People say that the furthest distance you will ever travel is the distance between your head and your heart. I totally agree with it, and the more I live as a religious, the more I can convince it. I can feel the distance between my heart and head getting further and further, and it never stops.
As I learned, prayed, and discovered about me more, I had to find my hands further and further placed from my head. Because my knowledge and prayer accumulate more and more, but my ability to practise it can not follow them. Obtaining knowledge was easy but practising that knowledge was not.
So many times, I fail to follow what my heart says me to do.
The worst part of my failure is that I keep making an effort for finding excuses rather than making an effort to practice it.
There have always been various good excuses for my neglect. It was easy to find good excuses. From my deep heart, however, I knew that did not mean that I could not practice.
Whenever I reflect on those moments, I see how much I have struggled to find or make good excuses for my neglect of practising good things.
It seems the Pharisees in today's gospel were the same as me, using the sabbath day as the excuse for their neglect. And I could clearly see that their hands were far away from their heart.
Let us talk more about the excuses.
I heard one interesting story about this.
One day just after the second world war, few Chinese in ShangHai were baptised Catholic. One of them was filled with great joy and decided to go on pilgrimage to Rome.
When he just begun his journey to Rome, he asked for help from people, saying he was a pilgrim.Then people there invited him to their home and provided a room and food.
But when he moved more to the west, and travelled an Orthodox area, it was a little different. People took him to the bishop of the town and let the church help him.
He continued his journey and got to near Rome. It was also different there in the catholic world from how people helped him. People there brought him a cheap motel, gave him a little money, and left him behind and gone.
In modern society, we have much more and better excuses for our neglect of practising ourselves good things. Now, we have many companies, churches, and social welfare facilities doing that instead of us. What we only have to do is make an ARS call for donation or put some money on the basket at the mass in the church. It is easy. But while we are doing that, we are losing our ability to practise good things by ourselves with our own hands. That is what exactly I am doing.
So my meditation on today's gospel led me to these answers that I did to my heart when it told me to do good things.
"Oh, I don't need to do that much because I have already devoted myself to God."
"Oh, I don't need to help them now because I am already doing many prayers."
"Oh, I don't need to sacrifice this time because I have already offered my life enough to God."
"Oh, I don't need to do that because the priest or the church will do."
And I saw all these answers of mine turn into one sentence. One sentence that the Pharisees in today's gospel had in their mind.
"I don't need to help them because today is Sabbath day."
So today, I am strongly determined to keep my hands close to my heart and listen carefully, and I will try to do what my heart says me to so without excuses like Jesus cured the man suffering from dropsy on Sabbath day.
And I also would like to invite you to the voice of your heart, the heart full of Jesus, and practice what your heart says to do.