Ave Maria Meditations
But good people worry because they say, “I never become any better; I go on week after week and year after year committing the same sins, being equally unsuccessful at my attempts at prayer, never apparently becoming any less selfish, never apparently drawing any nearer to God….”
Are they so sure? What they ought to ask themselves is, “Do I equally go on week after week and year after year doing the same hard things for God keeping for His sake the many other commandments that are often hard for me, going doggedly on trying to pray, going doggedly on trying to help other people. And if the answer is yes (as it is), then they should know that whatever the surface appearances and disappointments may be, love is growing within them. We live our lives at many different levels; and the events on the surface we can see and assess but we may know little or nothing of what is going on deep down beneath the surface. lf nature has made you choleric, you will no doubt go on losing your temper; if nature has made you lethargic, you will no doubt go on being lazy. But what do these things matter if, at the same time, charity is being fed in your soul by devotion, as friendship is safeguarded and deepened by friendly deeds?
They constrained one Simon of Cyrene. And perhaps God sometimes constrains those who love Him but think they do not love Him, so that in the doing of the work-the bearing of the cross He gives them-their love may grow and deepen although they remain unaware of it, until in the end, they find that beneath the apparent dryness and sterility, great things have been going forward in them and holiness has been born.
+ Fr. Gerald Vann O.P.