Dec 23rd - Self Sacrificing Poverty

Hello Everyone:
We are just two days away from Christmas! How fast time flies. Today after spending time with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, we are going to touch on what it means to be self-sacrificing. We will focus on our daily family living and all that we do to achieve God's Will as the Holy Family did.
So how are we, the laity, particularly mothers and fathers of families, suppose to be self-sacrificing? Being self-sacrificing entails the virtue of poverty because in it lies being truly detached from earthly things and in cheerfully accepting shortage or discomfort if they arise. Furthermore, it means having one’s whole day taken up with a flexible schedule in which, besides the daily norms of piety, an important place should be given to rest, which we all need, to family get-togethers, to reading and to time set aside for an artistic or literary hobby or any other worthwhile pastime. We live the virtue of poverty by filling the hours of the day usefully, doing everything as well as we can, and living little details of order, punctuality, and good humor.

It is love that gives meaning to daily sacrifices. Every mother knows well what it means to sacrifice herself for her children; it is not a matter of giving them a few hours of her time, but of spending her whole life in their benefit. We must live thinking of others and using things in such a way that there will be something to offer to others. All these are dimensions of poverty which guarantee an effective detachment.

The best examples of poverty are those mothers and fathers of large and poor families who spend their lives for their children and who with their effort and constancy — often without complaining of their needs — bring up their family, creating a cheerful home in which everyone learns to love, to serve and to work.

Here is Archbishop Fulton J Sheen's quote:
"The very permanence of marriage is destructive of those fleeting infatuations, which are born with the moment and die with it; it destroys selfishness, furthermore, because the mutual love of husband and wife takes them out of themselves into the incarnation of their mutual love, their other selves, their children; and finally it narrows selfishness because the rearing of children demands sacrifice, without which, like unwatered flowers, they wilt and die.” 
                                                                                       Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Again, this is profound. If we look at marriage in such a way - we will conclude that this formula will give us Heaven because we will live in imitation of the sacrifices once met of the Holy Family.
God bless!