Dear Folks,

Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity opens with a discussion of the will and the intellect. Salvation depends upon the will. We are saved or condemned according to what we love. If we love God, we receive God. If we love self in preference to God, we receive the self, apart from God.

But Sheed warns that even when our wills are pointed toward God, our minds may still be shaped by the world:

“When we look at the universe, we see pretty well what other people see, plus certain extra features taught us by our religion. For the most part, the same influences that form other people’s minds form ours—the same habits of thought, inclinations, bodily senses, indolences—worked upon by the same newspapers, periodicals, best- sellers, films, radio programs. So that we have not so much Catholic minds as worldly minds with Catholic patches. Intellectually, we wear our Catholicism like a badge on the lapel of the same kind of suit that everyone else is wearing.”

Do we really think differently, or do we simply act differently when it’s convenient? Is Friday the beginning of the weekend, or the day you

remember the Lord’s Passion? Is Sunday just family dinner, or truly the Lord’s Day of Sabbath rest and re-creation?

These reveal what we truly value in our hearts and minds:

How we spend money.

What we celebrate.

What we doom-scroll.

What we rearrange our schedules for.

What we dress up for.

This is why I sometimes resist the steady encroachment of secular themes attached to months and days—quiet

efforts to shape hearts and minds apart from God. We are not called to have “worldly minds with Catholic

patches. ” We are called to have Catholic minds and Catholic hearts—through and through.

Jesus, meek and humble of heart,

make my heart and mind like unto thine.

Pax et bonum,

Father John Mosimann