Break our Pagan Hearts

Perhaps on this feast day of Saint Patrick who converted the pagans in Ireland it is fitting to talk about the paganism in our own hearts.  We tend to think of paganism as a thing of the past, but often we incorporate it subtly into our spiritual lives without realizing it.

To speak in general terms, the pagans saw the gods as beings to appease.  They spoke of submitting to the will of the gods when circumstances turned against them.  They gave the gods what was demanded of them and begged for only what they absolutely needed, making sacrifices to obtain it.  They tried not to make the gods angry at them.  They had their favorite gods and their favorite rituals.  Yet even when they kept statues of household gods and burned incense to them, they never really wanted the gods to be part of their daily lives.

Don't we often act the same way with God?  We try to appease Him.  We speak of accepting His will when things don't go our way.  We try to fulfill His demands and not to ask Him for too much and try to bribe Him to say yes.  We try not to make Him angry at us.  We have our favorite prayers and devotions.  Yet we don't really want Him to be part of our daily lives and ask us to change our lives and convert our hearts.

We don't speak to God heart to heart as to our dearest friend.  We scarcely even know how to talk to Him at all.

One of the great examples of prayer is Abraham.  Think of him beseeching the Lord not to destroy Sodom.  He started by asking Him to spare the city from destruction if there were only fifty righteous men.  When the Lord agreed, Abraham talked Him down to forty-five and then forty and then thirty and then twenty.  Finally, he asked for the city to be spared even if there were only ten righteous men within its walls.

Yet in the end his prayer was in vain.  There were not even ten righteous men and Sodom was destroyed.

So what do we learn?

God's will was done as it would have been if Abraham had said nothing.  So do we just say: "Stupid Abraham, you should have just accepted God's will in the beginning because He always knows what He is doing?"

No.  Of course not.

We respect Abraham's dialogue with God if for no other reason than that God Himself respected it.  He could have told Abraham it was futile to bargain for He knew already that there were not enough righteous men to warrant saving the city.  Yet instead He allowed Abraham to continue asking.  By doing so, He confirmed Abraham in his prayer—a prayer that came from a heart moved with love for others and a heart that loved his Lord and would accept His will however it came.

Do we have that same courage?  Don't we rather shy away from asking God too intensely for what we want lest it not be His will?

Let us not be afraid to enter into that dialogue with Him, to ask Him for whatever we need, trusting that He will provide according to His far-seeing wisdom.  For if we avoid that conversation with our Beloved Lord, on whom do we rely?  Merely upon our own strength?  And is not that precisely what the pagans did?

As we journey through the desert of Lent, let us dare ask Him to break our pagan hearts and to give us hearts soft and docile to His voice and leading.