March 16, 2019

In the Voice of Moreau:  We live in a world where information and sensory stimulation are a constant reality.  In the age of technology, from morning to night, our minds have to be open for business – we are constantly on the spot as it were.  Yet, this is a recipe for spiritual catastrophe. What mechanisms do we have in place to prevent the devil, the world and the flesh from accessing our deepest and truest selves?  I tell you that we must learn to shut the door of the mind, allow the Cross to descend into the keyhole and dare anything that does not measure up to the standard of our crucified Lord to pass over into our hearts.  How often we play with that door! How we let in all sorts of company! Do we not know that the evil one wears disguises? He will do anything to steal us from God. Therefore, I implore you, sisters and brothers, to learn to live in these modern times with a closed door.  What our Lord wishes us to know, taste, feel or experience, he will deliver to us through a closed and locked door (Jn 20:19). Trust the Cross! Ave Crux, Spes Unica!

Holy Cross Educator’s Response:  The passion for esteem and honor is the source of all our mistakes and evils. We are all proximate to being irreparably infected with the disease of information bombardment.  The relentless flood of media information does not move us toward God. It causes us to be completely focused inward, on our flawed nature, for love and fulfillment. Parents and educators need to be on alert, first, to protect themselves from looking for solace and fulfillment through the pull of instantaneous world-wide information.  We must don the armor of faith that is woven from the Cross as our hope. This restraint is an everyday struggle. Yet the more we look to God and less to self, the stronger that armor becomes. If we energetically engage is this struggle, then we can assist our children and students to work toward the exercise of disciplined restraint from attempting to satiate all their needs for recognition and love through their devices.  This is a difficult task, yet a critical obligation. The survival of the soul is at stake. In a sermon on “Community Spirit” Blessed Moreau talks about the consequence for our first parents falling prey to Satan’s promise of everlasting bliss.   His explanation of the dilemma of Adam and Eve becomes relevant today if we replace their names with ours and Satan’s apple for the internet. “Pride is a vain and deceitful thing.  It spoke its first lying words in the Garden of Eden, ‘You shall be gods’. In his state of innocence, the first human was united to God, by complete dependence, and he drew from this union the clear light of his intelligence, the firm rule of his will, the spiritual life of his soul, his absolute empire over his body, his sovereign authority over creatures, and the immortality that allowed him to aspire to eternal glory.  All this because our first parent saw himself in God, who was always with him as the source of all his happiness to his perfect submission to the divine will.  But that permanent regard of humanity toward its Creator—humanity in whom God mirrored himself, so to speak—which referred all humanity to God was suddenly lost through the deviation of the human mind turned away from God and upon itself.”  It is natural to want to be loved.  It is unnatural to seek love through the door of the internet.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.