In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask you for pardon of my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Mother Immaculate, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
The Letter to the Hebrews is a very interesting letter where the sacred writer is encouraging a whole lot of Jewish priests or Levites who have become Christian. And that's why the Letter to the Hebrews has as its main theme the priesthood of Jesus Christ. But at the end of the letter, there's a series of words of encouragement or counsels that the sacred writer wants to give to these Christians. And among them, we find these words, this is Chapter 13 of Hebrews, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the Word of God. Consider the outcome of their life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
“Remember your leaders. Consider the outcome of their life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Well, in this month of October 2022, in which we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the canonization of St. Josemaria, we can pray a little bit about what it means to be a saint. In other words, what it means to live out the Christian vocation in fullness. Within the limits of our human weakness, of course, but counting on that fullness that comes from God's grace. And in all the saints, including St. Josemaria, I think we see fulfilled these words of Scripture: “Consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith.”
The saints always, as it were, punch above their weight. The effect of a holy life is huge; probably, we could say, incalculable. Saints want to win the whole world for Christ. The saint wants to make of his or her life, a deep and fertile furrow, something that goes way beyond what they're capable of, humanly speaking, regardless of how talented they might happen to be. And that's also our calling, isn't it? The desire to do big things for God is something that is part and parcel of seeking holiness because at the end of the day, it's not the saint, it's not us, it's not we who do big things for God.
“Consider the outcome of their life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” What makes all the difference is what you, Lord Jesus, do. What makes all the difference is letting the Lord work. This is the great secret of the effectiveness of the reach, we might say, of the saints. Sure, they put all they could on their part into it, but holiness, to a great degree, is letting God work. Letting God work. Not looking too much at our own littleness, which is truly little.
There's an interesting example of this in one of the biographies of Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Calcutta, who, for many years, felt very dark and cold inside even though she was doing God's work. God was doing huge work through her. She had great faith, huge faith. In spite of her subjective perception at times of, of coldness or of loneliness, she lived a life of tremendous faith. And one of her nuns recalled that:
“Mother one day brought a map of Europe and spread it before me. At that time, the Soviet Union had not yet broken up and half of Europe was under communist rule, with no permission for missionaries to enter as missionaries. But Mother just went with her finger from one country to another, like, France, we are here. Germany, we are here. Austria, we are here. Hungary, not yet. Bulgaria, not yet. And so she went on. Then she started to count the countries where we were not yet on her fingers. She was in dead earnest that a tabernacle, meaning a house, should be opened in each country of the world. Mother had a big vision of what she wanted to give her Lord and God.”
This is what we see in all of the saints: a big vision of wanting to do great things for God. And that's also our call, our privilege, our grace, every single one of us, a desire to do big things, not based on some kind of voluntaristic self-confidence, you know. It's not a matter of gritting my teeth and straining my muscles and becoming tense, and I'm going to make this happen. No, holiness is fundamentally going at God's pace. It's saying to Our Lord, with the spirit of Mary, with the spirit of Our Lady, “Let it be done unto me according to your Word.”
And that's how saints punch above their weight because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. It's interesting to reread and maybe to meditate on the very interesting article, which the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, at the time of the canonization of St. Josemaria, back in 2002. He began this short but very deep article by saying, “I have always been struck by the interpretation, which Josemaria Escriva gave of the name, Opus Dei, an interpretation which we could call biographical, and which allows us to understand the founder in his spiritual dimension.
“Escriva knew that he should found something. But he was always aware that whatever it was, was not his work, that he had not invented anything, that the Lord had simply made use of him. Thus, it was not his work, but Opus Dei, the work of God. He was only an instrument with which God had acted. All of this,” says Ratzinger, “helps us to understand why St. Josemaria Escriva did not consider himself the founder of anything, but only a person who wants to fulfill the will of God, to second his action, the work precisely of God.”
Lord, I ask you for this grace, also through the intercession of St. Josemaria and all the saints, that I, too, would let you work in and through my littleness, my, my flawed person, if you like, in and through my talents, my strong points, the virtues you've given me, in and through also my weaknesses and my, my incapacities, that you would work, that you would shine forth, that you would build the Church, according to your, according to your will. In The Way, St. Josemaria has that very incisive saying. He says, “Many great things depend, don't forget it, on whether you and I live our lives as God wants.”
That's a great thing to bring to our prayer, even now, you know. Many great things, not little things, many great things depend on whether you and I live our lives as God wants. It makes all the difference, to let the Lord work in and through us. And it does mean, of course, doing what we can, doing all that we can, but knowing that it depends fundamentally on Our Lord. That as St. Therese of Lisieux finished her life, saying, “everything is grace, ultimately.” And yet you Lord, in your infinite mercy, in your love, in your providence, in your wisdom, you do ask us to play our part.
Time and again, we see this dynamic of the Christian vocation in the Gospel. For example, the Gospel for the feast day of St. Josemaria itself. Our Lord, we see you, Lord Jesus, teaching by the Lake of Gennesaret. And you see two boats by the lake: the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked them to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.”
