Our World Needs More Saints.

I am Hoping Some are Reading this Reflection.

The world waits earnestly for new saints and new prophets. We need men and woman so deeply rooted in their love for God that they work for justice and especially for the least of our world’s population.

As Micah speaks these words from Scripture, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6:8). People who do justice and love kindness, whatever our profession or state of life, are the saints we need today. They have a mighty purpose and noble values, while pursuing holiness.

These “saints to be” who really want to love God find neighbors among the many strangers meet every day. They embrace other persons and see in them the person of Christ.

While they act as Christ acts, and like Christ, they treat strangers as if they are treating Christ. St Ignatius of Loyola put it this way: “…to choose, that which is more to the glory of the Divine Majesty.”

As you can see, saints are living, praying, doing. They have “ing” endings on their verbs. In this way they show that what they are doing right now is more important than what they have already done.

God calls each of his creation to do something significant with his/her in life. Holiness is God’s way of calling us to be someone more than we are at this exact moment in time. We are being gently called to work at becoming more!

God is asking us to do something special. Now we must discover who exactly is this newborn person and what is the new task God is asking you to consider. Martin Luther said, “What you do in your home is worth as much as if You are doing this in heaven for the Lord God.”

Jesus shows us that we are never to glorify ourselves by serving ourselves, but to give glory to God by serving others. Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “Creatures are all around me with their disappointing weaknesses and their terrifying powers.”

Seeking and finding God is not about seeking the sensational but only the ordinary.

It is about bringing the longings of the heart to our present moments and finding the grace that awaits us there. We are discovering the sacred in our ordinary moments. Our task is to gather our joys, sorrows, the beauty we find, and our dreaded mistakes from every hour of every day and consecrate them at the altar of daily life.

God is aware of what we are doing and He will communicate with us in His “small still voice.” Feeding us small consolations, ever so gently like “a drop of water on a sponge” says St Ignatius of Loyola.

We need to keep in mind that this “small still voice” of God does not come from out there calling us to become something we are not, but says Parker Palmer, a Quaker minister, “it comes ‘in here’ calling us to be that gift we were at given at birth to be.” St. Francis de Sales says “be who you are and to be that well…”

We have gifts and talents God has given us and these gifts and talents are our clues as to what God’s plan is for us. God works differently for different people. Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit poet wrote: “For Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his.”

We have to look and listen, if we don’t do either there is nothing to be seen.

I leave you with these words from the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he, who sees, takes off his shoes—

The rest sit round it and pluck Blackberries.