Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [47]
Therefore, we must also guard against being submerged in the morally indifferent but necessary functions of ordinary life. While we eat, wash, or dress; while we put our things in order or examine our accounts, etc., we must never allow any of these functions to occupy our mind entirely with its brute specificity. We must, on the contrary, expressly baptize all these things in the sense of not being possessed by them but rather we must dominate them by reason of our conscious, direct, and permanent contact with Christ. In constant awareness of our determination to belong to Christ and to perform all our activities as His servants, we must incorporate even the trivial details of our daily routine into the essential meaning and direction of our life. Thus shall we live if we keep in mind the words of St. Paul: “For none of us liveth to himself; and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8).
That the goods and tasks with which the texture of our life is interwoven should not contrast with Christ is not enough. Neither is it sufficient for us to avoid being absorbed by the immanent teleology of indifferent concerns and to consider everything in a general perspective centered on Christ. We must advance beyond that minimum and place everything in a direct relationship to Christ, so as to be guided back toward the Alpha and Omega by even the specific meaning of every single thing to which we devote our attention.
This may be achieved in various ways. The institutional and corporate aspects of such a sanctification of life, all-important as they are, do not enter into our present scope and may be referred to in brief. Certainly human things are given a specific connection with God, inasmuch as the Church, by a particular act of consecration or benediction, assigns to them a place in the sacral sphere, as is the case with the sacramentals. That specific connection is restricted, here, to definite provinces of being (notably, material objects), and within these limits, again, to definite exemplars consecrated by a particular act. There is, further, the entirely different and unique case of marriage, a high creaturely good which Christ has erected, genetically, into a Sacrament. What we in these pages are concerned with, however, is that connection of creaturely things with God which every Christian, individually, is able—and called upon—to establish; and which applies to all classes of things in creation.
We must offer everything to God
First, we may expressly offer as a sacrifice to God all our works, our joys and sufferings, whatever goods we are blessed with and whatever evils we have to endure. Everything is thus brought into a direct relationship with God and our mind is again and again reoriented to God. Yet, this relationship is a highly formal one; it is established, so to speak, above the head of the thing in question. It may be of great value, but it cannot actually fill our lives with a truly sacral atmosphere. The good intention which underlies that general sacrifice of our actions and sufferings on the one hand, and our specific contact with the object on the other, are not deeply interrelated. If one prevails, the other must decline and in both cases our life falls short of a full impregnation with the atmosphere of Christ. The good intention by itself is insufficient to baptize all things and to connect their very essence with Christ, to consecrate the world intrinsically. It does not pervade the things which are placed under its sign, but merely directs them externally towards God.
We must thank God for all things
A more profound connection between the genuine goods of the world and God will arise from our consciousness of possessing every such good as a gift from God, of the fact that everything we have is bestowed upon us by His charity. Thus, in a spirit of gratitude, through the medium of creaturely things we again and again hark back to the “Father of all lights