Fausto Gomez OP
As human beings always trying to be happy, we need to be compassionate: “If you wish the happiness of the others, be compassionate. If you wish your own happiness, be compassionate†(Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness).
As followers of Christ, we are asked to be compassionate or merciful with all, if we wish to be happy here and hereafter. Faith asks Christians in particular – as Pope Francis urges us – to be instruments of mercy in the world, to imitate God the merciful Father, to follow the way of mercy of Jesus, our only Way, and, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, to answer the constant call of Mother Church to practice merciful love, the works of mercy.
The Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy†(Mt 5:7) constitutes in a way “a synthesis of the whole of the Good News†(John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, DM 8). St. Caesarius of Arles (470-543) writes: “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. All wish to receive mercy, few are ready to show mercy to others…†He advises us: “You must show mercy in this life if you hope to receive it in the next.†
The merciful are called blessed “because they imitate God†(J. M. Cabodevilla). They forgive others always (Lk 6:37; Mt 18:21-22); if we do not forgive, we are not forgiven (Mt 6:14-15). Following Jesus’ example on the cross (Lk 23:34), they tend to excuse the sins of others. Jesus forgives and heals at the same time (Mk 2:1-12). The followers of Christ are called then to forgive and also to provide affective and effective help to those in need: the sick and wounded on the roads of life.
Mercy is God’s gift and our task – the task of being merciful to others. There are many merciful souls in our world, thanks God. Today many people are moved to compassion by the miseries and sufferings of others as it is movingly shown when peoples face natural or man-made calamities, such as an earthquake, a terrorist attack and personal miseries. Unfortunately, on the other hand, there are many other people who seem not compassionate but cruel and unjust.
Who are not truly merciful among us? In classical theology, we read that the envious are neither charitable nor merciful: they rejoice over the misfortunes of their neighbors. Neither the proud are merciful: they disrespect the others as inferior, and when misery visits them, the proud think they deserve it. Nor the selfish, who are concerned only with themselves and do not feel any passion when seeing the suffering others. Those who love all, except their enemies are not fully merciful, for mercy to be a sparkle of God’s mercy cannot be selective: we have to love all neighbors, including the enemies (Mt 5:43-48). The unjust and also those who are externally, rigidly, merely judicially just are not merciful. True merciful love purifies mere justice of its coldness, and aids it to go beyond “the eye for an eye†or “tit for tat†or the juridical mentality (J. M. Cabodevilla).
Love is merciful and envy, pride, selfishness are caused by lack of love, which is generous, humble and other-centered (cf. 1 Cor 13:4-7). We are all sinners and inclined to be selfish. Our merciful acts help us conquer our “fat ego†and be sensitive to the needs of others.
Mercy is compassion towards another needy person or group of persons. The mercy-giver, however, is not only a giver but also a mercy-receiver. The receiver of mercy also gives something to the giver: an occasion to practice mercy, an opportunity to love and be loved by a brother or sister. In Christian perspective, a true merciful act then has “a bilateral and reciprocal quality.†When this quality is absent “our actions are not yet true acts of mercy, nor has there yet been fully completed in us that conversion to which Christ has shown us by way of his words and example†(John Paul II, DM 14). The merciful person practices mercy not only because if not tomorrow the next day he or she will likewise be a receiver, but mainly because he or she is imitating Jesus who is particularly present in the receiver of mercy (Mt 25:40). Indeed, God returns mercy to mercy, and moreover merciful people invite others with their works of mercy to be merciful.
To be merciful means in the concrete to do compassionate acts, the works of mercy, that is, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Pope Francis invites us through the Year of Mercy: “It is my burning desire that, during this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty. And let us enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy. Jesus introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching so that we can know whether or not we are living as his disciples. Let us rediscover these corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. And let us not forget the spiritual works of mercy: to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offences, bear patiently those who do us ill, and pray for the living and the dead.†(Cf. CCC 2447).
The Jubilee Year is a “year of graceâ€(Lk 4:18-19) and a “year of mercy†in which like the fig in the parable of the fig tree (Lk 13:6-9), people are given another year to bear fruit – of love, mercy, and justice. The followers of Jesus the Merciful One are in the world to show the merciful face of God to the people around them. It is time to walk the talk!
May Mary the Mother of Mercy help us all obtain God’s mercy and be merciful!
