Thursday, September 12, 2013

Fr. Dubay on Spiritual Boredom

"Boredom comes not from reality but from people who are only half alive. [...]
"'[Mass is] not meaningful to me; I don't get anything out of it; I find it boring.' These alleged reasons are not considered by the one complaining to be defects in himself. Rather they are conceived as something wrong with the Eucharistic Sacrifice itself. [...] 
"What then is the core of the boredom problem? It is the same as with most kinds of tedium. Monotony is due chiefly to the spiritual poverty of bored people. They are so poor in human development that they are more or less insensitive to seeing and appreciating beauty lying right before their eyes. They can read Shakespeare and listen to Mozart without being thrilled or the least moved by what well-rounded men and women find stimulating and exciting. The awesome wonders of creation (an atom, a tiny living cell, galaxies of billions of immense stars, a psalm verse) leave them cold and unimpressed. They are partially or totally deaf in mind and heart. [...]

"People who profess to get nothing from a Beethoven symphony or an article dealing with a recent discovery in microbiology are saying far more about themselves than about the music or the science. [...] In plain English: People who say they get little from Mass are those who bring little. They are toddlers who have a lot of growing to do."
Source: Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.. Prayer Primer (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2002), 77, 99-101.

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