A Sunday Thought From The Recruitment Center to Start the Week Off

I hope this Sunday finds you in God's Hands, calm and peaceful. Here's something from the Recruitment Center to start off our week. Don't worry, the draft hasn't been reinstated. While war has been brewing and expanding in our weary world, we're not there yet - thank God. As we'll see, the recruitment center we're referring to comes from the pen of one of our favorite spiritual writers. We'll get to that in a moment.

While I try to keep Sundays relatively calm and peaceful as a rule, every once in a while, the dysfunction in our Church stirs up the pot and gets me a bit riled up. If you're a Catholic who tries to practice our holy religion faithful to the traditions that stretch back to Our Lord dining with his disciples during the last hours before being seized by the thugs sent for him by the Sanhedrin, you may be subject to these stir-ups form time to time as well. If they come on a Sunday, I typically remind myself that my time is better spent in prayer, in acts of charity and sacrifice, rather than reading endless websites that repeat the latest tales of woe about how bad things are in Holy Church.

But once in a while, some woeful tale sticks its nose into my interior life on a Sunday. And before I can beat it back, it does disturb that calm and peace - at least for a while.

So when I read this comment from our friend, Father Willie Doyle, whose wise words we posted last Sunday, I thought it might prove a bit of a salve on the constantly festering wound inflicted by that infamous "Spirit of the Council" that infected our Catholic Religion after Vatican II.

As you'll see, it seems that even way back in Father Willie's time, late 19th, early 20th century, things weren't all nice-nice. Indeed, I've read similar comments in the entries of The Inner Life of the Soul, published in 1904, from which we've quoted from time to time. The enemies of the Church, always on the move and never far away, apparently were hard at work trying to tear the faithful away from their love of God, especially those who expressed that love in faithfully attending to their spiritual life. 

Father Willie, recognizing this, writes thusly:

I think it is evident that, in these days of awful sin and hatred of God, our Blessed Lord wants to gather round Him a legion of chosen souls who will be devoted, heart and soul, to Him and His interests, and upon whom He may always count for help and consolation. Souls who will not ask “How much must I do?” but rather “How much can I do for His love?” A legion of souls who will give and not count the cost, whose only pain will be that they cannot do more and give more and suffer more for Him who has done so much for them. In a word souls who are not as the rest of men, fools perhaps in the eyes of the world, for their watchword is sacrifice and not self-comfort.

And because the guy who runs the website from which I garnered this gem wrote a short, sweet comment, we include that as well:

COMMENT: If the early 1900’s were “days of awful sin and hatred of God” as Fr Willie claimed, things would appear to be worse 100 years later.

But God is faithful. Whenever there is a crisis, God raises up a “legion of chosen souls” to respond. The history of the Church has always shown this to be the case. God still calls for loyal followers. But are we ready to respond?

So what say ye? How about we all consider joining this "legion of souls"?

Of course, we must be willing to be different. We have to quash any desire to be "as the rest of men." Even better if we do desire to be "fools, perhaps in the eyes of the world."

And lest we have any misconceptions here, Father Willie's asking for "sacrifice and not self-comfort." 

Definitely not what most of us seek. But perhaps exactly what we should be seeking. It's most definitely better than letting any camel's nose of woeful tales into the tent of our Interior Life.

Happy Sunday!