Dear Friends,
Pope Francis wrote you a letter this week. Like most letters from popes, it is a bit long, so you may not be able to read the whole thing in one sitting. He wrote the letter to encourage you to be holy. It is written in Pope Francis’ style which is not heavily theological, but draws on his own experience of being a pastor to people and is fairly easy to read. You can find the whole thing on line, but I think I will provide you with selections of the letter here in my bulletin letter over the next few weeks of our Easter season. He is truly writing to the people of God and not to clergy. This is for you.
Here are a few excerpts from Chapter One:
“My modest goal is to re-propose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities. For the Lord has chosen each one of us ‘to be holy and blameless before him in love.’ The Letter to the Hebrews presents a number of testimonies that encourage us to ‘run with perseverance the race that is set before us.’ It speaks of Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Gideon and others. Above all, it invites us to realize that ‘a great cloud of witnesses’ impels us to advance constantly towards the goal. These witnesses may include our own mothers, grandmothers or other loved ones. Their lives may not always have been perfect, yet even amid their faults and failings they kept moving forward and proved pleasing to the Lord. The saints now in God’s presence preserve their bonds of love and communion with us…
…In salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in a human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people.
I like to contemplate the holiness present in the patience of God’s people: in those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile. In their daily perseverance, I see the holiness of the Church militant. Very often it is a holiness found in our next-door neighbors, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence. We might call them ‘the middle class of holiness’.
Let us be spurred on by the signs of holiness that the Lord shows us through the humblest members of that people which ‘shares also in Christ’s prophetic office, spreading abroad a living witness to him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity.’ We should consider the fact that, as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross suggests, real history is made by so many of them. As she writes: ‘The greatest figures of prophecy and sanctity step forth out of the darkest night. But for the most part, the formative stream of the mystical life remains invisible. Certainly, the most decisive turning points in world history are substantially co-determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe the decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed.’
Holiness is the most attractive face of the Church…All this is important. Yet with this Exhortation, I would like to insist primarily on the call to holiness that the Lord addresses to each of us, the call that he also addresses, personally, to you: ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’ The Second Vatican Council stated this clearly: ‘Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord – each in his or her own way – to that perfect holiness by which the Father himself is perfect.’ ‘Each in his or her own way’ the Council says… Let the grace of your baptism bear fruit in a path of holiness. Let everything be open to God; turn to him in every situation. Do not be dismayed, for the power of the Holy Spirit enables you to do this, and holiness, in the end, is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life.”
Peace,
Fr. Damian