Spiritual Clutter

It begins around mid-December.  When our focus should be on Advent we soon find the assault of women’s magazines with January dates promising you the best tips ever to eliminate household clutter.  As the secular version of Christmas is complete and we creep ever closer to the new year the barrage continues.  Now we see news articles and facebook postings equating an untidy home with a host of psychological imbalances.  Talk shows and advertising circulars promote rubber containers and shelving units to put our material lives in order.  Fad diets are pushed on consumers eager to trim back the results of weeks of festive eating.  Self-help promos instruct the ambitious how to best compose new year resolutions so they just might last longer than a week.

Yet in all of this reorganizing, resolution-making, good-intentions where is the talk of a ‘spiritual clutter’ purge?

According to the University of Scranton, Journal of Clinical Psychology here is the ranking of the top ten resolutions for 2014:

Although these are all valid resolutions, they still lack the resolve to improve our spiritual nature.  Keeping in mind that the body is temporary and our time here is to be spent preparing for our afterlife, it only makes sound sense that our resolutions should reflect that as well.

Experts say that any good resolution should be specific.  For example,  in lieu of saying you want to loose weight you should determine a target amount and specific plan how to achieve these results.  An illustration of this would be to declare you want to lose 5 lbs per month and you plan to achieve this by eliminating all sweets except on Sundays.

Likewise, we should consider a spiritual plan for the new year ahead.  Instead of expressing a desire to pray more, make a concrete plan.  An example of this would be to attentively schedule 10 minutes upon waking into your routine for morning prayers or spiritual reading.  Or to start the day, every day, with a morning rosary.

And what about spiritual clutter?  What are the things that are piling up and distracting you, overwhelming you from a deeper relationship with God?  Are there unhealthy relationships in your life that need to be avoided?  Do your entertainment choices conflict with Church teachings?  What about the movies you watch, the t.v. programs you frequent, your reading choices, clothing styles, music you listen to?  Are these things drawing you to the faith or cluttering your path to an eternal life with God?  Would you feel comfortable sharing your entertainment choices or Facebook postings with your parents, grandparents, spouse, parish priest?  If not, there’s probably something in the spiritual clutter category that needs to be eliminated.  (^* What then shall we say? Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not! How can we who died to sin yet live in it? Romans 6:1-2)

Do you have an unbalanced focus on self instead of others?  Do you find yourself ever focusing on your needs and wants in lieu of making others a priority?  Perhaps this is the time to shift your energies onto helping others.  (And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’  Matthew 25:40)

My invitation to you is simple….when thinking of goals for the new year don’t forget to put priority on your soul. Yes, saving money, adopting a healthier lifestyle, and other forms of self-improvement are all worthy goals. Those should all be encouraged. But before we become too obsessive about those dirty dishes in the sink, let us begin to focus on the untidy aspects in our spiritual lives together.