August 19, 2025 // Perspective

Where True Gladness Is Found

Father Mark Hellinger

The collect for Mass for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time beautifully summarizes the readings and draw us into the most essential aspects of the Chrisitan life. It reads: “O God, who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found.”

This collect is fascinating in many ways but especially given its similarity to the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (which I have written about here before), despite having a completely different source. One of the most prominent themes of this prayer is the unity of the mind, will, and heart for which it asks. It also relates quite well to the readings, as Christ commands us this week to strive for the narrow gate, and there are a few instances throughout the readings that draw out the question: Do I know God the way He desires me to?

A few weeks ago in the Gospel, Jesus told us an essential truth: Where your treasure is, there is where your heart is. Now, as we have had a few weeks of readings that have been spelling out all that phrase really means, we are praying for a strengthening of heart that what we know should be the case might also be what we desire – and what our hearts are truly fixed on.

It is, I think, helpful to realize just how intense this prayer is – to invoke the mind, will, and heart all in one is to emphasize the complete person, the total gift of self. It invokes the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-6: “Hear, O Isreal, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” It also is the solution for how to avoid hearing from the master of the house the devastating words, “I do not know where you are from.”

For the mind, will, and heart to be united, desirous of God’s commands and fixed on true gladness, is the summation of how we find and enter the narrow gate. And especially to realize that for us to be “known” by God in the way of salvation, our hearts must be fixed on the place of true gladness. An image is helpful here. In Canto 5 of his “Inferno,” Dante the Pilgrim describes his encounter with the lustful in hell. The key aspect of the punishment they receive is that they are blown about by the wind for eternity. Because of the disordered desire that is lust, their hearts never become fixed on anything – they move from one temptation and desire to another. Thus, their punishment is a near perfect critique of their sin, and in God’s justice, they simply live for eternity what they gave their hearts to in this life.

Contrasting that image to the narrow gate and the collect prayer for this week gives us a clear examination of mind, will, and heart by which (if we have the courage to be honest with ourselves) we can see the areas of our life where God does not “know” us – that is those areas of our life where we hid from Him, refused to understand Him, desired something other than Him and His commands of love, and, ultimately, set our hearts on a treasure that is rotten and only sucks life from us.

True gladness is found only in the source of life Himself, the creator of our minds, wills, and hearts. Rather than being blown about by unformed minds, untamed desires, and uncommitted hearts, the collect prays for nothing less than that we each become who we are meant to be: beloved adopted sons and daughters of God, who know Him, obey Him, and love Him with a commitment that reflects the intensity of His love poured out to us on the cross and giving us strength through the Eucharist to remain fixed on true and lasting gladness.

Father Mark Hellinger is pastor of St. Jude Catholic Church in South Bend.