Thought for the Day – 25 October – The Memorial of Saints Crispin & St Crispinian – (†285 or 286) Martyrs
From the example of the saints, it appears how foolish the pretences of many Christians are, who imagine the care of a family, the business of a farm or a shop, the attention which they are obliged to give to their worldly profession, are impediments which excuse them from aiming at perfection. Such, indeed, they make them but this is altogether owing to their own sloth and malice. How many saints have made these very employments the means of their perfection! Saint Paul made tents; Saints Crispin and Crispinian were shoemakers,the Blessed Virgin was taken up in the care of her poor cottage, Christ Himself worked with His foster father and those saints who renounced all commerce with the world, to devote themselves totally to the contemplation of heavenly things, made mats, tilled the earth, or copied and bound good books.
The secret of the art of their sanctification was, that fulfilling the maxims of Christ, they studied to subdue their passions and die to themselves; they, with much earnestness and application, obtained of God and improved daily in their souls, a spirit of devotion and prayer; their temporal business they regarded as a duty which they owed to God and sanctified it by a pure and perfect intention, as Christ on earth directed everything He did to the glory of His Father.
In these very employments, they were careful to improve themselves in humility, meekness, resignation, divine charity and all other virtues, by the occasion which call them forth at every moment and in every action. Opportunities of every virtue and every kind of good work never fail in all circumstances and the chief means of our sanctification may be practised, in every state of life, which are self-denial and assiduous prayer, frequent aspirations and pious meditation or reflections on spiritual truths, which disengage the affections from earthly things and deeply imprint in the heart, those of piety and religion….by Father Alban Butler
AnaStpaul 