Friday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time
In the novel The Bear and the Nightingale, the secondary antagonist is an Orthodox priest who is manipulated by the main villain. At first, the priest is a sympathetic character. He says that he wishes to serve God, and seems to mean it. But over time, he begins to mistake his own wishes for God’s voice, and his desires for God’s glory. Moment by moment, he drifts further from God and closer to the service of his own ego, and it all began with a good enough intention.
When Jesus comes to the Temple and declares that “my house shall be called a house of prayer […] but you have made it a den of thieves” (Mk. 11:17), He recognizes that those in the Temple may have begun with good intentions, but have now drifted from God’s service. Time and time again, we see that the movement from God is rarely a sudden and dramatic break, but the gradual replacement of God’s voice with our own. Test every inclination—ask individual believers and the Church as a whole to confirm your intentions. Always focus on the service of God.