Uniting Ourselves to Centuries of Catholic Faith and Practice This Easter Season at Work
As we complete this fifth week in the Easter Season, we continue to pound on the importance of keeping the Easter Season front and center in our daily lives. That includes our time at work. While it may not always easy to do so when we're caught up with our daily tasks, still, it's important.
And lest you think we're making too much of all this, here's something that should set the record straight. It's from a Catholic spiritual work published in 1905. That's more than a century ago. Perhaps this will reinforce our theme and reignite your determination to keep Easter properly - indeed in a manner which Catholics have understood and observed for centuries.
From The Inner Life of the Soul:
The illustrious Benedictine, Dom Gueranger, in his work on the liturgical year, tells us that the practice for this holy season consists mainly in the spiritual joy which it should produce in every soul that is risen with Jesus. "This joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and the Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it up within him, by ardently seeking after that life which is in our Divine Head and by carefully shunning sin, which causes death. Our Holy Mother the Church is urgent now in bidding us rejoice. You who before Easter were sinners, but have now returned to the life of grace, see that you die no more. And you to whom the Paschal solemnity has brought growth in grace, show this increase in more abundant life by your principles and your conduct.
Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805 - 1875) was a Benedictine monk who served 40 years as Abbot of Solemnes Abbey in France. The next time you face a particularly demanding task or project at work, think of Dom Gueranger. He took it on himself to breathe life into an enterprise, if we might call it that, that had been essentially dead for many years. The Abbey was founded in 1010. It flourished for centuries until the French Revolution, which attempted attempted to suck the Catholic Religion out of French culture and society. Under the leadership of Dom Gueranger, the Abbey was restored in all its glory and then some. Indeed, so successful was he at his work that he helped restore not only the Abbey, but reinvigorated that great, unbroken tradition of our Faith and the rich culture that developed and enriched the lives of millions since Our Lord founded our Holy Catholic Church.
If you re-read Dom Gueranger's words, you will find the same clear message that has been heard, understood, and practiced by untold generations of Catholics. So when he speaks, we would do well to listen. Let's be sure we all heard him loud and clear regarding the spiritual joy of the Easter Season:
"This joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and the Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it up within him, by ardently seeking after that life which is in our Divine Head and by carefully shunning sin, which causes death..."
Note especially that the graces which flow from "carefully shunning sin" result in a more abundant life which manifests itself in our "principles" and our "conduct."
We find here how the rubber can meet the road, especially in this Easter Season, during our work day today. This is no time to sleep walk from 9 to 5 (or whatever your hours might be). These precious hours provide us with a golden opportunity to express our Easter joy by assiduously following those principles taught to us by our Catholic religion. Starting with charity, our conduct reflects those principles. We treat all those with whom we come in contact, either face-to-face or through whatever forms of media we might employ. Our words and actions reflect all those virtues we've learned from childhood: honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, fairness, diligence, etc. And if our thoughts should belie any of these virtues, we're careful to note this and pray for the grace to overcome whatever contradicts what we know to be good and true. We do this either the moment such thoughts occur, or perhaps later in our regular examination of conscience.
Of course, we're not immune from difficulties, temptations, sadness, even suffering during this glorious Easter Season. As the author of The Inner Life of the Soul reminds us:
Yet there are sad hearts, lonely hearts, suffering hearts, who will ask how this joy can be; how anything will have power to stop the anguish which death, or separation, or some interior trial has brought.
It can only be by simple and entire abandonment of self into the hands of God; by an utter and childlike union with His holy will; something more than submission, something higher than resignation; a veritable oneness with our risen Lord. 'If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above.'
We've recently emphasized the importance of this idea of abandoning self, turning our lives over to God even to the extent that we seek union with His holy will. The Inner Life of the Soul deepens our understanding of this union by quoting these words of St. Francis de Sales which reference our "self" and our "will":
"It is when it neither can nor desires to will, and thus abandons itself to the good pleasure of Divine Providence, so mingling with and steeping itself in that good pleasure that it no longer appears, but is entirely hidden with Christ in God, in Whom it lives, yet not it, but the will of God in it."
