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Finding Peace in the Storm
of Adam and Eve in Genesis (“Adam knew Eve”).
Adam and Eve joined together because of their love.
This joining was a union of love in the sacrament of
Marriage, and this oneness produced an even deeper
love: a knowing of each other, a desire to please and
serve each other, an authentic union in love.
What Liguori and Jesus reveal is that, when we
pursue “godly” or “religious” things that are truly and
objectively good, but we are not motivated by love and
an authentic desire to follow God and His will, then
we are doing things from other, unhealthy motivations.
How can this be so?
A few years ago, following a retreat that I gave at
a parish, a woman who appeared to be in her sixties
came up to me grinning from ear to ear. Let’s call her
Martha. Martha said to me with tears in her eyes, “I
finally get it. I have been hiding in religious activities
all my life. I am part of the altar society and this and
that group in the parish. I do it all because I can’t stand
the silence. I work myself to death to avoid dealing
with my wounds. I can see now that in all my religious
activities, I have actually been hiding from God. I have
come to realize that He wants to heal me. He wants my
heart, not my scurrying around on the pretense that
I am doing it all for love of Him. I do it to hide, not
for Him. But I see it all so clearly now. He loves me. I
want to love Him back. I want to give Him what time
I have left but in a way that is truly worship of Him
and not a hiding in my wounds.”
Martha had a breakthrough that led to a true conversion.
All her running around “for God” was really
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