I received from Abbot Damian of Spencer a copy of his homily that he gave last week for the funeral Mass of Br. Meinrad. He concluded his homily with the following: “I’ll let St. Therese and Fr. Thomas Keating have the final words. Therese expressed her conviction in this way: ‘Even if I had on my conscience every conceivable sin, I would lose nothing of my confidence. My heart overflowing with love, I would throw myself into the arms of the Father, and I am certain that I would be warmly received.’ "
For the solemnity of All Saints I referred to Thomas Merton who wrote: “to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore, the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true self” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p.31). It is interesting that Merton says it is a ‘problem’ to find our true selves! Evidently, he is implying that the process of finding our true selves is difficult. To expand more on this, how do we discover our true self? This self-discovery is a life-time spiritual adventure. As we discover more and more of our true self, how do we live from that self that is centered in Christ? If we turn to Jesus, the ‘key’ to finding our true selves lies in this saying: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake,…will save it’ (Mk 8:34-35).
“O God, keep us faithful to the gift which they received with such joy and handed on at such cost.” This is an excerpt from a prayer for the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude. The gift they received was their ‘mission’, their mission of proclaiming the gospel, and this they handed on with the cost of their lives. For the solemnity of ‘All Saints’ why am I beginning with these very moving words? When I heard this prayer, I thought immediately that it expresses what saints do. They receive their call from God with joy, and they live it to the end, until the day when they hand it on to others, and with such cost.
Today is the canonization of Cardinal John Henry Newman. He was a prolific writer, an intellectual whose heart very much balanced who he was, what he preached and what he wrote. I will share multiple quotes to support this statement!
To begin: “God has created me to do Him some definite service. God has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.”
As I was pondering what to focus this morning’s chapter talk on, I turned to the third conference we had from Fr. Michael Dodds for our retreat. In staying with his theme for our retreat ‘The Hiddenness of God’, he begins this third conference with a reference to the ‘sin’ of Adam and Eve who now because of their ‘sin’ are hiding from God! Fr. Dodds writes: “The point of the story is that sin, or acting against God’s will, was not part of God’s original plan. It arises from a free, human decision. But that decision initiates a new dynamic between God and human beings, who now try and hide from God”. This new dynamic between the human person and God is a dynamic of ‘wills’, that of God’s will and that of the free will given by God to human beings.
A popular Guest House recipe that is vegan, easy to mak...
