The Importance and Impact of a Strong Interior Life in a Busy World

We've been talking about Our Lord's hidden life and developing a strong interior life. Let's spend some time deepening our understanding of this crucial component of our spiritual lives, one that we hardly hear about any more. For Catholic men busy at work most of their waking hours, the interior life can assist us in effectively and consistently working for the greater glory of God.

Now, before we begin our discussion, can we all agree first that the greater glory of God should be our primary concern throughout the work day? And it's not so much that everything else takes second place to God's greater glory. We're not diminishing the importance of providing excellent service to customers, developing new products and services to increase revenue, increasing profits, etc. It's just that, as in our business lives, we need to have our priorities straight in our spiritual lives.

While our recent posts talked about Jesus at work during the years of His hidden life, let's not forget Our Blessed Mother during those years. And let's remember that Our Lady's interior life can serve as a perfect example for our own, especially as it applies to our daily work. Father John Grou S.J. (1731-18030 had this to say about the subject, when writing about Devotion to Our Blessed Mother:

“How shall we then show our solid devotion to the Blessed Virgin? By striving to imitate her interior life, her lowly opinion of herself, her love of obscurity, of silence, and of retirement; her attraction to little things, her fidelity to grace, the beautiful simplicity of her recollection and prayer, the only object of which was God and His holy will, Jesus Christ and His love, her continual sacrifice of herself and of all she loved most dearly and had the greatest reason to love. Let us ask her every day that she may serve us as our guide and model in the interior life, and let us beg of her to obtain for us the graces which are necessary for us, that we may correspond to the designs of God upon us. And these designs are most certainly our death to ourselves and the destruction of our self-love.”

Ah yes, there it is again: "death to ourselves and the destruction of our self-love." The words may flow easily. But acting on them is another matter. How contrary to the way most of approach our careers are these words: "her lowly opinion of herself, her love of obscurity, of silence, and of retirement." Good for Our Lady perhaps, but for some of us men such words sound somehow inappropriate. After all, we're constantly being told to boost our "self-esteem," to "stand out from the crowd." Will obscurity, silence, or retirement help us get ahead? Aren't we supposed to "make a difference," impact the bottom line, etc.?

Okay, so you do need to lead by example, to take the initiative, and, as a result, you naturally stand out from the crowd. It's just the type of work you do, what you get paid for. So here's where you rely on your strong interior life. You keep you ego, your self, out of the equation. Sure, you press on with your high-profile work. You perform every task as best you can. You expect excellence and push yourself such that you can easily attribute your success to your skills, your talent, your brilliance. But you don't take that last step. Your interior life tugs on the reins of your galloping ego and you pull up. You understand that any success you achieve comes from God. Even as your ego begins to inflate, your interior life acts as a pin to deflate it before you start to float. With ego in check, you're free to remember Our Lord in His hidden life, Our Lady working by His side in Nazareth, neither one calling attention to themselves.

You understand the importance of that strong interior life, and, by the grace of God, feel its impact, even in the midst of your busy world.