How many times a day do I think about what I need to get done, what I need to buy, what I need to eat, compared to how many times a day I wonder who I should pray for, how I can offer up what's going on in my life, examining my conscience, and uniting my soul to God? In other words, how many more times a day do I think of the temporary needs of my body and this life ahead of the life of my immortal soul?
Today Jesus is calling us to make the radical mind shift of valuing the lives of our souls more than our lives here on Earth. This can incredibly hard to wrap our minds around because we have so many pressing concerns. The life of our body and this life on Earth are very real and very important. It seems almost impossible to see beyond, to trust and know that our souls are more important than what's going on in the here and now. But Jesus Himself is telling us just that today, and if we take Him at His word and believe that our souls are worth His life, then we should be living as if our souls are more important than our earthly bodies. (Matthew 10:28)
I wish I could say that I pray more than I check my phone, or worry about making daily Mass more than I worry about making dinner. It's exceedingly difficult to live as Christ is calling us, but His grace gives us the ability to make our lives holy, and that's what we can rely on (not our own ability to transcend the daily grind).
I take encouragement for this from Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American person to be canonized by the Church, and whose feast we celebrate today. Saint Kateri lived with daily humiliation, rejection, and abuse just for living her faith. Yet she persevered because she knew the value of her own soul, and that Christ was calling her to a life of faith. Her life of faith contradicted the society she lived in to the point where she was living under constant threat of physical harm, yet she never gave up her faith.
I don't face these extreme hardships to live my faith, but I can take the same course as Saint Kateri's for my life and value my own soul above all else.
What can I do today to help me remember the value of my soul? Can I put a reminder on my phone to pray more frequently throughout the day? Maybe I can commit to making an effort to get to daily Mass during the week or make a Holy Hour? Saint Kateri, pray for us and help us imitate your true devotion to Jesus.
Christy Isinger is a wife and mom to five lovely, loud children and lives in northern Canada. When not homeschooling, she is a devoted reader of English literature from Jane Austen to Agatha Christie. She writes about the beauty of faith, life, and the home at her blog and is the co-host of the Fountains of Carrots Podcast. You can find out more about her here. She is the author of our Blessed Conversations: The Ten Commandments study found here.
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