Dear Joey,<\/p>\n
Do you know why you get frustrated?\u00a0 It\u2019s always the same reason.\u00a0 Frustration always comes from unmet expectations.\u00a0 So, to get rid of the frustration you are feeling at your summer job, you have to adjust your expectations. Summer jobs are just that: summer jobs.\u00a0 They\u2019re not meant to be anything other than that.\u00a0 They\u2019re not meant to be entertaining or titillating or fun or anything else.\u00a0 They are meant to help you make money for the coming year (or to pay off your debts from last year) and to give you chance to form the habits of hard work and responsibility.\u00a0 Giving you a taste of the \u201creal world\u201d is helpful as well.\u00a0 But that\u2019s it.\u00a0 If you go into your job expecting only that, you will not be frustrated and unhappy.\u00a0 It will still be hard, but it won\u2019t be unbearable.\u00a0 And, if you play your cards right, you can even use the monotony to build the Kingdom.\u00a0 Today\u2019s saint can teach you how.<\/p>\n
St Escriv\u00e1 was a simple priest who came from a simple, poor family.\u00a0 He was bright, inquisitive and cheerful, and his Spanish family was devout and filled with Christian faith and love, but nothing else about his background was extraordinary.\u00a0 Well, maybe one little incident.\u00a0 It happened when he was about 15-year-old.\u00a0 He was walking in the snow, and he saw some frozen footprints.\u00a0 They caught his attention because they were made by bare feet.\u00a0 He asked himself who would be walking barefoot in the snow?\u00a0 He followed the trail and found out that the footprints belonged to a Discalced (shoeless) Carmelite monk.\u00a0 It made him stop and think.\u00a0 If other people make such sacrifices out of love for Christ, why can\u2019t I do something too?\u00a0 It was a moment of grace, and it planted a seed that would later produce an astonishing harvest.<\/p>\n
With that thought in his heart, he entered the seminary.\u00a0 He studied well and was a model and encouragement for the other seminarians.\u00a0 As a young priest, he served in a parish and then went to Madrid to study law and to teach \u2013 he had to support his family after his father\u2019s sudden death.\u00a0 All the while he devoted himself to serving the poor and especially to prayer and the Eucharist; he was conscientiously and persistently seeking to find out what God wanted him to do.\u00a0 It came to him while he was on retreat: he saw the mission God was asking him to take up, to open up in the Church a new vocational path, aimed at spreading the quest for holiness and the practice of apostolate through the sanctification of ordinary work in the middle of the world, without changing one\u2019s place.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what he did.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t easy \u2013 he had to dodge the Spanish Civil War and an unending series of attacks against his person, as well as a slew of other obstacles hurled at him from every direction.\u00a0 But God was with him, and the Prelature of Opus Dei, with its Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, became a reality with full Pontifical approval by 1950.\u00a0 By the time of Josemar\u00eda\u2019s canonization in October 2002, it had surpassed 60,000 members from 80 nationalities, and was present on all 5 continents.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the deep spiritual insight at the heart of St Escriv\u00e1\u2019s inspiration that can help you transform your boring summer job into a powerhouse of grace for yourself and for the Church.\u00a0 Christians are leaven in the world.\u00a0 They are little particles of supernatural light and strength mixed in to the rest of the dough.\u00a0 If you make yourself aware of that, you will realize that you can find God in the midst of the most normal, mundane occupation.\u00a0 If you perform those occupations with faith and love, offering them to Christ and putting your best into them, they become vehicles of salvation, channels of saving grace.\u00a0 The best way to think about it is to contemplate the life Jesus, Mary, and Joseph led at Nazareth \u2013 normal, mundane, and yet there they were, saving the world.<\/p>\n
Think about it, my bored young nephew, and pray about it.\u00a0 And ask today\u2019s saint to share with you a little of the light that God shared with him \u2013 it will brighten up your summer considerably \u2013 and not just your summer.<\/p>\n
Your devoted uncle,<\/p>\n
Eddy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Joey, Do you know why you get frustrated?\u00a0 It\u2019s always the same reason.\u00a0 Frustration always comes from unmet expectations.\u00a0 So, to get rid of the frustration you are feeling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":145992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3719],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-142506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncle-eddy"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"","pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n