The Little Things

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

On many occasions in Our Lord's life, He talked about little things. “When they had eaten enough, he said to the disciples, ‘Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing is wasted.’ So they picked them up and filled twelve baskets with scraps left over from the meal of five barley loaves” (John 6:12-13).

From this great miracle where Our Lord fed five thousand people, He invited them to do this little environmental detail, eco-friendly, to pick up the pieces left over, which must have been quite a lot from so many people that had eaten. They filled twelve large baskets.

Not only had people eaten, but they had eaten their fill and there was a huge amount left over. This little detail throws into relief the greatness of the miracle that had been performed.

Often in the little things that we do every day, we manifest much greater things. We let the Spirit of God, and the spirit of the Work, be seen in and through the things that we do.

“In like manner he that had received two gained two. But he that had received but one, going his way, dug into the earth and hid his lord's money. After a long time, the lord of that servant came and reckoned with him” (Matt. 25:18-19).

You could say it was a small thing; it was just one talent. He hadn't used it well. He still had five from the others and three from another. But Our Lord gave importance thus in one little thing.

The lord said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Because you've been faithful over a few things, I will place you over many. Enter into the joy of your lord” (Matt. 25:21-22).

But to the one who had hidden his master's talents, he said, “You wicked servant! ... Cast him out into the depths” (Matt. 25:26).

On another occasion, Our Lord missed the details of hospitality and affection that He expected would be extended to Him. “‘Do you see this woman?’ he said to Simon, ‘I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she with her tears has washed my feet, and with her hair has wiped them’” (Luke 7:44).

“Our Lord sent them out two by two” (Luke 10:1). He didn't send them out in groups of twenty. Small little things, small little groups, to go and perform the great work of conversion that He called them to do.

Our Lord told the servants to “fill the water jars” and they did, to the brim (John 2:7). All sorts of little details are there. “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan” (2 Kings 5:10). Not five or six, but seven.

Very infrequently in our lives, we have opportunities to do big things, unusual things. Our spirit doesn't involve looking for unusual things, but rather invites us to make use of the ordinary little things of each day that are within our reach. “A little act, done for love, is worth so much!” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 814).

That may be the key that Our Lord is hoping for, and expecting for, from us. That little act each day—maybe of charity, of patience, kindness, perhaps of work, maybe of humility, of finishing some little thing well and saying an aspiration while we do it.

All the time this is humility according to our spirit. Take care of those small things, of our family life, of our way of doing things.

The extraordinary that we seek is the ordinary carried out with perfection, and St. Josemaría has taught us that the care that we place in little things is often the measure of our love.

If your love is not there in the small things—where is it?

Somebody asked Aldo Gucci once what was the secret of the success of his cosmetic empire. He said, “Every morning when I go to my store in Rome, there's a doorman there. He has white gloves with which to open the door for all the ladies that come into my store. The first thing I do is I check the whiteness of the gloves of the doorman.”

He was more or less saying that ‘the success of my whole cosmetic empire depends on the whiteness of those gloves of the doorman. That's what I check.’

Really what he was saying is: In the attention to detail, in the small things, that's where the perfection is, that's where the success is.

That's where our spirit is.

An architect said once that “architecture begins by placing one brick on top of another” (cf. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe).

Very often in our apostolate, St. Josemaría has taught us to begin in that sort of way, by placing one brick in front of another, by making one small step. Sometimes small things can be big things (cf. J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 821).

When Usain Bolt beat the record for the 100 meters by one-tenth of a second, it was only one-tenth of a second. Each second was worth an awful lot. If you ask any of the Kenyan marathon runners who've won the Boston Marathon, the London Marathon, or the Berlin Marathon, they'll tell you there's an awful lot of difference between one second and another. One second can mean a million dollars. It can mean a gold medal or not a gold medal. It can mean first prize or third prize.

Sometimes little things can be very important. Little things in our vocation can be very important—little negligences, little acts of care in the things where St. Josemaría has asked us to be particularly careful. Instead of transmitting the message that we're called to transmit, we might transmit something else.

