End

“Man was created for a certain end.” (Saint Ignatius of Loyola, page 18 from “The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius”).

Holy Family (Murillo)

I was having a bad week the other week.  It seemed like I was walking through a fog.  While nothing was actually too terrible, the reality was that things just felt more difficult than they needed to be.  And as a result of that feeling of distress, I started to think about why I was even doing any of this stuff to start with.  And the more I thought about the problems I was facing, the more worried I became.  And as I was working myself up into a frenzy of negativity, I suddenly had the odea that I should try to contextualise the problems I was considering.

I considered the problems in the context of eternity.

After all, everything seems better if we can consider a temporary problem with a permanent mindset…

“Man was created for a certain end. This end is to praise, to reverence and to serve the Lord his God and by this means to arrive at eternal salvation. All other beings and objects that surround us on the earth were created for the benefit of man and to be useful to him, as means to his final end; hence his obligation to use, or to abstain from the use of, these creatures, according as they bring him nearer to that end, or tend to separate him from it.” (Saint Ignatius of Loyola, page 18 from “The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius”).

And it is that CERTAIN END that I have been thinking about today.  When my children were born, I used to look at them – sometimes for hours each day – while I was feeding them or caring for them – and when I studied their faces and their little fingers and toes – I used to image how they would be and who they would become.  Even earlier – as soon as I knew I was pregnant with them, I would imagine how they would look and what their personalities would be like.  In those days – before I had experienced the Grace of conversion – my focus was really around temporary things, like how they would look and how they would sound and what their personalities would be like.  But afterwards – after the Holy Spirit came to call me back to Him while I was praying for my little niece who was very very sick – I started to realise that these temporary things are just that – temporary.

 And when I thought about that the other day when all of those things were overwhelming me, it seemed as though a weight was quite literally lifted from my soul.  Because when a person can understand that everything in this world is passing – the clothes and the money and the job and the health and the success and the failure and the excitement and the stress and the sadness and the grief and the happiness – everything is passing, then they can really focus on the end.  And the END is the only thing that we really do need to focus on…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.