A Sunday Morning Thought to Start the Week Off Right
Holy Mother Church calls on us to repent and grow closer to Christ
during Lent. We sin; so we repent of our sins. But mere "mea culpas"
aren't enough. We repent in order to grow ever closer to God day to day.
Lent is a special time for us to spend more time and effort than we
usually do in our striving for sanctity, that is growing closer to God.
Ideally, our spiritual growth will manifest itself in our work and in our place of work. Our spiritual life is not something apart from our work. Our work is not something we do strictly "in the world," somehow apart from our Faith. The secular society we all live in may see things that way, but we don't. So during Lent, as we strengthen our spiritual lives, we also strengthen our witness to Christ in the workplace; we hope our growing sanctity will increasingly be reflected in the kind of work, especially the quality of the work, we produce in the world.
Our Holy Mother Church also calls upon us to unite with all Catholics in a most special way this Lent, all of us striving to lead lives of increasing holiness. She calls us to unite and stand up for Her, the Bride of Christ, especially in these vulnerable moments when we are without a pope - sede vacante. For a brief spell, the Chair of Peter will be vacant. We will be between Popes. Our special call will be to pray that the Holy Spirit inspires the conclave of Cardinals to vote for a good Pope.
Now, as we hear or read the commentary from the media that will continue regarding our dear Holy Father Benedict and what we will be hearing as the conclave gathers and a new Pope is finally elected, Holy Mother Church will need us to be spiritually strong soldiers, to stand on the front lines and defend Her in what will surely be a flood of criticism and innuendo about the various crises in the Church, the failings of the Church, perhaps even continuing criticism of our Holy Father. And sadly the worst criticism will probably come from people who call themselves Catholic.
But we who really are Catholic - who know that the Church has faults, being an institution run by human beings, all of us sharing a fallen human nature - can and must stand firm in our belief in this one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, the Bride of Christ. It is we who must stand up to the criticism and, yes, the lies of the secular world - a world sinking ever deeper into the morass of the Culture of Death and Dictatorship of Relativity. (Need we go into detail?)
So Lent spurs us on, we Catholic men, in our work and in all aspects of our lives, to strive to become holy, to become saints, and to live our holy lives in the midst of this secular world and in the face of its criticisms, its disapproval -with much worse to come, I fear. But with the graces we will obtain, by our diligent Lenten practices, we will, I am certain, be strong, soldiers in the Church Militant, under our leader, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
And pray please for our Holy Father, Benedict XVI in his days of seclusion. He prays for all of us, as he said he would.
Ideally, our spiritual growth will manifest itself in our work and in our place of work. Our spiritual life is not something apart from our work. Our work is not something we do strictly "in the world," somehow apart from our Faith. The secular society we all live in may see things that way, but we don't. So during Lent, as we strengthen our spiritual lives, we also strengthen our witness to Christ in the workplace; we hope our growing sanctity will increasingly be reflected in the kind of work, especially the quality of the work, we produce in the world.
Our Holy Mother Church also calls upon us to unite with all Catholics in a most special way this Lent, all of us striving to lead lives of increasing holiness. She calls us to unite and stand up for Her, the Bride of Christ, especially in these vulnerable moments when we are without a pope - sede vacante. For a brief spell, the Chair of Peter will be vacant. We will be between Popes. Our special call will be to pray that the Holy Spirit inspires the conclave of Cardinals to vote for a good Pope.
Now, as we hear or read the commentary from the media that will continue regarding our dear Holy Father Benedict and what we will be hearing as the conclave gathers and a new Pope is finally elected, Holy Mother Church will need us to be spiritually strong soldiers, to stand on the front lines and defend Her in what will surely be a flood of criticism and innuendo about the various crises in the Church, the failings of the Church, perhaps even continuing criticism of our Holy Father. And sadly the worst criticism will probably come from people who call themselves Catholic.
But we who really are Catholic - who know that the Church has faults, being an institution run by human beings, all of us sharing a fallen human nature - can and must stand firm in our belief in this one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, the Bride of Christ. It is we who must stand up to the criticism and, yes, the lies of the secular world - a world sinking ever deeper into the morass of the Culture of Death and Dictatorship of Relativity. (Need we go into detail?)
So Lent spurs us on, we Catholic men, in our work and in all aspects of our lives, to strive to become holy, to become saints, and to live our holy lives in the midst of this secular world and in the face of its criticisms, its disapproval -with much worse to come, I fear. But with the graces we will obtain, by our diligent Lenten practices, we will, I am certain, be strong, soldiers in the Church Militant, under our leader, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
And pray please for our Holy Father, Benedict XVI in his days of seclusion. He prays for all of us, as he said he would.
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