Meditation on being a Christian

Today during my prayer I read this meditation by Fr. Lacordaire, a Dominican preacher from 1860s France. The excerpt was published in this month's copy of Magnificat. I found it to be an excellent, concise description of what it means to be Christian: to seek God's will and serve others, no matter where that task leads you.

For the man of the world, life is but a space to be got over as slowly as possible, by the pleasantest road; but the Christian does not regard it in such a light. He knows that every man is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor by the sacrifice of himself for the redemption of humanity; and that in the plan of his great work each has a place, marked out eternally, which he is free to accept or refuse. He knows that if he voluntarily deserts this place which Providence offers to him in the ranks of useful beings, it will be transferred to a better than he, and that he himself will be abandoned to his own guidance in the wide and short way of egotism. These thoughts occupy the Christian to whom his predestination is not yet revealed; and, convinced that the surest way to ascertain it is to desire to accomplish it, whatever it may be, he keeps himself ever ready to accept the appointments of God's will. He despises none of the functions necessary for the Christian republic, because in all may be found three things on which depends their real value -- the will of God which imposes them, the good which results from their faithful exercise, and the devotedness of heard to which they are confided. He even believes firmly that the less honored are not the less high, and that the crown of the saints never comes more directly from heaven than upon a poor man's head, grown gray in the accepted humiliation of a laborious calling. Little does it matter to him, then, where God may appoint his place; it suffices for him to know that it his his will.

The themes of self-sacrifice and love present in this short meditation are found everywhere in any true vocation. It seems to me that this should ring true to any good Christian mother or father; and I know it rings true for a man discerning God's will in the seminary.