“Passions” are emotions that drive us to action or inaction when a moral dilemma faces us. Some passions like love focus on the good in life, while others like fear and hatred help us avert evil.

Passions are morally neutral; their morality depend upon their use. When we use they for a good end, we make them virtuous. When we use them for a evil end, we make them immoral. A feeling of love or ecstatic in itself does not make us good. In the same way, feelings of hatred or inadequacy does not make us evil or deficient.

We need passions a such as the will to accomplish the moral good. But most of all, we need the movement of Spirit who empowers us toward the good.

Have you ever been challenged as a Christian? Have you ever felt God relieve you of worry or anxiety?

Does the Church you know lift your burdens or does it impose heavier ones on your shoulders? When you come from having celebrated the Liturgy of the Eucharist on Sunday, do you feel lighter, less weighed down, better able to cope with the ordinary burdens of life? Or do you come away with a renewal of guilt, with a fresh awareness of shame, with more unworthiness than when you went in? Jesus promises that if we go to him, we will find rest for our souls. The Church believes and teaches that Jesus can be encountered in the fellowship of the believing community, in the word proclaimed in the assembly of faith, in the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. We have encountered Jesus when we went to church!

The Church today endeavors to represent Jesus Christ to the people to whom it witnesses. The members of the Church itself need to see the face of the Lord in the community and in the leadership of that community. The Christ of the Gospels lifted burdens; he did not lay heavier ones on the shoulders of men and women.

In the parishes, we try to reflect the image of the loving Christ who came to save and not to condemn. Every ministry of the parish needs to be evaluated against the norm of “burden-lifting.” Every minister of the parish must strive to lift burdens from people’s lives and never to impose any that are not made by the Lord himself.

A smile and a cheerful greeting from the ministers of hospitality at the church door is a first requirement, of course.

Someone has said that the nature and the effect of the whole celebration can be ascertained from the kind of introduction and greeting with which the presider addresses the assembly at the very beginning of the celebration. Do those who welcome you seem happy that you have come? Do you get the impression that Jesus has already lifted their burdens? Or can you almost tell that they are more burdened than you are!?

People of prayer do not go around bent to the ground with the weight of life. They may be in deep pain and afflicted with many sufferings, but they are at peace in the love of Christ and radiant with joy that Christ is their Savior.

Parents and other teachers of the Christian faith should be radiant with the power of Christ who has saved them and wishes to save others through them. Either they believe this and reflect it and witness to it in their lives, or…they do not.

I would like to see the whole parish, leaders and ordinary folk alike, communicate most clearly that Jesus Christ is a lifter of burdens, that he brings peace and joy to those who follow him. Surely, more people would be attracted to him if his followers were happier.