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“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us…”
Today’s Scripture readings emphasize that God is the one who has taken the initiative in our salvation. God has borne us up on eagle wings and made us his special possession - we are a kingdom of priests, God’s holy people.
St. Paul is caught up in the wonder of God’s love for us: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us ...When we were God’s enemies, God reconciled to himself by the death of his Son.”
God is love, and the nature of love is to go outside itself toward others. God not only took the initiative in loving us. In the sacrificial death of Jesus, God proves in an incontestable way that we are loved far beyond any considerations of our worthiness. That is the mind-blowing mystery of our faith: we have been redeemed in total love by a God whose love is completely benevolent. God gains nothing by loving us. We gain everything by being loved by God.
Sometimes we can get too preoccupied with our duties as believers, our obligations as members of the people of God. We forget that God first moved toward us in love. We don’t have to seek God; God has found us.
Jesus has reconciled us to God by his death. Our heart-felt acceptance of our reconciliation can lead us to draw confidence from God’s boundless love and take greater hold of the life God offers us in Jesus. Our hope is sure. We have good reason to make God our boast every day of our life.
Our lives can become a joyful celebration of the grace that is ours. We are gifted by God’s love every day.
What return can we make to the Lord for his gift of love? Nothing better than freely and generously sharing that gift of God’s love with everyone we meet. May our thankfulness be evident each day as we choose to be an announcement of God’s gracious love in everything we say and do.
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“Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”
In a letter to the Duc de Bellegarde, Francis de Sales wrote:
“Keep your eyes steadfastly fixed on that blissful day of eternity towards which the course of years bears us on; and these as they pass, themselves pass by us stage by stage until we reach the end of the road. But in the meantime, in each passing moment there lies enclosed as in a tiny kernel the seed of all eternity; and in our humble little works of devotion there lies hidden the prize of everlasting glory, and the little pains we take to serve God lead to the repose of a bliss that can never end.” (Stopp, Selected Letters, p. 236)
Seen through the lens of Salesian spirituality, St. Paul’s exhortation makes absolute sense. The seed “of all eternity” isn’t found in the past; it isn’t found in the future. It is found only in each and every present moment as it comes!
Just this day.
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“The abundance of their joy and their profound poverty overflowed into a wealth of generosity...”
In Part III of his Introduction to the Devout Life Francis de Sales counseled:
“We must practice real poverty in the midst of all the goods and riches God has given us. Frequently give up some of your property by giving it with a generous heart to the poor. To give away what we have is to impoverish ourselves in proportion as we give, and the more we give the poorer we become. It is true that God will repay us not only in the next world but even in this one.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 15, p. 165)
In his own words, Francis de Sales is describing what St. Paul witnessed in the early Christian community. People practiced the virtue of poverty by sharing their possessions with others and in the process enriched themselves as well. In the Salesian tradition poverty isn’t about having nothing – poverty is about sharing what we have with others. Poverty isn’t about doing without – it’s about being generous with and to other people.
Today, how can we practice poverty, that is, how can we give to others with “a generous heart”?
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“Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”
“Karma” is a word that comes from Buddhist and Hindu traditions. It can be defined in many ways, for example:
- the law of cause and effect
- what goes around comes around
- you reap what you sow
- totally innocent victims are rare
- no good deed goes unpunished
- your actions create ripples that spread out, echo and constructively or destructively interfere with the ripples from the actions of others
St. Paul may have known nothing about karma, but in effect, it is this notion about which he wrote in today’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. For his part, Jesus tells us that whatever we do won’t simply come back to us, but that whatever we do will come back to us thirty, sixty and a hundred-fold! As we heard yesterday in Part III of his Introduction to the Devout Life Francis de Sales counseled:
“We must practice real poverty in the midst of all the goods and riches God has given us. Frequently give up some of your property by giving it with a generous heart to the poor. To give away what we have is to impoverish ourselves in proportion as we give, and the more we give the poorer we become. It is true that God will repay us not only in the next world but even in this one.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 15, p. 165)
What we do in this life does matter. In fact, everything we do has the potential for becoming a spiritual, moral and/or actual boomerang in our lives. God will repay us not only in the next life but even in this one.So, what seeds for tomorrow will you sow bountifully - today?
