What a truly amazing morning it has been and its only 5:30 AM. I had spent my hour in Adoration of our Blessed Sacrament in prayer, without any of the truly amazing revelations and great thoughts our Lord usually fills my soul with, but was blessed rather, on my ride home.

I often view my parish as a fortress. A place of refuge away from this world. Home base if you will. The “Bone Marrow” of my soul where “White Blood Cells” are produced. A place of safety out of the storm of every day life to regenerate. There in my parish, on the grounds, in the church, at Mass,this world we live in, is somehow with us, but separate. The outside world is its own place and when I need complete comfort and security in my time of need, the barriers of God’s protection can be found like this invisible force field of protection there. Granted, that same barrier is found protecting me when I am in the world, but its Him who keeps me separated from the outside forces of this world we live in, and the much to prevalent misery of sin that is flourishing in it. Sin that no one can see because of spiritual blindness. Today I have to call it the “Ooze”. The infection.

I’m going to have to go a few years back and say that “Ooze” of sin is just as it was in the movie Ghostbusters as the river of slime under the streets of New York. The difference in real life is, that no one is paying attention to it and the more we refuse to see exactly what it looks like, the uglier and more infectious it becomes. Also, its not under the streets, but rather covering everything in this world. Let me go back to the ride home from Adoration. Just down the street from my sanctuary, my “Home Base” of St. John Of The Cross, is an strip bar. I pass by this place many times a day on my way about and always pray for the conversion of the souls inside this particular place. Usually with a sigh as I know how the morals & values of todays society have gone so far astray that a lot of people believe this is a legitimate way to support their familys or how so many women believe that by doing this, it somehow makes them beautiful, which couldn’t be further from the truth. From a short distance away in my car I noticed a car leaving the parking lot of this place. In a flash of light, I did not see a car leaving the lot, but a blob of ooze, leaving its home base, heading out into the street to infect countless other souls. A single axis of sin much in the way of a single cell of Streptococcus goes into the world to make as many people as it can find sick. One soul who is easily bent or twisted out of the shape God formed them into, can do the same damage. Thus the unseen “Ooze”. The strange thing about this vision was, that ooze of sin has taken over most of this world and no one living outside of having faith in Christ, can see it.

On to the Aha. The ahas to me, is not only being able to identify this ooze, but doing everything possible to avoid it in my life and kill it. There is a deep pain in the soul during a conversion. That pain is the sin a soul carries. The sting of sin. In the state of repentance, after confession, when a soul sins, even a minor sin, you feel that burning immediately after the sin has been committed. When the soul is in a state of mortal sin, and I am speaking of grave sin before a conversion, when so many sins are on the soul who has not been to confession in years, that immediate burning pain is not present. I can only assume this is what it means to be “Dead in Christ”. When you can no longer feel the pain it causes not only you, but our Lord as the soul in repentance is one with the Lord.

How to avoid the “Ooze” and live for the Ahas? Every day our body’s come in contact with foul things in this world that cause illness. There is a multi-million dollar industry of antibacterial agents on the market to keep us free from getting sick. To avoid disease we wash our hands frequently using soap and water. So to the soul must be cleansed using the soap and water of confession and contrition. One MUST keep their soul just as clean all the time. Through prayer and receiving the sacraments the soul can ward off 95% of the sin we face every second in this land of “Ooze.”