Give Up a Dating Cold Heart This Lent

What does the human heart truly long for?

If you went out to a busy city street and began polling pedestrians on the answer to this question, I’m willing to bet the most popular answer you would receive would be love. We all want love. We need love, in fact, we cannot live without love because we were made for love. But the enemy of love is indifference and these days, that enemy seems to be gaining a lot of traction in modern behavior.

There is so much indifference in the world. The news reports offer us stories of a woman being mugged in an alley or a man being beaten on the street and people in the vicinity just walk by without even bothering to help. Families sit at the dinner table together but barely acknowledge each other because they're texting on their phones. One spouse abandons the other and their children just because he or she got tired of being married... the list goes on and on while we leave a trail of sorrow in our wake. These are just a few examples of why we need to take stock of ourselves from time to time to see if we are like that proverbial frog in the slowly boiling water and little-by-little are succumbing to indifference. It makes the season of Lent an outstanding opportunity to work on reversing this problem.

Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver recently wrote an exquisite article for Lent titled, Giving Up Cold Hearts For Lent and I encourage you to read it because it offers an accurate assessment of the ways we deliberately and unintentionally slip into indifference, but also how you can inject this powerful message of changing a cold heart to a compassionate one into your daily life and make this Lenten season truly meaningful.

"This experience of returning to the family of God has the beautiful effect of melting our cold hearts and enables us to see everyone as our brother or sister. It brings us out of ourselves and helps us see that everyone needs forgiveness," writes the archbishop. If you think about it, it's amazing how easily indifference can creep into our perspectives and of course, that's what the devil wants. He and his cronies are working 24-7 with no rest and no bathroom breaks in order to lull us into this kind of indifference and steal our hearts away from God.

This, of course, applies to all people no matter what their state in life, but as single Catholics, there are ways you can begin improving the way you date through eliminating that sense of indifference. For example,

1. Be responsive, don't put off that email, phone call or text message.
2. If you are on CatholicMatch and someone sends you an emotigram and a series of emotigram exchanges begin, why not be the first to include some questions and begin a conversation instead of continuing the emogi-volley?
3. If someone reaches out to you try not to write them off their profile to quickly. The quick view of a profile is not the same as meeting someone in person. You might need to exchange a few messages before deciding if they are really not your type.
4. Choose your words carefully before you write a forum response or blog comment when it concerns an issue you don't agree with. These are usually areas where it's easy to slip into indifference and respond with an extreme lack of charity. Make sure you use your words wisely.
5. If your dating relationship ends, do your best to be honorable about it. If you are the one who breaks it up, don't make it a mystery and leave the other person hanging without an explanation. If you're on the receiving end of the breakup, don't respond with rudeness. Treat each other charitably and accept that it's time to move on. Pray for each other so you each can find the right one. That's not only charitable, it's magnanimous.

Of course, Archbishop Aquila recommends doing all you can to soften your heart and leave indifference behind through the acts of fasting and abstinence, "Because it strips away our comforts and requires discipline to maintain, fasting can also help us see if we are too self-centered or self-indulgent. When our Lenten sacrifices expose our weaknesses, we can turn to the sacrament of reconciliation, where God clothes us with his mercy and restores us as his children." Amen, Archbishop Aquila, Amen.

Feel free to send me your comments and questions at asklisa@catholicmatch.com and follow me on Twitter @lisaduffy.