by Father Daniel Considine, 1950’s
The Faults of Good People
- Touchiness, i.e. over-sensitiveness with regard to points not of so much importance.
A touchy person takes offense where none is meant. . . . To me it is very remarkable how one comes across people really very good, but who let things rankle in their soul.
Let us efface ourselves, give up the luxury of being touchy. We ought to desire to be an instrument of spreading God’s glory, and we ought to fit ourselves for this.
It is extraordinary how we find touchiness in those who would go through fire and water for Our Blessed Lord.
One of the qualities of a sterling soul is an absence of touchiness. We ought to be thinking of God’s interests and the good of souls, and we waste our time over such trifles.
- Jealousy
If only we could eliminate jealousy from the religious world, what good we should do! Sometimes we haven’t an idea that we are jealous. How can we know?
Watch – because we are not jealous about things in which we don’t expect to excel, we think we are not jealous at all. We all have our ambitions; some wish to shine in society, others, again, wish to pass for very holy.
When you hear others praised in a line you want to excel in, ask yourself why you are a little unhappy.
We might almost say of jealousy, that it dies just a minute before we die, or after.
If we could get people to work together without jealousy, it would help God’s work immensely. . . .
Are there any against whom I feel tempted to bear a grudge? Any of whose misfortunes I feel a little pleasure in hearing? Why am I willing to listen to conversation disparaging to someone else? Can I cleanse my soul of touchiness and jealousy? How can I become more and more unselfish, and efface myself?
Let me put aside considerations of my own satisfaction. . . . Ask Our Lord in Holy Communion to free you from touchiness and jealousy.
Our Daily Task
‘Do thy day’s work like a good soldier of Jesus Christ.’
How these words seem to strike home to every one of us! ‘Thy day’s work.’
What is our day’s work? Can it be true that each son of Adam has a work allotted to him by God on which he is expected to be busy, for surely the Apostle’s words mean as much as this.
They are indeed addressed immediately to Timothy, but no one of us is supposed or permitted to stand in the marketplace of life all the day idle.
We all are by nature servants; we are parts of the great human machine, an intelligent machine, a living organization which should carry out God’s purposes in this world which we inhabit.
There is no place for drones in the hives of men. For each of us there is a position and duty assigned, each one of us has to perform his own portion of the general task; we must complete our own share of the universal plan.
To be a worker, to have, that is, something definite in life entrusted to our charge is the same as to live; we hold our life, we lease our life from God on that condition, we must be engaged on His business, we must execute His commands.
He is a most liberal and a considerate Master, but He will not, He cannot forgo His claim to dictate, and to direct our lifework.
It is not simply that He desires us to labor in order to keep us good, and to occupy our time, but there runs through all this mortal life, through all this existence of the world, a Divine design, which the Creator of it is accomplishing by means of us His creatures, in which He seeks and has appointed our aid.
See, then, what is meant by the conception of duty. We all have an object here. Our Lord Himself at His last Supper said to His Father: ‘I have finished the work that Thou gavest Me to do.’
What is this object, how am I to discover it? In most cases, it is settled for us by our circumstances.
Any work, if it be work and honest work, can be made God’s work if we do it for God. It need not be lofty, it need not be difficult; it may be, it probably is, common, ordinary toil such as is the lot of most men.
What God requires of us is that we do what we have to do, that we live our lives as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, that is that we seek the companionship, that we fight under the colors of Our Blessed Lord, that we associate ourselves with Him, that we recognize Him as our Comrade, as our Chief.
Our day may be a short one, or it may be prolonged through many weary years, in faithfulness even to the end.
What matter if in either case we are fulfilling our Master’s Will?
Life without God is empty and mean; if lived for God, it is, whatever our station, rich and fruitful and noble.
Everything we do each day, we do for our families and ultimately for the love of God. Our daily duties are a springboard towards heaven and will be the way in which we gain our own salvation and bring blessings upon our family. -Finer Femininity Painting by Jeffrey T. Larson
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Awe yes jealousy… What an annoyance it can be! Thank you for this reading!
I’ve heard a priest describe the difference between jealousy and envy. Jealousy is a type of desire to have and to hold what is rightfully yours. You guard your property or your spouse jealously. Whereas envy (a deadly sin) is a sadness or anger at what someone else has or is and a desire to take it away from them.