There was an election one time in Ireland, and the Prime Minister, who was a professor of economics, a very capable man, very brilliant, but at the same time known to be a little bit absent-minded, went out canvassing in different parts of the country.

There was a very attentive journalist there who was covering these particular forays of the current Prime Minister as he went campaigning around the country. He happened to notice that the Prime Minister had his shoes on the wrong feet.

Now he must have been very observant because normally if the Prime Minister is speaking, you're looking and you're hearing what he's saying, or you're looking at his face or his hair, and very few people would bother to look at his feet.

He looked at his feet and he saw that the shoes, each of them, was on the wrong foot. He took a photograph of his feet with the wrong shoes on them, and that's what appeared on the front page the following day in the newspaper.

It was a very small thing, a tiny thing. Probably his wife was very embarrassed and maybe he was—or probably he wasn't too embarrassed.

It sort of enforced everybody's opinion of him that he was the absent-minded professor, which he was. From one day to the next, he could go out with the shoes on the wrong feet. And this was the man campaigning for votes to run the country.

I think he still won the election. But it was a very small thing, and the journalists were certainly very quick to spot it.

Small things can make a big difference.

Small details of sincerity in our chat, or in our Confession, can often be the difference between the desire to be more holy and possibly a little bit of superficiality or carelessness.

Sometimes, St. Josemaría would stop and ask people in the middle of their work: ¿En qué piensas? What are you thinking about?

Where is your mind? Where is your heart? Is your heart in the things of God? Is your heart in the things of the apostolate, of the Work and our family?

Or is it in things that are a hundred miles away or in your own little areas of your life? Selfish little things?

Sometimes those little details can make a big difference to people. Other people who are watching us—supernumeraries, cooperators, associates who depend on us—they may see great sanctity behind some little detail, great affection, and they might also see the opposite if we're a little bit careless about certain things.

A priest who was preparing us for our seminar before we were ordained, said one day when he was cleaning the tabernacle in the center, and he was putting in the new tabernacle cloth which was on the floor of the tabernacle, he was sort of looking at which side of the cloth to put it, because on one side there's a stitch and on the other side there's not a stitch. He just was sort of looking to check if he put it the right way up.

He said a lady came to him afterwards and said, ‘You know, I was really impressed by that little detail.’ Possibly nobody else noticed, but that he would want to get that particular side the right way up is a small little thing—affection with Our Lord.

Possibly many other people might not see it or notice it, but Our Lord would see it or notice it. St. Josemaría has taught us to be very attentive to the way Our Lord feels about small things in the liturgy.

And often, small things that we do in family life can make a big difference. The things we say, the things we don't say, the questions we ask, the way we put ourselves last, the way we try to look and see how some material thing could be improved a little bit.

About twenty or thirty years ago, there was a piece of news in a newspaper called the International Herald Tribune, based in New York, which used to go all over the world. I think it's not functioning anymore.

One day in Manila I saw a story about a Jesuit house in Dublin where elderly Jesuits lived, and there was a new young Jesuit who came to live in that place. He was in charge of the material things of the house, and he had a little bit of an interest in art.

He noticed that there was a painting that was in the dining room. I think it was a picture maybe of the Last Supper, a very big painting on the end wall of the dining room, that had obviously been hanging there for fifty years. It had been donated by somebody way back in the 1930s.

Now, fifty years later, this young person noticed that this painting looked a little bit the worse for wear. Maybe it could be cleaned up a little bit in the National Gallery, could brighten the place a little bit, because all the burnt toast over fifty years had come to sort of land there, and dust, and grime, and all sorts of things from boiling kettles, and all the rest of it.

He sent it off to the National Gallery to be cleaned. When they started working on this painting, they found there was another painting underneath.

This was very interesting, because during the 16th century, in order to smuggle important paintings out of Rome, what they did was to paint over them. This led to some suspicions that there might be a very valuable painting underneath this particular painting that was so grubby.

