Salesian Sunday Reflection
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 18, 2023
Today’s readings remind us of our need to share our gift of faith in Jesus Christ with others. We are also reminded once again that we are a “kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” St. Francis de Sales, particularly, reminded Christians that they are all called to holiness, which entails a relationship with God and our neighbor. But the call to holiness has a diversity of expressions while preserving the unity of doctrine in the Church. St. Francis writes:
There was a famous Greek flower arranger whose name was Glycera. She was very skillful at arranging flowers in a variety of ways. Out of the same flowers she made so many different kinds of bouquets that a well-known Greek painter, who wished to portray her different arrangements, was unable to do so. He could not vary his paintings in as many ways as Glycera did her bouquets. In like manner the Holy Spirit disposes and orders in many different ways devout instructions to us through the tongues and pens of God’s servants. Although the doctrine is always the same, statements of it differ greatly according to the various ways in which their books are composed.
The flowers I present to you, my reader, are the same. The bouquet I have made out of previous writers differs from others because it has been framed in a different order and way. My purpose is to instruct those who live in town, within families, and by their state of life are obliged to live an ordinary life as to outward appearances.
Frequently, on the pretext of some supposed impossibility, these people will not even think of undertaking a holy life. It is their opinion that just as no animal dares to taste certain herbs, so no one should aspire to Christian holiness as long as they are living under the pressure of worldly affairs. But just as the mother of pearl fish lives in the sea without taking in a single drop of salt water and just as the firefly passes through flames without burning its wings, so also a strong, resolute soul can live in the world without being infected by any of its moods, find sweet springs of holiness amid its salty waves and fly through the flames of earthly lusts without burning the wings of its holy desires for a holy life. True this is a difficult task. But it is labor that refreshes and revives the heart.
(Adapted from St. Francis de Sales, Introduction of a Devout Life)
