Attitude Adjustment

Friday, Jun. 16, 2023

I’ve been trying to have a day to myself for the past two weeks. I need to take care of some personal matters, but I’m also in dire need of spiritual solace, and I’d like to devote at least four straight hours to a retreat. However, every time I try to do this, I get interrupted by work, friends asking for help or family wanting my attention, so on top of feeling stretched too thin I’m also struggling with annoyance at the people in my life. It’s not that they’re being unreasonable in their demands. Normally, I’d devote the time to them without thought, but the way I feel right now even a two-minute conversation seems like an intrusion.

My spiritual reading has an answer to this. For the past several months I’ve been going through Saint Teresa of Avila’s The Way of Perfection. Despite the title, Teresa makes it very clear that even in a cloistered monastery, walled away from the rest of the world, she deals with irritation arising not only from everyday life but also her sister nuns. Talking about the conflicts that occur when people are concerned about whether they are a higher status than others, Teresa comments that “these disputes in reality amount to nothing much more than a debate about whether the mud is better for making bricks or adobes. … God deliver us, Sisters, from similar disputes, even though they be in jest … When this concern about lineage is noticed in a Sister … give her penances until she understands that she doesn’t deserve to be thought of as made from even a very wretched kind of mud.”

I’m not dealing on a personal level with anyone who thinks they’re better than me, and I also don’t think I’m better than anyone – I’ve always felt more affinity with the publican standing in the back of the synagogue refusing to lift his eyes to heaven than the self-righteous Pharisee. On the other hand, I do struggle with pride; it’s so easy to compare myself to others and say, “Well, I’m doing this; they’re not, but they should.’”

All of this is a digression, which Teresa would understand; she quite often apologizes for going off on a tangent and having to return to her main point. The Spanish saint also would offer advice for the problem of not being able to spend time alone with God; in The Book of Foundations, she writes to her sisters,  “when obedience calls you to exterior employments (as, for example, into the kitchen among the pots and dishes), remember that our Lord goes along with you, to help you both in your interior and exterior duties.”   

In other words, I don’t have to go alone into the desert to find God; he’s right here with me as I work, helping me both complete my chores and deepen my spiritual life.

As if Teresa wasn’t encouragement enough to remain calm in the face of the inconveniences of everyday life, the meditation in today’s Magnificat is from Saint Anthony of Padua: “The world is like a field, and to bear fruit there is as difficult as it is praiseworthy.”

St. Anthony goes on to say that saints “are always ready to exchange the quiet of contemplation for the works of mercy as soon as they perceive in their heart the invitation of Christ.”

Obviously, I’m not a saint, because when people ask for my help I’m not always willing to sacrifice the time I set aside for contemplation. In fact, usually I feel put upon by such requests, but as both Teresa and Anthony remind me, God is present in those interactions as well. My prayer, then, is rather than fret about not having time to withdraw from the world to pray, I should to take to heart Teresa’s advice: “Trust God that you are where you are meant to be.”