And we can see, in a sense, Simon's heart sinking a little bit, you know, that sinking feeling we often get when we, when we're disappointed, or when we're just tired. Or when we're discouraged, you know, that sinking feeling, which is all too human, and very often is totally understandable, as is the case here. Our Lord, you know, says to Simon, “No, put out your nets for a catch.” And Simon, in all honesty, in all sincerity, he says, “Master, we toiled all night, and took nothing. But at your word, I will let down the nets.”
What a beautiful thing that Peter, Simon Peter, does here. He knows! He's the professional fisherman, not Jesus. He knows, he has experience. It doesn't make sense, in a certain sense, to go putting out the nets. And moreover, he's exhausted. He has toiled all night. And that toil has been fruitless: “we caught nothing. But at your word, at your word, Jesus, I will put down the net.” And then what happens? “When they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish. And as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat, to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.”
When we let Our Lord work, and very often, as in the case here of Simon Peter, it means going beyond our comfort zone. When we let you, Jesus, have your way with us, then great things happen. Then our desires to do big things really do become very big things because they're done, if you like, in a divine way. The Christian vocation is always a vocation to greatness. It's never a vocation to mediocrity. The baptismal calling is a vocation to holiness. This is something that St. Josemaria repeated time and time again and has become ever more frequently repeated in the Church's teaching in the magisterium, especially in and since Vatican II.
We could think of the current Holy Father's apostolic exhortation on the universal call to holiness, Gaudete et Exsultate, a great text to pray about, to meditate on, that all are called to holiness. And there, Pope Francis talks about the saints next door, in the sense that many saints are hidden, ordinary. They're not exceptional, or, you know, outstanding in the human sense. But they are outstanding before God. And we're all called to that.
I guess, when we pray about this, we immediately feel the need to go to the Holy Spirit and to say, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, fill my heart, and kindle in me, the desire of your love,” or the fire of your love, I should say. “Send forth your spirit, and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the Earth.” That zeal, that desire for holiness, is definitely a fruit of the Holy Spirit, a gift of the Holy Spirit. And therefore, we ask for it now with all our hearts.
So often, Lord, Jesus, you teach us this lesson, and yet we find it hard to internalize it. We do tend to think that it's all down to me: It's all down to me. I have to make it happen. That holiness somehow involves a superhuman struggle, whereas by definition, holiness cannot involve a superhuman struggle. It has to involve a human struggle; a human struggle, you might say, enhanced or elevated by divine grace. But it doesn't mean pushing ourselves beyond the limits. It's rather sanctifying the ordinary, sanctifying ourselves within the limits.
Sometimes it does test our faith, like on that day in Bethsaida when the crowds have gathered, and they have nothing to eat. And they follow you, Jesus, and they follow your disciples; you cure them, you heal them. And then the day begins to wear away. And the Twelve come to you, Jesus, and they say, “Send the crowd away to go into the villages and country round about to lodge and get provisions, for we are here in a lonely place.” But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.”
You give them something to eat. Isn't that what Our Lord says to you and to me? Faced with the immense challenges of the new evangelization, of sharing the Gospel today with, everywhere, with all kinds of people in all kinds of places, Our Lord says, “You give them something to eat.” And while like the Apostles, we might end up saying, “Well, we have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we are to go and buy food for all these people!” Ridiculously disproportionate. “For there were about 5,000 men. And he said to his disciples, ‘Make them sit down in small companies about fifty each.’ And they did so and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to Heaven, and blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were satisfied. And they took up what was left over, the twelve baskets of broken pieces.”
The result is completely disproportionate to what the apostles put in, the five loaves and the two fish, by your grace, Lord, by letting you take over. So often we find it hard to let Our Lord take over. We think it's all down to us. And in a sense, yes, we have to do all we can, but on that firm foundation of trust, of abandonment, ultimately, of faith. Yes, Jesus, that's what I most need as I pray here today, I need you to bless me with an increase of faith. That is what leads us to imitate the saints: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the Word of God. As you consider the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
The Second Vatican Council reminds us that in the saints, God reveals His face to us. In the saint, God speaks to us. And this is certainly the case in a superlative way in In Our Lady. We too, whenever we contemplate the first mystery of light, sorry, it's the second mystery of light, rather, the wedding feast of Cana, we too, can each in a personal way, hear addressed to ourselves, those words of Mary, “Do whatever he tells you.” Do whatever he tells you. And what he tells us is to “fill up these jars to the brim,” you know, so we give all we can. We give all the water we can, we don't hold back, we do all we can.
But then it's the Lord, with tremendous love and majesty, who transforms our poor water into finest wine. The Christian vocation is, indeed, a great calling, a calling to do really great things, but not on the basis of our own inherent capacities, or even our own efforts; primarily by letting God work that, after all, is the meaning of Opus Dei, the work of God. It's not man's work. It's not human work. It's the work of God, and the whole Church is that: the Church is the mystery of You, Lord Jesus, being with us down through history, saving us, helping us, redeeming us.
And this is the wisdom, of course, that we can learn from the saints. And we ask the Holy Spirit to give us this wisdom to help us rediscover the depth and the beauty of our Christian vocation. The Lord is calling you, the Lord is calling me to really great things in and through our ordinary life and notwithstanding our limitations. Lord, let me let you work. I ask this through the intercession of all the saints, especially St. Josemaria, and also through the intercession, of course, of Our Lady.
I thank you, my God for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask you for help to put them into effect. My Mother Immaculate, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.