"To educate in the contemplation of beauty is to open the mind to its essence.""Silence and sobriety are essential in the Christian life," Pope saysFor many years mankind embarked on the conquest of outer space. The technological race led for a time to travel to the moon, to put satellites into orbit, to try to communicate with supposed intelligent life forms in any corner of the Universe. The cosmos, which since the beginning of mankind had fascinated men when they contemplated the sky, was presented as the next continent to conquer, just as the new American world had been in its day. The Earth had become too small for us. Man needed to continue taking steps, no matter how small, that would be a great step for mankind. Neil Armstrong "dixit".
But more than outer space, today we humans need to undertake the conquest of inner space. A space more fascinating than the entire created universe. A space that remains in many of its corners unexplored and unknown. A space that opens us to great questions and great encounters. A space in which, ultimately, we can meet ourselves and others. Because contact with others occurs through the body, but it takes place in the soul, in the interior of our being. A space which, we know well, is the sacred place where God meets, where we encounter the living and life-giving God.
A "slow" lifestyle
"By his interiority (man) is superior to the whole universe; to this deep interiority he returns when he enters into his heart, where God awaits him, the scrutinizer of hearts and where he personally decides his own destiny" ("Gaudium et spes", 14).
Although we live in a time of special noise and difficulty for the interior life, we must recognize that the difficulty to enter within oneself and establish that intimate dialogue with God has always been in man. It is a work that each person has to carry out in his process of maturing and widening as a person. The deeper one is, the more inner life one has, the more personality quotas are achieved. On the other hand, the more superficiality and less capacity for introspection, the more we are at the mercy of feelings, external motions and manipulation.
But if this struggle to enter within oneself has been a constant in the history of spirituality, today we feel that this demand from the outside world has increased exponentially. And we perceive that there is a special difficulty, almost constitutive of our society and culture, to live from within. We are aware, and we have even experienced it in our own flesh, of the force that external demands have gained, especially through technology, and that is progressively leading us to lose our capacity for interiority.
Undoubtedly, living in the midst of the world, wanting to be salt and light in our society, has as a counterpoint the fact that we participate intensely in its struggles and difficulties. But this is precisely one of those aspects in which our life must be prophetically counter-cultural. Today it is possible and necessary, and the world requires it, another lifestyle, more "slow" than "fast". (some today promote the concept of "slow food" as opposed to "fast food"), more "in" than "out", more human than technological. More stillness, more interiority, more humanity.
A true revolution
We Christians are called to be the guardians of this interiority. People who warn about the climate change that can ruin our hearts. Cultivators of those green spaces of the soul that oxygenate the person and society as a whole. Teachers of that spirituality that our brothers and sisters hunger for and that, beyond the trees we embrace, is filled when we feel in our souls the embrace of Christ himself on the Cross and in the Eucharist.
Our lives will be authentic green spaces of the soul in our society and in the Church if we cultivate this interior life with special care and do not allow ourselves to be dragged down by the maelstrom of this society. And perhaps the special value that it can have for our contemporaries is that, being men like them, with their same worries, with their same struggles, we can open for them realistic paths of interior life and intimacy with the Lord.
The problem for this cultivation of the interior life is that, instead of being inhabited, we often find ourselves busy, as D. Mikel Garciandía, Bishop of Palencia, commented. Busy in a thousand things, many of them very holy, but which are not born from our being, but are pure doing. This type of actions, we know it well because we have suffered it, wear us out and can break us. Instead of being inhabited, we are preoccupied with circumstances and situations that come upon us and take control of our lives. Bold trust in God and in his loving Providence no longer dwells in us. We find ourselves often not inhabited but occupied - rather "squatted"., because our soul is not their house and does not belong to them by right - because of the demons that assault and take it, and it is necessary that someone stronger come to drive them out of their abode.
The five squatters
I believe that we Christians must undertake an eviction and throw out the squatters of the soul who have been creeping in without us realizing it at times. We need to take back what is ours, to conquer the inner space of our home. Here is a simple list of the squatters of the soul that I have discovered in my own home.
