When I was a young seminarian (sixty years ago!) they assigned me a spiritual director. He was to guide me in the ways of the spiritual life. One thing he kept stressing was “purity of intention.” I always felt like I wasn’t getting the message since my intentions, my motivations were always mixed. My dreams, my compulsions, my desires were always mixed in with my intention to do always and only what God wanted. How consoling to find that the scripture recognized my condition. More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans “asks how come I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I want to do?” We are a mess as a species. As we go through our Lenten practices we should remember that our desire to please God does in fact please God even if we find our tortured hearts are full of doubt and confusion at times.
