Caryll Houselander is a special soul who writes beautifully about the life of faith and prayer. In today's message she reminds us that even if our work seems hard or even monotonous at times there is always a need for what you do. Without your unique presence each day something of the presence of Jesus wold also be missing.

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Makes my mother very happy.

All right, don't do it because you want to grow in holiness.

Don't do it because you want to learn more about God's incredible

plan for your beautiful response to his vocational invitation.

Do it to make my mother happy.

Actually the time I'm recording this it's mother's day tomorrow.

So if you subscribe to be really happy, thank you.

We are going to jump into a quote from one of my absolute favorites.

I discovered it very light, but I'm just a beautiful soul and write so beautifully.

Her name is Carol House Lander.

Uh, grab some Kleenex friends because this quite chokes me up.

So let's do it.

Sometimes it may seem that there is no purpose in our lives.

That going day after day for years to this office or that school or factory is

nothing else, but waste and weariness.

But it may be that God has sent us there because, but for

us, Christ would not be there.

If our being there means the Christ is there.

That alone makes it worthwhile.

Wow.

Just, wow.

Our culture has a culture of access and extravagance and

success, and like, you know, being seen and being noticed and being

influential and being recognized and.

You know, my daughter was talking to this week about the met gala, um,

and the dresses for the met gala.

I mean, look, all I can say about the met gala is that if aliens

turned up, they'd just be like, you know what guys we're getting back

on the ship or we're out of here.

Like we thought we were strange friends.

It's a culture that rewards being seen.

And the most terrifying thing for our culture is.

Is not being influential, not being beautiful, rich, young,

powerful, influential, not having the right opinions.

And then we get this beautiful quote from Carol House Lander and

the image that she paints for us.

She's such a poetic soul, right?

Imagine going under the same factory year after year after year.

All the same school.

There will be some of you watching right now who are questioning,

whether you should continue.

I'm not God, I'm not your spiritual director, but let's just allow the spirit

to speak through this message that I, but she tells us that if we didn't go,

then Christ would not be in that place.

And he's never going to leave us or abandoned us.

He promised he wouldn't leave us as orphans.

Right.

He promised us he wouldn't.

So he's never going to leave you somewhere and forget you, but

he may believe you somewhere.

That's difficult because he knows it in that difficulty, you will either

descend into cynicism, exhaustion, burnout, and hardness of heart,

or you will become truly dependent and you will seek his heart.

You go, Lord, do you still want me here?

Do you still want me here?

Do you want me to stay here?

I'll stay here.

If you want me to stay, you will be.

But isn't it a beautiful image that if we continue to go, we might be

the only presence of Christ there.

I've been coaching.

Um, one of my kids' soccer teams and it's a real interesting cross section of kids.

It's not a particularly talented team.

Um, holy spirit plays, make sure none of them see this video.

And I think many of the kids in that team come from really difficult backward.

And I have zero soccer coaching skills.

I coach rugby my whole life and I only coached because

they couldn't get anyone else.

It was on a puppy dog.

It was like big eyes.

And it came on an email and it said, if we don't get a coach,

there'll be no, they can't play.

And I'm like, it's got, it's got big eyes.

Can we bring it home?

Anyway?

So I said, yes.

And, and I'm really convinced as the season's gone on that.

It's hard.

It's not something that I would have chosen.

It there's a lot of challenges with it that I begin to think.

Maybe my job is just to be the presence of Christ.

How am I doing altar calls?

I ain't doing articles.

I'm just trying to encourage and be a blessing and provide affirmation and

respect and kindness to some kids that might not be getting it somewhere else.

So maybe if I wasn't there, then the presence of Christ in some

small way, wouldn't be there.

Right?

Like, and so maybe for you, we need to remind ourselves that we are, you know,

what's that beautiful name for, for mother Mary, you know, the theater costs

or the Theotokos always love that word.

Beautiful icons in our home, the Theotokos, they called her.

What is the Theotokos?

The theater cost is.

The God bearer the mother of God.

That's why she's so important because she is the Theotokos.

She is the God bear.

She bears Christ.

And then we participate in that.

Right.

Or we participate in it.

That our baptism of vocation and your vocation as a Catholic

teacher is to be the Christ bearer, to be the bearer of Christ.

And you cannot be him.

If you do not know him and you cannot know him, if you do not practice

your faith and seek him in, in the, in the life of prayer, the life of

contemplation, the life of service, the life of, of the sacraments.

So who got to start?

Thank you, Carol House, Linda.

Let us be Christ bearers, even if it's hard, even if we are not thanked, even

if we feel overlooked and forgotten and ignored and, and appreciated, let us be

the bearers of Christ in each classroom, because if you weren't in there, maybe

Christ his presence would not be in there.

And if that's all you do with your life, you win, you win.

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