Starting a New Job During the Easter Season
Continuing with that new job during the Easter Season of 2001, my attending daily Mass continued after the Octave of Easter. But just as tackling my new job presented challenges, so too did my attending daily Mass at the little church around the corner from my new office building at the southern tip of the Island of Manhattan.
For one thing, I had been used to attending Mass during the week at the Cathedral of St Patrick, as my previous office was located only a couple of blocks from that magnificent place. The contrast with this tiny church across from Bowling Green couldn't be more dramatic. If you've ever been to St Patrick's, you know what I mean when I describe it as "magnificent." Lots of tourists are attracted to the place, most especially during the Christmas Season. I'd experienced the crush and hustle and bustle of the crowds and even seen and heard some of the reactions of those tourists who - rather than just rushing about clicking their digital cameras and phones to snap up as many images as possible as they raced down the side aisles - would pause and comment about the awesome beauty surrounding them. So you might imagine that the adjustment to the little new church downtown quite explicitly reflected the change I was undergoing in my work activities.
It wasn't just that I was working for a new company. I had taken a position with a company in the same basic industry, but my new employer was, similar to the little church, a lot smaller than my previous employer. Almost everyone knew everyone else. That alone was an adjustment to the semi-anonymous status you have in a giant corporation, as was my previous employer. Among other things, that smallness put into sharp relief the new skills I would need to develop at the new place. The products and services offered, though similar to those of my previous firm, were a lot less generic, much more specialized. As I began my new position, I found myself studying each night to get up to speed with my colleagues. While my background was that of a generalist, most of my colleagues had more technical backgrounds and I could see that I was expected to have at least a basic level of technical expertise (despite the impression given to me by my new boss).
So there I was, taking in the new surroundings each day and trying to match skill and talents to the demands of the new job, acquiring what was needed as the days passed and my understanding of what was expected of me increased. And as each day passed, my breaks for daily Mass at noon would give me the chance to pray for the help I knew I needed - albeit it with some new distractions that plagued me in this new church.
After a few days, the size and plainness of the place (it was sparsely appointed, certainly in comparison with St Patrick's) wasn't the biggest adjustment I had to make in attending Mass there: it was more the pastor. I quickly found the pastor to be - to put it delicately - an aging hippie-modernist type, something rarely, if at all, found at St Patrick's (or, thank God, at my local home parish). His sermons reflected the sometimes heterodox, even heretical views and beliefs such individuals hold. After that initial burst of Easter joy I talked about last time, this new dilemma presented itself: how to attend Mass and keep my focus on Christ's sacrifice in the face of the ramblings and occasional liturgical abuses of the modernist priest who celebrated Mass most days.
Ah, sweet humility! As I furiously worked to fill in the professional shortcomings my new position uncovered, and suffered the humility that attends such realization, so too did I furiously pray for the grace to contain my annoyance and occasional anger with this priest. Yes, I could have attended Mass at another church, this being Manhattan. But on a daily basis, it would have been impractical to rely on that alternative; indeed it would have most likely resulted in my skipping Mass at times, had I decided to avoid this close-by church and limited myself to the alternate church, which was a bit of a hike from my office.
And so as the challenges increased on the job, so too did they increase each day at Mass. I did my best to meet those challenges, with the usual successes and failures. Meanwhile, I eventually found the joyful spirit of the Easter Season to be of great assistance. It kept my spirits and thus my energy level and creativity up to the level required to do the job I was hired to do, without becoming discouraged as I occasionally stumbled. It also helped me to avoid too much steaming, carping and judging, my natural tendency when I'm in the presence of those modernists who've sprinkle their sermons with heterodoxy and moral relativism, peppered with socialist political nonsense. Somehow, the joy of Easter overrode it all and helped me get up each morning with the determination to persist in performing my job well and keeping my spiritual progress on track even in the face of Father's liberal drivel.
