There are two worlds.

They are two completely different worlds. We enter the one, thanks to the grace of Baptism, in prayer and adoration, allowing us to live more deeply and receive what we receive at each Mass in Holy Communion. The other is the one in which we have lived and to which we keep returning, at least outwardly, and which is the world. We are still in the world, though we should no longer be of the world. The two worlds are quite different, quite opposite! We used to think that sin was only when we did some evil deed. Then we came to understand that it is something more profound than that, and that deeds are only a manifestation of the state of sin in our inner heart. And finally, we began to understand that sin is in its essence a world opposite to that of God, a personality opposite to that of the sons of God, attitudes, relationships, thinking, and inclinations opposite to those that rule in the Kingdom of God. It is a matter of being flesh in the world, but not being drawn into the world with the heart, of remaining in Heaven with the heart as we enter it in the Eucharist, interior prayer, and adoration. For it happens to us that when prayer and devotion are over, and we return to the world, our heart and thinking also adjust to the world out of old habit. And that isn’t good! That first one, God’s world, is real. The other one is just an illusion. “Let us therefore not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober” (1Sol 5:6). Silence of heart and wakefulness in the sense of being awake, not just some kind of “beware,” are tools and aids to staying in reality and not sinking back into the mists and waves of the world. To stay awake. Awake. Preserving, keeping everything in its place. And to be in your place too, yourself, at Christ, on Christ, in Christ, with Christ, from Christ. He is the Anchor. He is the foundation, the Rock. Or else, to remain holy by that first holiness, that is, separated from the world and “rooted and grounded in it, established in the faith” (Col 2:7). Indeed, the decision to separate from the world and to remain separate from it is fundamental. That is why, as Christians, we are called “saints” in Scripture, separated from and belonging already to God and His world. “You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men” (1 Cor 7:23). Abide fully and completely and openly and publicly and without question (much less any sense of shame) in God’s world, in God’s son ship. To think, perceive, live, act, speak according to him – to the world strangely, even despite. This is the prize.