Daily meditations from St Josemaria

[NDIrish]

“Take me by the hand, Lord”
There are a great number of Christians who would be apostles …, if they were not afraid. They are the same people who then complain, because the Lord - they say! - has abandoned them. How do they treat God? (Furrow, 103)

He has called us too and asks us, as he asked James and John: “Are you ready to drink the cup” — that cup which means giving yourself fully to the will of the Father — "which I am going to drink?” Possumus!: “Yes! We are ready!” [1] Is the reply of John and James. Are you and I really ready to carry out, in everything, the will of our Father God? Have we given our Lord our whole heart, or are we attached to ourselves and our interests and comfort and self‑love? Is there anything in our lives out of keeping with our Christianity, something which makes us unwilling to mend our ways? Today we are given a chance to set things straight.

But first of all, we must be convinced that Jesus is putting these questions to us personally. He is the one who asks them, not I. I wouldn’t dare even put them to myself. I am praying aloud, and each of you, silently, is admitting to our Lord: “Lord, how useless I am, what a coward I have been! How many mistakes I’ve made, over and over again.” And we can go further and say: “It’s good, Lord, you have kept me up with your hand; for, left to myself, I am capable of the most disgraceful things. Don’t let me go; keep on treating me as a little child. I want to be strong and brave and manly. But you must help me. I am a clumsy creature. Take me by the hand, Lord, and make sure your Mother is also by my side to guard me. And so, possumus! We can; we will be able to have you as our model.” (Christ is passing by, 15)

[1] Matt 20:22: Potestis bibere calicem quem ego bibiturus sum? Possumus!

 

[NDIrish]

“A man who loves the world knows that the world is the place where he finds Christ”
You need formation, because you need a profound sense of responsibility, if you are to encourage and direct the activity of Catholics in public life and do so with the respect that everyone’s freedom deserves, reminding each and every one that they have to be consistent with their faith. (The Forge, 712)

A man who knows that the world, and not just the church, is the place where he finds Christ, loves that world. He endeavours to become properly formed, intellectually and professionally. He makes up his own mind with complete freedom about the problems of the environment in which he moves, and then he makes his own decisions. Being the decisions of a Christian, they result from personal reflection, in which he endeavours, in all humility, to grasp the Will of God in both the unimportant and the important events of his life.

But it would never occur to such a Christian to think or to say that he was stepping down from the temple into the world to represent the Church, or that his solutions are ‘ the Catholic solutions’ to problems. That would be completely inadmissible! That would be clericalism, ‘official Catholicism’, or whatever you want to call it. In any case, it means doing violence to the very nature of things. You must foster everywhere a genuine ‘lay outlook’, which will lead to three conclusions: be sufficiently honest, so as to shoulder one’s own personal responsibility; be sufficiently Christian, so as to respect those brothers in the Faith who, in matters of free discussion, propose solutions which differ from those which each one of us maintains; and be sufficiently Catholic so as not to use our Mother the Church, involving her in human factions…

Interpret, then, my words as what they are: a call to exercise your rights every day, and not merely in time of emergency. A call to fulfil honourably your commitments as citizens, in all fields — in politics and in financial affairs, in university life and in your job — accepting with courage all the consequences of your free decisions and the personal independence which corresponds to each one of you. A Christian ‘lay outlook’ of this sort will enable you to flee from all intolerance, from all fanaticism. To put it in a positive way, it will help you to live in peace with all your fellow citizens, and to promote this understanding and harmony in all spheres of social life. (Conversations, 116-117)

 

[blessedstar]

Beautiful