“I don’t wanna go through the motions
I don’t wanna go one more day without Your all consuming passion inside of me. I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking. What if I had given everything instead of going through the motions?” – Matthew West – Motions
This morning at Mass I found myself begging the Holy Spirit to remove ‘the motions’ from my heart. There is a movie called ‘Click’ in which the star gets a remote control that controls moments of life. He can fast forward or skip events he doesn’t want to go through. When he’s rushed to get a deadline, he can skip moments his wife or kids want to spend with him so he can get back to work. The bad part of this is that the remote learns. As these events come up later, the remote skips or fast forwards automatically. In the end, chasing other things, he finds he has missed out on his life.
How much can I be like this?
How many times have I prayed the Lord’s Prayer or The Rosary or whatever, to only find myself at the end wondering if I even prayed it. How many times at Mass, the greatest event in the world, when Heaven touches earth, have I found my mind wandering? Not remembering the homily or maybe even sitting at the end, not remembering Jesus coming to me in the Eucharist?
How easy it is to say the Lord’s Prayer or Hail Mary on autopilot – to say the words and not even be thinking of them? Or, at Mass to kneel, sit, stand, kneel and everything just pass through without realization? It’s all so routine that the soul can do without even thinking.
What a great loss.
So what do we do if we’re caught in this rut?
Ask the Holy Spirit to press the rewind and pause buttons on our faith and prayer life. Slow down and focus. Practice focus. When you find yourself wandering or losing your place, stop! Recenter and refocus and then go forward. Don’t beat yourself up, just rewind your mind and restart.
Whether reading the Bible or praying the Rosary or the Our Father or anything, focus and practice focus. Keep yourself in the moment. Come back into the moment.
Help me fight through the nothingness of this life – ‘Cause I don’t wanna go through the motions