All Hallows Eve: Saints and Sinners
Already Planted in the Kingdom of God
Lord, you have asked me, ignorant and sinful, to become holy as my Father who is in heaven. In seeking this priority, the fundamental and essential means for holiness, I prayed that you would teach me simply how to become a saint. But your answer caused me to lose heart. Then I remembered your word: I thank you, Father, that you have revealed these things to babes. I see clearly that every saint has his or her particular “style,” no one of them resembles another. Each saint has his or her own way of holiness. Yet a common way exists that everyone, without exception, must undertake. I must resemble the Lord Jesus. I must do the will of him who sent me. I have kept the commandments that the Father gave me. This means that I must accomplish the tasks of the present moment, Lord, and respond to your grace at every instant, placing total confidence in you and leaving you free to accomplish in me your plan and not mine. I must collaborate with all of my strength. Thus, my specific role will assume its proper splendor, modestly but with the necessary audacity! It was you, Lord Jesus, who told your apostles: You will do even greater works than these! Father, make me the littlest of all!
The saints lived on earth as much as I do. The saints were swept along by the same current of time. Their days were twenty-four hours long and not one minute more! Their lives were not longer in years: Francis Xavier died at the age of forty-six, Thérèse of the Child Jesus at twenty-four, and Rose of Lima at thirty-one. But the years they lived were incomparably intense and concentrated because they recognized that time had the value of eternity. God works through the saints who collaborate with God. How much we must esteem a single moment of the Lord’s work! We build holiness in the present moment not by turning to the past or anticipating the future. That is why the saints treasured the present moment; without neglecting a single instant, they made each moment a response of their whole being to God’s love. The saints lived in the present as in an immense ocean of peace because they already lived in that unending present of eternity.
Venerable Francis Xavier Nguyên Văn Thuân
Cardinal Nguyên Văn Thuân († 2002) was imprisoned by the Vietnamese government for thirteen years, during which time he secretly sent prayers and spiritual writings to his flock. / From Prayers of Hope: Words of Courage, English edition. Copyright © 2012, Daughters of St. Paul/Pauline Books & Media, Boston, MA. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Meager Offerings:
Ecstasy
If only I were a saint, not a sinner,
Done with the costly and searing trade,
Then I could pray and know for certain
My heart was pierced by His sharp, loving blade!
les
The Lost Pilgrim
Would I were a good man,
Instead of mediocre;
Would I were a righteous man,
Not just a crippled joker,
Telling tales to ease my pain,
Stumbling through the darksome rain,
Down a lost and lonely road,
Burdened by a dreary load,
Far from my home in a distant land.
Would I were a good man.
les
