Resentment.

It's St. Joseph's feast day again! St. Joseph is my confirmation saint, and a very good one to keep an eye on, especially for those of us going through Lent. 

As I've noted before, we don't know much about St. Joseph, but we are confident that he fulfilled the mission of his life uprightly, and therefore that he didn't have resentments about the way things turned out. He certainly could have. There he is, perhaps the most decent man on earth, and he has to devote his life to a mission he did not choose, fleeing to Egypt, fleeing back from Egypt, hearing terrifying prophecies, losing Jesus in the temple, etc. But when he was told to do something by God, he did it without arguing. You can't say that for most of the prophets and saints.

I was thinking about resentments this week, and how giving them up has been a major work of my adulthood. This week I was watching a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz on Ascension Presents about having to do things we don't like, and how this often leads to the same ol' place: resentment. The point that stuck with me seemed quite psychologically sound: 

Resentment is that anger, that frustration, solidified. It's not a living thing. Anger is a living thing; frustration is a living thing; grief is a living thing. Resentment is a frozen thing. It's something ... frozen in time. And it can't move. It can't grow. It's not a living thing. 

While strong and negative feelings from unhappy events can change and pass away, in other words, resentment can't, and that's why it's so awfully destructive.

So, for the rest of Lent, I think it'd be good for me to unfreeze my resentments and let them pass along the way, and stop new ones from forming like dirty hunks of ice on the side of the road. Hey, spring is almost here -- time to end the freezing and start new life.