If we are truly influenced by our religion, we shall live much above the world and worldly gratifications. The soul is too powerful and noble when restored to its possession of the life offered, to be shut up in the prison of bodily and sensual enjoyments. It will ascend towards God, its original, and to immortality. It seems, as one of old said, "to be ashamed to be in the body; "or as Saint Paul writes: we groan. being burdened, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. he who makes us for this very thing, is God, who hath given us the pledge of His spirit. Rest assured that it is religion only which enables us to die to this world, and earthly things, the rendering of which is to darken our minds, and obscure in them the light of Christ. The proper movement of true godliness in us is to its first original; while ungodly men are really burying their souls in their bodies, their aims and desires, bounded within the world they inhabit. This is a living death of the saddest kind. Let us endeavour to look on ourselves, not by the attachment of the body and of this life, the cords which fasten us down, like the fabled man, to the earth, but by those of our renewed souls; for is not this the apostles advice? Mind the things that are above; not the things that are upon the earth, for you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Gather hence a noble aim of your daily life, however humble may be its present occupation. Serve ye the Lord Christ. A Christian, having the Holy Spirit in him, is not one whose soul is a servant, to wait upon his senses, and to be led up and down against sound reason, as well as sound religion, which is the condition of numbers around. He is called and enabled to converse and walk with God: to know and love Him, and to become more and more like Him. Oh! great distinction and most blessed privilege! Keep it ever in mind; try to embody it into your daily life - walk before me, God says to each of us, and be thou perfect.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp