Nov. 21, 2010 Sunday: Christ the King, "Holiness"
The following talk on "Holiness" was given on Nov. 17 for Marian Servants at St. George.
Click to hear audio of the talk
I could have listed another name
on that board like, ‘Princess Diana.’ If you remember on August 31, 1987,
Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. She was only 36 years
old. For weeks, we saw on TV how mountain of flowers and tributes were showered
on her death. A week later, on September 5, Mother Teresa of Calcutta died. Yet
her death was overshadowed by the continuing coverage of the death of Princess
Diana. If I asked you, “Do you think the word ‘holy’ fits Princess Diana” how
would you answer? We know she did numerous humanitarian works all over the
world. We know she was kind and gentle woman. Why do we hesitate to use the
word, ‘holy’ with Princess Diana?
In the chapels of Mother
Teresa’s sisters all around the world, there is a very succinct sentence that
Jesus spoke that is affixed next to the crucifix, ‘I Thirst.’ The one great
secret of Mother Teresa’s soul was the mystery of Jesus’ thirst. Thirst for her
signifies deep, intense desire. As Fr. Joseph Langford says in his book about
Mother Teresa, “The divine thirst points to the mystery of God’s freely chosen
longing for man. Simply put, though nothing in God needs us, everything in God
wants us—deeply and intensely.” In the depth of the mystery of who God is as
Trinity, we see “the depths of God’s infinite longing to love and be loved.”
Mother Teresa said in one of her letters to her sisters, “the closer you come
to Jesus, the better you will know His thirst…Whenever we come close to Him—we
become partners of Our Lady, St. John, Magdalen.” So what does it mean to be
holy? After receiving the fruits of silence and prayer, we possess in the
depths of our heart this very thirst of God for souls within us, which propels
us to love and to serve. This is being the channel of God’s holiness. Mother
Teresa said,
·
How unlike Him we are.
How little love, little compassion, how little forgiveness, how little kindness
we have. We are not worthy to be so close to Him--to enter His heart. Let us
find out what part of His body is wounded by our sins. Let us not go alone but
put our hands in His. Our Father loves us. He has given us a name. We belong to
Him with all our misery, our sin, our weakness, our goodness. We are His. Our
way of life depends on our being rooted in Christ Jesus our Lord by our
deliberate choice.
Click to hear audio of the talk
Mother Teresa: No Greater
Love – On Being Holy
Opening Prayer
Offering of myself as a Victim of Holocaust to God's Merciful Love
(St. Therese of Lisieux)
O My God! Most Blessed Trinity,
I desire to Love You and make You Loved, to work for the glory of Holy Church
by saving souls on earth and liberating those suffering in purgatory. I desire
to accomplish Your will perfectly and to reach the degree of glory You have
prepared for me in Your Kingdom. I desire, in a word, to be a saint, but I feel
my helplessness and I beg You, O my God! to be Yourself my Sanctity!
In the evening of this life, I
shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count
my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed
in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of
Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!
In order to live in one single
act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL
LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite
tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may
become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!
Introduction
Several years ago, when I was
still a seminarian, I dropped by Mother Teresa sisters at St. Agnes to say hi.
The sisters then whisked me to the CCD classrooms and asked me to say hi to the
kids. Then, a sister said, “Brother Paul, we’re missing a catechist for 8th
grade, would you sub in the class?” I said hesitantly, “Yes.” Once in the
class, I asked what the topic of the day was, and they said, “Holiness.” So on
the blackboard, I wrote two names. On one side, I wrote, ‘Mother Teresa’ and on
the other, I wrote, ‘Madonna’ (the pop star) Then I said to the kids, “Do you
think the word ‘holy’ fits Mother Teresa?” All the kids answered, “Yes.” Then I
asked, “Do you think the word ‘holy’ fits Madonna?” All the kids laughed and
said, “No.” Then I asked, “So what is holiness?” The kids hesitated. It is easy to identify a person who is
holy, yet difficult to describe what holiness is.
Now suppose on the board, I
write ‘Mother Teresa’ on one side and your name on the other side. Do you think
the word ‘holy’ fits your name? Are you hesitating? Do you not go to mass
frequently like Mother Teresa? Do you not do the works of charity like Mother
Teresa? Mother Teresa went to confession every week. How often do you go to
confession? Monthly? It must mean that she has more sins to confess than you
do, right?
Humility
If Mother Teresa were to be
asked to write her name on one side, who would she write on the other side?
Jesus. And what would she say about herself? She would say, “I am not holy.
Only He is holy.” If we want to understand how to be holy, the very foundation
of holiness is humility—knowing that only Jesus is holy, and we are only
channels of His holiness. So Mother Teresa said,
·
We should not be
concerned with the instrument God uses to speak to us, but with what God is
saying to us. I'm just a little pencil in His hand. Tomorrow, if He finds
somebody more helpless, more hopeless, I think He will do still greater things
with her and through her.
