Recently, I have focused on exhorting my children that undertaking such and such an act — ranging from a menial chore like putting away washed dishes on the drying rack, or something more thoughtful such as bringing big brother a cup of ice cold water, or something unexpected like cleaning up younger brother’s scattered legos in the garage, or something really unexpected like helping mom by folding clothes that have remained in the laundry basket for days, are all “easy” ways to grow in holiness! The “easy” way is the way of the little acts — many of which seem to be quite mundane — that season all the hours of our days. Such opportunities are “easy” in the sense that even though effort is required, they usually don’t take a lot of time and the key is that they are “selfless” acts — moments in which we decide that someone else is more important than ourselves.
In their violin studies, whenever my sons have difficulty playing a section of a musical piece, I remind them to make it as easy as possible — we all tend to gravitate to the “easy,” right? Often, this is accomplished simply by breaking down the passage into a small enough part. And that is easy to do! Sometimes it takes several repetitions before the passage becomes truly easy, but eventually, it is mastered. Then once a string of several small passages are mastered, the “hard” is accomplished!
The smallest acts, done with love, as Saint Mother Teresa used to beautifully remind us, can be so powerful! Because it is much easier to train our will to do the “small” acts of charity — share my dessert with my sibling, bring Daddy a cup of coffee, wash my brother’s dirty dish, read my younger sibling a story, do a load of laundry for Mom — that train us for bigger sacrifices, in other words, “the hard”, by helping us to master our unwieldy self-will. Such mastery can only come with practice, i.e., repetition of small acts over and over and over again! The more we re-focus our mindset on serving others through many sacrificial little acts, especially when we don’t really feel like doing so, the more we cultivate a mental state that is focused on truly showing authentic Christian love — which is one of the best ways we can teach our children to live the Christian faith! So let us remind our children and ourselves of these “easy” ways to grow in virtue and holiness every day!