Anticipating All Saints Day at Work
This week we're anticipating the great feast and holy day of obligation, All Saints Day. I remember as a school boy looking forward to All Saints Day. It wasn't just because we got the day off. All of us Catholic school students were expected to attend Mass. After Mass we were excused from classes and headed home. The combination of attending Mass, receiving Holy Communion, the fall weather, the chance to go out and play with our buddies instead of sitting in the classroom and, likely, feasting on the candy we collected the night before on Halloween, made it all something unique and special.
For years I've tried - with modest success - to take off on All Saints Day. I managed to take a vacation day a couple of time in my last job, as I did for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Now that I run my own business, it's really a matter of simply making up my mind to do so, albeit it balancing the desire to take off against my obligation to perform my ordinary duties that must be attended to. This year, with All Saints falling on a Friday, I'm going to have to spend some time attending to deadlines that can't be pushed off. Despite that, I'll do my best to capture some of the holy "magic" of the day.
In looking forward to All Saints Day, thoughts of "humility" rise to the surface. It's got to be one of, if not the, chief virtues that sets the saints apart from us ordinary schlubs - at least this ordinary schlub. So I thought it would be worthwhile, as the great day approaches, to spend some time on this all-too-rare virtue.
I think it's especially important for us Catholic men at work. Many, if not most of us, work hard and try to get ahead. To do that, we're told, we need to be assertive, to make sure we get what's coming to us, based on our skills and our efforts. We should make sure those in a position to reward us and advance our careers know what a great job we're doing, how valuable we are to our companies, etc. All of that makes worldly sense. When we're doing a great job, acknowledgement and financial reward is both welcome and deserved - as long as it doesn't feed our pride. And, let's face it, pride infects even the best of us to some degree or another. It's what brought Lucifer down and we're certainly not immune from it. In fact, the devil's favorite temptation is to pride. He wants us to join him in his misery, ultimately in Hell. If you're not sure about the danger of pride, just remember the saying, "Pride goeth before the fall" and it should all fall into place.
With that in mind, here's something that lays out the depth and the danger of the vice of pride:
“The condition of the proud man has something appalling and repulsive about it. God and all His creatures resist him; the law of universal order, which he upsets, protests against his insane pretensions, but he, in his insolence, defies this opposition. Pride makes a man resemble Satan; it imprints on his brow the mark of the beast: ‘When I meet a pretentious man, who esteems himself more prudent, more learned, or more virtuous than others, I shudder and feel myself confronted by a demon incarnate,’ says St. Alphonsus. The strangest thing of all, and the most alarming, is that no proud person suspects himself of this insidious passion. It is rare to find a person appreciating himself at his proper value, and still more rare, to meet one who regulates his life according to a correct estimate of his worth. Great interior light is required that a man may see himself as he really is: only saints are wholly free from illusions about their personal worth. Where is the man who is not wounded by a want of esteem shown him, or by the failure of an enterprise, or by some humiliation? Who is he that is not pleased on being appreciated or sought after? Who does not dread blame, neglect, sarcasm? Even the most sincere human soul experiences in herself habitual opposition to humility, a permanent contradiction between the good opinion she has of herself, and the judgment which the Eternal truth has of her.
“The very best men, when closely watching their interior movements, have to acknowledge that in nearly all their free acts, they can detect a certain inordinate seeking after self-glorification. In a measure, self is the center around which all the aspirations and all the thoughts of their minds revolve.” - Fr. Joseph Schryvers, C.SS.R. (1876-1945)
Because it's so critically important, let's reiterate what we put in bold:
"...no proud person suspects himself of this insidious passion. It is rare to find a person appreciating himself at his proper value, and still more rare, to meet one who regulates his life according to a correct estimate of his worth...only saints are wholly free from illusions about their personal worth."
Here we find both a wake up call as well as a direct connection to the glorious feast of All Saints. We have time now to begin to pray for their intercession to help us to both see the pride within us and to beg the grace to resist and ultimately excise it from our souls.
Next time we'll dig a little deeper into how the saints understood the life-threatening dangers that pride presents to us all.
For years I've tried - with modest success - to take off on All Saints Day. I managed to take a vacation day a couple of time in my last job, as I did for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Now that I run my own business, it's really a matter of simply making up my mind to do so, albeit it balancing the desire to take off against my obligation to perform my ordinary duties that must be attended to. This year, with All Saints falling on a Friday, I'm going to have to spend some time attending to deadlines that can't be pushed off. Despite that, I'll do my best to capture some of the holy "magic" of the day.
In looking forward to All Saints Day, thoughts of "humility" rise to the surface. It's got to be one of, if not the, chief virtues that sets the saints apart from us ordinary schlubs - at least this ordinary schlub. So I thought it would be worthwhile, as the great day approaches, to spend some time on this all-too-rare virtue.
I think it's especially important for us Catholic men at work. Many, if not most of us, work hard and try to get ahead. To do that, we're told, we need to be assertive, to make sure we get what's coming to us, based on our skills and our efforts. We should make sure those in a position to reward us and advance our careers know what a great job we're doing, how valuable we are to our companies, etc. All of that makes worldly sense. When we're doing a great job, acknowledgement and financial reward is both welcome and deserved - as long as it doesn't feed our pride. And, let's face it, pride infects even the best of us to some degree or another. It's what brought Lucifer down and we're certainly not immune from it. In fact, the devil's favorite temptation is to pride. He wants us to join him in his misery, ultimately in Hell. If you're not sure about the danger of pride, just remember the saying, "Pride goeth before the fall" and it should all fall into place.
With that in mind, here's something that lays out the depth and the danger of the vice of pride:
“The condition of the proud man has something appalling and repulsive about it. God and all His creatures resist him; the law of universal order, which he upsets, protests against his insane pretensions, but he, in his insolence, defies this opposition. Pride makes a man resemble Satan; it imprints on his brow the mark of the beast: ‘When I meet a pretentious man, who esteems himself more prudent, more learned, or more virtuous than others, I shudder and feel myself confronted by a demon incarnate,’ says St. Alphonsus. The strangest thing of all, and the most alarming, is that no proud person suspects himself of this insidious passion. It is rare to find a person appreciating himself at his proper value, and still more rare, to meet one who regulates his life according to a correct estimate of his worth. Great interior light is required that a man may see himself as he really is: only saints are wholly free from illusions about their personal worth. Where is the man who is not wounded by a want of esteem shown him, or by the failure of an enterprise, or by some humiliation? Who is he that is not pleased on being appreciated or sought after? Who does not dread blame, neglect, sarcasm? Even the most sincere human soul experiences in herself habitual opposition to humility, a permanent contradiction between the good opinion she has of herself, and the judgment which the Eternal truth has of her.
“The very best men, when closely watching their interior movements, have to acknowledge that in nearly all their free acts, they can detect a certain inordinate seeking after self-glorification. In a measure, self is the center around which all the aspirations and all the thoughts of their minds revolve.” - Fr. Joseph Schryvers, C.SS.R. (1876-1945)
Because it's so critically important, let's reiterate what we put in bold:
"...no proud person suspects himself of this insidious passion. It is rare to find a person appreciating himself at his proper value, and still more rare, to meet one who regulates his life according to a correct estimate of his worth...only saints are wholly free from illusions about their personal worth."
Here we find both a wake up call as well as a direct connection to the glorious feast of All Saints. We have time now to begin to pray for their intercession to help us to both see the pride within us and to beg the grace to resist and ultimately excise it from our souls.
Next time we'll dig a little deeper into how the saints understood the life-threatening dangers that pride presents to us all.
Comments