True enough, it was a long-lost Caravaggio—a Caravaggio that had been lost since the 16th century. It had been traced to Scotland, but nobody knew where it went after that.

It had made its way to Dublin, and some family that was maybe throwing out all their old paintings that were of no value, decided to donate this painting to the Jesuits: ‘they might find some use from it.’

It had been hanging on the wall for fifty years, and it turned out to be worth $50 million. That's why it got into the International Herald Tribune, and the story went all over the world, and I read about it in Manila.

It was a bit embarrassing in some ways. This thing had been hanging on the wall for fifty years, and nobody had noticed, and it turned out to be worth a fortune. I think it's now on a long-term loan to the National Gallery. Probably it can't be sold, but it could be used for many things.

Of course, it shows you that some small effort to change things or to improve things will sometimes have enormous consequences. It also reminds us that it's a very good thing to encourage people who are dying or selling houses to donate old paintings!

I heard a story also of a relative of mine in Dublin, a brother-in-law who knew a wealthy family who had been wealthy for many decades, maybe centuries. Then they fell on hard times. They had this home that had been in the family for maybe, centuries; accumulated many wonderful things.

They were not a Catholic family; they were a Protestant family. It was such a big house that there were two stairs in the house.

At one stage the different occupants of the house had taken the various paintings that were in the house that they didn't like and had hung them on the back stairs.

The back stairs were full of small little paintings and old bigger paintings and all the paintings that down through history people had not wanted.

This family fell on hard times, and they had to sell everything in the house to keep going. So, they sold everything in the house. Then they came to look at these old, useless, ugly paintings that were on the back stairs.

Some expert that came along to examine these paintings took a second look at one little painting, a very small little painting, and he thought, That might be by such and such a person.

He decided to investigate. He investigated, and true enough, it was by that famous painter a couple of centuries ago, and it was worth all the money that they had raised by selling the house and all the rest of the furniture.

But it was too late. All the furniture was gone, all the other things were gone. OK, now they got this piece of money, but if they had known that in the beginning...

In fact, this painting was a painting of Our Lady. Then the question asked was, How did that painting of Our Lady come into the hands of this Protestant family?

It turned out that a century or so ago, a member of the family developed tuberculosis. In those days the best cure for tuberculosis was to go to a very nice warm climate like Tuscany. In Europe, you only find that in Italy and other places. They went to live in Italy, I think in Florence. They lived there for a year.

While they were living there in Florence, this Protestant got converted to Catholicism, and developed a great devotion to Our Lady, and brought back with him from Florence a painting of Our Lady.

Obviously, he paid quite a sum for it. But when he died, nobody had any use for that painting, so it found its way to the back stairs. But eventually, that painting could have been the financial salvation of the whole family.

So, sometimes little things can be very important. The care that we place in those little things is a measure of our love.

Generosity in finishing things down to the last detail is an important aspect of our spirit. We don't leave things half-done. We go the extra mile. We make sure that things are finished and finished well. We place the last stones. We take a certain pride in our work.

It doesn't matter who is going to see our work, or who may compliment ourselves on it, or a whole pile of other human aspects. We do our work well and we try to finish it, not for human reasons, but because we know that God sees our work, and He gives us the grace to be able to do a good job.

This is where His grace will help us to a maximum degree. There is a phrase in the Book of Proverbs that says, “Show me a person who does a good job, and I will show you a person that is worthy of the company of kings” (Prov 22:29).

We have to be people who do a good job. We are known by the details that we place in things.

How and where do we sign documents? The fact that we read over any document that is passing through our hands, notice corrections that the Ts are in the right place and the Is are dotted, et cetera, et cetera.

We don't allow shoddy work to pass. We demand the same standards from other people, as St. Josemaría demanded people to do a job again.

One time, Don Álvaro was writing a letter when he was in Dublin in 1980. Every year he would write a letter to those people being ordained, and 1980 was before the time of computers, so it was a handwritten letter. It was something he did every year.