(Published in O Clarim, Macau Catholic Weekly, February 2016)
Fausto Gomez OP
The Extraordinary Holy Year Christians are celebrating focuses on mercy, on the virtue of mercy, which is a moral virtue and an effect of the virtue of charity. What happens to the virtue of justice? Does mercy replace justice?
In Sacred Scriptures, justice is justice/love and love is love/justice. The merciful love of Jesus goes beyond and above justice, but it presupposes justice, which is mini-charity, mini-compassion. Justice in Christian perspective is charitable and merciful justice.
“Be merciful as your Father is merciful†(Lk 6:36), Jesus says. How is the mercy of God our Father? Divine justice is different from human justice; it is a “superior justice†(Mt 5:20), the justice Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount. It is the justice of the father of the prodigal son and not the justice of the elder son (Lk 15:11-32), the justice of the owner of a vineyard who sends workers to his vineyard and at the end of the day, regardless of the number of working hours, pays the same wages to all (Mt 20:1-16). This kind of justice is mercy with justice, merciful justice. “God’s mercy works above his justice, not against it†(St. Thomas Aquinas). His mercy is the root and plenitude of justice. He being just, St. John of the Cross writes, “you feel that He loves you and gives gifts justly.â€
In our world everybody talks of justice – of “human justice†– but often many practice it, in a cruel, vengeful and unforgiving way, that is, in an unjust way. The saying “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth†(Mt 5:38) is a failure of an authentic justice. It is, as St. John Paul II writes, “a distortion of justice in the past, and today’s forms continue to be modelled on it.†In our world, this “alleged justice†continues unabated: “the neighbor is sometimes destroyed, killed, deprived of liberty or stripped of fundamental human rights†(Dives in Misericordia, DM, 12). Justice needs mercy to be purified. One of Dostoevsky’s characters tells another: “You have justice, but you lack compassion, and therefore you are unjust.†St. Thomas Aquinas says that mercy without justice is foolishness and justice without mercy is cruelty.
True human justice is not just giving to another what is his or hers. It is more radically “giving†to others their rights, including the right to life, to freedom, to education, to pursue happiness. True justice is equality and harmony. In Christian perspective, justice demands moreover that all have a share in the goods of creation created by God for all (Vatican II, GS, 69).
Justice needs love to be full and perfect justice. Justice in itself – and its language “I†and “mine†– is cold, while love – and its language “we†and “ours†– is warm. Mercy adds to the cold relationship of justice the warm, open relationship of love. For the Christian, justice – like all other saving virtues – is a mediation of charity or love, which is the “form†of all virtues.
In his wonderful Encyclical Letter Dives in Misericordia, St. John Paul II states that “mercy differs from justice,†“justice serves love,†and love is greater than justice “in the sense that it is primary and fundamental.†He adds: “The relationship between justice and love is manifested in mercy.†Jesus, the Sinless One, took upon himself our sins and died on the Cross for them and thus “paid†for us to God: divine justice is rooted on mercy and flows in merciful love (DM, 4-5, 7-8). Indeed, authentic mercy is “the most profound source of justice.†In a true sense, mercy is “the most perfect incarnation of equality†and therefore of justice, too. Love includes justice and moves to mercy “which in its turn reveals the perfection of justice†(DM 8). “Is justice enough?†It is not: merciful love is needed to shape human life in its different dimensions (DM 12).
In his excellent fist encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est (DCE), Pope Benedict XVI speaks powerfully and clearly on the relationship between justice and charity (and mercy), and the need of having the latter to purify and practice the former. Working for a just social order is the central task of politics. Indirectly, however the Church “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice†(DCE 28). The central role of the Church in society is caritas as love of neighbor, which means “love and concern for the other†(DCE, 7-8, 15). There will always be “the need for the service of love.†Even the most just State will not be able to provide “loving personal concern.†The Pope Emeritus adds: There is “necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbor,†as in the loving and merciful life of Christ. Indeed, “Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave†(DCE 18).
In His lovely Bull of Proclamation of the Jubilee of Mercy, Misericordiae Vultus (MV), Pope Francis underlines that mercy is above justice, but there cannot be true mercy without justice, which is the first step – “necessary and indispensable.†He added later: “In a world which all too often is merciless to the sinner and lenient to the sin, we need to cultivate a strong sense of justice, to discern and to do God’s will†(Christmas Eve Homily, December 24, 2015). But justice is not enough to have even a truly just world, mercy that surpasses justice is needed (MV 10, 20-21).
