Just for Today, February 1

Nature desires to be taken notice of, and to do such things as may procure praise and admiration. Grace teaches us to restrain the senses, to avoid vain com­placency and ostentation, humbly to hide those things which are worthy of praise and admiration, and from everything, and in every knowledge, to seek the fruit of spiritual profit, and the praise and honour of God.
-Bk. III, ch. liv.
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When my divine Master bade me give to whomsoever asks of me, and not ask that what has been taken be restored to me, it seems to me that He was speaking of spiritual as well as earthly possessions. Neither are my own property: I have renounced the latter by my vow of poverty, and the former are only lent to me by God, who is at liberty to withdraw them without my having any right to complain.

One's own deep and original reflections, living flames that spring from the mind and heart, are a personal treasure to be jealously guarded. For instance, if I share with some Sister a light I have received in prayer, and she passes this on as her own, I feel that she has robbed me. In the same way, if at recreation a witty remark is appropriated by another and repeated before the Community, the original owner of the saying feels that she has been defrauded of what is hers, and though she does not claim it at the time, yet she takes good care that the authorship becomes known.

But I have been given the grace to be as detached from the treasures of my mind and heart as I am from those of this world. If I happen to think or say anything that pleases my Sisters, I take it as a matter of course if they appropriate it: the thought came from the Holy Ghost, for St Paul assures us that without His inspiration we cannot even call God our Father (Rom. viii, 15). He is at liberty to communicate through me a good thought to another soul, and I cannot consider it as mine.
-The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme)
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Adapted from Just For Today(©1943 Burns & Oates)
Nihil Obstat: Reginaldus Phillips, S.T.L.,Censor deputatus
Imprimatur: Edwardus Myers, Vic. Cap.