+ Today as we celebrate the feast of St. Paul of the Cross we
begin by contemplating a youth, Paul Danei, a native of Ovada in Genoa, Italy.
He spent a brief time in the military, but left to devote himself to prayer.
When his uncle, a priest, left Paul a significant inheritance on the condition
that he would marry, Paul forfeited the inheritance, taking only his uncle’s
breviary.
At the age pf twenty-six,
while still a layman, he conceived the rule of a new order, the Passionists.
Living a life of mortification and poverty, the Passionists take a fourth vow
to proclaim the Passion of Christ.
“Bury yourselves…” Paul wrote, “in the
heart of Jesus crucified, desiring nothing else but to lead all men to follow
his will in all things.”
Paul died in 1775.
Living
buried in the heart of Christ means being rooted and
grounded in love – so that we might be filled with the fullness of God. St.
Paul prays that the Ephesians be thus rooted
and grounded that they may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones
what is the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, and to
know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be thus filled
with all the fullness of God.
And who would not want to live
their day – full of God’s love and grace, and gentleness, kindness, caring,
compassion and forgiveness?
In the gospel passage Jesus
tosses out a two-sided coin for us to ponder – I wish the fire of my heart, my
love, my peace would be ablaze in all the world; but when it first arrives it will
apparently cause the opposite effect as men, women and children will have to
pause what they are doing and seriously consider whether they want to be filled
with the light, warmth and joy of his real peace, or whether they want to
continue to bask in the phony light of their own artificial worlds and
contrivances – coping techniques.
This will cause family rifts
and divisions as some begin to choose Christ and the good life, while others
still languish in indecision or no decision at all.
In our day and age, in this
country with its political tumult and chaos, the time has arrived – if there
will be any peace on earth at all – to choose to follow the banner of Christ
whole heartedly, or the banner of Satan, no heartedly. The choice is a critical
one, and essential one, but an easy one for those who turn and face the East,
those to turn to Christ so that he can gaze at them, with his all-embracing,
merciful forgiveness just waiting to be released at our word of contrition: it
is that easy, it is that difficult! We must pray for the grace for this
cooperation to take place for ourselves, for our loved ones, for those we don’t
even know and for all in the political process that will determine the fate of
civilization.
I
consider all things so much rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him!
No comments:
Post a Comment