Elevating Our New Year of 2024 at Work With Jesus
Let's start our work this Year of Our Lord 2024 with Jesus. And who better to give us a boost than our dear Father Willie Doyle.
These are some of Father's reflections during the second week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, completed in 1907. Their subject: the "hidden life" of Jesus when Jesus was a young boy.
As a further context, we might think about the ever-popular "New Year's Resolutions" so many of us gin up after January 1st every year. While there may be some exceptions, so many of these hardly make it through January, never mind the New Year.
Why? Many reasons. "Too ambitious" might be one of the more commons reasons: "I'm going to lose 85 pounds this month." "Too vague" makes the reasons list too: "I'm going to get into the best shape of my life." What the heck could that possibly mean?
Now, if you're a New Year's Resolution sort of guy, don't take offense. It's just the way things typically go.
We'll see that Father Willie's resolution can easily translate to each and every one of us. There's plenty of ambition to be sure. But it's not the sort that's far beyond anyone's capability. In fact, it's just ambitious enough for serious souls. We may not succeed 100% right away - or even after years of trying. But we can easily see how the effort is just the sort we need to do our part to become a saint, and thereby to get to Heave - with God's grace.
It's also not in any way vague.
As we read this brief passage, we can apply Father Willie's resolutions to our own work today. Ideally we'll do that every day that God keeps us in this Valley of Tears.
During the reflection on the Hidden Life I got a light that here was something in which I could easily imitate our Lord and make my life resemble His. I felt a strong impulse to resolve to take up as one of the chief objects of my life the exact and thorough performance of each duty, trying to do it as Jesus would have done, with the same pure intention, exquisite exactness and fervour. To copy in all my actions walking, eating, praying Jesus, my model in the little house of Nazareth. This light was sudden, clear and strong. To do this perfectly will require constant, unflagging fervour. Will not this be part of my “hard life”?
I should examine all my actions, taking Jesus as my model and example. What a vast difference between my prayer and His; between my use of time, my way of speaking, walking, dealing with others, etc., and that of the child Jesus! If I could only keep Him before my eyes always, my life would be far different from what it has been.
Each fresh meditation on the life of our Lord impresses on me more and more the necessity of conforming my life to His in every detail, if I wish to please Him and become holy. To do something great and heroic may never come, but I can make my life heroic by faithfully and daily putting my best effort into each duty as it comes round. It seems to me I have failed to keep my resolutions because I have not acted from the motive of the love of God. Mortification, prayer, hard work, become sweet when done for the love of Jesus.
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