Under stress, the goal is union with Christ

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 16, 2026

One of the more interesting problems we face in life generally, but perhaps especially in a technological world where we must constantly learn new ways of doing things, is the stress occasioned by change. Here at CatholicCulture.org, we have spent the last several months preparing to move our web server and our databases to a new hosting company. Then we made the switch last week. And of course we’ve been putting out fires ever since.

Now you may say this is nothing compared with your own stress, and you are probably right. But there is still a lesson to be learned…even if it is a lesson to be learned again.

Because our transition process went fairly smoothly, most visitors will not have noticed any interference with their normal use of the website, except for a few hours on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 6th, when all our files and databases were transferred from the old server to the new one. For our technical team, however, there have been a dozen small fires to put out based on this move to a new hosting company, a new web server, a new database server, and updated web processing software. As the one who had to arrange for and guide this transition, I was also the one who most often had to put out the fires—or iron out the operational wrinkles—inevitably caused simply by changing things.

No matter how thoroughly we prepare for any sort of change, there are always new and disruptive factors which in some ways must be resolved differently than they would have been in the past. Particularly bothersome in any change are the dysfunctions caused by either overlooking some aspects of the change that needed more attention than we thought or by the need to quickly master altered procedures for keeping everything under control. In any new system, some problems are different, but many others must simply be managed differently.

In the modern world, with its fantastic pace of technological change, keeping up with the latest procedures and techniques is especially difficult for tasks that we don’t have to perform very often, or for shifts that involve working with new tools, new companies and new sets of people who manage things in ways that are different from those to which we have long been accustomed. The same is true, of course, whenever we change the techniques and resources we use for basic tasks like educating our children, or whenever we must take on fresh responsibilities. When conditions and tasks are either new or very infrequent, they make demands beyond our normal habits—and while we might find these demands exhilarating, we will definitely find them stressful.

Coping

The changes we have just been through at CatholicCulture.org are merely a case in point. I acknowledge that, to many, they may appear to be an extraordinarily trivial case in point. Still, sometimes we can be pushed beyond our limits simply by not seeing how our present stress can ever come to an end, and that is particularly hard. On the one hand, it did not help me that this current shift in hosting companies occurred when I was 78 instead of, say, 35. On the other, I did find some consolation in the simple reality that I will not be suffering these tensions (such as they are) for very much longer. For it seems that while, like Martha, I have been busy with many things, I have also grown old.

With a well-defined task, however, the problem is more a matter of successful completion than unending angst. Yes, we may have to endure some stress for a brief time…but we do well to remember all those whose problems do not appear to have a stopping point this side of the grave. When stressed, then, it is often very useful to recall that many more deserving souls are currently operating under much greater pressure. It is in fact very healthy for all of us to recognize in these critical moments that others are “stressed” as well—that is, others are suffering far more than we; and also, surely, without nearly as much justification!

It is also helpful to recognize that stress can be taken not only as a cross but as a comfort—by which I mean a spiritual comfort. Indeed, the older I have grown, the less do I understand how anybody gets through anything without a closeness to God in prayer. It is hard to recall at times, when we are striving or struggling or tired or just feeling inadequate to the task at hand, that we are surrounded by people—whether they are in some sense better or worse than ourselves—who are more tired, more frustrated, more confused or far more long-suffering than we. Not to mention far less aware of Christ’s presence.

The reader my well laugh at my weakness, but I will still emphasize that there is no shame in recognizing our own stressful suffering or even our own dissatisfaction with the conditions or the task at hand. But there may well be shame in failing to recognize that if we are suffering it is because our Father has asked it of us. For those of us who should know, at least, there is a bit more shame in not remembering that each stressful task is just one more precious moment in the Garden of Gethsemane. For we are inescapably united not only in shrinking back, but also in pushing forward, with the agony of Christ.

A small thing, you may say. But it is still my small thing, or perhaps your small thing. And it remains also a further occasion for what Our Lord called the one thing needful (Lk 10:41-42). For we must never be so anxious and troubled, and indeed so vexedly stressed, that we fail to pay attention to Christ—the very thing that, if we will only choose it, will never be taken form us.