Holiness is a matter of daily life, not about going on a long retreat, not about spending a lot of time in church. It’s about how you live. For example, avoiding gossip. Gossip is very addictive isn’t it? Especially when you’re sitting with a friend or a couple of friends and you get a nice juicy story and you start to share it with them, and it usually means that you start pulling somebody else who’s not there, pulling them apart. Little criticisms that then become bigger and bigger. Doesn’t do anyone any good. So we would live a life of holiness by catching ourselves and controlling ourselves and saying ‘I don’t want to be part of this conversation’. Or being aware that we’re spending too much time, wasting our time on the Internet, or too much time just browsing, or too much time just shopping, that there are other ways in which we can live, other things we can be doing that are more joyful actually and more useful.
Christian Life in the Light of Christian Meditation 2: Holyness by Laurence Freeman OSB
