Vigilance requires Temperance

An old love song can express what ought to be a longing deep inside our spiritual life.

 “How can you keep the music playing,” it starts. “How can you make it last / How can you keep the song from fading too fast…”

 Set in a haunting melody, the song reflects a deep sentiment of the heart that wants love to stay permanent in the dynamic flow of life, to remain clear and definite instead of tentative and provisional.

 But the tenor of the song can also be applied to our spiritual yearning. Since our life is a shared life with God, we need to find ways to put ourselves always in the presence of God, filled with love and a burning desire to do good. 

 These days, this ideal is getting more elusive because not only bad things separate us from God, but also good things, if we are not vigilant, can take us away from him, instead of leading us to him.

 Take the case of the new wonders of the digital world. In themselves they are not bad. They are good. They offer many practical uses. And they generate a seemingly self-propelled force to discover more potentials and possibilities that look endless.

 But precisely because of this character, the digital charm can intoxicate us. We can get so entrapped in its technological and pragmatic loop that instead of living with God, we would simply be living by ourselves, exclusively seeking our own interests instead of seeking God.

 That is why it is good to be reminded of the virtue of temperance. To be vigilant, to keep our music with God playing, we need to be practice restraint and moderation in the use of material and earthly things, no matter how good in themselves they may be.

 Temperance makes sure that we are not overrun by the workings of our human flesh and of our material world. It makes sure that our material and earthly condition is properly fused to our spiritual and supernatural goal.

 Temperance helps us to submit our temporal and human affairs not only to right reason, but also and most especially to our Christian faith, hope and charity. It poises our heart to soar to its spiritual and divine goal. It helps our active life to be contemplative as well, unifying the mundane with the sacred.

 Temperance frees our heart from being shackled to merely mundane concerns, and leaves it open to receive spiritual promptings continuously. This is how to “lose yourself to someone / and never losing your way,” as the song goes. This is how “not to run out of new things to say.”

 Even in marital and family life, vigilance and temperance are always needed. If a husband and father, for example, succumbs to workaholism and neglects his wife and children, disaster in marriage and family would just be a matter of time, if things are not corrected.

 If the husband spends more and more time in the office and fails to give reassuring words of love and affection to his wife, the once fervent love would just grow cold, wane and eventually die. There can be other aggravating side-dramas besides.

 If the father sees his children less and less, there can come a time when he can be a stranger to his own offsprings. He will get stuck in the level of generics in family life, failing to descend to the specifics, slowly emptying the family of its true substance, love.

 We need to see to it that our heart escapes from being dominated and enslaved by the charms and magic of the world. It has to deny itself frequently, as our Lord said, and take up the cross. It has to learn to enter by the narrow gate, instead of just drifting easily to the wide gate.

 We should see to it that our mind and heart never lose their attachment to God. In fact, the reverse should be encouraged. That attachment should grow stronger each day, looking for creative ways to make it vibrant.

 Our concerns, affairs, the things that we handle should bring us closer to God and to others, instead of taking us farther from them. For this reason, there can be occasions—and they can be many—when we have to say no to certain activities, or to certain thoughts and words, because we need to pray, to go to Mass, confession, etc.

This is part of temperance that helps keep our vigilance alive, so that we keep on playing music with God.