By Father John Bayer, O. Cist.
Special to The Texas Catholic
Do you ever feel like you are going through the motions without passion as you carry out your responsibilities? At times, we all can — even monks.
We can be good rule followers with a strong sense of duty, but Jesus wants more for us. He does not want us simply to do things. He wants us to be happy and for our hearts to be enkindled with the fire of love. Love is our purpose in life. A monk who just lets himself be carried bell to bell by duty is not happy. As St. Benedict said in his Rule, we were made to “run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love” (Prologue 49).
Do not get me wrong. Duty is good. It is good to have a strong will that keeps us doing what is right even when we lack passion for it. Duty can carry us through dry times, and dry times happen in this life to us all. Moreover, dry times can be important ways for us all to grow in generosity, detachment, and deep, deep charity. People who do the right thing without perceiving any immediate reward — without even the reward of “good feels” — are certainly on the path to holiness.
But while Jesus might not want more from us in such moments, he certainly does want more for us in the end. He wants us to be personally integrated and happy and not just coldly dutiful. The way to happiness can wind through dry periods, but it ends in the fire of passionate love.
So, even as we prepare ourselves to accept spiritual dryness whenever God permits it, we are not wrong to look for ways to experience the love of God taking over our humanity and turning us entirely into a single, pure flame of joyful love — body, mind, and spirit.
The saints can help us catch fire like this. Take St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. She was a French Visitation nun who died in 1690. In her life, Christ gifted her with visions that ultimately led to the modern form of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Jesus inspired her to pray in a special way on the first Friday of each month. In private revelations to her, Christ established the Friday after the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi as the feast of the Sacred Heart. This eventually became a reality for the whole Church when Pope Pius IX extended the feast to the General Roman Calendar in 1856. Christ also gave her the experience of resting her head upon his heart, and he told her that he wanted all people to know about his goodness.
St. Margaret Mary was transformed by these visions. As one sister wrote about her, “The love of the Sacred Heart was the fire which consumed her, and devotion to the Sacred Heart is the refrain of all her writings” (The Catholic Encyclopedia).
If we want to catch fire like St. Margaret Mary, then we too must encounter the goodness of God. We must experience his Sacred Heart and let it overwhelm our own. Only grace can make that happen, but there are ways we can open ourselves to this grace.
First, pray. Ask God to care for your heart. We cannot force our hearts. We are not machines or algorithms. But we can ask God to move them. He created them. He can move them.
Second, do something to rest on God’s heart. Read Scripture as a letter addressed to you. Scripture is not an impersonal encyclopedia. It is a communication in which God expresses his personal love for you. Rest on his heart.
Third, do something to share in God’s heart. Our hearts must catch fire, and for that to happen, they have to make contact with the living flame. One way to do that is to directly serve those in need. I know that if I manage to set aside my sense of self-importance and give my time to someone suffering, it is easier to sense the centrality of love. I think we can feel God’s own heart rising within us as the work of mercy leads us to forget everything else but eternal compassion and love.
St. John wrote, “we love because (God) — first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19). Through prayer and works of love, may we encounter the Sacred Heart and experience God’s piercing goodness. Then, we will be moved, and we will live from deep love and not merely from duty. If we draw close to God’s fire, we can catch his flame, and by his grace we can enjoy a passionate love that will lead us throughout our lives and into eternity.
Father John Bayer, O. Cist., is a monk at Our Lady of Dallas Cistercian Abbey in Irving.
Cutline for featured image: A painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on April 13, 2025, at Sacred Heart Church in Prescott, Arizona. (BOB ROLLER/OSV News)
