Consecration Aids: 11: Resolutions
Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
D on’t just sit there. Do something about it.
This challenge – seemingly coming from out of nowhere – shook the drowsy roots of my being, early one morning as my daily meditation period was hazily drawing to its close.
Even now as I look back, several years later, I still have a clear remembrance of the experience, and I shall be ever- lastingly grateful for that saving grace – for so it proved to be – the kind Our Lady occasionally grants her slaves of love.
Permit me to share the experience with you. O, I know it’s not what you’d call a sensational discovery, much less a mystical phenomenon. But to me it’s just another proof that God’s grace can penetrate even the thickest and most impervious skulls – at least it did in my case. And for anyone who knows me that should be proof enough.
Before relating the incident, however, let me remind you that I had been practicing daily meditation for years. And, generally speaking – I say this in all simplicity – I thought I had been doing “pretty well” in this spiritual exercise. One thing only distressed me as I thought of it from time to time – namely, the fact that it didn’t have much effect, or direct influence, on the rest of the day. Naturally I should have guessed why – I wasn’t taking my resolutions too seriously. So, I blamed it on forgetfulness, not neglect, and I didn’t feel so nearly as remorseful about the whole situation as the fellow who had forgotten to remind someone not to forget to remember.
For sure, I had taken resolutions quite regularly, towards the close of each meditation. But it was more as a matter of routine. They were of the sluggish type, the kind that are about as practical as a bottomless cup and as effective as the proverbial water on a duck’s back. Briefly, my daily meditation had been centered almost exclusively on the intellectual and affective faculties, with very little if any emphasis on solid, practical resolutions for the day.
All this, of course, was before my total consecration to Jesus through Mary, and even for a short while after making it – for Our Lady doesn’t teach us everything at once. Happily for us. We might get spiritual indigestion. And who wants indigestion, spiritual or otherwise?
Well, to get back to our story – if story you may call it – it happened this one morning. I was meditating on the virtue of humility. In fact, I had been meditating on that virtue for the past three or four weeks, with no perceptible change in my own attitude or conduct. So I sat there in my pew, this particular morning, deploring this fact and wishing that something could be done about it. I really wished I were humble.
Suddenly, a voice, soft yet irresistible, penetrated the very roots of my soul: Don’t just sit there. Do something about it.
Author: Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
This is the eleventh in a series of articles covering Consecration Aids.
If I am to pride myself in being a slave of Mary, I told myself, I must begin by working for her. Her work, I had learned, consists in transforming human souls into the likeness of Christ.
I recognized the voice, it was that of Our Lady. I understood the language, it was the language I myself would have used to spur someone on to action. I easily deciphered the message, it was unmistakably clear: it is not enough to admire virtue, one must practice it; it is not enough to say “Lord! Lord!” to enter the kingdom of God, one must also “do the will” of the Father Who is in heaven.
The words of St. Louis De Montfort now came back to me with alarming force: “Beware of remaining inactive while possessing my secret: it would turn into a poison and be your condemnation.” (Secret, No. 1 ) I remembered how these words had frightened me when I first read them, until I realized that they were but a practical application of the Parable of the Talents – of the unfaithful servant who had been condemned for having buried his talent instead of making it fructify.
Wasn’t that what I had been doing all these years with the talent of my daily meditation? Instead of taking resolutions and thus carrying out the fruit of my mental prayer into my actions of every day, had I not been burying that fruit in the cold, barren soil of my intellect and memory? Instead of strengthening my will and transforming my daily actions into supernatural currency, had my daily meditation brought me much more than mere intellectual satisfaction and spiritual stuffiness?
If I am to pride myself in being a slave of Mary, I told myself, I must begin by working for her. Her work, I had learned, consists in transforming human souls into the likeness of Christ. For me therefore that means that, as her slave of love, I cannot afford to remain “inactive” when it comes to working out my salvation, since this is Mary’s work!
And here I was, almost six months after my consecration, still “inactive,” at least in so far as carrying out the resolutions of my meditation was concerned. Here I was meditating on the virtue of humility, admiring its beauty, its power and its charm, and yet hardly moving a finger to transplant that virtue into my own life, except in a vague, spineless sort of way.
I remembered now that St. Teresa had said: “The soul does not profit so much by merely thinking of God often, as by loving Him generously, and the love of God is acquired by the determination to work for Him. For my part, I wish for no other method of meditation but that which will cause me to advance in virtue.”
Need I tell you that since I have realized that Our Lady means business I have “put the screws on” my daily resolutions? Need I remind you also that she has helped me immensely in keeping them? If you are running up against the same difficulty, dear reader, why don’t you try my recipe, you know, the one Our Lady gave me: don’t just sit there, do something about it!
