Day - by - Day from the Magnificat

Thanks to Doctors of the Catholic Church

Putting Our Hand to the Plow

For the man of the world, life is but a space to be got over as slowly as possible, by the pleasantest road; but the Christian does not regard it in such a light. He knows that every man is the vicar or Jesus Christ, to labor by the sacrifice of himself for the redemption of humanity; and that in the plan of this great work each has a place, marked out eternally, which he is fee to accept or refuse.

He knows that if he voluntarily deserts this place which Providence offers to him in the ranks of useful beings, it well be transferred to a better than he, and that he him himself will be abandoned to his own guidance in the wide and short way of egotism. These thoughts occupy the Christian to whom his predestination is not yet revealed; and, convinced that the surest way to ascertain it is to desire to accomplish it, whatever it may be, he keeps himself ever ready to accept the appointments of God’s will.

He despises none of the functions necessary for the Christian republic, because in all may be found three things on which depends their real value – the will of God which imposes them, the good which results from their faithful exercise, and the devotedness of heart of which they are confided. He even believes firmly that the less honored are not the less high, and that the crown of the saints never comes more directly from heaven than upon a poor man’s head, grown gray in the accepted humiliation of a laborious calling. Little does it matter to him, then, where God may appoint his place; it suffices for him to know that its is his will.

- Father Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire ( + 1861) was a great Dominican preacher who refounded the Order of Preachers in France after the French Revolution.


He (the Christian) knows that every man is the vicar of Jesus Christ. WOW! From the CCC, "vicar" means one who stands in for or acts for another. I love that and a different way of saying - we are to be Christ for one another.