Jesus said to his disciples:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?
Did we not drive out demons in your name?
Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’
Then I will declare to them solemnly,
‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’ Mt 7:21-23

Is it not easiest for us to live life in the doldrums of our own world?  It is so easy for us to get caught up in routines, daily activities, and just the run around that life typically puts us through.  We can get moving so fast, and even at times too slow, that we forget where we are going, what the purpose is for us being here, and exactly what all we really should be focusing on in life.

I am Catholic because I chose to be. As funny as that sounds, I converted to Catholicism from virtually no real affiliation. I had a very loose interpretation of my relationship with God, and at that point, really struggled with the fact that Jesus is the way to Him. I fell in love with the tradition, the rituals, the flow of how Mass operates, the majesty and mystery surrounding the core beliefs, and most of all, the belief in the communion of Saints. It was very refreshing for me to be able to learn the Mass, to know that I can travel to just about anywhere in the world, and the same traditions are going to be followed, and I could anticipate the phases every Sunday. In all of its wonder, the routine is what I fell in love with when it came to the Mass.

And that is the key, we tend to fall in love with some of our routines. In doing so, we can lose the flavor of the purpose of what that routine was for in the first place. I find myself doing that from time to time. Oh, let’s kneel now and huh… here we go again, we stand, we kneel, we sit, and on and on. It is so easy to get just be lackadaisical and lethargic in our methodology.  I know I have been in a rut from time to time, and have had my purpose fall away from the reason that I am at Mass in the first place… Celebrating my Lord and Savior Jesus. Even then, sometimes it is all in how I prepare for Mass that makes the difference. Shutting down my day to day mind in order to allow for the Spirit to work.

This passage delves deeper into this.  For me, it shows the fact that just going to Church, showing up, going through the motions, and then going right back into what we are doing in our daily lives does not move us into a space of Grace. Even just minor acts of anything to show love to someone is more than just being a passive Christian. Please don’t get me wrong, I understand totally, because I fall into the all about me roles from time to time. I get so wrapped up in myself, all my woes, all my routines, all my happenings, that I forget the important relationships that I am supposed to be working on, like my wife, God, and my friends. That I feel is really the important message in this, what are we doing to really have a relationship with God? Are we spending the meaningful time in the relationships that matter most to us, or are we worried about us, and taking these things for granted? Like with everything, quality takes work and time. We get only what we put into it.