·
To become holy we need
humility and prayer. Jesus taught us how to pray, and He also told us to learn
from Him to be meek and humble of heart. Neither of these can we do unless we
know what silence is. Both humility and prayer grow from an ear, mind, and
tongue that have lived in silence with God, for in the silence of the heart God
speak.
Humility
and Silence
Do you
remember one of her simple sayings?
“The
fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is
love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.” We all had
a time when we had a period of peace, and all of a sudden, we lose that peace;
we go from order to disorder. In order to regain that peace, we try everything,
except the one thing we need to try. An analogy I can think of is driving a standard
transmission car on a highway. As you cruise on the highway at 70 miles per
hour, all of a sudden you see a line of cars not moving and you hit the breaks;
this happens everyday if you drive eastbound on I-12 toward Denham Springs.
When we lose peace, it’s like our car going from 70 miles down to a crawl. And
if you have a standard transmission, you have to downshift to the first gear to
make your car start moving again. The moment we lose peace, we should not be
downshifting to doing more service activities. Mother Teresa suggests
downshifting all the way down to silence, in order to build back up prayer, then
faith, then love, then service, and ultimately, peace. So Mother Teresa said,
·
Let us really take
trouble to learn the lesson of holiness from Jesus, whose heart was meek and
humble. The first lesson from this heart is an examination of our conscience,
and the rest--love and service--follow at once.
·
Examination is not our
work alone, but a partnership between us and Jesus. We should not waste our
time in useless looks at our own miseries, but should lift our hearts to God
and let His light enlighten us.
One of the prayers that Mother
Teresa prayed frequently was the Litany of Humility. I recommend all of us to
pray this daily, for I have found it to be one of the most effective ways of
Examination of Conscience. It was composed by Cardinal Rafael, the Secretary of
State for the Holy See under Pope Pius X. It’s divided into three-parts.
First part asks us to set aside
our attempts to make ourselves feel “special” through the acceptance and
admiration of others. Second part asks us to overcome our repugnance to feeling
emotionally hurt by others. The last part asks us to seek the good of others in
all things, setting aside all competition, even at our own expense.
I will read it slowly, and I
will ask you to respond to each of the litany.
Litany of Humility
(Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val,
d1930)
O Jesus! meek and humble of
heart, hear me.
From the desire of being
esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being
extolled, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being
honored, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being
praised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being
preferred, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being
consulted, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being
approved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being
humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering
rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being
calumniated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being
forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being
ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being
suspected, Deliver me, Jesus.
That others may be loved more
than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more
than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to
desire it.
That in the opinion of the
world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I
set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to
desire it.
That others may be praised and I
unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to
desire it.
That others may be preferred to
me in everything, Jesus, grant me the
grace to desire it.
That others may become holier
than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
How many times have we tried to
make ourselves feel “special” through the acceptance and admiration of others?
How many times have we avoided doing something because we feared being hurt by
others. And how many times have we failed to seek the good of others,
especially when we were overcome by envy, jealousy, and pride. By praying this Litany daily, we are
asking God to give us the grace to overcome these temptations.
I Thirst
·
I have the impression
that the passion of Christ is being relived everywhere. Are we willing to share
in this passion? Are we willing to share people's sufferings, not only in poor
countries but all over the world? It seems to me that this great poverty of
suffering in the West is much harder to solve. When I pick up some starving
person off the street and offer him a bowl of rice or a piece of bread, I can
satisfy his hunger. But a person that has been beaten or feels unwanted or
unloved or fearful or rejected by society experiences a kind of poverty that is
much more painful and deep. The cure is much more difficult to find.
·
People are hungry for
God. People are hungry for love. Are we aware of that? Since we cannot see
Christ, we cannot express our love to Him. But we do see our neighbor, and we
can do for him what we would do for Christ if He were visible. Let us be open
to God, so that He can use us. Let us put love into action. Let us begin with
our family, with our closest neighbors. It is the individual that is important
to us. In order to love a person, one must come close to him or her.
Back when I was a seminarian
serving at Our Lady of Mercy, I used to help with communion service at a nursing
home. I befriended a volunteer in her 80s who organized the communion service
and some of the social events there. She told me that 20 years ago her mother
was placed in that nursing home. Every time she came to visit her mother, she
saw those sad, abandoned faces sitting near the entrance of the nursing home
waiting for their children who seldom came to visit. After her mother died, she
continued to come because she had the desire in her heart to serve those
elderly like her own mother. She had in her heart God’s thirst for these souls.
This call to holiness is nothing
but God’s call for us to be transformed into the image and likeness of His Son.
Mother said,
·
The perfect will of God
for us: You must be holy. Holiness is the greatest gift that God can give us
because for that reason He created us. Submission, for a person who loves, is
more than a duty; it is the secret of holiness.
·
Saint Francis said each
one of us is what he is in the eyes of God--nothing more, nothing less. We are
all called to be saints. There is nothing extraordinary about this call. We all
have been created in the image of God to love and to be loved.
