I recently told my spiritual director how overwhelmed I feel. Our house and property are a black hole with constant needs. Right now we need to close up the pool, get the bees ready for winter, take down some dead trees and do general clean up. I enjoyed gardening at our home in Alexandria, but with three acres it's a never-ending chore these days. The circle garden out front is a jungle. And then there's the house. The spiders have taken over the basement and the fruit flies are propagating in the kitchen. The dust bunnies own the upstairs. The to-do list keeps growing and I'm drowning in clutter.
Time for a deep breath. When Mother Teresa's nuns said they wanted to spend more time serving the poor, Mother responded that they would first have to spend more time in prayer. So when everything around me screams for attention, my first need must be to spend at least a few minutes to turn to the Lord in prayer and take a few deep breaths in hopes of reducing my blood pressure.
A great book was recommended to me by a friend, Union with God: According to the Letters of Direction of Dom Marmion. He offers a gem when he writes that "Fidelity is the one touchstone of real love." It's easy to shirk when we feel overwhelmed and discouraged. Just get out a sleeve of cookies and wallow in self pity. Think about the challenges of being faithful: to my spouse, to my children, to the responsibilities of my state in life, but above all to God. Dom Marmion identifies the problem and calls for a serious self examination:
Our difficulties come from our self-love, and the sincere love of Jesus, in its simplicity, will settle all your difficulties, for our difficulties come from our self-love, and the sincere love of Jesus destroys self love. I say that you will have no difficulties, but I do not say that you will have neither crosses nor trials...trials cease to be difficulties, for nothing is difficult to love.
That statement humbles me. How little I must love because so many things in my life are difficult. And so I think today I will rededicate. myself to the daily recitation of the Litany of Humility. I often think, when I'm lamenting something, that I asked for it. How can I complain about being forgotten or rebuked or ridiculed or unnoticed or humiliated when that's what I prayed for. But before I pray that prayer, I will ask the Lord to increase my fidelity to Him and to His mother: to pray every morning and evening and remember Him throughout the day and never skip my daily rosary. I'll ask all the champions of the rosary to intercede for me to be a faithful daughter of God and His holy mother Mary, Mediatrix of all Graces and Co-Redemptrix. All graces come through Christ, but his mother is a co-operator who is powerful with God because of her love for Him and His incredible love for her.
May Jesus Christ be praised.
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