More Encouragement to Help Us Through These Days of Lent at Work
We're in the last two weeks of Lent. Here's a bit more encouragement to help sustain us in our Lenten discipline.
I remember once thinking that it would be oh-so-much-easier to be faithful in my spiritual discipline if only I were a monk free from the distractions of this world. If only I didn't have to get up early, face that morning commute (never mind the commute back home), work long days, bear the responsibilities of family life, etc. How holy I'd be then.
Then I read and studied just how serious, fruitful Catholic monks really live, what they really do. That disabused me of any notions that simply being a monk would make me holy. Add to this my eventual understanding that we are all - as in ALL of us - called to be holy. Which brings us to this day in the fifth week of Lent, facing another day of work, trying my best to persist in being faithful to those sacrifices to which I committed way back on Ash Wednesday when this year's Lenten journey began.
Last time, we talked about how faithful our great God is to us. We saw how He helps us face any difficulty. Remembering now that that most important call to all of us to be holy - which ultimately means to be faithful to God as He is to us - we saw that even, in fact most especially, during those times of temptation we all face, God provides the strength we need - in the form of His grace - to not only resist temptation, but to build virtue in us, ultimately to help us grow closer to Him.
Now, most of us understand that every challenge we face on the job and attempt to overcome represents an opportunity to strengthen our ability to succeed at our chosen work. If we gave up every time things got tough, whether in the form of difficult assignments, demanding customers, or uncooperative colleagues, our careers would hit a dead end. It's the same when we face challenges in our spiritual lives. And there's nothing more challenging than temptations not only to sin, but also to slack off in our daily efforts to grow closer to God.
Here now some encouraging words to help us persist in our daily efforts to be holy, especially during these special grace-filled days of Lent. Take heart. Don't give up:
We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee,
I remember once thinking that it would be oh-so-much-easier to be faithful in my spiritual discipline if only I were a monk free from the distractions of this world. If only I didn't have to get up early, face that morning commute (never mind the commute back home), work long days, bear the responsibilities of family life, etc. How holy I'd be then.
Then I read and studied just how serious, fruitful Catholic monks really live, what they really do. That disabused me of any notions that simply being a monk would make me holy. Add to this my eventual understanding that we are all - as in ALL of us - called to be holy. Which brings us to this day in the fifth week of Lent, facing another day of work, trying my best to persist in being faithful to those sacrifices to which I committed way back on Ash Wednesday when this year's Lenten journey began.
Last time, we talked about how faithful our great God is to us. We saw how He helps us face any difficulty. Remembering now that that most important call to all of us to be holy - which ultimately means to be faithful to God as He is to us - we saw that even, in fact most especially, during those times of temptation we all face, God provides the strength we need - in the form of His grace - to not only resist temptation, but to build virtue in us, ultimately to help us grow closer to Him.
Now, most of us understand that every challenge we face on the job and attempt to overcome represents an opportunity to strengthen our ability to succeed at our chosen work. If we gave up every time things got tough, whether in the form of difficult assignments, demanding customers, or uncooperative colleagues, our careers would hit a dead end. It's the same when we face challenges in our spiritual lives. And there's nothing more challenging than temptations not only to sin, but also to slack off in our daily efforts to grow closer to God.
Here now some encouraging words to help us persist in our daily efforts to be holy, especially during these special grace-filled days of Lent. Take heart. Don't give up:
“A virtue that has never been tried does not deserve the name of virtue…The effect of every temptation against purity, for example, or against faith, or against hope, is to strengthen these virtues in our soul and carry them to the highest degree. The effect of anxieties, of weariness in doing good, of disgust at everything, of evident repugnance to duty, of extreme desolation, so that all feelings of grace are withdrawn from us, and God seems to have forsaken us – the effect of all this is to purify our love, to increase our courage, our fidelity, and our perseverance. The effect of calumnies, vexations, and persecutions is to raise us above all human respect, and at the same time to take away from us a certain good opinion of ourselves which the praise of men nourishes in us without our perceiving it. Finally, the general effect of all temptations is to detach us from the things of this world, to humble us in our own eyes, to inspire us with more trust in God, and to draw us into closer union with Him.” (Father John Grou, S.J., 1731-1803)
We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee,
because by Thy Holy Cross
Thou hast redeemed the world.
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