·
"It is God's will
that you grow in holiness" (1 Thessalonians 4:3). His Sacred Heart is
filled with an insatiable longing to see us advance toward holiness.
·
We cannot be renewed
without the humility to recognize what needs to be renewed in ourselves.
This transformation into the
image and likeness of Jesus involves us following Our Lord’s Way of the Cross.
Mother said,
·
Don't be afraid. There
must be the cross, there must be suffering, a clear sign that Jesus has drawn
you so close to His heart that He can share His suffering with you. Without God
we can spread only pain and suffering around us.
We think of suffering as
something coming from outside of us. But the deeper suffering is of denying our
will to make room for God’s Will. Mother said,
·
We all long for heaven
where God is, but we have it in our power to be in heaven with Him right now,
to be happy with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means
loving like He loves, helping like He helps, giving as He gives, serving as He
serves, rescuing as He rescues, being with Him twenty-four hours a day,
touching Him in His distressing disguise.
·
Jesus is going to do
great things with you if you let Him, and if you don't try to interfere with
Him. We interfere with God's plans when we push in someone or something else
not suitable for us. Be strict with yourself, and then be very strict with what
you are receiving from the outside. People may come with wonderful ideas, with
beautiful things, but anything that takes you away from the reality of what you
have given to God must remain outside.
We will be constantly tempted to
choose our will over God’s. As Padre Pio said, “The life of a Christian is
nothing but a perpetual struggle
against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection
except at the price of pain.” Mother said,
·
Let us ask our Lord to be
with us in our moments of temptation. We must not be afraid, because God loves
us and will not fail to help us. Hence, have a deep reverence for our own
person; reverence for others, treating all with accepted marks of courtesy, but
abstaining from sentimental feelings or ill-ordered affections.
Do you know what age Mother
Teresa began her work in the slums? When she was 40 years old! She had been a
Loreto Sister for over 20 years as a teacher. Then God began calling her in her
midlife. She felt the tug, but she was frightened. She wrote in her diary, “I
am so afraid.—This fear shows me how much I love myself.—I am afraid of the
suffering that will come—through leading that Indian life [of the poor],
clothing like them, eating like them, sleeping like them—living with them and
never having anything my way. How much comfort has taken possession of my
heart.” She argued with God, “My own Jesus—what You ask it is beyond me […] I
am unworthy—I am sinful—I am weak—Go, Jesus and find a more worthy soul, a more
generous one.”
Mother Teresa was not unlike the
rest of us, as we struggle to answer the promptings of grace that nudges us
beyond ourselves. Unfortunately, when faced with new challenges our first
response is often negative, as we listen instead to the voice that insists we
cannot change. Like Mother Teresa, when faced with God’s unexpected
invitations, we find ourselves held back by fear, fatigue, tepidity, and a
reluctance to take on new challenges. And we pull back. Mother Teresa showed
us, though, that despite our struggles it is never too late to change, to grow,
to say yes to the God who calls. Mother said, “Give yourself fully to God. He
will use you to accomplish great things, on the condition that you believe much
more in his love than in your own weakness.”
We began this talk with names on
a black board—names of Mother Teresa, Madonna, Princess Diana, and your own
name. And I asked you whether the word ‘holy’ fits with these names. Whereas
most of us would ascribe the word ‘holy’ only with Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa
herself would say that there is only one person who fits that word, Jesus. Mother
Teresa urges us to thirst for souls like Jesus, to bear suffering like Jesus,
and to love like Jesus. She said,
·
The work of moral
rearmament is carried out with discretion and love. The more discrete, the more
penetrating it will be. You give it to others, and it is they who absorb it.
If we had to ask her, “Mother
Teresa, can you summarize for me in less than three paragraphs, how I should
live a life of holiness,” she would reply,
·
[First], we shall
instruct by the power of the example of our lives lived entirely in and with
Jesus Christ our Lord, bearing witness to the truth of the gospel by our
single-minded devotion to and burning love of Christ and His Church, and also
by verbal proclamation of the Word of God fearlessly, openly, and clearly,
according to the teaching of the Church, whenever opportunity offers.
·
[Second], we shall
sustain the tempted by our prayer, penance, and understanding love, and when
opportunity offers, also by enlightening and encouraging words. We shall
befriend the friendless and comfort the sick and sorrowful by our real love and
personal concern for them, identifying ourselves with them in their pain and
sorrow and by praying with them for God's healing and comfort and by
encouraging them to offer their sufferings to the Lord for the salvation of the
whole world.
·
[Third], we shall bear
wrongs patiently by offering no resistance to the wicked. If anyone hits us on
the right cheek we shall turn the left also; if anyone takes away anything from
us, we shall not try to get it back. We shall forgive injuries by seeking no
revenge but returning good for evil, by loving our enemies and praying for
those who persecute us and blessing those who curse us.
