Happiness in Goodness ~ Fr. Lasance

There are certain loved ones in my life that do not like the Catholic Faith because they do not like its take on the cross. They feel that if they embrace the Faith wholeheartedly, a Faith that has its emphasis on the merits of suffering, their lives will be nothing but misery.

These same dear people suffer much in their lives. Suffering is a part of their life, as it is with us all, and yet they are gaining nothing from it. They could be offering these sorrows for their own salvation and that of others and yet the suffering lands on barren ground.

They also fight it all the way which only increases their sufferings.

And I say to myself, “Why do they not see it?”

As the article states, “It is proper to the devil to create trouble and excitement and to shroud the mind in darkness: whereas it belongs to God to shed light, and with understanding to teach us what we need to know.”

Painting by John Waterhouse

by Fr. Lasance

Shall I be happy, if I am good? I know I should be happy in heaven, but that seems a long way off.

Shall I be happy on earth? I ask the question with some anxiety, because I hear a great deal about carrying the cross; and I cannot conceive how anyone can carry the cross and be happy.

Carrying the cross means, I suppose, making oneself miserable. Now, though I should like to be good, I have no mind to make myself miserable. What am I to do?

I’m to put out of my head forever the notion that carrying the cross means making oneself miserable. There is one indeed who, if I try to be good, will do everything in his power to make me miserable. That is my enemy, the devil, whom St. Peter bids me to resist strong in faith (1Peter:9).

St. Chrysostom says that a Christian resists thoughts of impurity, so he should resist thoughts of sadness: indeed the one often leads to the other.

And St. Ignatius : “It is proper to the evil spirit to sting, to sadden, to put obstacles in the way, making the soul restless by false reasoning to prevent its getting on. And it is proper to the good spirit to give courage and strength, consolation and rest of soul, making things easy and removing all obstacles, that the soul may go on further in doing good.”

And St. John Chrysostom again: “It is proper to the devil to create trouble and excitement and to shroud the mind in darkness: whereas it belongs to God to shed light, and with understanding to teach us what we need to know.”

In short, there are two crosses, our Lord’s cross and the devil’s cross. Our Lord’s cross consists of the labors of my state, and the pain and sorrow that go with labor, of whatever sort it be, as God said in the beginning to Adam: in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread: thorns and briars shall the earth bear to thee (Genesis 3. 18, 19).

This cross I must submit to be nailed to, and never come down till death releases me, never abdicate, never resign.

The devil’s cross consists of feelings of wretchedness, black discontent, irritation, complaining, downheartedness, and misery – as it were whiffs from the cloud that envelops Satan in internal despair. This cross I must fling far from me.

There is no virtue in long faces, even when pious people pull them.

To carry Christ’s cross manfully one should be reluctant to avow that one has got any great weight of it on one’s shoulder.

Let me take an example: The case of a young man or of a young woman at college.
A frequent cross with youth is the cross of examinations. I was going to add “in uncongenial matter”; but somehow nearly everything that one is examined in, and has to plod through during months of preparation, comes to be felt as uncongenial matter.

Here are two wrong things to do, and one right thing. The first wrong thing is to refuse the examination, get oneself let off, or get oneself off by seizing to study. That is like resigning a burdensome office in later life, usually a mistake. It is slinging Christ’s cross away.

The second wrong thing is to go on studying, making oneself miserable all the while with lamentations about the disagreeableness of the task and the prospects of failure. That is adding to Christ’s cross Satan’s cross, and may likely end in casting off both, quod erat faciendum, in Satan’s plan.

The one right thing is to work hard, serenely and faithfully, day by day, doing all one can, and committing results to God.

The moral is this: The cross of sadness should always be got rid of by a Christian, so far as ever he is able to shake it off: but the cross of arduous and at times disagreeable employment should be held on to and cheerfully borne.

The History of ‘APRONS’ – Tina Trivett

I don’t think most kids today know what an apron is. The principle use of Mom’s or Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids..

And when the weather was cold, she wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.

From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, she walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that ‘old-time apron’ that served so many purposes.

Send this to those who would know (and love) the story about aprons.

REMEMBER:

Mom’s and Grandma’s used to set hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.

I don’t think I ever caught anything from an apron – but love.

“This Conscience has a quiet, tiny voice, but it can shout down the widest passions. It is beyond bribes and knows no fear….”

The Catholic Boy’s and Girl’s Traditional 30-Day Journals! Let’s keep our youth engaged in the Faith! Let’s teach them how to be organized, how to prioritize, how to keep on top of, first, the Spiritual things in their lives, and then the other daily duties that God requires of them… Available here.

 

 

In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own “resurrection”—his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.

Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him…..

Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?”
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