Maxim Monday: With Gentleness and Eargerness

Be a person of such greatness that what is not God wiII be nothing, and embrace gently and eagerly great apostolic undertakings when the Holy Spirit urges you to this; but, according to this same maxim, whatever you do or suffer, let your heart find it a trifle, as indeed it is, in comparison with the grandeur of God and the worth of his sovereign perfection. Maxims of the Little Institute, 91

I’m not sure what led me to this particular maxim this past week. During the past few days, I seem to be meeting this maxim lived out all around me.

Saturday I had a meeting with the CSSJ Atlantic Federation Core committee. This group prepares weekend workshops and week-long retreats for sisters in the seven Congregations of Sisters of St. Joseph. All are fully engaged in their day-to-day ministries, but none seemed to mind traveling up to four hours for this meeting.

Sunday afternoon I accompanied a friend who regularly prepares and serves a meal at Pine Street Inn Women’s Unit. Several times a year, she coordinates a food group with members of her local parish. She has been doing this for over 25 years. The whole venture usually goes like clockwork but today, for some reason we arrived late and the staff was already serving an alternative meal.

What’s this got to do with Maxim 91? For two days my friend, her family, and a host of neighbors have been preparing different parts of the meal. I’d say she coordinates this “gently and eagerly” and there’s no doubt it’s a “great apostolic undertaking." They told us we were late. I shudder to think how I would respond after all the work that goes into preparing these meals. Even though she let the staff know that she'd been coming at this time for 26 years, she did it with a gracious manner -- with what the French call douceur.

As Marcia Allen, CSJ, writes in Love’s Design,
“This Maxim reminds us of the zeal with which we enter into our vocation and its aim. …We give all, no matter the difficulty. The French encourages us to embrace projects “sweetly and ardently”; that is, our love is one of douceur, undertaken with the fire of love – ours and God’s, most of it hidden in mystery.”