We
read in the 3rd chapter of Saint John: “For God so loved
the world that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him
will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son
into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved
through Him.”
There are many verses we could find in the Bible, my dear sisters,
that would speak to us of the Universal call to Holiness because, in
fact, that is the very essence or the very purpose of the
Scriptures, of this Inspired Writing… our holiness in God. It is a
wonder, however, when we think of how difficult it is many times for
humanity to take so long to come to the realization that this is
“what it is all about”, “what we are all really about”.
But
even as our most beloved Church has throughout the years found
different manners to pinpoint this for us, now more than ever this
truth has been placed so clearly before our eyes in the teachings of
the Second Vatican Council and through posterior Magisterial and
spiritual teachings. Through this great work we, each one of us,
has the possibility of coming, each in their own personal, intimate
manner, to this understanding. Because even as faith and truth are
dogmatic, they are also a personal intimate experience that must be
embraced. And many times, this can take as long or even longer than
what it has taken for the Church.
If
we examine our own lives with sincerity, we will see that, unless we
have received a most special grace from God, we have not always had
the understanding that the purpose of our lives: is holiness in
God and that happiness is intimately related to the achieving of
this holiness. We look at our lives, and most specifically, perhaps
the environments from which we have come, and in a greater or lesser
degree, we realize that we have had very little opportunities to
come to understand that the only true path to happiness is holiness
of life.
I
invite you right now, to close your eyes at this moment, and to look
back, in your mind to your life up until this day. To your family,
school experiences, relationships, eventually, your marriage and
then motherhood. As you do this “memory” of your life, the question
that would be laid open before you is this: during all those
years, did you ever have anyone tell you that your purpose in life
was holiness in God? Or perhaps, in the interior of your
hearts, did you ever perceive, that your path to happiness could in
fact be so simple and at the same time so “difficult” as this. Were
you prepared for this? Were you given from your earliest memories,
the opportunities to come to know little by little, that your
ultimate, most important call in life was holiness in God, in Jesus
Christ?
Well, of course you don’t have to answer these
questions but it is food for thought, for reflection. How can it be
that the most important thing we can ever come to know in our lives
is, in fact, the one thing that we come to know often very late, and
even worse, for some, not at all? To this question there is
probably even less of an answer available. However, we must believe
that even if this is true on a large scale, that even though the
majority of the population of the world, throughout all of history
has had a very vague knowledge of the purpose of their lives … even
though all this is said and done, we have to believe that a
difference is possible. We have to come to realize that in fact,
the legacy of this new, third millennium must necessary be this one…
to offer to humanity the opportunity to come to know, and to come to
experience that each man and each women’s personal most intimate
vocation, call and capacity is to holiness. With our lives we
are to live and therefore to witness that the human person is
capable of this, we can be holy in God, we ought to be holy in
God, because we are created “in His
image” and because He redeemed us “in
our image”.
So
my dear sisters, I tell you right now, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ and in communion with His most blessed Mother, none of us can
walk out of this sacred place being the same. What God has done for
us here and is wanting still to do for us, ought to lift up such a
sense of thanksgiving in us, that it moves us to respond to such a
prompting. Remember when the Lord said to those around Him :
“In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which
says, “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will
keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people
has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have
closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear
with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I
would heal them.” But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and
your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many
prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not
see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” Matthew
13 : 15 – 17.
So
many years to come with such clarity to this profound knowledge and
to you it has been given so freely. And I must add, that it has
come to you, in each one of your lives particularly, as a result of
your call to a married vocation, and even more, because of the
vocation within the vocation which your husband may have received to
the deaconate. It is not totally contingent on this, because even
if you had not gotten married, even if your husband had not begun to
feel the call to the deaconate, even then, it would be your most
fundamental call in life and the Lord would have been knocking at
your door in many different ways in order to lead you to this
truth. However, you may or may not have come to know it.
But
because of what has, in fact, transpired in your life, and because
in fact, your husband has begun to look into this possibility …
because of this, your truest call, is also being revealed to you.
So what does this Call to Holiness
really mean?
To
answer this question, I am going to put it into its plainest term
possible, and I am also going to do my best to, as we would say in
our secular world: I am going to try to “market it”, “sell it”. In
other words, I want to answer this question in a manner by which you
will truly feel that “it is something you must have”.
The
Call to Holiness in God means YOUR TRUEST, MOST UNCHANGEABLE, AND
TIMELESS HAPPINESS!!
You
see, my sisters, the minds behind the media are minds that study and
have come to know the psychology of the individual. The minds
behind the media know that what each human person seeks is that
which they think will make them happy. So what do they do? THEY
SELL HAPPINESS!! If you use this cleaning product, you will… if you
have this, you will…
But
the advertising is just one part of the equation. We are the other
half. Why do we not only listen but even more follow what they
say? Why do we in fact buy that product or seek that item?
Because we have found that what was told to us has worked. The
Media convinces us because what it has advertised has worked. We do
in fact feel happy when we have that new car, when we are wearing
that labeled shirt, when we have used that all-purpose cleaner!! IT
HAS WORKED. We have felt happy… even if the happiness was only
momentary, it was enough to convince us.