It was a two or three-page letter. Halfway down the second or third page, Don Álvaro made a spelling mistake. He could have scratched it out—it was done with his own handwriting—and continued writing.

But he went back and started again. He wrote out the letter again, this time without any mistake. He left that other letter half-written there as a memento of his visit to the commission in Dublin. A memento of his visit, but also sort of a lesson: that we don't allow shoddy jobs to pass, jobs that have mistakes in them.

We put perfection into everything, even if that takes a little bit more effort, a little bit more time. Don Álvaro, who was already in his late seventies, took the effort to write that thing out again. Good example attracts.

Often, it's the little example in our life that opens the eyes of other people to the way that we practice a virtue. This little detail of poverty—of turning off lights, or water, or saving electricity, closing doors properly—others should read the gospel of little things in our lives every day.

You probably know the story of the kid who was walking along the beach and a lot of starfish had been swept up on the beach. He was trying to throw a number of starfish back into the sea.

Another older man came along and said, ‘You know, with all these starfish, maybe hundreds of them washed up on the beach, if you throw this little starfish back and another starfish back into the sea, do you really think it's going to make a difference?’

The young fellow replied to the older person, ‘It makes a difference to this one, and it makes a difference to this one.’

We might be talking to some little child some time, and we might have an opportunity to say something, or to point out something, or to give some little example. And it will make a difference to this soul, and to that soul, and to the other soul.

I know the Numerary Cardinal of Purdue who retired recently—his name escapes me—he tells a story of how, when he was going to kindergarten school, it was a kindergarten school run by nuns, there was an elderly retired nun who used to sit on the bench at the school entrance every morning.

She would beckon to the little children as they were coming in to come and sit beside her for a moment. She would say something to them, something nice, or some little story, or some little bit of encouragement, talk to them just for a moment or two, and then she'd get the next one.

He talked about—he was one of those little kids that that elderly nun sort of beckoned to and come and sat beside him.

He said in one of his homilies, “I learned something from that elderly lady, tired as she was, making the effort to talk to little children. It might have seemed that all her efforts were falling on deaf ears. Can little children understand anything? Am I wasting my time?”

But she didn't know that one of those kids was going to become the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima (Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio), an important cardinal in the whole of South America.

We don't know who are passing through our hands—this little kid that comes to this particular talk or class, or this other girl that passes through the center, or children of supernumeraries, or other people that pass by from time to time, who see things, who notice things, who pick up little aspects of our spirit, even though they may be very small.

When I started to go to a center of Opus Dei, it was a residence for ladies where my sister was living. I was about seven or eight at the time. We used to attend the midnight mass there, which was marvelous because we could stay up at night. In those days there were three masses.

Then afterwards, there was the most important part: there was a snack. At this snack there were peanuts and there was orange juice. These lovely ladies used to come around and keep offering you peanuts and orange juice. We thought Opus Dei was fantastic. Every Christmas we really looked forward to that.

Sometimes, as John Paul II says, we go to the great spiritual messages through material signs and symbols. Sometimes those material things can be very important. We reach hearts, often through stomachs and through other places.

But all the time we transmit a message: details of collegiality in a local council, details of the apostolate of public opinion, details of communication.

Father Manule, who is here at the moment, likes to say, “Everything in this world is communication.” Communication is vital. Public relations is vital. It means everything.

Of course, we live in the world and in the century of communication. Everything to do with communication comes to be very important: answering emails quickly, answering messages quickly, keeping abreast to what's happening in the world.

We transmit a message to people that we're on the ball, that we do things, we're listening to them, when we answer them quickly and correctly, or we give them the answer, because that's partly what it's all about—the speed with which we do things, public relations.

That's something in the universal Church that we have to sort of grow in and improve an awful lot—that aspect of perfection in details.

Often, the perfection is in double checking. Double-checking our work. Having another look at things. Looking back on the work that we've done, not presuming that everything is OK.

Sometimes the little thing will be a little detail of order. When Don Javier was coming down the stairs in the center in Singapore, on his way to Taiwan, he was carrying his own bags.

