[00:00] Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever. In our reflection today, we're going to continue with our counsels for a healthy and a holy spirituality. Our last counsel dealt with the importance of rules and how good rules literally regulate our life. How they help us to live in right relationship with God, with ourselves, and with others. The eighth counsel that we're offered today is as much as possible to focus on the good.

[00:37] Word focus comes from the Latin word focus, which spelled the same way, pronounced the same way, unless you want to put in a little Italian or European twang on the word, but it's the same word. In the Latin word, it means hearth or a fireplace. So what would have been the center of someone's home. What you focus on is what you center your heart and your life on, essentially. The psalmist in Psalm 4:6 says, "There are many who say, 'Oh, that we might see some

[01:09] good, lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O Lord.'" So, when we say 'focus on the good,' what are we essentially saying? We're saying focus on God. Center your life on Him. Focus on the supreme good. St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:18, that we "fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen." Since what is seen is transient, it's temporary, but what is unseen is eternal, He says.

[01:45] The Greek philosopher Plato called the Good with a capital G, the highest form in the place beyond the visible sky, or the hyper-Uranian realm, is what he called it. It was kind of his understanding of heaven. The Good, Plato said, is the source of all reality, all truth, all knowledge, all beauty, all justice, all goodness. He said that just like the sun gives us light and allows our eyes to see, so too, the Good gives us truth, allowing our minds to see and understand reality.

[02:22] Without the Good, you really can't know anything. That was Plato's conclusion. And what does St. John say about the Word, the Word with a capital W, second person of the Blessed Trinity? He says, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." "He is the true light that enlightens every man." John 1:4 and 9. So said in another way, focus on the good means focus on Jesus Christ.

[02:52] Focus on the light of the world, as Jesus calls Himself in John 8:12. The invisible light made visible in Jesus of Nazareth. You can walk on water, you can do the impossible when you focus on Jesus, as St. Peter experienced in Matthew 14. You can literally walk on water. When Peter was walking on the Sea of Galilee, but then he took his eye off of Jesus, what happened to him? He began to sink.

[03:24] We take our eye off of Jesus, we focus excessively on other things, or other cares or concerns, or the world news, or the church news, or what's wrong, or what's not good, we sink spiritually. We can easily become like the seed sowed among thorns that Jesus speaks about in Matthew chapter 13. Instead of sinking, our Lord wants us to stay afloat in the storms of life.

[03:54] And this is also why Eucharistic adoration is such a beautiful thing. I go to adoration, and there's Jesus at the center, where He should be. He's the good that I need to center my life, my thoughts, my heart on. And yes, you can train your mind and your heart in this way. You can cultivate habits of directly directing your mind towards what is good. You know, what you love in life, what you focus on in life, that's actually what's going

[04:25] to transform you. As one person said, we become what we love, and who we love shapes what we become. The more you love something, the more you'll pursue it and the more it will define you. So loving the good doesn't just orient us towards God, it transforms us into His likeness. Which is why St. Paul says in Philippians 4:8, He says, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable,

[04:57] if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, He says, think on these things or think about these things. St. Paul most likely wrote that when he was in prison, by the way. The more you become like Jesus in your thoughts, your desires, your words, your choices, your actions, your reactions, the more you will also become a tremendous blessing to others. It's actually the greatest compliment someone can give you when they say, you know, when

[05:28] I think of you, I think of Jesus. It's so easy, it's so natural, if you will, for fallen humanity to focus on what is wrong. I've heard a counselor say that for every negative affirmation or every hurt we receive, we need about 16 positive affirmations to balance out the scales. Quite lopsided when you think about it, right? So much easier for us to dwell on the negative, or dwell on the hurts,or dwell on what's wrong.

[06:02] But we need to ask our Lord and our Lady to help us change that. Every day we should pray, "Lord, help me to focus on You." "Blessed Mother, help me to keep my eyes and my heart fixed on You and fixed on Jesus." Pray about the bad and the hurts, and pray for those who've hurt us, and pray about the wrongs but strive to focus on the good. And if with our thoughts we're aiming at that, that'll be a big help for our emotions too because our emotions are directly connected with our thinking.

[06:36] So when our mind is thinking about what's good or virtuous, our emotions will be more stable. Whereas if we're constantly thinking about things that are upsetting or depressing or negative, our emotions will be more in turmoil, and life will just be all that much more difficult on top of that. I think it's one of the tricks of the devil that he gets us to focus on what's wrong or what we perceive to be wrong. Because again, that easily puts us in turmoil, fosters anger and bitterness, can foster despair,

[07:09] it can foster a critical, cynical spirit, not a charitable, merciful spirit. This is also where sin-centered or fear-based or rules-centered spiritualities can come into play because they're more consonant, they're more in tune to focusing on what's wrong. A grace-based, grace-centered spirituality focuses on the good because it focuses on God's hand and His plan and His activity, not the evil plans or the evil hands of others.

[07:46] Great example of this in the Old Testament, found in the patriarch Joseph, was the envy of his brothers, he was their lightning rod, sold into slavery, blamed for crimes he didn't commit, imprisoned, forgotten, but in the end, he reconciled with his brothers and he said to them, he said, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today," Genesis 50:20.

[08:19] "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." It's a very powerful verse for us to take to heart as well regarding all the wrongs that we've received in our life from the hands of others. God's children will sing those words in paradise, "They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." And it fits very much with what St. Paul says in Romans 8:28. If you don't know that verse, you should look it up and memorize it. We say it so often, by now, you should know it. But when things are difficult, we should ask the Lord for consolation,

[08:54] for comfort, for strength as well too. St. Paul calls Him the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, 2 Corinthians 1:3. So we should call on Him in our need, reach out to Him in prayer and also reach out to His people too. Those whom we know that God has brought into our lives to offer us support, and comfort, and encouragement. When I thought of this, I thought of the song, Carole King's song, "You've Got a Friend," right? I'm pretty sure we sung that at my graduation party when we gathered at eighth grade graduation roughly

[09:30] about 500 years ago or so, give or take a few years. "I no longer call you servants but friends," Jesus says in John 15:15. Our Lord, yes, He's our friend. So is our Lady, too. And there are others to whom we can actually reach out to as well. And we should do that. So if we try to look for the good in situations, look for the good in others, look for the lesson that the Lord is trying to help us to learn, we'll often, if not always, find something

[10:04] that's beneficial. If you can't find good in what you're going through, ask someone to help you. Four eyes are better than two in this respect. A lot of times, the people who are outside of our personal life tornado can see the tornado in a clearer way than we can. And they can help us to see something positive or something beneficial that we're just not able to see. In our next reflection, we'll take a look at how St. Thérèse of Lisieux incorporated this principle of focusing on the good into her own life and her own

[10:39] spirituality. In the meantime, let's ask our Lady for the grace to help change and improve our focus in life. Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.