7th Monday after Pentecost

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow upon two other means for performing our actions well. The first is, not to think, whilst we are acting, of anything except of what we are performing; secondly, not to have any thoughts except those which belong to the present day. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to concentrate upon the action with which we are occupied the whole of our mind and of our attention, that we may perform it as well as possible; 2d, to propose to ourselves every day that we will live in a holy manner until the evening. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of an ancient: “He who thinks of many things at once performs each of them less well.”

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Our Lord teaching us different ways of performing our actions well. Our good Father never forgets anything that may be useful to us. He loves us; He wills that we should render ourselves worthy of His love, and, in order that we may become so, He teaches us the means whereby we may please Him. Let us thank Him for so much kindness.

FIRST POINT

Whilst Acting to Think only of what we are Doing

One of the greatest obstacles to the perfection of our ordinary actions is, when we are doing one thing to think of another, so that our mind, being distracted, only half attends to what has to be done. We are uneasy and troubled, one thing gets mixed up with another, and so we do nothing as it ought to be and as it might be done. The remedy for this evil is to attend only and entirely to what we are about, as though we had nothing else to do. “All things have their season,” the Holy Spirit says (Eccles. iii. 1). “Be not solicitous for to-morrow. For the morrow will be solicitous for itself; sufficient for the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. vi. 34). During prayer do not let us think upon worldly matters or on the anxieties attendant upon our position. When we are occupied with our affairs, let us give our entire attention to them and give to them the whole of our care. Wherefore go back to the past? It is a thing which is consummated, and we cannot change it. Wherefore anticipate the future? We are ignorant of what it will be; we do not even know whether we shall see it. It is a great evil to distract our attention from the employments in which we are at the moment engaged and to give it to what we shall have to do later, often even to imaginations and reveries which will never be realized. It is to kill the present by the future, the reality by phantoms; it is the way in which never to do anything well. Wisdom, on the contrary, tells us to send the thought of things to come to the time when we shall have to do them, and not to be afraid that later on we shall forget the good idea which has presented itself to our minds during the action with which we are occupied. God, who is a friend of order, will bless the postponement of the inopportune thought, and will make it return in due season with an added profit because of our having left it on one side that we may thereby please Him. We shall gain instead of losing by it. The knowledge, says St. Basil, with which we do not occupy ourselves for the sake of virtue, is better acquired afterwards through virtue. Let us here examine ourselves. What vitiated prayers and actions have been ours for want of following these rules!

SECOND POINT

Not to Occupy ourselves with Anything Beyond the Present Day

We are so weak that perhaps courage would fail us if we could behold at one glance the fifty or sixty years to be spent in perfect restraint, in a perpetual attention to ourselves, in the privation of the comforts of life, and in the renunciation of our wills and our desires; whilst, on the contrary, courage will be easy to us if, instead of beholding all this at once, we see things in detail, and say to ourselves: This is not a question of calculating upon long years; what would be the good of it—I, who do not know if I shall live until to-morrow? It has to do solely with the present day. If I live until to-morrow I shall see what I have to do. Now, from the present moment until this evening, would it be possible for me to find it too hard to live well, to inconvenience myself and mortify myself? A day is so soon over: a day compared with eternity. Oh, it is nothing; and how unreasonable I should be if I did not employ it in a holy manner! Strengthened by this thought, I set myself to work and I spend the day in a holy manner. The next day I begin again without ever looking beyond the present day. By means of this innocent stratagem, everything in virtue becomes easy, and we arrive at perfection. Let us propose to ourselves to employ this means constantly.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.