02 Mar Spring-Cleaning Your Heart

by Catherine Doherty

Deep inside us there is junk that has accumulated through the years. You have to go and cleanse your soul and heart of it all. Go into your heart and you’ll see thousands of things: envy, jealousy—a lot of things.

So, come Lent, you make a genuflection—not so much of your knees but of your soul—and you say to yourself, well, here is where I cleanse my soul; here is where I spring-clean it; here is where I make it a place in which God can live.

Think of your soul as a room,  you are making ready for God, and if you knew that God was coming, you certainly would wash and clean and scrub.

Do it now. Do the washing and scrubbing and cleaning. Lent is for that.

And as you come out of it, a great joy will prevail in you, and Easter will be a really beautiful time. Beautiful! If your Lent has been true and one that really cleansed your soul.

Do it now; face it. Talk to your spiritual director; talk to God himself and to Our Lady. Talk! So that Christ may be ready to walk into your room, your soul.

Excerpted from Grace in Every Season, (2001), February 24, p. 64, available from MH Publications