It is the things that come out of a man that make him unclean.
For it is from within,
From men's hearts,
That evil intentions emerge.
Fornication,
Faith,
Murder,
Adultery,
Avarice,
Malice,
Deceit,
Indecency,
Envy,
Slander,
Pride,
Folly,
All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.
Whom of us do not struggle with that list?
Who can truthfully say that they haven't experienced all of those emotions,
Expressions?
Whom of us can say that we haven't done them to anybody?
I don't think there's a single person on this planet at the moment who is without sin and who doesn't struggle with all of these things that comes from ego.
The consciousness of I as being separate from God.
That consciousness,
Which we talk about a lot,
Is one that we are born with.
It is our disconnect from the Lord and from each other.
The consciousness that tells us that I need to survive,
I need to survive at all costs,
Doesn't matter what I do to somebody else,
Doesn't matter how much hurt I inflict,
As long as I am okay.
How's that working for all of us?
How's that working for you in your life?
I know in mine it's not.
I know that as soon as I start focusing on myself as an individual trying to survive in this world,
Suddenly my whole world goes upside down.
As soon as I start giving in to that list that we read about,
Everything starts falling apart.
Why?
We are not meant to be separate.
I think a big part of why we are on this planet is that we connect and we break down this perception of being separate from each other.
We break down these perceptions of being separate from God and from His great creation.
But we need to work on it.
It's not something that just happens.
It is not part of the human condition,
I believe,
To be aware of this.
And yet it is part of the human lesson that we come down to learn,
To forget these layers of separateness from the Lord,
To reconnect to each other,
To see God in each of us,
To see God in the person who is maybe trying to do us in,
To see God in the person who is struggling,
To see God in the person that we don't like,
To see God in those that we love.
What do we do when we fall?
We are human.
How much do we blame ourselves for making mistakes?
How much do we hate ourselves?
And how long do we do it for?
Because that in itself is not helping.
That is where we oftentimes see that people start lashing out.
We oftentimes see that people are overwhelmed with the responsibilities that they have taken on out of love.
And then it gets too much.
And then suddenly everything is a problem.
Suddenly everything is against you.
Your perception is that everybody is against you and you lash out.
We forget about God within all of us.
I think that is the best time to come back to these three words.
Lord,
Have mercy.
We say during every Mass,
Lord,
Have mercy.
Christ,
Have mercy.
Lord,
Have mercy.
That should be the credo of our times.
Because if only once we let that mercy of the Lord wash over us,
That we can step out of the ego,
That we can step out of the times that we do wrong to others,
To ourselves,
The times that we hurt other people,
The times that we hurt ourselves,
The times that we hurt the Lord,
We can only step out of that when we fully submerge ourselves into this mercy of the Lord.
And once we do that,
We start moving back into harmony with what our lives could be and can be and the plan that God has for our lives.
And only then,
When we are in that flow of God,
Can we truthfully and honestly live lives that are holy and pure,
Not always without hardship or struggles,
But holy and pure.
Amen.