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“Please put up with me.”
In a letter of spiritual direction and encouragement, St. Francis de Sales made the following observation:
“To be a servant of God means to be charitable towards one’s neighbor, have an unshakable determination in the superior part of one’s soul to obey the will of God, trusting in God with a very humble humility and simplicity, to lift oneself up as often as one fails, endure oneself with all one’s abjections and quietly put up with others in their imperfections.” (Stopp, Selected Letters, p. 140)
As followers of Jesus we are challenged to “put up” with one another as an expression of our love for one another. Note, however, that while Francis de Sales says in this case that we must “put up” with another’s imperfections, in other cases he also reminds us that if we really love others we must not put up with another’s sinfulness or immorality. In the case of the latter we are obligated to draw their attention to it, not as an occasion to embarrass them, but as an opportunity to help them to become more of the person that God wants them to be. What’s the moral to the story? When it comes to the people we love, there is a distinction that we need to make – there are some things with which we need to put up, but there are other things about which we need to be put out.
And to point it out!
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“Store up treasures in heaven…” In his Introduction to the Devout Life (in a chapter entitled, “We must be Faithful to both Great and Little Tasks”), Francis de Sales wrote:
“The Sacred Spouse implies that He is pleased to accept the great deeds of devout persons, that their least and lowest deeds are also acceptable to Him, and that to serve Him as He wishes we must have great care to serve Him well in both great, lofty matters and in small, unimportant things. With love we can capture His heart by the one just as well as by the other…For a single cup of water God has promised to his faithful a sea of endless bliss. Since such opportunities present themselves from moment to moment it will be a great means of storing up vast spiritual riches if only you use them well.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 35, pp. 213-214)
Do you want to store up treasures in heaven? Do good things for God – be they little or great – as often as you can on this earth.
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“The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.”
Francis de Sales wrote:
“I have often wondered who is the most mortified of the saints that I know, and after some reflection I have come to the conclusion that it was St. John the Baptist. He went into the desert when he was five years old, and knew that our Savior came to earth in a place quite close by, perhaps only one or two days’ journey. How his heart, touched with love of his Savior from the time he was in his mother’s womb, must have longed to enjoy Christ’s presence. Yet, he spends twenty-five years in the desert without coming to see our Lord even once; and leaving the desert he catechized without visiting him but waiting until our Lord comes to seek him out. Then, after he has baptized Jesus, he does not follow him but stays behind to do his appointed task. How truly mortified was John’s spirit! To be so near his Savior and not see him, to have Him so close and not enjoy His presence! Is this not a completely detached spirit, detached even from God himself so as to do God’s will, and to serve God, as it were to leave God for God, and not to cling to God in order to love him better? The example of this great saint overwhelms me with its grandeur.” (Stopp, Selected Letters, Page 74)
“How truly mortified was John the Baptist’s spirit.” What does Francis de Sales mean? The American Heritage Dictionary defines mortify as “to discipline by self-denial or self-inflicted privation.” John did, indeed, discipline himself: he denied himself many things in order to be faithful to his understanding of whom God wanted him to be: a light to the nations, a light to highlight the coming of Jesus.Think about it! John spends twenty-five years in the desert preparing to announce Christ’s coming. Despite growing up in the same general area, John meets Christ only once – when he baptized him at the Jordan River – only to remain behind as Jesus recruited others to be his apostles and disciples! John never sees his cousin again before dying in prison at the hands of one of King Herod’s executioners.
John was faithful to the role God wanted him to play in the plan of salvation and he played that role supremely well. Listen to what Jesus himself said: “I tell you the truth: among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” (Matthew 11: 11) “Yet,” Jesus continues, “anyone who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” John shows us that being faithful to God’s will often requires that we deprive ourselves of the desire to “have it all” and to dedicate ourselves to discerning – and embracing – our unique roles in God’s plan of salvation.
Today, what unique role might God ask you to play in his ongoing plan of salvation just this day?
