Fraternal Charity

Our Mistress said to me one day: "Your programme of life seems to be this: I will be kind to those who are kind, and amiable with the amiable. Then, naturally you become agitated as soon as someone disagees with you. In this you are like the pagans spoken of in the Gospel. And Our Lord Himself tells us not to imitate them but rather 'do good to them that hate you and pray for them that persecute you.' To do good to those who only who are good to us springs from a wisdom that is merely human; in other words, all for self and nothing for God.

~My Sister Saint Therese, by Sister Genevive of the Holy Face (Celine Martin)


I am reading this book right now, and I am having to take it in bits and pieces. Not because it is difficult--quite the contrary! It is beautiful, fascinating, enlightening, and easy to read. But the powerful spirituality, the call to follow Christ and truly embrace his words...ALL OF THEM, is excruciatingly painful. Every time I read a passage I realize how far I am from sainthood, and I nearly despair of even meeting the minimum qualifications of a follower of Christ. This is the standard to which I would like to measure myself, but when I use this and then reflect upon it, I realize that I can't even reach the scale. So I'm learning it's best to read a little here and there, take it to heart, and give God the opportunity to chang me, rather than let despair darken the light He is trying to bring via the Little Flower's powerful explanation of what it means to be like Jesus.

Last night I was really down on myself, having read several passages. Then it came to me, I think via some words of St. Therese of Avila, another Carmelite and Doctor of the Church, reminding me that "self-knowledge", that is, awareness of our inability to do anything without the Divine Grace of God is a good thing and leads to the virtue of humility. So perhaps I am only suffering via a reduction of pride. It is not a sin to realize we do not measure up...in fact, we need to understand that we cannot POSSIBLY measure up to the Saints, but must depend upon God to bring us to him.

All we have to do is reach upward towards him and He will reach back to us and lift us higher, one step at a time. And if we let go and fall back, He will wait and come back for us once again when we are ready and reaching back to Him.

God is infinitely patient, infinitely merciful, and loves us without bounds. So I'm sharing my lesson with you all, because I know we've all been there, where we are trying and seem to always be failing, and as a result, become discouraged. But then when we think we're failing, it's sometimes only a gift of self-knowledge, a recognition that we've maybe been relying too much on ourselves, we've been prideful, we've been vain...or what have you. And when we give in to those temptations, then God has no room because we close him out, shove His Divine hand aside and try to go our way. As soon as we recognize what we are doing, God is there and will embrace us...no matter where we are, and once again set us on our way.