Does mercy replace justice? Certainly not! Mercy and justice meet! The prophet Micah tells us: “This is what the Lord asks of you, only this: ‘To act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with the Lord’†(Mi 6:8).
(Published in O Clarim, February, 2016)
Fausto Gomez, OP
Greek philosopher Plato says that the best definition of the virtue of justice is a just person. We know the definition of the virtue of mercy as compassion for the needy. It is a good definition but still – like all definitions – a bit cold and unmoving. The warm and moving definition of the virtue of mercy is the merciful person, and therefore the best definition of mercy is our infinitely merciful God.
God is merciful and compassionate, eternally merciful and sympathetic (Ps 118). He appears to Moses and presents himself thus: “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity†(Ex 34:6-7). The Lord is merciful: He forgives and heals and feeds and redeems and “renews your youth like an eagle’s†(Ps 103:3-5). He is like a faithful and loving spouse (Is 5:1-7), a father (Is 63:15-16; Ps 103:13), and, above all, a mother, better than the best of mothers: “Can a woman forget her baby, / feel no pity for the child she has borne? / Even if these were to forget, / I shall not forget you†(Is 49:15).
While in the Bible’s Old Testament God is called Father not often, in the New Testament Father is the favorite name to describe God, who is called the Father of Jesus Christ 203 times and the Father of believers 53 times (Theological Historical Commission, Holy Year 2000). “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead†(1 P 1:3). God is “the merciful Father†(2 Cor 1:3), rich in mercy because of his great love for us (Eph 2:4).
God, One God, is love (1 Jn 4: 8, 16) and is Trinity: He is One and Triune; not a solitary God but a loving God. Commenting St. Bonaventure, writes Walter Kasper in his monumental work Mercy: “From eternity God has a beloved and a co-beloved. He is thus God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,†“Triune Being in love.†He is eternal, almighty, omnipotent and merciful. His mercy, primary divine attribute, is an attribute which especially shows his omnipotence. God is merciful because He loves us with common love as his creatures and with special love as his image and likeness (Gen 1:26), who wishes to be united to us as One and Triune (Jn 14:23). God wants the salvation of all (II Pet 3:9; I Tim 2:4; I Tim 4:10). St Thomas comments: God wants the salvation of all, and therefore He offers sufficient graces to all – all means all!
Jesus is the face of the merciful and compassionate Father. “He who has seen me,†Jesus says to Philip at the Last Supper, “has seen the Father†(Jn 14:9). In Jesus, we know his Father (Jn 14:7). In a true sense, Jesus is Mercy (John Paul II), “Mercy made flesh†(Pope Francis, Opening the Year of Mercy).
In the Gospels, Jesus feels “compassion of the crowd†(Mt 9:36; 14:14; Mk 6:34). Jesus Christ is the Messiah announced by the prophets because he does the works of mercy: “The blind see again, the lame walk, those suffering from virulent skin- diseases are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the good news is proclaimed to the poor†(Lk 7:22). He is merciful like the Father of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11:32), the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37), and the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:11). As the Good Samaritan, He heals the sick, expels demons from the possessed, feeds the hungry, forgives sins and raises the dead to life (Mk 5:21-42). As a Good Shepherd, He goes as far as giving his life for his sheep (Mt 20:28).
The redemptive incarnation of Christ is the supreme work of his merciful and compassionate love. Jesus on the Cross as the way to his Resurrection represents the culmination of the revelation of mercy. According to John Paul II, “the Paschal Christ is the definitive incarnation of mercy.†He is universal mercy: Christ died for all without exception (cf. Mt 18:14; Rom 5:8; in CCC 605-606). How will He save those who do not know him at all: “Grace works in an unseen way†(Vatican II, GS 22; LG 16)
Mary, the Mother of Jesus and our Mother is merciful. Romanus the Melodist (6th century) writes: “Fittingly, the Merciful One has a merciful Mother.†Mary’s Magnificat is a song of praise, gratitude and merciful love, a merciful love that “extends from age to age…†(Lk 1:50). All the saints practiced merciful love.
