Time: 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm mountain (8:30 pm to 10:00 pm eastern).
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Giving Up Secrets
Our session will begin with prayer, led by Sr. Anne Marie Walsh Of SOLT.
We live in an age of secrets. Governments, corporations, educational, medical and religious institutions are all skilled at keeping secrets both for good reasons and not so good reasons. Media definitely keeps secrets according to the agenda it pushes. But this reflects people in general. People tend to keep a lot of secrets.
There is a pressing need to recognize that secrets make a difference. They can determine the direction of our lives, and the manner in which we pass from this world into the next.
Jesus tells us in the Gospels that everything that is hidden will be revealed. Secret activities, secret wounds, secret weaknesses, secret sins, secret fantasies, secret thoughts, secret addictions, secret jealousies, secret plans, secret ambitions, family secrets, secret judgments, secret desires, in fact a secret life, all of it will be revealed. That is unless you have taken care of any sin in your secrets, by going to Confession where God annihilates the sin and wills to remember it no more. Then they will never ever be brought up as a testimony against you.
Ironically, we hide things about ourselves but at the same time have an attraction to know the secrets of others. There is almost nothing people like better than hearing a good secret. Why? There are several reasons. One, it diverts attention away from our own secrets. But we also love secrets because we love hidden knowledge. We live in a state of being that is still looking for something that hasn’t been completely revealed to us yet. We’re searching, whether we know it or not, for the one Word that will answer all of our questions and give sight to the vision, the understanding we seek.
Interestingly enough, Jesus mentions that the Father Himself keeps secrets from the “wise and learned” and reveals things to the “little ones.” Why is that? We know most certainly that God never does anything without good reason, and a reason that redounds, often in mysterious ways, to our greatest benefit.
Might it be that God protects the sacred and hides divine treasures for our sake? Anyone who has studied covenant knows that profaning the sacred is dangerous. We can be destroyed by our profanation. A simple look at the human wreckage surrounding the modern desecration of the gift and mystery of sexuality confirms this.
In other words, could it be that just as Jesus told us not to cast pearls before swine, He follows His own counsel with us? He puts His treasure in safe places…He is careful with what is precious beyond measure. And at the same time He is merciful to those of us who would have a terrible accounting to give for squandering a poorly understood gift, if we received it and did not really appreciate or care for it.
Secrets like this can be a good thing; in fact they can be a very good thing if their purpose is to protect a treasure (whether that be jewels or a reputation) from vandalism or theft, misuse or destruction.
But some secrets should never be kept. And unfortunately, people usually have more of these kinds of secrets.
We can safely say, I think, that many of the sicknesses of our age are determined by the secrets we keep. This is well known in the world of addiction and co-dependency: “We are only as sick as our secrets.” This is actually a psychology that was first explicated in the Sacred Scriptures. Psalm 32 says: “I kept it secret and my frame was wasted…” The distress, the groaning, the anxiety, the depression, the disturbance of so many today, more often than not, comes from holding secrets that should not be kept.
I know a woman who struggled with terrible depression much of her adult life, watched Mother Angelica faithfully, but would not take the secret of her abortion to the Confessional. She died recently and my prayer is that before she died she finally released her secret into the loving mercy of God so she could enter her heavenly home with “joy and an upright heart.” Her secret certainly didn’t keep her in peace or bring happiness into her life. In fact, it brought her to the verge of a mental breakdown.
At the end of our lives, we will have an encounter with God Who is pure Love and Light and Goodness and Truth. And all that is hidden will be revealed. To our own overwhelming confusion we could find ourselves suddenly naked before the Lord, rather than clothed in the garments of grace He so freely and continually offers us, all because fear, or attachment or shame or pride kept us from giving up our secrets. Great Confessors, like St. John Vianney and St. Padre Pio spent themselves in this work of getting people to give up their secrets so that they could begin to know the deep things of God in their lives.
Our Blessed Mother, the most pure creature who ever lived, was without secrets of her own. She kept only those God gave her. And because of that, there is no one more beautiful, more radiantly transparent in the living of the Mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity. In Her many apparitions in the last centuries, we can hear the cry of our good Mother when she bids us return to the Sacraments and live the Gospel way of life. One of the things She is saying with great affection and urgency, as if speaking to a little child, is: “Run! Run and whisper your secrets to your Father. All of them! And be assured that He will give treasures out of the darkness and riches that have been hidden away especially for you!” Is. 45:3
For the full article please see: http://www.missionaryinthemodernworld.blogspot.com
Questions For Silent Reflection
1. What is your experience of secrets?
2. Have you ever seen or experienced the effects of holding bad secrets?
3. Do you think some secrets can actually make you physically ill?
4. What do you think God wants from us in our secrets? Remember that nothing is hidden from Him?
