How to Reach Perfection in your Daily Duty: Wednesday’s Meditation

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore God, who in the creation and the government of the universe does all that He performs in a perfect manner, because He does it with number, weight, and measure (Wis. 11:21). He performs great works and He performs little ones, but in both the one and the other He always acts with supreme perfection (St. Augustine). Let us admire this perfection God exhibits in performing all that He does perfectly well, and let us profit, like the saints, by the lesson He therein gives us.

FIRST POINT

The Whole Perfection of the Christian Life Consists in the Perfection of our Ordinary Actions

In point of fact, the foundation of the rule of all holiness lies in the will of God alone, which alone forms the value and the merit of all our works. Independent of this holy will, the greatest actions count for nothing; with it, the least actions acquire a high degree of merit, and we may even say that the soul which in all things sees, loves, and follows this most adorable will has reached the perfect life. Now what is the will of God in regard to us? It evidently consists in the perfection of our ordinary actions: every day and of every moment, since what is extraordinary is essentially rare; Second, because the great interests of order and of happiness, whether in society or in the family, whether in the Church or in the State, which clearly enter into the will of God, cannot be safely preserved except by means of the fidelity of each individual in fulfilling the duties of his position; Third, because Jesus Christ and the saints placed their holiness in the perfection of the ordinary actions proper to their state and position. What did Jesus Christ do during thirty years? Nothing remarkable in the opinion of the world, nothing even but what was common and almost contemptible in the eyes of man. From morning until night He occupied Himself with the little employments assigned to Him by Mary and Joseph (Luke ii. 51); these were the duties of His state and of His condition. But He performed these little employments most perfectly, both as regarded the exterior action and the interior dispositions through which He acted; and by doing that alone He practiced a holiness which was the object of the complaisance of God His Father. After Jesus Christ, nothing more holy under heaven has been seen than Mary and Joseph; and yet their holiness consisted only in performing perfectly the common and simple actions belonging to their state; and what millions of saints we shall see at the last day whose life has been obscure, hidden, unknown to the world, and who sanctified themselves without doing anything brilliant, but by performing in a perfect manner the humble and modest actions which entered into the duties of their state. They may have passed unperceived upon earth, but at the great day of judgment they will shine with incomparable splendor, which will make all the assembled people comprehend that all holiness really consists in the perfection of ordinary actions. Are we thoroughly convinced of the truth of this maxim of the spiritual life?

SECOND POINT

There is Nothing more Consoling than this Doctrine

What, in fact, is more consoling than to be able to say: In order to become holy, I need not go very far to seek what I must do; my perfection is near to me, and in me; it consists in the duties of my position and of my state being properly fulfilled; in my daily exercises being well performed; a perfection which, apart from these exercises and which would not help me to fulfill these obligations, would be a religion ill understood and badly regulated, a religion that God would not recognize, that even the world would reprove, might inspire me with pride, and expose me to commit a thousand faults; whilst perfection in ordinary life is approved by God and man, it edifies, it gives a credit to virtue, it preserves order and the rule; it does not swell the soul with pride, it is not subject to vanity, and at the same time it is very meritorious, because of the difficulties which must be overcome and the violence we must do our selves constantly to keep up the practice of it. Let us beg of God to enable us thoroughly to understand and practice this rule of conduct.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.