The Great Interior Clean-Up

I am a teacher, which means, invariably, that I spend my summer days at home with my two young children. It's a blessing and a curse. It means I get to see my kids and spent time bonding with them. It means finally being a first-hand observer to all those silly behaviors my kids' daycare teachers have been telling me about all year. It also means more diapers, more chores, and more discipline. In order to simplify the next 10 weeks, this first week of summer vacation, I have been cleaning house. Yesterday and today I cleaned the kitchen (all you stay-at-home parents may be amazed that it only took two days). Tomorrow, the master bedroom. So it seems like a good time also to tackle the Great Interior Clean-Up!

Of course, trying to become a Fiat Man means a great degree of spiritual virtue is needed, but I am a little short on spiritual virtue. I'm overweight, I lose my temper periodically, I am not good at doing the things I should be doing when I should be doing them ("I'll pray a rosary later...when I'm exhausted"). Basically, if you could see my soul, it would be a fat, middle-aged, balding man. Actually, I am bodily two of those things anyway. Bad example.

The trouble with being a teacher is that I am a theology teacher. It's a job I love, but it means that I have the know-how to beat the ever-loving daylights out of myself in self-examination. I'm perfectly well-aware that most of my discipline problems come from a lack of the virtue of temperance. The lack of virtue of prudence, though, is what keeps me from doing anything substantial about it.

Not today! It's the beginning of the Great Interior Clean-Up!

Now, I could embark on some terribly difficult quest to reconquer myself under the name of temperance, but here at Fiat Men, I've decided to go a different route. According to the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux and Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, the most perfect way for us to attain to holiness is by doing what God calls us to, with love.

Fortunately, my last post was about how love is the one instrument we really need in having the determination to conquer our wills! Over the next few days, I'm going to consider some ways we can put love to work for our cause to become Fiat Men.

Just like the physical clean-up of my home, this interior clean-up, this getting my house in order, should make it easier for me to maintain an orderly spiritual house, always ready to say, "Fiat!" to God's will.

Pax,

Micah