Showing posts with label work ethic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work ethic. Show all posts

Monday, November 13, 2017

It's Mother Cabrini's Feast Day; now let us work

The Mass today was for the first American Saint, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. The priest mentioned in his homily that Mother Cabrini only lived 67 years, but she founded 67 charitable institutions in her lifetime. I was born in 1967, 50 years after St. Frances died in 1917, so I have a fondness for the number 67. In fact, I picked the number 67 in a sideboard raffle recently. I didn't win—typical.

I used to have a prayer card somewhere with her famous quote on it, which I like and try to use as a motto. It is "We shall have Eternity to rest. Now, let us work." I have tried finding that quote online, and I finally found one result which I found in a Google Books reference to the book Discovering Jesus in the Least by Chris Ramsey. Here's the entire thing.

Mother Cabrini was known for her tireless, pioneering work establishing a variety of charitable organizations. An amazing woman of God, the Chicago Sun-Times (2003) credited her with "founding some sixty-seven orphanages, schools, hospitals and convents in Italy, France, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and the United States."

How did this amazing nun and her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart accomplish all this?.

Perhaps we can gain and inkling of how she and her sisters achieved such feats when she told her sisters: "We shall have eternity to rest. Now, let us work.".

Saturday, January 11, 2014

My Daddy Can Beat You Up Morally

Rod Dreher sics his father Ray Dreher, Sr.'s work ethics on the widowed, disabled Alan Beggerow.

You don’t need to sit down with me and talk, Mr. Beggerow. You need to sit down and talk to my elderly father. I doubt you would enjoy it, but it would probably do you some good, like it did me.

I think we all understand why Dreher chooses a proxy for this duel instead of himself.

Beggerow, in Dreher's initial post, reveals details unreported by either The New York Times or Dreher. Mr. Beggerow also, in my opinion, acquits himself as far more of a man temperamentally and rhetorically than Ray Dreher, Jr. or, by the unfortunate route of Junior's proxy, Ray Dreher, Sr.

Having somehow established himself as The Hardest Working Boy in Show Business - Rod keeps this country running, after all - Dreher proceeds to wring this teat out even more painfully by offering up some Cambodian refugees as the latest heirs of the Dreher Family Work Ethic.

So, after this many bracing rounds of Dreher sanctimony shots (like retsina, except crafted with the finest local turpentine), why don't we all cleanse our palates now by wishing Mr. Beggerow well for his remaining years while praying that Rod never finds himself in an occupation like steelworker, McDonald's associate, or flunky when one of his regular mono naps or anxiety attacks comes a-calling.

Oh...would it be insufferably ironic of me to point out that the work ethic of Ray Dreher, Sr., which Ray, Jr. opportunistically straps on here as his battering shield, is that historically well-known  Protestant work ethic fundamental to the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism which Senior shares with his late daughter Ruthie?