I have a glass jam jar sitting on my desk in my office. It used to contain delicious strawberry preserve, which I had relished to the very last drop. I passed someone something I made a few weeks ago, and it was returned to me washed and cleaned, and I have yet to bring it back to my living quarters. As grace would have it, I found a new use for it now that we cannot hear confessions in the confessionals but rather in our offices due to the safety measures put in place by the powers that be viz-a-viz the COVID situation. It comes in suitably handy in bringing across a point when hearing confessions regarding purity.
It is not uncommon to see people who are sincere in wanting to grow in holiness getting into a certain rut when dealing with their issues with purity and addictions. While they are clear that their lives should not be lived around the obsession with things and activities that fill their hearts and minds with things that God finds offensive, many can end up having their lives obsessing over the direct opposite end of this moral spectrum – where they are overly concerned with keeping their lives and souls scrubbed spotlessly clean (as if that will ever happen) and making that the aim and goal of the spiritual life. It is not.
Our lives (as is our heart and our soul) are not to be imaged as a blank slate or an empty vessel to be kept empty. Emptiness doesn’t have value and goodness in itself. Emptiness is a lack. The beginning lines of Genesis tells of how before God created anything, that the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. This is strong metaphorical language because it isn’t logical to even say that there was earth before God created anything. It’s alluding to the fact that emptiness is a lack, just as vacancy is a lack.
Out of love, God has created so that creation can partake in the love that God is in his very essence. Just wanting to keep our souls (and obsessing over keeping our minds) clean and vacant not only isn’t possible, but it is also not in line with God’s aim of creation. Yes, keep it clear of clutter and what does not glorify God, but do make great effort to fill that with what does give glory to God. We do this by loving God and loving neighbour, and all acts of mercy, charity and rightful love will do that in big and small ways. That’s probably the harder follow-up part of the spiritual quest that many find challenging.
This is when I use the concrete example of the empty jam jar sitting on my desk in my office. The makers of that glass container did not make it to be a container for air. It was made to contain things. The same for our souls, which are not made for them to be void of anything, but to be filled with love (for God and neighbour) because they are made by love (of God). Who could have guessed that a washed jam jar could be something I could use as an apparatus to depict our souls?
This brings to mind a gospel passage from Matthew 12:43-45, where Jesus says that when an unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it will go to waterless places seeking rest, but finding none, will return to the place from which it came and finding the house empty, swept and put in order, will re-enter it with seven spirits more evil than itself and the person will be in a worse state then before.
It will be a new obsession and it will be more insidious because at least in the first instance, it was a clearly morally objective evil obsession. Now, in the second instance, the new obsession of being OCD about one being scrupulous will have an appearance of goodness, while in essence it is still not filling it with any semblance of love of God or neighbour, but is in fact a new level of being self-absorbed and self-serving.
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