My Faithful Superiors

A friend shared the following from Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel. It's 'very cloistered heart,' said she. 

I could not agree more.

'We, the ordinary people of the streets, know very well that as long as our own will is alive, we will not be able to love Christ definitively. We know that only obedience can root us into His death. We would envy our religious brothers and sisters if we too could not die to ourselves a little more each day. 

'However, for us the tiny circumstances of life are faithful 'superiors.' They do not leave us alone for a moment, and the yeses we have to say to them follow continuously, one after the other. When we surrender to them without resistance we find ourselves wonderfully liberated from ourselves. We float in Providence like a cork on the ocean waters. 

'From the moment we wake up these circumstances take hold of us. It is the telephone that rings; it is the key that won't work, the bus that doesn't arrive or arrives full, or doesn't wait for us. It is the person sitting next to us who takes up the whole seat, or the vibration of the loose window pane that drives us crazy. It's the daily routine, one chore that leads to another, some job we wouldn't have chosen... It's the people we meet and the conversations they choose to start...

'Life becomes a film in slow motion. It does not make our head spin. It does not take our breath away. Little by little, thread by thread, it eats away at the old man's frame, which cannot be mended and must be made new from the ground up.' 

Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel

Painting: Henri Lebasque