The author concludes thusly:
Such is the resurrection that can take place this side of the grave; and such the path that leads to true Easter joy and peace.
And lest you think we're making too much of all this, here's something that should set the record straight. It's from a Catholic spiritual work published in 1905. That's more than a century ago. Perhaps this will reinforce our theme and reignite your determination to keep Easter properly - indeed in a manner which Catholics have understood and observed for centuries.
From The Inner Life of the Soul:
The illustrious Benedictine, Dom Gueranger, in his work on the liturgical year, tells us that the practice for this holy season consists mainly in the spiritual joy which it should produce in every soul that is risen with Jesus. "This joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and the Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it up within him, by ardently seeking after that life which is in our Divine Head and by carefully shunning sin, which causes death. Our Holy Mother the Church is urgent now in bidding us rejoice. You who before Easter were sinners, but have now returned to the life of grace, see that you die no more. And you to whom the Paschal solemnity has brought growth in grace, show this increase in more abundant life by your principles and your conduct.
Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805 - 1875) was a Benedictine monk who served 40 years as Abbot of Solemnes Abbey in France. The next time you face a particularly demanding task or project at work, think of Dom Gueranger. He took it on himself to breathe life into an enterprise, if we might call it that, that had been essentially dead for many years. The Abbey was founded in 1010. It flourished for centuries until the French Revolution, which attempted attempted to suck the Catholic Religion out of French culture and society. Under the leadership of Dom Gueranger, the Abbey was restored in all its glory and then some. Indeed, so successful was he at his work that he helped restore not only the Abbey, but reinvigorated that great, unbroken tradition of our Faith and the rich culture that developed and enriched the lives of millions since Our Lord founded our Holy Catholic Church.
If you re-read Dom Gueranger's words, you will find the same clear message that has been heard, understood, and practiced by untold generations of Catholics. So when he speaks, we would do well to listen. Let's be sure we all heard him loud and clear regarding the spiritual joy of the Easter Season:
"This joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and the Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it up within him, by ardently seeking after that life which is in our Divine Head and by carefully shunning sin, which causes death..."
Note especially that the graces which flow from "carefully shunning sin" result in a more abundant life which manifests itself in our "principles" and our "conduct."
We find here how the rubber can meet the road, especially in this Easter Season, during our work day today. This is no time to sleep walk from 9 to 5 (or whatever your hours might be). These precious hours provide us with a golden opportunity to express our Easter joy by assiduously following those principles taught to us by our Catholic religion. Starting with charity, our conduct reflects those principles. We treat all those with whom we come in contact, either face-to-face or through whatever forms of media we might employ. Our words and actions reflect all those virtues we've learned from childhood: honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, fairness, diligence, etc. And if our thoughts should belie any of these virtues, we're careful to note this and pray for the grace to overcome whatever contradicts what we know to be good and true. We do this either the moment such thoughts occur, or perhaps later in our regular examination of conscience.
Of course, we're not immune from difficulties, temptations, sadness, even suffering during this glorious Easter Season. As the author of The Inner Life of the Soul reminds us:
Yet there are sad hearts, lonely hearts, suffering hearts, who will ask how this joy can be; how anything will have power to stop the anguish which death, or separation, or some interior trial has brought.
It can only be by simple and entire abandonment of self into the hands of God; by an utter and childlike union with His holy will; something more than submission, something higher than resignation; a veritable oneness with our risen Lord. 'If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above.'
We've recently emphasized the importance of this idea of abandoning self, turning our lives over to God even to the extent that we seek union with His holy will. The Inner Life of the Soul deepens our understanding of this union by quoting these words of St. Francis de Sales which reference our "self" and our "will":
"It is when it neither can nor desires to will, and thus abandons itself to the good pleasure of Divine Providence, so mingling with and steeping itself in that good pleasure that it no longer appears, but is entirely hidden with Christ in God, in Whom it lives, yet not it, but the will of God in it."
The author concludes thusly:
Such is the resurrection that can take place this side of the grave; and such the path that leads to true Easter joy and peace.
Happy Easter!
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