The Church proclaims Jesus’ mercy. Mercy is the very foundation of the Church: the mercy of God incarnated in Jesus and poignantly manifested in his wounded Sacred Heart (cf. John Paul II, encyclical on mercy Dives in Misericordia 13). The Church is the Church of the Sacraments, in particular the Sacrament of Mercy or Penance, and the Sacrament of merciful love, or the Eucharist. The Church is “called above all to be a credible witness of mercy, professing and living it as the core of the revelation of Jesus Christ†(Pope Francis, MV 25). Pope Francis has often applied to the Church the image of a field hospital after a battle. She is the tender mother who cares for the wounded on the roads of life, principally for the most wounded.
May he Church, the People of God show to our world, in a special way this Jubilee Year of Mercy, the merciful face of Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the Crucified and Risen Lord!
(Also published in O Clarim, Macau February 2016)
Fausto Gomez, OP
On a Friday afternoon Linus tells his friend Charlie Brown of the Peanuts Family: Have a happy week-end. The round-headed boy, the kind master of Snoopy answers him: Thank you. And in pensive mood asks Linus, the kid with the security blanket: Incidentally, what is happiness? Through the Jubilee Year of Mercy, some are asking, Incidentally, what is mercy?
Philosopher Spinoza says that virtue fascinates and attracts. Virtue is a good habit, a firm internal inclination that directs persons to live as flourishing human beings,a trait of character which shapes our vision of life.
Virtues, sources of true happiness, put order in our lives and harmonize dynamically our potencies, traits and skills. Virtues are harmoniously interconnected like the parts of an organism. There are the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, which are God gifts, and the moral/cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, which are God gifts and are also acquired by us through repetition of similar acts. Rooted in divine grace, the infused virtues are perfected by the Gifts of the Holy Spirit present in the graceful soul, which is inhabited by the Blessed Trinity.
The virtue of mercy is deeply connected with the virtue of charity which is love of God and love of all neighbor, which is the virtue above all others (CCC, 25), the form of all virtues, their mother and coordinator. A free gift from God, charity is joyful, peaceful and merciful. Mercy is a fruit of charity (Gal 5:22-23), an internal effect of charity as love of neighbor. It is a great virtue proceeding from charity or from human love and presupposing justice. Mercy is above justice, but there cannot be true mercy without justice and no full justice without merciful love. The virtue of mercy, a gift of God love, may also be acquired through repetition of compassionate acts of love, of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Through the practice of mercy, we participate in the lives of other human beings and in the life of the Blessed Trinity. God One and Triune is merciful and in his mercy shines in a great manner his omnipotence. The greatest virtue human persons may possess is charity, which unites them to God and makes them similar – in a real but limited way -, to him. Among all the virtues related to the neighbor, mercy is the highest virtue (St. Thomas Aquinas).
Mercy or compassion can be a mere emotion or passion of the sense appetite or a virtue of the intellectual appetite, the will, in which case it is also related to the passions. If compassion is only a passion of the senses when facing the misery of another then it is not a virtue but a passion or feeling or emotion that does nothing to alleviate the suffering of the neighbor. If it is a free movement of the will regulated by reason, aroused by the suffering of another person and leading to do something positive about that suffering, then it is the virtue of compassion or mercy: affective and effective mercy.
Compassion or sympathy is opposed to apathy and antipathy. Apathy is indifference to the sufferings of others. A person who does not transcend himself or herself, who is self-centered is not compassionate. Antipathy is the opposite of compassion. It is an attitude of dislike if not condemnation of some others, like the poor, the uneducated, the refugees, the migrants, women, the elderly, and children. Empathy, moreover, is wider than compassion, for it places the empathetic in the shoes of the others – not only of those who are needy (compassion), but also of those who are happy (see Rom 12:15).
There may be also true and false compassion. True compassion entails to be moved by the neighbor suffering and do something good about it, while false compassion, or pseudo-mercy, is ending our neighbor life – be an unborn child through abortion, or a terminally ill patient or a dependent elderly through euthanasia and assisted suicide. St. John Paul II writes: True compassion leads to sharing another pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear.
Mercy then is heartfelt sympathy for another’s distress that impels us to succor him if we can (St. Augustine). Mercy is having compassion of heart for the unfortunate and unhappy. Mercy or compassion entails to suffer the other pain as our own. To be in the place of the other is to be close to the victims of poverty, injustice, and violence.
Mercy then is not merely to feel sentimentally the pain of the other, but also to do something to relieve that pain as if it were ours. Are we obliged to do something for all the needy we meet on our daily journey of life? No one can help all persons in need and therefore we are not obliged. However, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, we are obliged to help one who is in urgent need.
