About The "Running Fight" in Our Work and Our Spiritual Life - 2

We continue to settle into the Easter Season, picking up on our last post. 

If you recall, we're addressing a situation where our efforts during Lent didn't provide the spiritual result hoped for. Typically this will be expressed as a feeling, or even some objective analysis that yields a conclusion.

Our spiritual director, - Fr. Francis LeBuffe will continue his cogent explanation of what he terms a "running fight" in our spiritual life. And we will continue to see how we can apply his ideas to both our spiritual life and our work.

To sum up, we've learned that there's never an end to our struggle for sanctity. We connected this with any idea that we can ever end daily struggle in our work life, winding up with an example of a business that purportedly can be put on auto-pilot - a claim sometimes made by franchise operations: Buy the franchise, flip the switch, sit back watch the bucks roll in.

In fairness, some franchises are better than others a providing what seems a "fool-proof" plan to start churning out profits. But flipping a switch and kicking back won't characterize even the best franchises. Stuff happens. 

No business, no matter how perfectly constructed, no matter how much it may run seemingly on its own, continues without some continuing action ranging from tweaking to major overhaul. With all that in mind we found some solid connects between our spiritual life and our work. Today, father sums up his thoughts by focusing on the concept of "self-conquest."

Self-conquest sits right at the center of our spiritual life. We struggle to quell pride by building humility. We struggle to put aside what St. Paul calls the old man and put on the new. We are no longer who we once were with all our self-centeredness, sinful habits, conceit, etc. Charity rules and all our thoughts, words, and deeds reflect our complete abandonment to God's Will, along with our deep love of the Lord.

Of course, getting to that state takes constant struggle - hence the running fight. Father explains:

“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've seen the similarities with the daily struggle we encounter in our work. If we can establish and maintain a connection with our work and our spiritual life, we can combine our seemingly separate struggles. What benefits us in the one will then do so in the other. 

Struggle to conquer self in our spiritual life and we can more easily take our egos out of our daily work and focus on the results we need to achieve to satisfy our boss, our customers, our clients. 

Struggle to achieve specific results in our daily work, while offering all our efforts up to God, and we clear the path to growing closer to God, the whole purpose of our spiritual life.

To connect all of this to our Easter Season: When Our Lord rose from the dead, He showed us that by following Him we can overcome sin and gain eternal happiness. If we struggle in this life, both in our spiritual life and in our work, we can begin to get some inkling of what awaits us when we are finally called home to Heaven.

Happy Easter!