Our Lady Saint MaryBarry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Religion
Our Lady Saint Mary
Barry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Meditations
If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are seeking
to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find abundant field
for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our daily relations with
others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not every man to his own things,
but every man also to the things of others," is the practical rule of
the sacrificed will. It seeks to fulfil the service of the Master by
taking the spirit of the Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His
sympathy--with one into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the
peculiarities of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work
itself up to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular
setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent to do
under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is accurately
enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a hero to his
valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary circumstances, and under
commonplace temptations, we do not succeed in holding life to the
accomplishment which is ours when we are, as it were, on dress parade.
In other words, we respond to the opinions we desire to create in
others; and the spirit of sanctity is a response not to public opinion,
but to the mind and thought of God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and
seek to reproduce that mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by
it, then we shall gladly render back to God all life's riches which we
have received from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty
that "all things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we
given Thee."
The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as _force_.
Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of _power_. The only
power that we understand is the power that _compels_, that secures the
execution of its will by physical or moral constraint. With this
conception of power in mind men are continually asking: "Why does not
God do this or that? If he be God and wills goodness, why does He not
execute goodness, use power to accomplish it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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