This Can Lift Up Our Hearts By Lifting Up Our Work Today

During Holy Mass we Hear "Lift up your hearts." Remember? We want to lift them up to the Lord, right? So here are some thoughts from Father Willie that will help us here. And these words can absolutely be applied to our work today.

As we've discussed over the years, our work can and should be a constant and robust source of help in our struggle to become a saint. Yes, in case this very basic fundamental motivation for all we think, say, and do escapes us from time to time (or maybe most times), that's really our most important goal in this life. And yes, this applies to even us worms who are so unworthy, who basically crawl around in the dark barely able to get through a few minutes of any given day without being focused on self rather than on God and His Holy Will.

Since so much of our time is spent at work, what could make more sense than to turn all that we think, say, and do at work into an offering, a prayer, a means to aid us in our daily struggle? And so we seek to sanctify our work - all of it, each and every day.

Father Willie provides us with a specific, practical and powerful way to do this. He wrote these words in his diary when contemplating the hidden life of Our Lord with the Holy Family in Nazareth. Just read them slowly and thoughtfully. If you do, there's not real need for further comment.

By way of reminder, our source for this diary entry is, as always the wonderful site williedoyle.org. You could do worse than to check in with the almost daily postings. 

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.