Listen, ponder and pray

     “If you really want to become holy, don’t ask your friends, most especially your spiritual friends. Ask the people you live with, how you need to change to grow in holiness.  And when they tell you – and they will – don’t react and get defensive. Think about what they say – bring it to prayer and see if there is any truth in it.”

     These were the words spoken by a priest many years ago, and I was one of the brave ones who decided to give it a try. I’m the kind of person who likes a challenge, so I figured if I was really serious in growing in my relationship with God, what would I have to lose? Besides, I really didn't expect to receive any revelations

An awakening

     I love the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but that wasn't always so. I grew up during the time when weekly confession was expected. The sisters had impressed upon us the need to keep our souls spotless to receive Jesus in Holy Communion and we readily complied.

     After the Vatican Council, it seemed as if we lost our ‘sense of sin,’ so little by little, the time between each of my confessions grew. I reasoned that I really wasn't a bad person and loved God a lot, so I justified my actions as okay. As a young adult, I made sure I made my ‘Easter duty’ and was quite pleased that I made it a priority and was a good Daughter of the Church.

Seeking holiness

     We so often act as though holiness is something very complicated and out of our reach – like there’s a ‘hidden formula’ to follow – and so we spend our time searching for it, in the hope that when it’s found – just maybe we’ll get it right -- and then we’ll be holy!

     Our good God did not make our sanctification an impossible feat – but placed His Holy Spirit within our souls to direct our every thought, word, and deed . . . but we must be attentive to His voice and then surrender to His promptings, so He may form Jesus in us.

God's will be done

     Accepting all as God’s will is such a challenge!

     

     The good things that happen are certainly easy to accept and see God’s hand in them; then we thank and praise Him. It’s the difficult things that just seem to happen – the trials that purify our will and challenge us to trust when everything within us feels like rebelling or just giving up!

Pondering life through the heart of Mary

     “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”

     As I meditated on those words, I felt stunned! I was familiar with St. Luke’s scripture passage about the Child Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem, not to mention the fact that I had prayed that mystery of the rosary and meditated on it hundreds of times. Maybe that was it! Because of my familiarity with this passage, I did not expect to learn anything new about it…about Our Lady…about myself.

Catherine and the Hail Holy Queen

     Her name was Catherine. I did not know her, but was asked to visit and bring Jesus to her, in Holy Communion. She resided in a nursing home and dying of stomach cancer.

     Although I had visited and ministered to dying people in the past, I was taken aback when I walked into Catherine’s room. She was very frail and weak and quite emaciated from the disease.  Cancer had taken its toll, and she was, for the most part, bedridden. She spoke very softly and I needed sit close to her in order to hear. It seemed clear to me that death was not far off and that her suffering was intense.

The slow work of God

     “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time . . . And so it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow; let them shape themselves without undue haste. Don’t try to ‘force’ them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make you tomorrow. Only God could say what this is new spirit, gradually forming within you, will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you surely through the obscurity and the becoming, and accept, for love of Him, the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.


     God has a plan and vision for each of us; to become the man or woman that He has called us to be from all eternity – to become a saint -- and that could take a heck of a long time, with a whole lot of ‘tweaking!’

Without distinction

     “Lord, if you tell me to love others just as You love them, then You must love them in me and through me. So the closer my union with You, the more I love all without distinction.” St. Therese of Lisieux


     What a challenge -- to love as He loves! St. Therese knew the difficulty of loving prickly personalities. We all have people in our families and in our lives, who test us in ways that are sometimes maddening! These very people have the capability, depending on how we handle it, of helping us become great saints or sinners – it’s up to us.