DISCOVER THE DIVINE IN THE ORDINARY.
Be holy, for I, your God, am holy (Lev 20:26, 1 Pet 1:16).
God is calling you to serve Him in and from the ordinary, material and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work.
Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.
-St. Josemaria, Conversations, n. 114
Somehow, when one thinks of “holiness”, there is a tendency to excuse one’s self, justifying perhaps that holiness is only reserved for quite a few important people who live in a world apart from normal sinners like us. However, as the then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote:
“BEING HOLY DOES NOT MEAN BEING SUPERIOR TO OTHERS;
indeed, A SAINT CAN BE VERY WEAK AND MAKE MANY BLUNDERS IN HIS LIFE.
HOLINESS IS PROFOUND CONTACT WITH GOD, BEING A FRIEND OF GOD; IT IS LETTING THE OTHER ACT, the One who really can guarantee that the world is good and happy.
If therefore St Josemaría speaks of the common vocation to holiness, it seems to me that he is basically drawing on his own personal experience, not of having done incredible things himself, BUT OF HAVING LET GOD WORK. Therefore a renewal, a force for good was born in the world even if human weaknesses will always remain.
TRULY WE ARE ALL ABLE, WE ARE ALL CALLED TO OPEN OURSELVES TO THIS FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD, NOT TO LET GO OF GOD’S HANDS, NOT TO GIVE UP, TURNING AND RETURNING TO THE LORD, SPEAKING TO HIM AS TO A FRIEND, KNOWING WELL THAT THE LORD REALLY IS THE TRUE FRIEND OF EVERYONE, EVEN OF THOSE WHO CANNOT DO GREAT THINGS ON THEIR OWN.”
-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published in “L’Osservatore Romano,” October 6, 2002.
Dear friends, while we thank Our Lord for the example and dedication of an important saint for our times, LET US ALSO RENEW OUR DESIRE TO STRIVE FOR HOLINESS, TO SEEK, FIND AND LOVE GOD IN LITTLE ORDINARY THINGS OF OUR DAILY LIFE, convinced that, IT IS THERE WHERE HE AWAITS US to CARRY OUT OUR DAILY TASKS FOR LOVE OF GOD. As St. Josemaria said:
DO EVERYTHING FOR LOVE. THUS THERE WILL BE NO LITTLE THINGS: EVERYTHING WILL BE BIG…A LITTLE ACT, DONE FOR LOVE, IS WORTH SO MUCH! ‘GREAT’ HOLINESS CONSISTS IN CARRYING OUT THE ‘LITTLE DUTIES’ OF EACH MOMENT for Love!
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