Back to Regular Lent After a Rosy Laetare Sunday - 2
Last time we talked about how we've enjoyed the respite provided by our rose-colored Laetare Sunday liturgy. Now it's back to "regular" Lent.
Having left the rosy light and anticipatory joy of Laetare Sunday, it's time to double down as we both resume our usual Lenten discipline and now anticipate Passiontide. We're in a heavier, more intense stretch.
And if work flow has also intensified, it may be particularly challenging to remain faithful to our Lenten practices.
If we paid attention to our spiritual guide last time, we should have been somewhat encouraged. He's told us that our failure to conquer this or that fault or weakness once and for all time is simply not realistic.We found that self-conquest is always going to be a "running fight." We can't expect conquest, likely not as long as we're saddled to this Vail of Tears that we call life in this world.
Not encouraged? Why not? Reality may not always be pleasant. But isn't it better to understand what's real? Is it better to live in a fantasy world?
We who work for a living should have no trouble with this. To be effective in our work, we've got to be in the real world, dealing with real world problems and challenges.
And in the real world of work, the idea that you'll ever completely conquer all problems and challenges that arise is an idea from Never-Never Land.
If you deal with people - clients, customers - you can provide every last stitch of what they need or want. All done, right? No way. Either they'll have something else in mind for your products/services; or they'll simply change their minds. It happens all the time.
If you make things, without dealing with the clients/customers, you can certainly perfect the thing you're working on. But isn't it typically the case that either the item falls out of favor or there's room for improvement?
Father LeBuffe's teaching doesn't address our work, of course. He's talking about our soul, our spiritual life. But If you read this carefully, you can see the connection with every day work.
And if we narrow the focus to our Lenten discipline, we'll learn some valuable lessons that should spur us on to continue to do our best with whatever commitments we've made and not get discouraged when we don't score 100%.
Let's have Father take us out for today...
“Self-conquest is indeed ‘a running fight.’ It means dealing self a blow
here, and striking down the head of pride there, and prodding out
selfishness in yet another corner of our life. … We should like to make
one great resolve – and thereafter to be saints. But it hurts to begin
today, and then begin again tomorrow and then on another morrow to start
out all over again. We do advance, of course, and we do carry the war
further and further into the enemy’s country, but the old tendency keeps
up such a running fight to have its own way that we find it hard to
realize we have beaten it back at all. Dear Lord, I want to conquer self
and to be rid of all my faults. That ‘the life of man upon earth is a
warfare’ is fearfully true, and the sad part of it is that we do not win
out in a single fight. It means a struggle today and tomorrow and then
another morrow, and there is never any truce. I do not want to yield or
run away; and so I beg of You to give me much grace, no matter how weary
I am, to keep up, with You and for You, this running fight for my
soul.” - Fr. Francis LeBuffe, S.J.
We adore Thee O Christ and We Bless Thee
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