Meditation for May 23, Pettiness

It is most disconcerting after a few years in religion, to discover what pettiness exists in the religious life of some communities. We expected to find only nobility of soul, intense love of renunciation, joyful endurance in trial, faultless fraternal charity, a thirst for God so ardent that it absorbs every mean feeling...hence what surprise and what sorrow to discover more often than we ought, all sorts of pettiness without any graciousness, little meannesses, little envies, little disagreements, little infidelities.

Long experience is not necessary to confirm the fact that we are perhaps leading contributors to this chaplet of pettiness with beads both large and small.

We had imagined religious life a Paradise, and how far it is from heaven. It is not hell - at least - at least, God grant that it may not be! - and no one is a demon; but we might be strongly tempted to believe, at least some days, that it is surely purgatory.

First of all, we must not be surprised. However firm may be the desire for perfection, it remains, that as long as we are on this earth, we keep our poor human nature subject as it is to much misery.

We must have a better understanding of God's plans. We are more often tried by our friends than by our enemies. God so de­signs it that we may suffer because of those with whom we live, without their suspecting it and without their committing the least
fault. There is absolutely no malice and no ill will, only weakness, misunderstanding, and forgetfulness. It is the triumph of God that each one is mortified by the other without any offense to God.
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)