I cannot control my emotions, cannot command my sentiments or feelings. Well, then, let me beware lest I undervalue them, for their influence upon life is enormous. Stop and think how much of the day is arranged for by mere sentiment. My hours of rising, of business, are regulated by little else; or at least by custom, which is largely sentiment crystallized. For I can soon notice that different nations have their different hours when the streets are busy or silent, and the variety is based not merely on climate, but on that vague and uncertain principle, "We have always done so." Again, the arrangement of my room, the nick-nacks upon the mantelpiece, the pictures on the walls, the photographs, indeed the very idea of having photographs at all, are not all these things due entirely to sentiment? My day, my work, my pleasure, the things with which I surround myself, my calling in life, my prayers, my home, are they not one and all steeped in emotions, dominated by emotions, ruled and regulated by emotions? I say that I cannot control my emotions; can I say as truly that they do not control me? Before answering that question, let me at any rate be clear upon this point, that emotions are not necessarily unreasonable. Occasionally the argument is heard by which something is dismissed as being "mere sentiment"; now the fact of anything being merely sentimental does not degrade it at all, for in some ways and at some moments our emotions are the finest things we have. Men are, in given instances, at their best when they obey instinctively the call of emotion; and what puts reasoning beings at their best cannot fairly be called unreasonable.
I have, therefore, to start with the idea that very much of my life, and of the life of the race, is governed by reasons of sentiment: there is no contradiction in this phrase, since sentiment in man can be reasonable. Now when I have faced that fact deliberately and began to realize its meaning, I can then go on to consider sentiments, etc., in relation to religion. I find that in dealing with my fellows, and in dealing with myself, sentiment plays a considerable part, and that it does so (when under proper safeguards) without any harm either to them or to myself; in fact, that the world would be harder and poorer if sentiment was barred out. Hence I expect to find the same in my relationship to God namely, that sentiment should have its place in the united and harmonious worship that my whole being renders to its Maker. A religion, therefore, that neglects, ignores, or denounces whatever is sentimental simply because it is sentimental, stands itself condemned, for it is the religion not of man, but of only a part of him. It is inhuman; it can have effect only upon a starved and stunted portion of mankind, and then only for a time. My worship of God, therefore my religion, must appeal to the whole man; it must induce me to put into His hands the whole offering of myself. Puritanism may work wonders of good when it follows upon a period of laxity and disorder, but it cannot last. It holds the seeds of its own decay, since it scorns a part of nature and makes Christianity not a fulfilling but a distinction of the law. My dealings with my fellows, my dealings with myself, my dealings with God, will all be considerably affected by sentiment: and if religion is to rule me all the day, it must rule all of me.
I should, therefore, be very careful that my attitude to sacred things does not become harsh, gloomy, unnatural, inhuman. It is one thing to say that I cannot control my feelings, quite another to say that I should ignore them. It is one thing to say that my prayers are likely to become more deliberately supernatural if they are untouched by feelings of pleasure, quite another to say that therefore we must abolish feelings. I cannot repose on feelings, but that is no reason for expelling them. Saint Gregory wrote to Saint Augustine, in England, not to destroy, but to hallow to divine service the heathen temples of our Saxon forefathers. Let me, too, consecrate to God that buoyancy and gladness of soul which is all too frequently supposed to be a sign of the pagan joy of life. It is not pagan, but human; and, like the rest of man's nature, needs to be baptized unto Christ. If my devotions tend to cast out love, to sneer at the poetic side of religion, to crush out enthusiasm or grace fulness or youthfulness, then I must be on my guard at once, for such devotions cannot last. My faith should not be uncouth, rigid, stilted, repulsive, but glad, easy, natural. Devotion to the comeliest of the sons of men, the thought of His beautiful boyhood, of the firm majesty of His splendid manhood, will keep supple the sinews of love. The ideal of God's Maiden Mother, pure, yet womanly, the mother of fair love, will prevent my emotions becoming divorced from religion and growing befouled.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.