The weeks before The Week

Things are busy busy busy.

Met with the pastor earlier this week to go over the many things of Holy Week, who’s preaching what, and so on. I’ll do the first of two Good Friday services (in English) and preach the Vigil in English and Spanish; he’ll take Good Friday in Spanish and the two masses of Easter morning. Done and done. Visited my spiritual director, caught up on the first seventy-some-odd days of ministry and made my confession. Marriage prep class tonight with four couples. Baptizing a grandson tomorrow. Full slate of liturgies Saturday and Sunday.

In other news, the weather is breaking in the right direction. We went from flurries earlier in the week to…checks temperature…77 and sunny. I’m hoping we’ll avoid any late freezes at this point, since everything’s sprouting and blooming like crazy. Certainly the grass could use cutting. Probably have to squeeze that in some afternoon next week.

Herewith some thoughts from Francis DE Sales that come up in his treatment of indifference, which is how he describes a disposition of accepting from God things that give us pleasure along with the things that do not (Treatise on the Love of God, IX:vii). I found them extremely appropriate during these final weeks of Lent.

God has ordained that we should employ our whole endeavours to obtain holy virtues, let us then forget nothing which might help our good success in this pious enterprise. But after we have planted and watered, let us then know for certain that it is God who must give increase to the trees of our good inclinations and habits, and therefore from his Divine Providence we are to expect the fruits of our desires and labours, and if we find the progress and advancement of our hearts in devotion not such as we would desire, let us not be troubled, let us live in peace, let tranquillity always reign in our hearts. It belongs to us diligently to cultivate our heart, and therefore we must faithfully attend to it, but as for the plenty of the crop or harvest, let us leave the care thereof to our Lord and Master. The husbandman will never be reprehended for not having a good harvest, but only if he did not carefully till and sow his ground. Let us not be troubled at finding ourselves always novices in the exercise of virtues, for in the monastery of a devout life every one considers himself always a novice, and there the whole of life is meant as a probation…