When we're diligent and disciplined without being mechanical, we find "joy in the current moment." Don't be too rigid. Let the Holy Spirit flow.

This is very important. "Joy of the moment" means finding happiness in every pursuit -- laborious or otherwise. It's enjoying what is on our plate now. It's not putting off happiness but deciding, often, to have it despite present circumstances. Savor the here and now!

Most often, we put that off; we're too "busy." We figure that we'll find joy one day, when we're done with our work, when we finish a certain project, when our children are raised, when we retire.

We're called to go step by step instead of driving ourselves crazy -- to take life in smaller bites, to take a closer look at the present , and to nurture the personal side of life in an age of impersonalization.

Take like that -- one moment at a time -- and you'll start to slow down and find much more joy on a regular basis. In this way, you'll also find it easier to love. Stop working yourself into a frenzy!

You'll also find joy with a clean spiritual slate. Often, we are blocked from enjoying taking life slow by what you might call "little sins." Are you being blocked from enjoyment by transgressions you don't even recognize as transgressions?

Have you let little sins build up?

This is more of a problem than we usually know. There are many "minor," venial sins -- and while they don't stop us from receiving Communion (nor condemn us to the fires of gehenna, or lower purgatory), they can be enough to halt grace and require purification.

"God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work," it tells us in Corinthians (9:6-11).

But the farther away we are from God, the less grace and the more "bad luck." We become blind to the joy available around us.

What is a "little sin"?

There are the small "white" lies. Are you guilty of fudging, of exaggeration, of "fibbing"? A lie is a lie. There is stealing. When we gossip -- when we're overly critical -- we are taking joy from another or stealing from a reputation.  God wants us to practice vigilance over our interior lives. He wants self-regulation. When we don't, we fall into the capital sins of pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, or sloth.

All these plug us up. All these remove the joy of the moment.

Meditate on each capital transgression (we recommend a dynamite little guide called The Seven Capital Sins) and you will be amazed at how things pop up that you didn't think of as a block, as a transgression.

Make each day, each morning, each evening, an act of Confession. This will bring you the ability to live in the joy of the current moment.

What is sin and what is not? 

"Bad thoughts, however filthy and abominable, are not sins," says the book. "It is only by consenting to them that we commit sin. We shall never be overcome so long as we call on the holy Names of Jesus and Mary."

Realize this, act on it, watch each thought, and you'll be surprised at how free you become.

"There is nothing more difficult to cure than envy, nothing that causes the soul more suffering, vexation, and torment of mind," notes the book. "It gnaws at the heart like a worm. The chief remedies against it are fervent prayer, the practice of humility, and reflection on the grievousness of this sin, the difficulty of its cure, and the evils that flow from it.

"During the assaults of temptation, it is most useful to renew our resolution of suffering death rather than offend God; it is also good practice to sign ourselves repeatedly with the Sign of the Cross, and with Holy Water. It is of great help, too, to reveal the temptation to our confessor. But prayer is the best remedy of all, accompanied by cries for help to Jesus and Mary."

Otherwise, those small sins build like a dam that halt the flow of the living water which is the Holy Spirit. Inspiration can be yours -- if you don't block it. Happiness is in your reach.

You are called to enjoy each moment -- to live for now (not some distant dream) -- and you do that by clearing the slate -- by cleaning it.

In school, teachers used to use erasers to remove chalk from the board and once a week a wet one to really make it clean.

So it is with us. The cleanliness of the spirit is in direction proportion to contentment. When we purge those "little sins" -- those things are really "aren't" sins -- a whole new vista, a more peaceful vista, one of incredible Light, opens before us.

Often, joy is just a Confession away.

6/22/07