Joysong:
This is why I posted the question originally, to learn how we as lay persons should interpret these
Joysong:
Give away everything at the first sign of a demand, even if they were the most necessary things.
Allow them to take away even what is due you — respect, your good name — let your spirit rise above all that. And so, set free from everything, rest close to My heart not allowing your peace to be disturbed by anything.
Well I’ll take a stab at how this layperson “sees” how a passage like this written by a religious can be applied to my life
First, I focus on the last sentence - “not allowing your peace to be disturbed by anything.” For me, I find this most often happens when I rely to much on myself . . . when my thoughts, my needs, my wants, my goals, my desires figure to prominately in my mind. For me, peace just seems to flow like a river when I acknowlede these needs in my mind
but leave the outcome of it all to God. Trust and abandonment, even in our little layperson ways
, are the road to peace. To much self-reliance, as I believe St. Therese learned early on, is to heavy a burden bear for ultimately we learn we can’t do it but God can when operating through us. For me, loss of peace comes from losing sight of that.
So what is it that a layperson can “give away” to gain that peace? Well, like the Saints and religious, we can learn to “become silent to self” – a theme I’ve talked about alot on this forum lately. This can take many, many forms but mostly it has to do with little acts of detachment and self-denial repeated throughout the day about the types of things mentioned above.
Regarding the specific “hard sayings” St. Faustina mentions to “give away”, well obviously we as laypersons can’t give away the same way a religious might. I think now to how Fr. de Cussade defines finding God’s will in “Abandonment to Divine Providence.” He is totally focused in his presentation to the needs of the present moment as it relates to the duties of our state in life. For me, these duties are as husband, father and business owner.
In this light, reputation, honor, good name and so on are important and necessary to the degree in which they aid in the fulfillment of my duties to those entrusted to me. So I think this takes on a different slant for a layperson compared to a religious.
For example, I find there are many, many times I need to defend myself in some way to convey matters of right and wrong to my kids. And since I find it is best to lead/teach by example more so than through words, reputation is important because it is the reflection of how my kids see how well I’m doing. If I were to disregard all that, then I think I’d fail in my principal duties toward my kids. And in a similar vein, one of the best pieces of advice my priest gave me to help discern how well I’m handling things at home is to ask myself “what does your wife think?” And isn’t this just another way of saying good name, respect etc?
And these issues are equally important in the business world. Clients want to work with business partners they know and trust . . . and this, of course, is heavily based in perceptions of reputation. Again, if I were to “give that away” and no longer be concerned about it, then I’d be violating one of the key responsibilities of my state in life.
The key in all of this, I guess, is not to defend myself simply because my pride got pricked and I feel the need to assert myself over someone. Rather, I must “sense” in some way that the self defense is important to protect the interests of those entrusted to me, always trying to do what is right as determined by my concience at that point in time.
Don’t know if that makes sense at all, but it’s what came to mind
Dave.
Sometimes the answers are clear cut . . . other times not so much.
