Year of Saint Joseph
Year of the Family "Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love"
Blessed Virgin Mary
Other Saint: Saint Charbel Makhlouf (1828-1898)
Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 44 Satisfaction by the Excommunicated
Mass: Ex 24:3-8; Resp Ps 50; Mt 13:24-30
God the Lord has spoken and summoned the earth.
MARY, CAUSE OF OUR JOY,
PRAY FOR US.
Just yesterday I embarked upon a fascinating biography, Salt and Light: The Spiritual Journey of Elisabeth and Felix Leseur. One thing that comes to mind is this, "with God all things are possible." In the book, I read this about Elisabeth: "Since Emmanule Monier, our contemporaries would say that she had a 'personalist approach' to human relationships, which is, moreover, simply an often silent look of love on the heart of the person whom one is facing, a 'Christian approach' to every human being, whoever it might be." Furthermore, Elisabeth "always tried, out of respect for the person, to help her visitors 'to be', whatever their opinions, and she did it from the deepest part of her soul and her intellect" (p. 72). Felix later read something else in Elisabeth's diary. Elisabeth wrote this: "Talked and discussed a great deal with dear friends who do not believe. I love better than others these persons whom the divine light does not enlighten, or, rather, whom it enlightens in a way we do not know, poor little minds that we are. There is a veil between such souls and God, a veil that allows only a few rays of love and beauty to pass through it. God alone, with his divine movement, can lift this veil; then real life will begin for these souls. And I, even though I am worth so little, I believe in the power of the prayers that I constantly say for these dear souls" (pp. 72-73).
Interestingly enough, I found that Saint John Chrysostum (347-407) said something similar about Saint Paul:
Our heart is enlarged. For as heat makes things expand, so it is the work of love to expand the heart, for its power is to heat and make fervent. It is this that opened Paul's lips and enlarged Paul's heart ... There was nothing more capacious than the heart of Paul, for he loved all the faithful with as intimate a love as any lover could have for a loved one, his love not being divided and lessened but remaining whole and entire for each of them. And what marvel is it that his love for the faithful was such, since his heart embraced the unbelievers, too, throughout the whole world?
(From a homily on the second letter to the Corinthians by Saint John Chyrsostom, bishop, in Office of Readings, Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday)
We grow together in our lives, the weeds and the wheat, some of both in each one of us. May Elisabeth and Felix, and Saint Paul, intercede for us so our hearts expand to receive God's love. Then, may we share that love with one another, wherever we come from, whatever our respective opinions, beliefs, or un-beliefs. Indeed, all things are possible with God.
SAINT CHARBEL MAKHLOUF,
SAINT JOSEPH,
PRAY FOR US.
Today's photo: From sis vfo and the Blister Sisters' hike on the Donner Summit Three Lakes (Angela, Flora, Azalea) Trail, near Norden, CA.
© Gertrude Feick 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment