Painting: Household Chores by Rudolph Epp (German 1834-1910)
Article by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Nazareth Family Spirituality, Madonna House Publications
Catherine was brought up in Russia and had many fond memories of her life there….a life that reflected simplicity, family, religion. After fleeing Russia during the Communist Revolution, she eventually came into the Catholic Church. Catherine prayed much that her motherland would be freed from Communist rule so that people could once again openly practice their faith.
Work
One of the truths of God that we have lost is that of work. Its theology utterly escapes us. Its beauty, comeliness, joy, fruitfulness, creativeness, its powers of healing, restoring, making whole again have become unknown quantities to us.
In our day and age, manual labor, especially what the world calls “menial work”, is disdained by those who do not know Christ the carpenter; Mary the housewife, laundress, and weaver; and Joseph who taught Jesus carpentry.
Nor do such people know the endless rosary of saints—male and female—who delighted to be humble, lowly, “menial” workers. Who understood that because they did everything out of love, they were the nobility of heaven and the aristocracy of earth.
Worse than this lack of understanding of manual labor, we use the intelligence which God has given us to invent thousands of ways to avoid what little work we have to do.
We excuse this heresy by saying that by this “inventiveness” we give ourselves more time. Time for what? Time to waste on baubles. Time for temptations to become rooted in us, eventually to flower into sins.
Idle time, which the Prince of Darkness can use to weave a net of perdition around us. And all the while work, manual work, awaits us. It stands patiently outside the doors of our hearts, ready at a moment’s notice to enter this inner house of ours and set it in order, so that the Lord Christ may come and dwell therein and feel at home.
All work is holy. Through it we walk the royal road of Christ. We seem to have forgotten that.
Behold how the Church uses this hallowed word—the corporal works of mercy, the spiritual works of mercy. These works encompass prayer and sacrifice, intellectual and physical labor.
The summit of all work is the Cross on Calvary, on which hung a Carpenter who worked with his hands—God, who worked with his perfect creative mind in a flame of love. The hands of God and the hands of men both work—or at least his do! Do ours? How can we restore work—all work—to Christ?
The Tranquility of God’s Order
Place yourself in Nazareth with Our Lady and sweep for those who never sweep the cobwebs and the dirt from their souls. Sweep in the Nazareth of human minds and hearts. Prepare that inn eternally, every day, for the Child to be born, the Child who was denied the inn and still is denied the inn of our hearts.
When a house is in order, it is at peace, and charity blooms in that order. Disorder in a house reflects a restless soul not at peace. All things that rest in God are orderly.
An orderly home bespeaks people who rest in the heart of God where the perfection of order is obtained.
Have we experienced the utter joy of scrubbing a floor? Do we know how to make it a prayer, a song of love and gladness? Have we recited the litany of dusting and sweeping whose goal is a home bedecked with cleanliness? Or are these humble tasks irritatingly monotonous to us?
Have we experienced the creativeness in cooking a meal or making a loaf of bread to eat? Do we understand the sublimity of service—humble, daily, constantly repeated?
Why work with this attention? Because then it is a song of love that goes up from a world that has nothing to offer God but hate. These humble little things are a tremendous song before God, and before Our Lady. Do them well. Offer them up.
Pray—not just with words, pray with your hands; their movement is a prayer. Make the sign of the cross before you begin. It is God’s time, God’s broom, God’s floor.
God will see the love in your heart. Do not waste his time. We have so little time to give Him. Give Him all of it, full of your love. Let your work be a song and a prayer of love and atonement.
Your work is redemptive. Souls depend on the perfection of your work and the spirit in which you approach it. That spirit should be peaceful, prayerful, and full of charity.
With God, everything has its place. Believe me when I say that peace of soul is achieved by tidiness and order outside the soul, just as the inner peace of the soul will reflect outwardly.
You see, if you give concentration and thoughtfulness to things today, then tomorrow you will give thoughtfulness to people. There is so much beauty in the action itself, in concentration, and in its results.
Face it: you are doing little things over and over again—exceedingly well for the love of God. This is going to make you a saint. That is absolutely positive.
Don’t seek immense mortifications or self-sacrifice. Seek the daily mortification of doing a thing exceedingly well. Believe you me, you are certainly going to have mortification, I can promise you! You will get so that you will have the heebie-jeebies sometimes just at the thought of dusting the same chair once more. But you’re going to throw them away saying, “This too, Lord, for love of you.”
The desire to straighten things up, not to leave a mess behind—these are the tokens of love. When the house is in order, it’s at peace, and charity blossoms in that order.
To Catholics marriage is a sacrament, symbolizing beautifully in the love of husband and wife the tenderness with which Christ regarded His spouse, the Church. While to others marriage may become a mere civil contract as prosaic as the making of a will or the taking of a partner into one’s grocery business, to Catholics it is a holy thing, a contract that Christ has transformed into a channel of untold grace for mankind. The Catholic Church believes firmly in the possibilities of so sacred an institution. -Fr. Daniel A. Lord, 1950’s
Beautiful Blessed Mother Wire Wrapped Rosary! Lovely, Durable ~ Available here.
Each link is handmade and wrapped around itself to ensure quality.
Beautiful Mother of Heaven Apron! Feminine and Beautiful!
Available here.
Leading the Little Ones to Mary ~ Available here.
I used this book when my children were young. It was a valuable tool in helping them to incorporate True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort into their little lives…. “PREFACE: This Marian program has but one purpose, to imbue the little ones with a genuine devotion to Mary. It is a copying of Mary- a way of life. It is the De Montfort Method simplified for young minds.”
Our Lady’s Wardrobe ~ Available here.
This delightful rhyming book introduces Catholic children to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a fun and simple way—through her clothes!
When Our Lady lived in Nazareth two thousand years ago, she was very poor and probably didn’t have many nice things to wear. But now that she’s in Heaven, she has an enormous mansion. And in that mansion she has an incredibly beautiful wardrobe filled with a great variety of dresses, veils, slippers, sashes, robes, rings and crowns.
Over the centuries, Our Lady has visited the people of Earth many times. On each of these occasions she has dressed very differently. Our Lady’s Wardrobe tells the story of some of her most famous apparitions, highlighting the clothes she wore and the things she did.
By reading this book, children will not only learn about the Mother of God, but will also learn the main purpose of her life—to love and serve her son, Jesus Christ, and to lead others to do the same.
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Thank you, I really appreciated this description of work…. It is so easy to forget. 😇
May went by so fast, there was so much I wanted to do to better the area around the shrine I made for Our Lady, but many other responsibilities took that time from me. At least the hyacinth came up that I planted last fall in front of her status this spring, and they were pretty. Note to self: “plant more biennials next year around Our Lady in the fall.” This would give me at least a little sense of order. Please, God.🌺🌺🌷🌷🌼🌼🌸🌸🌻🌻