It is in giving that we receive...
“Oh my goodness, I’m so jealous!” This may be surprising, but I often hear phrases like this when I catch up with some of my married friends. Shortly after I entered the convent, I developed a great appreciation for how prayer is woven necessarily into the daily schedule of the motherhouse. Morning prayer, daily Mass, and Eucharistic Adoration are no longer spiritual practices that I try to fit into my busy life; they are my responses to Jesus’ love for me, essential encounters through which I grow in love with Him, as well as obligatory work that I offer on behalf of the Church. (This is, of course, when I am not beset by distractions or fatigue!) My married friends who take their faith and relationship with Christ seriously sacrifice much of their peace, rest, and time previously spent in prayer to devote themselves so generously to their newborn children and their families. Their dedication is so inspiring, but prayer and meditation is squeezed into nursing time, napping time, and any spare moment that they happen to find. Hence the jealousy when I share I get to spend time in Eucharistic Adoration every day.
Nevertheless, in the convent, it can be easy to see prayer time as “my time”, as yet another possession to which I cling. Instead of a loving encounter between myself and God, necessary if I am to be a witness to the “prophetic dimension” of the vocation to religious life, I can be tempted to view prayer as something I carve out for the sake of my own personal comfort. St. Therese’s actual sister, Celine, writes that when she was a novice, “the desire for a calm recollection was fast becoming a besetting anxiety with me”. When St. Therese was the novice directress, she noted to her sister, “It looks as though you go into solitude for your own gratification, and to give an extra little present to self”.
That is why when I was asked to teach an additional CCD class on Sundays, my response was one of frustration and resentment. Why did I have to give up “my” time on Sundays? Why did “my” monthly Retreat Sunday (a monthly day of silent recollection) have to be interrupted by this class? Why must “my” opportunities for home visits on weekends be limited by this weekend obligation? Thus, I went to Holy Hour that evening with the intention to give Jesus a big piece of “my” mind! As I furiously scribbled in my journal, I recognized the frustration, felt the disappointment, and noticed a bit of Resentment entering my spirit. Upon naming that feeling – resentment – I put down my pen, paused, and turned to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
In the novel Hinds’ Feet on High Places, Hannah Hubbard writes an allegory of the soul’s spiritual journey. The main character, Much-Afraid, follows the call of the Good Shepherd and is transformed into Grace and Glory by persevering through various places of challenge, such as the Valley of Humiliation and the Shores of Loneliness. However, she is met along the way by characters who try to dissuade her from her journey and tempt her to stop following the Good Shepherd. These spiteful characters include Craven Fear, Self-Pity, and…Resentment. Upon recognizing the voice of Resentment growing louder in my heart, I realized that that was a voice to which I shouldn’t listen. Instead, I needed to quiet that voice and listen to the voice of Christ.
As I became quiet and focused the ears of my heart on Christ, what did I find was He asking of me? What did I discover? I closed my eyes and looked within. From inside my heart there came a call to obedience, to sacrifice, to die to my selfishness and instead, to give of myself generously for the sake of others. Any real giving, any real act of sacrificial love has a price. This CCD ministry was costing me “my” time on Sundays that I had grown to love inordinately and selfishly. Yet as I slowly offered this sacrifice in a spirit of surrender, I felt my rebellious “no” being transformed into a yes, a yes that felt very much like Mary’s Fiat. I could feel that this sacrifice of self was the wheat necessary to be transformed into bread broken for others. Part of my selfishness was crushed, and through that necessary crushing, I felt like I could fulfill this call of God and, with His grace, become God’s love for this group of children. I could become the Eucharist for this CCD class.
This dying to self in order to grow in love is the essence of every vocation. Husbands and wives die to themselves in their love for each other. Mothers and father die to themselves for the sake of their children. Priests and religious die to themselves for the sake of God’s people in the Church. Gradually, I hope and pray that I too may be able to die to myself to allow, as expressed in the Constitutions of the Sisters of Christian Charity, “the love of Christ to so permeate and fill [me] that it flows over to love of others in [my] service of the Church”. And because I clearly have a long way to go, please pray for me too!