Little did I know it at the time, but the "forced" mental and spiritual discipline these days imposed would prove to be preparation for a much greater and, certainly much more dramatic, challenge that would soon descend on my little corner of Manhattan Island.
More next time...
For one thing, I had been used to attending Mass during the week at the Cathedral of St Patrick, as my previous office was located only a couple of blocks from that magnificent place. The contrast with this tiny church across from Bowling Green couldn't be more dramatic. If you've ever been to St Patrick's, you know what I mean when I describe it as "magnificent." Lots of tourists are attracted to the place, most especially during the Christmas Season. I'd experienced the crush and hustle and bustle of the crowds and even seen and heard some of the reactions of those tourists who - rather than just rushing about clicking their digital cameras and phones to snap up as many images as possible as they raced down the side aisles - would pause and comment about the awesome beauty surrounding them. So you might imagine that the adjustment to the little new church downtown quite explicitly reflected the change I was undergoing in my work activities.
It wasn't just that I was working for a new company. I had taken a position with a company in the same basic industry, but my new employer was, similar to the little church, a lot smaller than my previous employer. Almost everyone knew everyone else. That alone was an adjustment to the semi-anonymous status you have in a giant corporation, as was my previous employer. Among other things, that smallness put into sharp relief the new skills I would need to develop at the new place. The products and services offered, though similar to those of my previous firm, were a lot less generic, much more specialized. As I began my new position, I found myself studying each night to get up to speed with my colleagues. While my background was that of a generalist, most of my colleagues had more technical backgrounds and I could see that I was expected to have at least a basic level of technical expertise (despite the impression given to me by my new boss).
So there I was, taking in the new surroundings each day and trying to match skill and talents to the demands of the new job, acquiring what was needed as the days passed and my understanding of what was expected of me increased. And as each day passed, my breaks for daily Mass at noon would give me the chance to pray for the help I knew I needed - albeit it with some new distractions that plagued me in this new church.
After a few days, the size and plainness of the place (it was sparsely appointed, certainly in comparison with St Patrick's) wasn't the biggest adjustment I had to make in attending Mass there: it was more the pastor. I quickly found the pastor to be - to put it delicately - an aging hippie-modernist type, something rarely, if at all, found at St Patrick's (or, thank God, at my local home parish). His sermons reflected the sometimes heterodox, even heretical views and beliefs such individuals hold. After that initial burst of Easter joy I talked about last time, this new dilemma presented itself: how to attend Mass and keep my focus on Christ's sacrifice in the face of the ramblings and occasional liturgical abuses of the modernist priest who celebrated Mass most days.
Ah, sweet humility! As I furiously worked to fill in the professional shortcomings my new position uncovered, and suffered the humility that attends such realization, so too did I furiously pray for the grace to contain my annoyance and occasional anger with this priest. Yes, I could have attended Mass at another church, this being Manhattan. But on a daily basis, it would have been impractical to rely on that alternative; indeed it would have most likely resulted in my skipping Mass at times, had I decided to avoid this close-by church and limited myself to the alternate church, which was a bit of a hike from my office.
And so as the challenges increased on the job, so too did they increase each day at Mass. I did my best to meet those challenges, with the usual successes and failures. Meanwhile, I eventually found the joyful spirit of the Easter Season to be of great assistance. It kept my spirits and thus my energy level and creativity up to the level required to do the job I was hired to do, without becoming discouraged as I occasionally stumbled. It also helped me to avoid too much steaming, carping and judging, my natural tendency when I'm in the presence of those modernists who've sprinkle their sermons with heterodoxy and moral relativism, peppered with socialist political nonsense. Somehow, the joy of Easter overrode it all and helped me get up each morning with the determination to persist in performing my job well and keeping my spiritual progress on track even in the face of Father's liberal drivel.
Little did I know it at the time, but the "forced" mental and spiritual discipline these days imposed would prove to be preparation for a much greater and, certainly much more dramatic, challenge that would soon descend on my little corner of Manhattan Island.
More next time...
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