6th Thursday after Pentecost

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow upon the manner of performing our ordinary actions well, and we shall see that we must perform them: 1st, in a state of grace and with sustained application in their right performance; 2d, with exactitude and fervor. Our resolution shall be: 1st, to preserve ourselves always in a state of grace; 2d, to infuse into all our actions exactness and fervor, or a great desire to perform them perfectly. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Imitation: “Give yourself up entirely to what you are doing.”

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ performing so perfectly each one of His ordinary actions that God the Father was well pleased (Luke ii. 52), and that the people, beholding His actions, uttered the admiring exclamation: “He hath done all things well” (Mark vii. 37). Let us unite ourselves with the complaisance of the Father and with the praises of the people; and let us congratulate our Divine Saviour on the perfection with which He does all things.

FIRST POINT

Of the State of Grace and of Sustained Application in the Right Performance of all that we do

It is an elementary truth that unless we are in a state of grace all our actions are but dead works, and that, however excellent they may be, they have no merit in regard to salvation. “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor,” says St. Paul, “and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (I. Cor. xiii. 3). It is true that venial sins do not take away life from our actions, but they diminish the merit of them; imperfections affect in a more or less degree their goodness before God. Hence we may conclude that we must avoid everything which may in the slightest degree diminish the state of grace in which we are, consequently all that would distract us from endeavoring to do in a perfect manner all that we have to perform, for if we act from routine and without reflection, without aiming at the best manner of performing our actions, without desiring to take the trouble to ensure their success; if we divide our attention instead of thinking solely on what we are doing, occupying ourselves with other thoughts under the pretext that they are not evil, or that we have a mind large enough to occupy ourselves with several things at one and the same time, our actions will necessarily be bad, or at any rate defective. It is even not anything great to be inspired with this spirit of application on certain days when we are touched by God; the essential thing is to have it in all our actions one day as well as another, to walk always with an equal step, without ever giving way to relaxation or giving the lie to ourselves. Let us examine if such be our conduct. Are there not, on the contrary, in our daily life continual alternatives of good and evil, without there being anything sustained or persevering in it?

SECOND POINT

On the Exactitude Accompanied by Fervor with which we must do Everything

To perform our actions with exactitude means not to omit any of them voluntarily; not to retrench from any one of them the smallest portions of which it is composed; to do them at the fixed hour assigned to them, in a suitable place, and in the manner in which they ought to be performed. Want of exactitude in these things is an imperfection which diminishes the value of our actions; it is a transgression of the will of God, which extends itself to everything, even to the smallest details. With this exactitude must be associated fervor, that is to say, a great desire to perform all our actions well and an energetic resolve not to neglect anything in the way of duty, notwithstanding the dislikes and repugnances, the coldness and the dryness we may experience. The absence of taste and of pleasure in what we do ought never to discourage us or incline us to give way to relaxation. Far from being an evil, this want of taste renders our fervor more solid and more meritorious. Let us here again examine ourselves: have we infused into our actions the exactitude and the fervor upon which we have been meditating? Alas! what cowardice, what omissions and variations have marked our conduct!

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.