Daily duty, prayer and sacrifice, and the interior life - what do these things really mean? God, Who knows all things, knew that the Modern Age would be one of increased sin and danger. Having already given us the means to sanctity, He gave a new efficacy to “simple things,” like the Rosary. Through the Fatima revelations, which are in perfect accord with Divine Revelation, Our Lord also made it known that the sacrifice He now requires of each one of us is the faithful accomplishment of daily duty. The means are prayer and sacrifice, by which the interior life may become perfect in God, because “in divine things the most simple…are also the loftiest and the most profound.” [1]
Like Tradition and Scripture, prayer and sacrifice are inseparable to the spiritual life of the soul. The Rosary is the prayer Our Lady asked us to offer every day. It is a great spiritual help to understand some reasons why we should pray the daily Rosary.
At Fatima, Our Lady often responded to the people’s supplications, saying it was necessary for them to pray the daily Rosary in order to obtain these graces throughout the year.[2] At other times, She said the request would be granted within the year if the Rosary was prayed every day. As in all things, the Virgin’s response is for God’s glory and the salvation of souls.
To pray the Rosary, every day for a year, is to practice perseverance in prayer. Our Lord said, “All things whatsoever you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.” [3] The daily Rosary gives us greater faith, hope and charity. It increases our belief, our adoration, our trust, our confidence and our love for God and His Virgin Mother. It multiplies sanctifying grace and helps us avoid mortal sin - even venial sin. The 15 Rosary Promises, given by Our Lady, are intended to lead us to Her Divine Son. At Fatima, Our Lady succinctly summed up the same promises in one sentence when She said, “My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God.”
With the Rosary there is daily duty, which Our Lord called “the true penance” He now requires. Daily duty has always been the obligation of the faithful Catholic; it is the normal path to sanctification. As Sr. Lucia wrote concerning what Jesus said in this regard, “He wishes that it be made clear to souls that the true penance He wants and requires consists first of all in the sacrifice that each one must make to fulfill his own religious and temporal duties.”[4]
What is meant by daily duty? It means faithfully fulfilling our obligations to God and in our states in life with supernatural charity, the virtue summed up by Christ Himself: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.” [5]
How we accomplish daily duty is the secret of the interior life, which is also called “the life of the elect” or “the spiritual life.” The interior life is defined as “the state of activity of a soul which strives against its natural inclinations in order to regulate them, and endeavors to acquire the habit of judging and directing in movements in all things according to the light of the Gospel and the example of Our Lord.” [6]
When we offer our every thought, word and action of the day to Jesus through Mary, our souls gain spiritual merit. “The chief fruit of sanctifying grace is merit – a claim or right to receive an increase of sanctifying grace, together with a claim to a corresponding measure of glory and happiness in heaven,” the Baltimore Catechism explains. “We can increase in heavenly merit indefinitely. Not only works which are by their nature good, such as prayer and the reception of the sacraments and attendance at Mass, but even the ordinary works of our day, such as the taking of our meals, study, our games and amusements, can become meritorious if we perform them under the proper conditions. These conditions are very easy – we must be in the state of grace and offer our works to God out of love for Him. We do not have to make this offering with each work we perform. It is sufficient to make it from time to time, particularly every morning…” [7]
It was for this reason that Sr. Lucia, the last Fatima visionary, assisted in composing what is known as the Fatima Morning Offering. As soon as we awaken, we may give our thoughts to God and consecrate the day to Him by praying the Morning Offering:
O my God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary (here kiss the Brown Scapular [8]), I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, joining with it my every thought, word and action of this day.
O my Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence and merit I can, and I offer them, together with myself, to Mary Immaculate, that She may best apply them to the interests of Thy Most Sacred Heart. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us! Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us. Amen.
This particular offering means we give everything to God, “to Jesus through Mary.” It is the shorter way of spiritual perfection, as taught by St. Louis de Montfort, an interior life of simplicity. “In divine things,” wrote the eminent theologian, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P, “simplicity is united to depth and elevation, for divine things that are highest in God and deepest in our hearts are simplicity itself.” [9]
“Do your duty and all will go well” was a favorite saying of St. Pius X, by which he meant all will go well with the life of the soul. Daily duty, justly accomplished when we cooperate with grace, leads to infused contemplation, but only if there is “progress in the acquired virtues, the infused virtues, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost in interior souls truly detached from themselves and almost continually united to God.” [10] To accomplish daily duty means practice of all the virtues to a heroic degree. Such is the path to sanctity.
The Main Pitfall to Avoid
Daily duty accomplished with love, but “dying to self,” is not an easy process. Although “the charity of God presseth us” [11] to return His love, there is good reason that the Scriptures warn we must work out our salvation in fear and trembling. [12] A holy fear of the Lord means we love Him and do not want to offend Him, just because we love Him. We should always fear ourselves because, due to the effects of Original Sin, we bear four wounds - ignorance, weakness, malice and disordered desire. These four wounds are the causes of our faults, which we so carefully hide from ourselves, but they are overcome when we use God’s graces well. That is why Our Lord made it clear that our daily duty should be offered up in true penance.
Due to our spiritual weaknesses, we are easily swayed into thinking we have pleased God, especially when we fulfill our religious obligations. We must guard against outward shows of piety (to garner attention for ourselves) while simultaneously fearing to do as we ought (because are afraid of what others may think of us). Nor should we revel in spiritual consolations, for two reasons: They do not signify sanctity and they are fleeting. In fact, God eventually withdraws such consolations to help us overcome pride and whatever else may be our predominant fault.
