| Make Good Resolutions and Detach Yourself From Your Own Opinions |
For Sunday’s Living Jesus Chat, we will again read an article from a book by St. Francis de Sales called Of Devotion, and of the Principal Exercises of Piety. It explores the importance of nurturing faith with prayer.___________________________________________To prepare for our chat, please read the article, which is reproduced below, and review the questions at the end.Click for Living Jesus Chatroom  Photo by Karsten Winegeart on UnsplashYou ask me, what you can do to strengthen thoroughly your good resolutions, and to make them succeed? There are no better means than to put them in practice. But you tell me that you remain always so feeble, that although you often make strong resolutions not to fall, yet you notwithstanding lose your footing and fall headlong. Shall I tell you why you remain always so feeble? It is because you will not abstain from food that is bad for you. It is as if a person who wanted to be free from indigestion asked a physician what he was to do, and the physician were to reply, Do not eat such and such food, because it causes crudity and sickness; but the patient was nevertheless to eat of it. You do the same; you would wish, for example, to love correction well, and yet you choose at the same time to remain always attached to your own opinions. Oh, this cannot be: you will never be strong to endure correction, so long as you will eat of the food of self-esteem. You would wish to keep your soul in a state of recollection, and yet you will not banish a crowd of useless reflections. This cannot be. My God, you say once more, I would willingly keep firmly and invariably to my resolutions, but I would like it not to cost me so much trouble to put them into practice; that is to say, you want to find the work all done to your hands: but that cannot be in this life, where we shall always have to labor. The feast of Purification has no octave; we must purify ourselves every day, as long as we are in this world. It is necessary for us to have two equal resolutions: one, to see ill weeds grow in our garden; the other, to have the courage to see them torn up, and to tear them up ourselves: for our self-love will not die so long as we live, and this it is that causes these evil plants to grow.For the rest, it is not being feeble to fall sometimes into venial sins, provided that we forthwith raise ourselves up from them, by a return of our soul to God, sweetly humbling ourselves. We ought not to imagine that we can live without always committing some venial sins or other, for only our Lady had the privilege of being free from them. Certainly, though they may check us a little, they do not turn us aside out of the way; one single loving look of God effaces them. Lastly, we must be convinced that we ought never to cease from making good resolutions, although we may see clearly that, according to our ordinary state, we shall not practice them, nay, though we saw that it is impossible for us to practice them when the occasion for them shall present itself; and then we ought to make them with more firmness than if we felt that we had sufficient courage to succeed in our enterprise, saying to our Lord: “It is true that I shall not have the strength to do such and such a thing of myself; but I am rejoiced at it, inasmuch as it will be Thy strength that will do it in me;” and resting on this support, to go to the battle courageously, and never to doubt but that we shall win the victory. St. Paula, who was so generous in disentangling herself from the world, quitting the city of Rome and so much grandeur, and who could not be shaken by the maternal affection which she felt towards her children, so resolved was her heart to quit everything for the sake of God; she, after achieving all these marvels, allowed herself to yield to the temptation of her own judgment, which persuaded her that she ought not to submit to the counsel of several holy persons, who wished her to retrench somewhat of her ordinary austerities: in which St. Jerome declares that she was reprehensible. Reflections: Why do you think keeping resolutions is so difficult?What is the “food of self-esteem,” and how does it hinder us from keeping our resolutions?How can we keep our minds free from “useless reflections”? And what might constitute a useless reflection?Why do good things always require discipline, hard work, and dedication?Often we make “New Years resolutions,” but why is it better to regularly make new and good resolutions instead of just one emotionally driven day of the year? (For example, the Church gives us Lent and Advent as prominent times to do this).What resolutions would you like to make today? Sign up for our Living Jesus Chat Room:Come to our Living Jesus Chat Room, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time U.S. this Sunday . Seats are limited, so come on time. |