Liberation from Obsessions

Dear Parish Faithful,

Great Lent: The Twelfth Day

From St. John Cassian (+c. 430)

If we want to set our lives right and find peace,

it is not the tolerant attitude of others

that will do it for us.

It will come about, rather, by our learning

how to show compassion to them.

If we try to avoid this hard struggle of compassion,

by preferring a withdrawn and solitary life,

we will simply drag our unleashed obsessions

into solitude with us.

We might well have hidden them

We certainly will not have eliminated them.

If we do not seek liberation from our obsessions,

then becoming more withdrawn and less social

may even make us more blind to them,

since it can mask them.