[todaysdate]
By Matthew Sewell
It’s easy to look at great saints and be intimidated. Whether it’s the stories of their personal holiness, their martyrdom, or just that their greatness is so revered, we tend to think it’s out of reach. We think that a deeply intimate, personal relationship with God is something reserved for someone that’s not us. But it should be encouraging to know that a “saint” is just a person who ends up in Heaven once God calls them home.
Getting to heaven isn’t just possible for us, it’s encouraged, and when you break it down it can be incredibly simple! Daily duties that otherwise seem mundane, pointless, or something you could just go without and be fine, when instead offered to God as prayers, can become vehicles for us to grow in relationship with Him and get us closer to our eternal reward.
Here’s some things to help you grow closer to your heavenly reward each day before lunch!
1. Pop out of bed with the first alarm.
An extremely accurate rendering
The first one might just be the hardest. When it comes to waking up in the morning, I’m the worst offender of hitting snooze a few times before waking up (also known as the “Holy Trinity of Snoozing” phenomenon). However, St. Josemaria Escriva spoke about the value in doing the opposite:
The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body. If, with God’s help, you conquer yourself, you will be well ahead for the rest of the day. It’s so discouraging to find oneself beaten at the first skirmish. -The Way, 206
Despite getting a few more minutes of shut-eye, the difficulty of rolling out of a warm bed into the cold, so-not-bed environment of your room can, rightly considered, be good for your soul.
2. Make your bed.
(Disclaimer: Your mothers didn’t put me up to this.) In the first chapter of James, we read that “all good giving and every perfect gift is from above” (1:17). Your bed is a good gift. Taking care of that gift (and any other) is a natural way of showing honor and being thankful to God for it. Right out of the gates in the morning, taking 30 seconds to make your bed will not only get you praying before breakfast, but it will start your day off with a small sense of accomplishment.
3. Say a little extra grace before breakfast.
As much as you might be tempted to say the “Bless us, O Lord…” prayer in five seconds or less before diving into your Cinnamon Toast Crunch, it’s always better to make an intention for someone or something else that could use prayers that day. Doing so will make saying grace less of an obligation and more of an offering, and that’s always a good thing.
4. Take care of your dishes.
(Again, not your mom here.) It doesn’t get simpler than this. Whether it’s just putting them in the dishwasher or washing them and leaving them to dry, it’s still a task that’s more difficult than just leaving them in the sink for later. Offering that extra minute up as a prayer for someone you’ll encounter later that day as you’re washing will make it all worth it.
5. Pick up after your spouse or roommate.
Pick up the dang sock, man.
As a newly-married man, I’ve come to understand that this one might just get 100 souls into heaven right along with you. One of the biggest frustrations (seeing socks on the floor, wives?) can turn into one of the biggest graces if we make a prayer out of picking up a small item for a loved one. St. Therese of Lisieux once said, “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.”
Thérese, a French nun who died of tuberculosis at age 24 in 1897, was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope St. John Paul II for exactly this kind of devotion. Her “Little Way” of doing ordinary things with extraordinary love was, to her, the best path to holiness. It seems to have worked…
6. Smile at a stranger on your way to work.
Not in a creepy way, of course. Studies have shown for decades the value of a simple gesture of kindness like a smile at someone on the street. It’s really easy to walk past someone while we’re checking our phones, or to ignore a homeless person on a street corner, but challenging ourselves to look someone in the eye and give them a genuine smile helps us to recognize both their personhood and God’s presence in our fellow humans.
7. Deny the temptation to snack between breakfast and lunch.
When Jesus said, “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me,” I don’t think he was referring to us saying no to the box(en) of donuts in the break room. However, there’s something to be said about denying ourselves small pleasures as a way of prayer. Those little micro-fasts are great opportunities to say, “Lord, this stinks, because I really like donuts. But for You and for this person I’m praying for, I can go without it.”
8. Take notice of something you normally wouldn’t.
Avoid the cuteness. I dare you.
The world we live in is filled with a remarkable amount of goodness, beauty, and intentional order that nearly always go unnoticed. Our busy existence usually does little but cause additional stress, so it follows that giving ourselves a mandated break from that busy-ness to observe a simple beauty will offer us a reprieve and some much-needed peace. As Fr. Robert Barron so eloquently put it just this week,
God is the unconditioned source of goodness, truth, and beauty. Therefore whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is beautiful participates in God and reflects God. And so…the frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a beautifully-proportioned building, a handsome face smiling in friendliness, an innocent child at play, a crisply executed fast break, a well-written television program, all these things in their truth, goodness, and beauty speak of God.
Even finding a couple minutes of goodness or beauty in the morning will make your day infinitely better.
***
All of these things boil down to one central point: thinking of yourself less and serving others more. It’s the great paradox of our call to holiness. We were given freedom, and in 1 Peter we read, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace”
A grand plan of action — biting off half the elephant when you can only chew one bite at a time — isn’t what anyone has to do to get to heaven. A year-long mission trip in a third-world country may be what God is calling some people to do; That’s just fine and dandy, but God’s call to holiness isn’t necessarily measured according to how many miles we travel or how many mouths we feed over the course of our lives. Our journey to heaven is measured by how and when we say “Yes” to that call, even when it’s as simple as making our bed.
“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.” -Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
