and all about a simple way to Sainthood and Praying the Rosary!
My sister told me many of my posts, are long to read, and complicated to read through. She stated that it seemed I am preaching to people.
My daughter said that not everyone can meet the expectations of Prayer, Penance and Eucharist as I appear to envision them. You can be a good Mother, a good Secretary, a good Grocery Clerk, and a good Attorney; and if that is your calling in life, and you execute it well, with love and caring, and you are following God’s commandments, you will be with Him for eternity when you leave this world.
marytojesus.com
I am a bit frustrated with these comments because I think that this blog is neither complicated nor infers that living a life of Prayer, Penance and Eucharist, is more than a simple expectation achievable by everyone. Becoming a Saint is living a life of Prayer, Penance and Eucharist and this can be done simply. In today’s post in honor of the Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, I will lean heavily on St Therese’s Little Way, and endorse her Little Way as the way that this blog’s message is intended always!
Praying can simply be always Loving God and living your life in Gratitude for the unconditional Love God shows you always.
Penance can simply be accepting with Joy, and without complaining, any frustrations, annoyances, problems, health issues, accidents you experience daily, and offering any negativity, work, and inconvenience tied to those events as reparations for sins, and the conversion of others to realize and accept the Love of Jesus Christ.
Eucharist is simply availing yourself of receiving Communion more often than usual, or at every opportunity you have.
What’s common about each of these actions is they each have an underlying attitude, a pre-disposition, to desire to Love Jesus and in so doing imitate His example. I call this kind of Living for Jesus, having a God-Mindfulness. I know I had this ATTITUDE before my NDE (Near Death Experience). I also know that where I fell short was in the execution of my ATTITUDE. If I awoke every day and lived a God-Mindfulness day, that would be sufficient for Loving God to the best of my ability, but I didn’t. The focus of this blog is to emphasize to others, that becoming a Saint requires simple actions, but that after my NDE, I know full well, that though the actions are simple, they should be performed daily.
Godly intentions without Godly actions store no eternal treasures for our soul. Minimally it means we have to devote time to performing Godly actions daily.
marytojesus
What is great, is that so much of the Godly actions around Prayer and Penance, are a matter of attitude; they do not require a burden of extra time, as much as they require consciously embracing a God-Mindfulness attitude, while completing our daily activities.
The post’s title poses the question, could cleaning your house be an activity that could help you in your quest for Sainthood? To answer that question, I turn to St. Therese of Lisieux, and her explanation of her Little Way in the activity of picking up a pin. I think you will see that cleaning your house can actually be part of your path to Sainthood, as long as behind the activity is your love of God, and a desire to restore order in even a small way to the world in which we live that God has Blessed us with.
St. Therese has said: “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifices to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for the Love of God, can convert a soul.” (Complete reference about this quote below, see “St. Therese on picking up a pin story” below.)
St. Therese is telling us how powerful our Motivation to act for the Love of God can be; imagine it can save a soul! Father Chris Alar, MIC, is a priest with the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, explains this incredible power of our Motivations, referred to by St Therese’s example of picking up a pin, as restoring a bit of Divine order, to the Natural World. This is because an ordered world, reflects the Divine world, and picking up a pin, that is out of place, out of order, with the intention of restoring God’s order to the Natural World is an action reflecting the Divine Order of the Divine world. The power of such actions comes from God! Picking up a pin, in this manner, shows our Love for God and Gratitude for the World He has Blessed us with.
St. Therese’s example of picking up a pin, has had me thinking that if our house needs cleaning; things organized, put away and thrown out; restoring order to our home, would be an opportunity for myself to reflect the Divine order of God’s Divine World, in my home, by performing these cleaning actions, similarly to St. Therese’s picking up a pin and restoring it to an order in her world. I believe St. Therese would say cleaning our house out of love for God would be a perfect prayer of Thanksgiving to God. So if the act of cleaning our home is good, then the corollary of keeping our home unkempt, is an insult to the Divine order and the loving gifts God has bestowed upon us. Cleaning our house, with the intention of Gratitude for our material Blessings that God has bestowed upon us, through His Love, in this world; is a powerful example of completing tasks in our daily life, out of Love and Gratitude to God. This simply occurs by having a God-mindfulness attitude and intentionality as we perform our tasks. I believe this is how we can imitate St.Therese’s Little Way, in our own lives today.
Embracing St. Therese’s Little Way attitude, we no longer have to make an excuse for not having time to pray, becasue we are literally praying all the time by virtue of how we are living daily.
So what about the person that is living a good life, a moral life, but is not mindfull or living with intentionality about God’s Love and Loving God in return? I believe if a person has not learned about Jesus and what He asks of us, Jesus will give them an opportunity before death to know and accept His Love, to act and to respond to His Love, and their response to His calling will be their opportunity to be saved for Eternity.
