A Thought For The Last Day Of Ordinary Time

     “‘As God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk.’ No one can do better with his life than that; no one can put it to a better use. Any life must be perfect in proportion as it does what it was made to do. There are many lives that are brilliant failures; they strive after many things that they were never intended to do and fail in that one thing. It seems strange that a reasonable being should never ask himself why he was put upon earth, or that it should not occur to him that the reason must be found in the will of his Creator....

     “At the end of the day of our earthly life, we have to answer to our Maker whether we have been employed about our own work or about His, whether we have even made an effort to find out what He would have us do. A life that is inspired by such a motive is sure to be a success, for of this we may be absolutely certain: that each of us can fulfill in our life that for which we were created. We cannot be sure that we have the gifts needed for any other purpose....

     “For God, in creating us, equipped us for the work for which He created us. We have every gift of nature and of grace, of mind and body that is needed for this work.”

     [Father Basil Maturin, from his Spiritual Guidelines for Souls Seeking God]

     It is a high blessing, one of the highest, to know with confidence what work one was created to address, and to find joy in doing it. But penetrating that mystery isn’t child’s play. Perhaps I’ll write more about this later.