A 3rd Sunday of Lent Thought For Those of Us Whose Past Has Been Less Than Perfect
For those who are perfect, no need to continue reading. For the rest of us, our spiritual guide provides some thoughts about hope and holiness. It seems hope plays a critical role in becoming holy.
For those who don't wish to become holy, no need to continue reading. For the rest of us, we'll gain insight into how hope gets us and keeps us on the path to holiness - ultimately, by the grace of God, sainthood.
(And we'll want to become a saint while we're still alive to eliminate the alternative of spending who knows how long in Purgatory. At least that's the ideal, right?
So Fr. Daniel Considine tries to lift us up to that pursuit of holiness. He tries to compare us ordinary human beings to saints. And in comparing, he notes how many of us don't shoot for sainthood because of our less than perfect lives.
It would seem the saint isn't necessarily "perfect."
Well, how about we just let Father speak for himself!
“If I were asked for the best sign in someone I did not know very intimately, of how far he would go in the spiritual life, and how great things he would do for God, I think I would find out how far he possessed the virtue of hope. And by ‘hope’ I mean the practical conviction that God is not only very good, but very good to me. What holds us back in the spiritual life is want of hope, want of confidence. Everyone could become a saint, if he would only believe that God wants to make him one. The wonder is that, people being as good as they are, they are not a great deal better. And the reason of it is their want of hope. We are so shockingly inconsistent. We believe that, morning after morning, God gives us His own Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, and that, later in the day, when we go and ask a small grace of Him, He won’t give it! Could anything be more absurd and illogical.
“If you want to know what point you have attained in the spiritual life, see what you hope for. Is it a little grace, or immense graces? … Why ask Him little things? He would more willingly give you what is magnificent than what is paltry. The difference between a saint and an ordinary person is, the saint has much bigger ideas of God. If you say, I have misspent my life for so many years, and now it is too late, and I can do nothing for God – don’t you see that you are misconceiving His power and His infinite love? We have such disrespectful and unworthy views of God. We call him Our Father, and then treat Him as a stranger or a foe. In this rut so many of us crawl on slowly, and when we hear this doctrine, we say: ‘It isn’t meant for the likes of us.’ A saint and another person commit the same fault. The sinner draws away, and keeps aloof: the saint is very sorry, but goes on just as before; it makes no difference. It is too late, people say, why didn’t I begin fifty years ago? Time is nothing to God. Does the father tell the prodigal son to go into penal servitude for six years, and then perhaps he’ll receive him back again? He takes him into his house at once, puts the best robes on him, and feasts him. Widen your thoughts of God, He never ceases to love you.”
We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee
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