Soul Cleanse

Entering the Wilderness Amidst the Chaos of Daily Life

When someone changes their diet, nutrition teaches the idea of a thirty day cleanse – the beginning of a shift to eating healthy by no longer eating unhealthy foods and eating only healthy foods. As with our clay, so with our soul.

Enter into the wilderness of your soul even as you live amidst the chaos of your daily life, by refining your daily activities to replace devices and gibberish and noise of the world, carnal engagements, with prayer, scripture, holy readings, and holy conversations. If doing this as a family, designate one phone as the family phone and email and only check it once a day, as a mail box of yore. No television, radio, social media, email, internet. Off.

The goal is to run more fully toward Jesus our Christ. Doing so inherently recalibrates our soul to be sensitive to movement of the Holy Spirit, to note the sticky, clingy, fearful draw of temptation far more easily in the movements of our soul, and to have strength of will to counter these attacks of Satan by willfully choosing virtue instead.

What do you do instead? Create and enter your Halo. Establish a daily discipline of prayer, choosing from among the many options our beautiful Holy Tradition offers, including Lauds, Vespers, Rosary, daily readings from Mass (or just the Gospel, if needed), reading a quality commentary on it (Catena Aurea or The Navarre Bible are excellent choices), and discussing what you've read and your daily journey with your Halo. Cultivate mindfulness, which cultivates eyes of innocence and deepens our hunger and capacity to wield the salvation arts.