Help
With Your Rule
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
"We should not want to practice many [spiritual] exercises at the same time or all of a sudden. The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished... St Jerome says "Among Christians it is not so much the beginning as the end that counts." "
St. Francis de Sales, "Finding God's Will for You", New Hampshire, Sophia Institute Press, 1998, p52-53
posted by Holly at 1:03 PM
2 Comments:
This passage is rich for those of us following a Mother's Rule. First, we want to be like Saint Paul who bragged not in starting the race, but in completing it and pressing on to his prize. In the end, it is the accomplishment of our motherly duties that we will present to God, not mere good intentions or unfinished projects.
Secondly, it recalls Psalm 31:1 "O Lord, my heart is not proud... I busy not myself with great things." A desire to 'do something important' out in the world and to diminish the dignity of our vocation, despite that it is God's intent for us, can be a powerful source of temptation for us. Like St Therese - let us do little things well. Going about the often small and mundane duties of our daily lives and offering these to God in love is the epitome of doing 'great things', just like the Blessed Mother.
Thirdly, it behooves us to remember that we do indeed have an enemy, and one who is probably not very excited about us adopting or implementing our Mother's Rule. We can expect at least a certain level of spiritual warfare. So we pray for protection; use reason to balance our rules and not take on too much - just the essentials. We do what we can by starting slowly and not being impetuous, and plodding along like Aesop's tortoise if we have to! Slow and steady wins the race, and our prize is God!
The Psalm refered to above in Psalm 131 not 31.
Holly :-)
Post a Comment
<< Home