St. Caesarius of Arles writes: There are two kinds of mercy, mercy on earth and mercy in heaven, human mercy and divine mercy. What is human mercy then? It makes you concerned for the hardships of the poor. What is divine mercy like? It forgives sinners.
Mercy is the essence of the Gospel and the key to Christian life (Cardinal Walter Kasper). May the Jubilee Year of Mercy help us all make of mercy our lifestyle!
(Published also in O Clarim, The Macau Catholic Weekly, December 2015))
MEDITATION ON ADVENT: THE LORD IS COMING!
Advent and Lent are the most important seasons of the liturgical year: both prepare us for the greatest feasts of Christianity. While Lent is the time of penance and prepares Christians for Easter, Advent is the time of hope and prepares the believers in Jesus for his different comings to us.
Advent means “coming,†“arriving.†Who is coming? Jesus! Christian faith speaks of three kinds of Jesus’ coming to us: his first coming at Christmas, his intermediate or middle coming through the journey of our earthly life, and his final coming at the end of time. “In his first coming our Lord came in the flesh and in our weakness; in his middle coming he comes in spirit and in power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty†(St. Bernard).
As the first Sundays of Advent remind us, Jesus will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead – all of us. When will his final coming will take place? Nobody knows except our Father in heaven (Mt 24:36). Well, there are always some groups of Christians who keep telling us of Jesus’ immediate final coming. Someone asked Jesus: “Will few be saved?†Jesus answer to him and to us: “Keep on striving to enter through the narrow door†(Lk 13:22-24). What really matters for us is that we keep striving and try to be always prepared and ready to receive Jesus in his final coming at the end of time, and also at the end of our personal life here on earth.
There is between the coming of Christ at Christmas and his final coming at the end of the world, what St. Bernard calls “the middle coming,†which is also very important and the most frequent in our temporal life. Benedict XVI says that the middle coming takes place in a great variety of ways: “The Lord comes through his Word; he comes in the sacraments, especially in the most Holy Eucharist; he comes into my life through words or events.†He continues coming to us in a special manner in the poor and afflicted: “I was hungry and you gave me food… I was sick and you visited me†(Mt 25:35-36).
Through the liturgy of the four weeks of Advent, we Christians are reminded in particular of the coming of Christ at the end of time and, especially during the final weeks, of Jesus’ coming at Christmas. Our Lord Jesus Christ came the first time twenty one centuries ago in history, when He was born at Bethlehem, and He will come again this year in the liturgy of Christmas.
How do we prepare properly for the different comings of Christ into our lives? The Church invites us through Advent to acquire and deepen a hopeful attitude, which is really the attitude of life: we are pilgrims on the way to our God’s home. Christian hope is not “a pie in the sky,†but a commitment to change the present – our present. Rooted in the past, looking towards the future, Christian hope concentrates on the present, on the “nowâ€: God, the object of our hope is “the eternal now†(Hebr 3:7-8). The only thing in our hands is not the past or the future but the present. To be truly hopeful a Christian – and other believers – tries earnestly to be faithful to the present moment: “I just keep concentrating on the present moment… An instant is a treasure. Let us see each instant as if there were no other†(St. Therese of the Child Jesus). What does it mean to live the present, this moment as if there were no other? It means to do what we have to do every moment, every “now†with love. We journey to the house of our Father with steps of love.
To be truly hopeful entails to be vigilant, that is, to be watchful: to see with the eyes of faith and love the realities of our life and our society, and try to transform ourselves and communities according to the values of the Gospel, including justice, solidarity and compassion. To be vigilant, to keep awake means to fight evil, sin, which is always a betrayal of God’s love. Sins of selfishness, pride, lust, insensibility to the needs of the poor are not steps forward or God-ward on our journey of life and of Advent, but steps backward. To be vigilant includes to be temperate by not allowing the body, or our passions, to lead us: “The body under the spirit and the spirit under God.†To be hopeful and vigilant, we are asked to be always motivated by love – of God, of neighbors, of the needy neighbors.
To prepare properly for the encounter with the Lord, we have to be prayerful: “To prepare the way means to pray well; it means thinking humbly of oneself†(St. Augustine). To be humbly prayerful means to ask the Lord constantly for his grace and graces for we are weak: “If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders toil†(Ps 127:1); “the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?†(Ps 27:1). The Eucharist in particular is our especial nourishment for the pilgrimage.
Advent then is a time to prepare for the middle comings of Jesus, his final coming, and most proximately for Christmas. Indeed, the Lord is near!
