Duties of State of Life

Although it has been changed since then, when I was in the Girl Scouts, the pledge we recited solemnly was, "On my honor, I will try, to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at all times, and to obey the Girl Scout law."

When one of my parents wanted me to do some particularly unpleasant chore, the directive would sometimes be prefaced with, "How would you like to do something for your country?" I was not convinced that weeding the garden was a patriotic act, but the phrase did seem to invest the chore with a level of importance.

I saw my beloved maternal grandmother do her housewifely chores with a degree of dignity and discipline that is rarely seen these days and perhaps was uncommon even then. She was a Lutheran, not a Catholic, but she understood well the teaching that God's will for us is to give first priority to the duties of our state of life. How I wish I could perform my duties as well as she performed hers.

Although I have never been able to locate a source that relates when and where he said it, I have heard many times that one of St. Pio's maxims was that one's duty of state must come before all, even holy things. I think I understand what he meant by that.

For a married woman her duties are clear: husband, home, and family come first. Blogging must be somewhere way down the list. Recently, a young mother put up a good post about this principle.

The single state has duties too. Their specifics are something that has to be sorted out with the help of a good spiritual director. Generally speaking, however, the single life is supposed to be a life of service. And, some of us have been blessed with a profession that allows us to be compensated monetarily for serving others. For us too, these duties and others must necessarily come before blogging.

While I have not exactly neglected my professional duties since I started blogging early this year, I regret that I have not given them and certain other responsibilities the wholeheartedness I should have. For that reason, for the foreseeable future, I will be visiting sites on the internet much less and posting with much less frequency at this site. I do have many, many ideas for posts, however, and so I will continue to post occasionally as it seems proper.

Image:
Old-fashioned housewife from an antique Danish greeting card.