Revisiting a Culture Ungrilled

Monastery grilles are normally set into walls, so there is essentially no getting around them. The grille in this photo would have been in such a situation in its original state. As it is now, however, it's on public display to illustrate how the set-up once worked.

As persons who live in the world, we are not enclosed by physical walls and grilles. If we want to respond to all things "through the grillwork of the will of God" (in other words, through Scripture and Church teaching), we must make a conscious effort to "see" that grille before us. Such seeing does not come automatically, and the culture we live in doesn't help us. 

In fact, if we really pay attention to what God says about (insert topic here), we are likely to find a real conflict between God's revealed will and what we're told by the world around. Scripture and Church teaching are clear on how to think according to the basics of God's will, but how often would we rather ignore the clarity? We can find it quite easy to succumb to the murkiness of what is most commonly thought, tolerated, said, believed, done.

It is not difficult to find God's "mind" on a particular subject. We have Scripture, and we've been given the marvelous tool of the Official Catechism of the Catholic Church. There is not much that can't be found therein, and there we can find the basic "bars of the grille."  

I love the photo a friend provided for this post, because I feel it shows our exact situation. We can choose to view and respond to situations through the grillwork of the will of God .... or we can move away at any time. We can simply get up, or lean just a little, and we're suddenly seeing life "un-grilled and raw."  

Thankfully we don't have to stay ungrilled, however. Jesus is always waiting to help us get back to where we belong.
 
We live in the midst of an ungrilled culture. With one click of a TV button or computer mouse, we come face to face with life as it was not intended, by God, to be. 

If we compare what we see around us to what's in Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, how many examples might we find of "a culture ungrilled?" 




This is an edited repost from June, 2012. It is being linked with Theology Is A Verb and Reconciled To You for 'It’s Worth Revisiting Wednesday'   

Text not in quotes © 2015 Nancy Shuman. 
thecloisteredheart.org     

 
(photo by C Wells, at the Carmel of Port Tobacco in La Plata, Maryland, site of the first Carmelite monastery in the USA)