakes within us.”58 The harm that other people do to me never comes from them, it comes from me. Harm is only self-inflicted, the Fathers of the Church said long ago.

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