How often have we heard “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This old adage and many like it are little sayings prompting us to take seriously our health. This maxim holds an importance for healthy discipleship too. 

Soon the feast of Pentecost will bring closure to  the most unusual Easter season in our lifetimes. Easter is the great moment  when God’s chosen people celebrate  their  redemption, proclaiming  to the world: “The Lord has come, died, risen and sent the Holy Spirit.” Easter is an uplifting message that God has not given up on his creation, He still believes that on one Easter what he dreamed for creation happened. “These are my people, and I am their God. They have no other God but me.”

The ever-active Holy Spirit, the spiritual engine, keeps the memory of Jesus, His Son and Savior alive in our hearts.  As memory keeper of Jesus’ refreshing  words preached and taught, the Spirit helps creation praise and honor God, for creating and loving us.  God trusts that this perfect Easter will one day arrive, and so God patiently awaits.

It makes sense to stay healthy especially in these unnatural pandemic times. Scientists are asking us to wash our hands frequently, avoid crowds, and stay sequestered at home which are all important.  This suggestion to eat  “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” adds  a bit of enjoyment  to a serious situation – and an apple tastes good too!

Apples can also remind us to cherish  everything God created: our body, mind, heart and soul as important to God. When we eat right, sleep well, pray well, and stay well nourished,  we possess the energy to love others as God loves us – enthusiastically. Francis de Sales recognizes this:  

“Take care of your health that it too, may serve God.” 

A Message from author, Father Richard DeLillio: A Moment with De Sales

 This blog, livetodaywell.org, began the same year Pope Francis became Pope, 2013. Since day one, Pope Francis preached this helpful message: Jesus is Savior of us all. Jesus brings God’s mercy and forgiveness. Jesus wants no one to perish. Accept His Father’s love and his gifts of mercy, and salvation is yours.

St. Francis de Sales and his common-sense spirituality agrees.  When we earnestly begin understanding who we are through our gifts, our strengths, by knowing what makes us laugh and cry, it is then we grasp our vulnerabilities.  And we realize we don’t have to hide them. It’s okay to be who we are. They open the doors to holiness, allowing us to become the true person God wants.

Francis De Sales believed that the roots of holiness sprout in the soil of our weaknesses.  They help us see what we need for sainthood to blossom in our lives.  This reminds me of what my mother once said: “We start becoming a saint, when we stop believing we can’t.”  I think Francis de Sales would agree with her.

Livetodaywell.org offers the reader gentle ways in which one can “turn small acts of everyday life into great acts of praise to God." It is a witness to the master craftsman who creates us one day at a time.

If you’re reading this blog for the first time, we invite you to join by subscribing below.  New entries are posted every Friday.  You will receive an email notifying you of the posting. If you are a currently regular subscriber, please invite a friend. As we begin our seventh year, we are blessed with 120 readers. we would like to double that number and your assistance will be helpful. 

Therefore refreshed with the cheerful spirituality of St Francis de Sales, “be who we are and to be that well,” we can walk firmly on our grand pilgrimage of holiness.  And this "grand pilgrimage" is done “one step at a time,” filling in our weakness with God’s love and mercy and doing our “ordinary duties, extraordinarily well." 

Gratefully yours

Father Richard R. DeLillio, osfs