Pride, the root of all sin, is very cunning, because it hides itself under the guise of virtue. Although we are in a state of grace, we are not “safe” from the seven deadly sins; indeed, the devil works against us even more so. His ultimate aim is find our weak spots, blind us to our faults, retard our progress, or cause us to fall so many times that we are tempted to despair. Interior troubles often begin with temptations to pride.
Both the Old and New Testaments provide copious examples of pride, the particular danger to the faithful. For example, we recall St. Peter’s over-confidence that he would never abandon Christ. Yet only hours after receiving the very first Holy Communion, he and all of the apostles fled from Christ’s persecutors. Then the first Vicar of Christ publicly denied the Lord three times. For this great fault, St. Peter wept and sincerely repented for the rest of his life. This one, painful failure was a great lesson to him and to all the Church’s members throughout time: We can never be sure of ourselves, only of God.
Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, the Apostles’ faith remained weak until the Descent of the Holy Ghost. Pentecost brought to them the second interior conversion, with the result that St. Peter fearlessly and publicly proclaimed Christ. Although greatly persecuted, they never again denied Our Lord. Despite this fidelity, human respect was the cause of St. Peter’s second great public sin.
His first public offense was against God; his second was against his neighbor. The second wrong-doing seemed a very small matter at the time, but it displayed a serious hidden fault. St. Peter caused a great scandal to the faithful when he would not sit with the Gentile converts (who were not circumcised) for fear of the Jewish converts (who were circumcised).[13] St. Peter, who thought it prudent to momentarily avoid the Gentiles, committed an act of cowardice, which artfully disguises itself as the virtue of prudence.
On the path of sanctity, our predominant fault is overcome if and when we truly love God above everything else. As trustworthy spiritual advisors like Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange point out, we (like St. Peter) usually learn of our hidden faults by trials, sufferings and humiliations. On the other hand, not all trials are due to our sins, for some are meant to perfect us while others allow us to practice greater charity in reparation for the sins of others.
Charity, the queen of virtues, is the reason why daily duty can be offered to God as “true penance.” When we submit to all that God allows or wills in our lives, thinking only of Him in our joys and sufferings, we imitate Christ, Who loved us enough to live - and die - for us.
“Pick up your Cross daily and follow Me”
The sacrifice of daily duty, then, is our cross. The Cross is “all that goes against self. All that it costs to subdue self – to act on principle, submit to authority, to follow common life, to accommodate ourselves to others, to bear correction, to be faithful to irksome duties, to be submissive and humble during sickness, to struggle against self-indulgence and the softness of our times, preserving attention to the rules of modesty, to be energetic in attention to our weak point, to bear up against failure and monotony of daily routine, to be resigned when all seems to go wrong, whatever is contrary to our liking in circumstances, our health, the way things are done, the way things turn out – all that is our cross.” The truth is that “true holiness does not consist in not feeling the Cross, but in bearing the pain with true conformity to God’s will.” [14]
“Whatever you do, think not of yourself, but of God.” (St. Vincent of Ferrer)
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"Secrets of the Catholic City" is Mrs. Bartold's new column, graciously printed by Catholic Family News (CFN). "Why Daily Duty Sanctifies Us" was published in CFN's February 2009 issue. All Rights Reserved World-wide by the author.
Marianna Bartold, founder of Keeping It Catholic (http://www.keepingitcatholic.org/), is the author of “The Age of Mary” Study Guides, a series of “digitally delivered” Catholic unit studies for teens, adults or anyone who wishes to grow closer “to Jesus through Mary.” Her other works include the upcoming digital Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings) Catholic Study Guide. She is the author of the Keeping It Catholic Home Education Guide books (Volumes I and II). Mrs. Bartold was the original homeschool editor of Sursum Corda (later assimilated into Latin Mass) and the founding publisher of The Catholic Family Magnificat! Magazine.
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Endnotes
[1] Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Three Stages of the Interior Life, Vol. II [Copyright 1948 by B. Herder Book Co, St. Louis, MO. Republished in Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, 1989]: p. 165.
[2] Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth about Fatima: Science and the Facts: Vol. I [Buffalo, NY: Immaculate Heart Publications, English Translation Copyright 1989]: p. 181. [3] Mt. 21: 22.
[4] Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth about Fatima: The Third Secret, Vol III. [Buffalo, NY: Immaculate Heart Publications, Revised edition 2001]: pp. 20-21.
[5] Mt 22: 36-40.
[6] Rev. R. Walsh, O.P., Meditation on the Passion [Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1963]: p. 17.
[7] Baltimore Catechism and Mass #3, The New Confraternity Edition, Revised [Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America, 1949], Important Truths about the Holy Ghost and Grace: p. 65.
[8] A partial indulgence of 500 days is granted each time the Brown Scapular of Mt. Carmel is piously kissed. An individual who wears this sacramental should be either enrolled in the Confraternity of the Brown Scapular (which imparts a perpetual blessing on the wearer, so that new Scapulars need not be blessed) or otherwise ensure that each new Brown Scapular is properly blessed by a priest.
[9] Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, loc. cit.
[10] Ibid.
[11] 2 Corinthians 5: 14.
[12] Philippians 2: 12.
[13] Galatians 2: 11-14.
[14] Rev. R. Walsh, O.P., op cit., p. 222.
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