St Therese says: “The good God does not need years to accomplish His work of love in a soul; one ray from His Heart can, in an instant, make His flower bloom for eternity.” Kidadl.com #38
St. Therese of Lisieux, was famous for her “little way”, becasue this is how she lived her life, simply doing her job, simply doing what was expected of her, with an underlying Love of God. The motivations behind all her actions was either the Love of God (Prayer), or enduring sufferings for the Love of God and in imitation of His own enduring suffering for all people (Penance) and of course receiving the Eucharist at every opportunity. St. Therese lived very humbly, like our Blessed Mother did, and St. Therese and Mary are excellent examples of how becoming a Saint is really simple.
St Therese says “Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude.” Kidadl.com #37
My blog advocates for praying the Rosary daily, becasue I know that doing so has provided me a structure for making time for prayer daily, and deepens my relationship with Mary and Jesus. I know Mary has asked us to Pray the Rosary Daily, and I believe that’s a good thing as It also serves as a mechanism to offer reparations for man’s sins against God (penance). I also know that praying the Rosary leads me into moments of Contemplative Prayer and can be a springboard to Christian Meditation. These are more great Rosary benefits!
I advocate the adoption and praying of the Brigittine Rosary becasue I have found it a special departure from the Dominican Rosary, further enhancing my prayer focus, the perception of my penitential actions and deepening my contemplative and meditative prayers with Jesus and Mary. For myself, praying the Brigittine and the Seven Sorrows Rosaries, are like a Rosary refresh!, a positive multiplier of Rosary Prayer activity.
I wish to clearly state that all of the aforementioned Rosary Prayer activities and habits, are suggestions for helping us on our path to Sainthood. These Rosary Prayer activities are not that complicated to perform IMHO. These Rosary Prayers fit my realization that the path to Sainthood, and adorning my soul with heavenly treasure as opposed to focusing on earthly things, is comprised of simple actions that I can do daily. Developing a Rosary Prayer habit, answers the urgency and the anxiety I experience on a daily basis to be in Daily Spiritual Communion with Jesus and Mary and desire to recommend to others a habit that will lead them to becoming Saints as well! Also of utmost importance today, and across my life, is that the Rosary is a tool that Satan and his followers despise.
I have felt the influencing temptations from Satan at times in my life, particularly when I have battled depression and low self-esteem, and I believe my rosary is a protection from giving-in to these temptations.
From John Paul’s Traditional Latin Mass Facebook Group post
marytojesus.com
I also believe becoming a Saint is much simpler than embracing any single prayer activity, it is simply living with intentionality on a continual basis out of Love for God, out of Gratitude for the Love that God showers on us with every instant we are Blessed with life! It is becasue of these beliefs, that I have become a huge advocate of St. Therese of Lisieux’s, “Little Way.”
A sermon story I heard many years ago, reminds me of the spirit of practice behind St. Therese’s Little Way.
A farmer and a wealthy business person, both died at the same time. The wealthy business person, lived a life that included a faithful practice of weekly Mass and Eucharist reception on Sundays and alms giving for the poor. Upon his death, the wealthy business person arrived at the gates of Heaven and was told he would have to wait a time BEFORE entering Heaven. The business person then saw the farmer, whom he often observed toiling long-hours on his way to and from work, and who appeared to spend less time in Church Services, and it was presumed had far less means to provide alms for the poor, —being welcomed directly into Heaven. The wealthy business person asked God, how could this be? “How God, could the farmer be more worthy of immediate entrance into heaven than I?” the business person asked. God replied that the farmer lived a life of constant prayer, of constant Love for God. God said the farmer awoke each morning, and knelt down in praise of the Lord asking His Blessings as he began his work, and offered to God all the work that he would do that day in return for all the Love that God was showering on him that day. Then at lunch, God said, the farmer knelt down in the field for a moment, and said, Lord I thank you for the gifts you have given me and I offer all that I do, for you today. Finally at night before retiring, the Farmer knelt down and thanked the Lord for Blessing him with all that he was given that day including his ability to work. God then said to the wealthy business person, “So while you found time for Me once per week, and gave alms that required little sacrifice on your part, the farmer, daily, never forgot Me, continually Loved Me and returned My Love of him. The farmer helped others less fortunate as often as he was Blessed to be able to provide. The Farmer is the more worthy person to come immediately into My Kingdom,” God said!
I often remind myself of this sermon becasue I believe it emphasizes it is not how great we think our actions appear before the Lord on a weekly basis, but the intention behind our living of Life on a daily basis. Daily Loving our Lord, and professing Gratitude to the Lord for how he has Blessed us in Goodness and Suffering is to me living a life of God-Mindfulness, and emulates the Little Way of St. Therese. The completion of simple actions for the Love of God on a daily basis, is the most imporatntpathway to becoming a Saint!
MarytoJesus.com
So let me close with a few examples of simple “God-Mindfulness” reflections of St. Therese of Lisieux’s, Simple Way, in honor of her Feast Day, October 1. These reflections emphasize loving God, Trusting that God Loves us, and that in our Good Times and Suffering times, that we never become discouraged. Fiat!
