Salesian Literature

Chapter 6  :  Loving God involves taking what opportunity offers

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The grandiose schemes some people evolve of doing great things for God!  they dream of wonderful deeds, unusual sufferings – deeds and sufferings outside their present experience, and which will probably never come their way.  This leads them to imagine that with one leap they have reached the heights of love.

 

More often than not, it is just where they are wrong.  They have simply let imagination grasp great crosses still in the far-distant future, while they zealously avoid burdening themselves with smaller ones around them in the present.  That is the worst temptation of all: to be heroes in theory, cowards in practice.

 

God preserve us from fanciful fervour!  Deep in our hearts it breeds the hidden germ of self-esteem.

 

Important tasks lie seldom in our path; but all day long there are little things we can do so well, if we do them with all our love.  That saint, with his draught of cold water for the thirsty traveller – little enough, it seems, his gesture; but so pure his intention, so perfect the kindness, the love, which he puts into what he is doing, that his simple offering becomes a spring of living water to bring him everlasting life (cf. Mt. 10:42).

 

Fitting in with others’ moods; putting up with boorish behaviour; overcoming our own moods and passions; giving way over our own petty inclinations; trying to conquer our distaste for things and people; gladly recognizing our imperfections; struggling constantly to preserve our peace of soul; loving our self-abasement; graciously accepting shame, criticism of our way of life, the company we keep, the things we do – all this does the soul more good, Theotimus, than we could ever dream, as long as God’s love inspires it.  But I have already explained this to Philothea[1].

 

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[1]  Introduction to the Devout Life, Part Three, chapter 3 and Chapter 35.

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