I lost my wallet again last week - for the fifth time in the past five years. On every previous occasion I got it back without whatever money was in it. This time it was different. A shop assistant from India had put it aside for me where I had left it on the counter and there wasn't a cent missing. I was as amazed as much as delighted. Not too long ago it would have been reasonable to expect this in Ireland but experience in recent years has shown us all that we're not as conscientious about returning found property as we used to be.
The Easter season is a great time for thinking about the positive side of who we are. Old-fashioned virtues such as hard work and honesty are, I believe, still very dear to us. Anybody with whom I shared my good news about the Indian gentleman's honesty was visibly pleased with the story. To me that was a sign that beneath the sham that so many of us take to be normality there is still a current of decency running through everybody. In a way it's like the saying that under every obese person there is a slim person waiting to get out. Under every Irish psyche, heavy with the spoils of our recent prosperity, there is an honest and hard-working person waiting to get out.
It isn't a vanity to ask our souls if they would like to go on a diet. Just as our bodies often crave the admiration of our peers so too do our souls. If we were to invest the same amount of energy into taking care of what is inside us as we do for the externals we would be a far happier nation. But it's hard to see the growth of the inner self. Belonging to a Church or faith community is akin to membership of a gym, except that it is a gym for the soul. Like working out in gym, it can be a slow and often daunting task to shed the excess baggage that we collect in our daily lives.
It would be wonderful if we could be as proud of our Church membership as we are of proclaiming what gym we attend. After all, how many of us really want the people we know best to remember us as a wealthy person in a beautiful body, but nothing more? A straight answer to that question will show what nerve was struck the day I got my wallet back. Of course it's very nice to be successful, but most of us would prefer to be remembered for our kindness, our honesty and our dedication than for the size of our financial legacy.
Giving our souls a chance to work out will provide them with an opportunity to cast out the hatred, racism, sloth, greed, vengeance and bitterness and allow our inner selves the chance to be true again. Embracing the values of honesty, hard work, loyalty, kindness and openness will lift those excess kilos off the soul and make it freer to be true. Like any gymnasium the members of the faith community (including the staff) will be at various different stages of development with a struggling balance between success and failure, highs and lows, good times and bad. Beneath this tired, overworked, dutiful person there is a good and kind one dying to get out.
F. MacE.