Noise. There is noise in the street, in the houses, everywhere... And there is noise in the soul. A noise that comes in the form of the media, of videos of YouTubeof WhatsApp messages, of likes on social networks. A noise that is everywhere and that sneaks into our soul. A noise that prevents us from listening to the lament of men and their needs, that does not let us hear the laments of our own soul. A noise that prevents us from listening to God.
Noise is the first squatter of our soul. Noise of sounds, but also visual noise with images that approach us at breakneck speed. Or advertising noise, sneaking through algorithms among our tastes and preferences. Noise that stuns us and dulls our soul and senses. Noise that leaves us no room for creative, inspired thought.
Noise is the first squatter of our soul that we have to kick out with a court order imposing a loving silence.
2.- Activism. The second squat is activism. One of the most frequent in today's world. When occupation, doing, takes over the soul, it is impossible to be inhabited. We are occupied, but not inhabited.
The doing that is born of being and is a consequence of our identity makes us grow, builds us up. It becomes a donation. But the doing that is born from the desire to succeed, to achieve, from a simple machinery that we cannot stop, destroys us. It is the doing that undoes us. It is butter spread on too much bread. It is life stretched like chewing gum. It is the not arriving, which does not give me life, which ends up being a doing that in the end is a way to fill a void. The emptiness of a house, our soul, that is not inhabited.
The second squatter of the soul has long been among us and eviction is not easy. He claims his rights. He will tell the judge that this house is his. That we have to do, do, do good to others, that the world needs us, that people need us. That we need to feel useful... Only a life of deep faith that makes us live from the spirituality of Nazareth will be able to evict this unredeemed squatter.
3.- Superficiality. The third squatter of our soul is superficiality. The culture of entertainment, the culture of constant claims, the culture of the lack of deep and rigorous thinking... Everything invites to superficiality, to live in the skin, in the feelings. We are all governed by stimuli that come to us from outside and make us very manageable and vulnerable. We live, if not outside, at least on the surface of ourselves.
This can also happen to us Christians. May we be satisfied with a superficial interior life, of moments, of experiences... But may we not live from the authentically mystical union with God to which we are called. Let us not despise this third squatter and let us go into the thicket.
4.- Curiosity, change, novelty, snobbery, the tyranny of fashion. The fourth squatter of the soul is closely related to the previous one. Our society easily falls into the trap of living in a permanent roller coaster. We are so obsessed with experiences to the maximum that in the end we feel nothing. It is the overstimulation that children suffer and that we all experience. We get bored of the everyday. We run away from routine. And that's why we constantly need to try new experiences. We are not in the now... which is the only place and time we can inhabit. We are tourists pecking at one experience or another. We are never at home.
Narcissism-self-referentiality. The last squatter in our house is ourselves! Again, this is one of the characteristics of our "selfie" and "like" society. It happens when we become the center of the world and, like a narcissus, we have to look at ourselves in the new lake that is now the photo of a cell phone and feel the appreciation and applause of others in the "likes" they give us. Then we too drown in sterile self-centeredness. We do not find God, nor do we find our brothers and sisters. We only find ourselves. But we find ourselves, really, lost. Our false image, our mask, our frustrations have taken the place where we should live.
He is the most difficult squatter to evict, but the most necessary. Mary's self-forgetfulness in the Visitation is our best help in doing so.
Needless to say, the battle to evict the squatters is going to be tough. One would say that the legislation itself protects them and they will claim that they have the right to stay there. Because there really is a risk that they will become culture, habit, lifestyle and stay to live in our soul.
That is why the eviction must begin as soon as possible.
Teaching Delegate in the Diocese of Getafe since the 2010-2011 academic year, he has previously exercised this service in the Archbishopric of Pamplona and Tudela, for seven years (2003-2009). He currently combines this work with his dedication to youth ministry directing the Public Association of the Faithful 'Milicia de Santa Maria' and the educational association 'VEN Y VERÁS. EDUCATION', of which he is President.
