PARADOXICAL
The faith chroniclesMonday, February 25, 2013
Lenten retreat reflection: Day 14 - Velleity
"Velleity: a mere weak desire that leads nowhere"
Now I'm worried. I wonder whether I'm normal because I had to think hard to visualize the many ways I exhibit velleity at present, as Fr. DuBay defines. I almost immediately was able to understand what velleity means, but my memory is also immediately brought to the past, instead of the present.
Maybe I am having a hard time because my zeal for God is not that weak, no longer that weak as before, but as I have discussed in Day 13, my resistances to deep conversion are far more subtle, because they all have to do with self-acceptance as well as the acceptance that God loves me unconditionally, even when I sin, even when I can't deliver what I think I should.
Voila! Maybe then that's where my velleity struggles lie, after all: my weak desire to believe in God's unconditional love for me. Oh. Where, oh, where do I start to strengthen that desire? I don't know.
What I know is that I was able to instinctively identify with this next line that Fr. DuBay highlighted in neon colors, so to speak: "What we know has very little effect on how we live."
I, for one, know, theologically speaking, or profess to believe that God loves me unconditionally, even if I turn my back on God. But my body can't lie; my body -- my anxieties, my bouts of panic -- tell a different story: the truth is I doubt God's unconditional love for me, for why does my heartbeat betray me, betray what I say I know and believe?
Oh, God, help my unbelief. Heal my congnitive dissonance. I want to transcend my velleity. My problem seems to be far more basic, for how can I obey You, if I have fundamental issues with belief?
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