He was also carrying the Sunday newspaper. It was a Sunday, which in Singapore is fifty pages. He was trying to balance one or two bags and also the newspaper.

I went up to take the newspaper from him to lighten his load a little bit. I came down in front of him and then I opened the first cabinet that I could find, and I threw the newspaper in to get rid of it, because we were going to the car, we were going to the airport, there were important things happening.

Don Javier, even though he was coming down the stairs behind me and on his way to the airport, perhaps thinking about boarding passes and luggage and what he was going to say on arrival in Taiwan, he saw that the cabinet where I put the newspaper hadn't closed properly.

He stopped and investigated, Why is this cabinet not closing properly? Of course, it was because of the bulky newspaper. I was very sorry I hadn't put it somewhere else.

But what was interesting was that he stopped in his tracks and investigated this little thing. It was the least important thing of anything that was happening that day.

Then when he saw it was just a newspaper, then OK, he went down to the car. It was interesting how that little thing caught his eye.

I had been living so many years with St. Josemaría. He noticed certain things. When he came into the house, into the center, on that first evening he also pointed out one or two things that those of us who were living there hadn't really noticed.

But immediately he spotted little things. It's the spirit of St. Josemaría if we have an eye for detail.

It will be a pity if, after years of work, there are certain things we don't notice. Details, little things. Little things in time.

You transmit a message to other people that time is important. One of the management books on time that you find in Books First and these other places tells a story of a man who liked to tell people, ‘I will call you at 8:07 tomorrow morning,’ or ‘at 8:32.’ Instead of functioning on the hour or the quarter or the half hour, he functioned by the minute.

Then he recommended to people to call other people precisely at 8:37 or 8:07. They realized, ‘Oh my goodness, this person gives a lot of importance to time.’

With little details of time, we communicate a message that we are always punctual. We demand punctuality from others. Our time is on time.

If we get delayed or if something goes wrong, we communicate a message: ‘I'll be two minutes late.’ That also sends a message: ‘I value your time.’

One time when the Father (Don Javier Echevarría) was going to a get-together in Hong Kong—traffic usually moved very well, but on this occasion, it didn't—and they got stuck in a jam. They were about twenty to thirty minutes late for the get-together that they were going to.

Of course, people were a bit uneasy. Here we are with the Father, it's a get-together, many people are waiting, it's a very important event, and we have made the Father be late.

In the car, the Father said, ‘The council has chosen the best route’ which was a very nice thing to say, because the driver and the Counsellor himself were thinking, ‘We have chosen the worst route, we got stuck in traffic, we've made a big mistake, we've made everybody late, and this is a disaster, it's the worst thing that's happened in the whole of the trip with the Father.’

But the Father had that little detail to calm people down. ‘The Counsellor has chosen the best route.’ OK, it hasn't worked out very well, there's a problem, but this was the best route.

Sometimes the things we say, when something goes wrong, can be very encouraging. It can be the difference between lifting up people and letting them down.

Encouraging them at that moment, which might be an embarrassing moment, might be a difficult or humiliating moment, but it's very good if we have something to say that distracts people, or conveys our serenity, or helps people not to worry, or helps them to laugh—all sorts of little things, whereby we lift up the lives of other people.

Some of the greatest messages of the pontificate of John Paul II came in short phrases. Often he was the master of short phrases—

<!-- -->

<!-- -->

<!-- -->

—fantastic phrases with great meanings, phrases that will build up a whole new century, a whole new civilization.

It's also from our internal studies and the culture that we pick up, not just in classes but in get-togethers and other moments, hopefully, we also pick up little slogans, little phrases, that contain a wealth of doctrine that can open the eyes and the ears and the minds of so many people who come in contact with us.

We're told that Our Lady “treasured all these things carefully in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Silently she pondered these words, these events. These were little things, it was a little reaction, but yet it was full of significance.

Mary, as we enter this table in Bethlehem, helps us to pay attention to all the little things that are taking place these days, so that we can make them part of our own lives.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JSD