This call to happiness that the world offers … what a
tough opponent for us to battle.
Do you know or remember how our Beloved Church has told us many
times that we have three truest enemies? The wisdom of the Church,
basing itself on the Scriptures namely from the 1 Letter of St.
John, has taught us that the three real enemies of our lives are not
your spouse, child or next door neighbor… but the devil, our
flesh and the world. These are our enemies! The enemies of our
soul! And these three enemies fight together very strongly to keep
us from coming into that true knowledge and love that sets us free!
Their work is based on two things,
deception and the playing on our fallen tendency to selfishness!!
All
our lives, each and every single one of us, find ourselves in this
battle. We can not avoid it. We can not get out of it. Our answer
rather is to courageously enter into it, with the grace of God and
to be victorious over it. In the end, the battle is for our eternal
life. But, in the today, in the right now, the battle is fought in
our being able to recognize and respond to the true road of
happiness.
The
devil, our flesh and the world are and have successfully sold to us
an idea of what will make us happy. They have done it and do it
with such strength, that the image of happiness which Christ came to
preach, many times, pales in comparison in our hearts.
Until what?! Until it has it true effect on us and we end up feeling
disgusted, cheated, annoyed and bitter. In the end, if we allow
ourselves to get to the end… in the end, we realize that we are not
happy. And because we have been deceived, we begin to think that
happiness is almost impossible. And it is here where we are most
vulnerable, because we begin to feel resentment towards everything
and everyone, especially to those we have most close to us. We have
to blame someone, so we blame them, we blame the immediate
surroundings. When in fact, the fault was our own… because we
allowed ourselves to take in as true, what in fact is a lie.
My
dear sisters, the only thing that is a true path to happiness, is
holiness in God. Oh, how the soul is enlarged, how our hearts
expand, how we find true joy, lasting joy when we travel down that
road. A joy that is within, that shapes the exterior rather than
being dependant on it. Even on your husbands.
Holiness, my sisters, holiness in God, holiness in loving Him and
loving through Him. Holiness in choosing as much and as constant as
we are capable of (and always seeking to be more and more capable),
that which is right and good before Him. It is really that simple.
Holiness is choosing freely to do what is good and right before God
and others. And it is this doing what is good and what is right is
that will be rewarded. Each good and righteous act or manner of
living is a precious gem that, in our hearts, explodes into many,
many rays of inner happiness and sense of completeness.
One
of the apparitions of our Lady, many years ago… gave two principal
messages. In the first one, she says to them: “You must live good
lives.” When I heard that for the first time, it just seemed too
simple to me, I remember asking the Lord what our Lady was saying,
because I could not grasp what she meant by “live a good life”, it
just seem so unusually vague. But as time has gone by, it’s meaning
has become more and more clearer. You see, it is supposed to be
that simple. That’s how holiness is. Nothing extraordinary,
nothing out of the unusual, simply living, good, righteous lives
joyfully and humbly… knowing that with time, in Heaven… we will be
rewarded for this… we will be able to then see fully, what each
simple, humble good act, really has meant. There the ordinary
things done today, will become extraordinary. And the extraordinary
will pale in comparison.
Listen to what a great Spiritual Doctor of our Church, St. Francis
de Sales speaks about holiness, which he calls by the term, “true
devotion”:
“Genuine, living devotion, presupposes love of God, and hence it is
simply true love of God. Yet it is not always love as such. Inasmuch
as divine life adorns the soul, it is called grace. Inasmuch as it
strengthens us to do good, it is called charity. When it has reached
a degree of perfection at which it not only makes us do good but
also do this carefully, frequently, and promptly, it is called
devotion.”
Or
as we would say, holiness. Holiness is that inner movement of God’s
grace in us, which strengthened by our Love for Him, strengthens us
in turn to do what is right before Him. When we do this “rightness”
carefully, frequently and promptly… we can say we are walking in a
manner agreeable to God.
All
of us are called. And all of us are capable. We are introduced
therefore into the path of virtue, which is another synonym of
holiness. A holy person is a virtuous person because virtue is the
ready disposition to do what is right.
Once
again, St. Francis tells us (Intro. To Devout Life)
Every state of life must practice some particular virtue. A bishop’s
virtues are of one kind, a prince’s of another, a soldier’s of a
third kind, and those of a married woman are different from a
widow’s. All men should possess all the virtues, yet all are not
bound to exercise them in equal measure. Each person must practice
in a special manner the virtues needed by the kind of life he is
called to.
Thus your holiness will be intimately
determined by your vocation.
St. Francis
“. .
try to convince yourself . . . that God wants you to serve Him just
as you are, both by practices that are suited to your state in life,
and by the actions that go with it. Once you are convinced of this,
you must bring yourself to a tender affection for your state in life
and for everything about it, out of love for Him who wills it so.”
Cardinal Neuman:
"If
you ask me what your are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first
do not lie in bed beyond the time of rising; give your first
thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the
Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God's glory; say the Rosary well;
be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening mediation
well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and your are
already perfect."
Areas to strengthen
1.
Prayer/Spiritual reading
2.
Sacramental Life
3.
Growth in knowledge and love of your vocation
4.
Sacrifice
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
