A Rich Harvest

This week has been full of challenges.  This isn't particularly out of the ordinary in a large family mind you.  I was grateful to awaken fairly rested this morning and had an hour to myself to sit and read and think in absolute quiet before I needed to shift into high gear. A title caught my eye on the bookshelf: Holy Abandonment.  My fingers ran down the table of contents til they reached "home and community." 

The page found, I read first, "Our time on earth is a a time of conflict: of conflict against ourselves to repair our faults, to overcome our defects, and to grow in virtue and merit. The means at our disposal for attaining these ends are manifold. One of the most efficacious is community life with the sacrifices it imposes."  This of course, has its counterpart in the domestic church, the home and family. 

Jean Pierre de Caussade writes that, "...because you have not sufficiently brought home to yourself this great principle, you have never been able to submit as you should to certain conditions and occurrences, nor consequently to remain firmly and tranquilly united to the will of God." He says we suffer much disquiet and 'false reasonings' on this account. 

There is a section which follows that explains that the irritations and upset we experience with others only serves to show us what is inside of ourselves.  Kind of like that meme about how when the kettle is knocked you find out what was boiling inside of it.  Other people serve to reveal was already inside of us.  For this reason the author asserts that these occasions of annoyance are a blessing.  (otherwise) "We should imagine we knew ourselves and all the time entertain the most fantastic illusions, if this person or that in a moment of temper did not frankly tell us the truth about ourselves."

He shares that a holy founders once said, "Each of you has her own disposition, temper, imperfections, eccentricities. If we had no difficult characters (in our family/community) we would be obliged to purchase some in order that they might help us to heaven. God has provided us with such means free of charge. It is for us to make the most of of this means of mortification."  

Digest that one for a moment.  These personality clashes are somehow a blessing.  More than that,  a necessity.

Holy Abandonment advises:

"Let us forgive and we shall be forgiven. Let us forget the wrongs we have suffered from our brother and God will gladly forget the wrongs He has suffered from us. Let us support our neighbor, let us be patient with him, show him mercy and kindness; and the Lord, ever faithful to His promise, will deal in the same manner with us."   The author understands this is not easy.  "It costs something to suffer without respite." 

These contradictions which we face day in and day out, "Provide us with repeated opportunities for the practice of the rarest and most solid virtues: charity, patience, gentleness, humility of heart, kindness, mortification of the temper, etc.  These little daily virtues, faithfully practiced, will yield us a a rich harvest of graces....

This cross alone (daily irritations) will serve more effectually than other crosses, heavier in appearance."

De Caussade goes so far as to say, "Far from pitying you, I can only congratulate you on having found at last an occasion for the practice of true charity. The antipathy you feel for the person with whom you are continually associated,  the opposition between your ideas and temperaments, the pain he causes you by his manners and language are so many infallible guarantees that the charity you will exercise in his regard shall be purely supernatural without the least alloy of human sentiment. Therefore thank the good God."

He gives four instructions so we may not squander this opportunity:

 

1. Endure patiently the involuntary feelings of resentment excited in your heart by the conduct of this person, just as you would endure an attack of fever or a headache. 
2. Never speak as perhaps others do of this person but always say something to his advantage for he must have some good qualities. And which of us is altogether free of defects?
3. Whenever you commit any fault (ie respond undesirably to the person) repair it once by gently humbling yourself without any voluntary bitterness either against yourself or this person. By means of these daily miseries and faults God never ceases to lower our pride and keep us in true humility. 
4. Abandon everything to Providence. 

 

"Instead of complaining, let us bless God Who has had the wisdom and the goodness to place at our side (such a person) for that neighbor is necessary to us."

 

 

 

St Jane Frances de Chantal, a woman who is said to have begun her life with a 'haughty' disposition, chipped away at her pride and grew in humility over a seven year span following her husbands untimely death. She was ill-treated and suffered humiliations in her father-in-law's home.  You can read more here on page 164-165. 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Victoria P]

I needed this tonight. That book is wonderful but I have yet to get through more than the first several chapters...the fact that it's so hard is probably a good indication of how on point it is!
The "domestic cloister" is so challenging, but so beautiful...

[Keri Jackson]

You consistently speak things I need to hear. I am so thankful you continue to blog!