May Isaiah, the prophet of Advent, Luke, the evangelist of the New Liturgical Year (2015-2016: C), and Mary, Our Lady of Hope accompany us on the journey of Advent!
Come, Lord Jesus, come!
(Published by O Clarim, Macau November 27, 2015)
FAUSTO GOMEZ, OP
CALLED TO BE SAINTS
On November 1 of every year, Christians celebrate joyfully the Feast of All Saints: the canonized and beatified by our Holy Mother Church and the (not just multitude but) megatude of anonymous saints who lived a holy life, including members of our families, especially our mothers. On the eleventh month of every year, we are reminded of our vocation to holiness.
Vatican II underlines that all Christians are called to holiness, that is, to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. (Cf. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, LG, 40; Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCC, 2013)
Holiness is loving union with God. For us Christians, holiness is loving union with God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Consoler who is the love of the Father and the Son. Loving union with Christ is called “mystical union, because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments – ‘the holy mysteries’ – and, in Him, in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.†All Christians are called to the mystical union with Christ, although only some receive special graces or extraordinary signs of the mystical life (CCC 2014).
The Holy Spirit, the sanctifier, is the agent of holiness. To Him, holiness is appropriated. (See LG, chapter V). The union with God is union of love with God (vertical dimension). It is also union of love with all neighbors (horizontal dimension).
4.2.7
Holiness is a gift of God. As free human beings, we are asked to respond freely to this gift. Our response is our availability: we have to be available like the Virgin Mary and the saints. Our available cooperation means to say yes to God, to his grace that calls us to holiness, to perfection, to happiness; in a word, to do the will of God always. Holiness entails a graceful life, a virtuous life: a life grounded on grace, practiced in virtues, above all the virtue of charity as love of God and neighbor.
The way of holiness passes through the cross. “There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle†(II Tim 4). Spiritual progress implies self-denial and mortification. These lead gradually to live in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes (CCC, 2015). As Christians, we are called to be transfigured on the mountain of our life. This transfiguration, like the Transfiguration of Christ (Mt 17:1-9) gives strength to walk patiently and even joyfully our Way of the Cross.
St. Robert’s father told him: “Son, the only mistake we make in life is not to be a saint.†Indeed, as French convert Leon Bloy says, “There is sadness, only one: the sadness of not being a saint.†Bloy asked himself: “Is it hard to be a saint?†His answer: “No, just one step beyond mediocrity and you are a saint.†Well, perhaps, a few steps!
How to become a saint? By the sacrament of Baptism we become holy in our being as Christians. By our practice of faith we become holy and holier in our life. St. Paul advises us: Live “as is proper for God’s holy people†(Eph 5:3); be clothed with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience†(Col 3:12); do the will of God in all things, even – like Jesus – by being “obedient unto death, even to death on the cross†(Phil 2:7-8).
We become saints by being authentic followers of Jesus Christ, the Holy One. Jesus is our way of holiness, and his virtuous life, the path of holiness. The practice of virtues make us holy and happy. Following Jesus, we imitate his prayerful, merciful and selfless life, his boundless love for all, in particular the poor, sick and abandoned. With God’s grace and love, we try to love God and neighbor as Christ loves us (cf. Jn 13:34; LG 42).
Holiness is one: loving union with Christ in the Church, which is holy. However the paths of holiness are many and each one is called to follow the best path for him or her, that is, his or her personal vocation. A single person, a married couple, a religious woman, a priest or a cardinal are all called by the Lord to imitate him essentially in the same way and individually according to the specific path each one is called to follow Jesus. We remember always that all the saints, headed by Mary who is above all saints, point to Jesus. St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, a great devotee of Our Lady writes: “If you call Mary, the echo is Jesus.â€
Let us be devoted to the Blessed Trinity. Let us be good children of Mary our Mother. Let us venerate the saints of our devotion and imitate their virtues. Let us realize that according to the tradition of the Church guardian angels protect us when facing dangers, and intercede for us before God.
May Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the saints of our personal devotion accompany us on the journey of life to heaven – to a life in God One and Triune, in Jesus, in the company of Mary and the saints and our family and friends, and the whole company of heaven!
Hard to be a saint? Just a few steps beyond mediocrity. With God’s grace, we try to journey always with steps of love!
(Published by O Clarim, October 23, 2015)
FAUSTO GOMEZ, OP
