“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
~ St. Teresa of Calcutta
Two possible lists:
| A | B |
|---|---|
| Brush your teeth | Run a marathon |
| Say your prayers | Climb Mt. Everest |
| Do a good deed | Save the world |
Which list do you think is going to be accomplished first? Which list doesn’t have much of a chance of being accomplished? I would think it’s pretty easy to decide.
While the lists might seem kind of nonsensical, there are many times that we make the same kind of lists in our faith lives. One list, the sensible one, would be to say prayers, do good deeds, forgive someone who has wronged us and the like. The other list, the more impossible one, might have things like totally change my life, perform all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in one day, seek forgiveness today of everyone I have ever wronged, et cetera.
We often assign insurmountable tasks to our lives and our faith lives. After we have assigned the tasks, we look at them and say, “That’s impossible”, and we give up. For good reason, too. Because they would be impossible. We might be able to totally change our lives, perform all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and seek forgiveness of everyone we have ever wronged. However, it would take us our lifetime to accomplish and that would be all right, as long as we were working on it a little bit each day.
When we give up, though, we rob ourselves of any chance to do better and to draw closer to the Lord. Mother Teresa encouraged her sisters — and herself — to draw closer to the Lord day by day. In doing small works, one work at a time, she knew that she and her sisters could be totally renewed. She embraced the small things and, by the end of her life, she found that they helped her to do great things.
We cannot let the big things scare us. We need, instead, to look at all the small things that we can do, to embrace the small things, to accomplish them and then let them build us up enough to do bigger and bigger things each day.
FAITH ACTION: Ask God to give you the grace that you need not to be overcome by large matters so that you may better attend to the day-to-day matters of your life.