Part 3, Chapter 33
When I was younger, I used to stay up late plays games and doing other things. Most of the time these things weren’t too bad, but they were leading me slowly away from God. I couldn’t get up in the morning, and since I was tired, I was not able to think as clearly about not doing something that I shouldn’t. “It is a senseless thing to turn day into night, light into darkness, and to exchange good works for mere trifling follies” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 139). Dancing, and staying up late are not good combinations. They place things in our mind that shouldn’t be there. And let’s face it, many of the outfits that are for dancing, are not modest, nor are the dance moves. Dancing places things into our minds that don’t need to be there, it leads to many, many temptations. Why put ourselves to the test!!! St. Francis De Sales says, “So dance but little, and that rarely…lest you run the risk of growing over found of the amusement” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 139). We don’t want to be fond of this because it leads to doing something that is definitely not helping us in the devout life.
Dancing the night away is really dancing our eternal life away. There are much better ways to spend our time. Sometimes though, dancing is really hard to avoid such as at weddings or fundraisers, what do we do? Try to avoid dancing, but there may be moments where it is almost unavoidable, such as dad dancing with his daughter at her wedding or something like the chicken dance. “So after frequenting balls you should frame pious thoughts that may counteract the dangerous impressions made by such empty pleasures on your heart” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 140). It is not just the dancing that is dangerous, it is what we see and what we open our minds too. So when we do this, we need to pray and ask God to help us to cleanse our minds of what was not good and to focus on holy things like living like a saint. We may want to make a little reparation for our involvement with dancing and for the people who are struggling with sin in regards to dancing.