A few years back, I felt God really inspire me to text a friend and to let them know I was praying for them – they had been going through a difficult time in their life. But I wasn’t quite ready for the text I received back from them. They shared with me, that they had got up that morning and said to God in prayer ‘if you’re out there and you’re with me, show me a sign today’ – she said my text was that sign!
At this time of ‘giving up’…one of the greatest ‘giving ups’ we can ever make is that of sacrificing our own agendas! When we start to live less for ourselves and more for others – in the name of divine love - we see the change…not only in our own lives but in the lives of others. Our little acts of kindness (which sometimes demand a great sacrifice on our part) start to eclipse our world as the darkness is scattered. I once heard a very holy priest say ‘that an outstanding act of kindness done here on earth is almost like a glimpse of heaven on earth’ – like a movie trailer of the main event…what heaven will be like!
“If you are what you’re meant to be you’ll set the whole world ablaze”
St Catherine of Siena
But in this day and age – sacrificing for others’ needs - has never been more difficult… in generation selfish, in our ‘in it to win it’ culture… as it opposes the way of the World. That’s why it’s been reserved to only the few who have the capacity to light up this world in their charitable and selfless lives, their our modern day heroes and heroines – or translated into God’s language (through the way he believes in you) – ‘You’re his Saints of the new millennium!!’
“Just as salt gives flavour to food and light illumines the darkness, so too holiness gives full meaning to life and makes it reflect God's glory. How many saints, especially young saints, can we count in the Church's history! In their love for God their heroic virtues shone before the world, and so they became models of life which the Church has held up for imitation by all.”
Pope John Paul II
Seminarian from the Salford Diocese.
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