Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi
“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
Monday, October 4th Lk. 10: 25-37 “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Then he said to Jesus, “Who is my neighbor”?
Who is my neighbor? Excerpts from a talk by Sister Mary Clare, O.C.D.
There is no authentic Catholic spirituality that is not social. So if you ever come across a spirituality that says you can reach union with God, which is our ultimate goal, in isolation, you cannot do that, and that is not authentically Catholic.
We are meant to live as the Body of Christ in communion with one another. It’s really important to think about our spirituality and how it integrates into what we do every day. We are human beings made in the image and likeness of God and we have to know how to integrate who we are, our being, into what we do every day.
The three reflections that I want to look at today are: Encounter with Christ, Encounter with our neighbor, and Discernment in practice.
Encounter with Christ…
In today’s society, we really have a crisis of meaning. What is life all about? And this leads to a sense of alienation. There’s a sense of loss, a sense of mourning in our society because of this.
We have a disposable culture, right? We think about life in prospect and for us it’s cheap and disposable. Just get rid of it; it’s an inconvenience (legalized abortion). We think about life in fact and it’s expensive and disposable. We can’t afford you, so we’ll get rid of you (legalized euthanasia). That’s the kind of society mentality that we’re thinking in.
And in order to solve it, we’re grasping after truths. We’re trying to find out, “What is the truth?” When what we really need to be seeking is the Truth, with a capital “T”, right? That’s going to be the answer to our problems.
We can only do that, we can only change, if we begin with ourselves. Be souls of prayer or else you will have nothing to give. We need to encounter Christ in our daily life. That means taking time out. That means spending time with Our Lord. I’ve got to encounter the Person of Christ.
In order to treat others with dignity, I must first know mine. I must know what it means to be a child of God, right? I must know what it means to be made in His image and likeness. I must experience that I have been called into being by name for a purpose. And once I have experienced that, then I can experience that you have been called into being by name for a purpose and reverence it.
If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me to drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. (cf Jn 4:10) Christ will give to us, but we must go to Him. He wants to give to us in abundance. I am not perfect; I am broken; I need to be redeemed. But I am not disposable. I am not dispensable. I have a mission that no one else can fill. I have to believe that about myself, right? And I have to know His grace is abundant.
Encounter with our neighbor…
Next is our encounter with our neighbor. As I said before, all Catholic spirituality is social. We are meant to live in community. We are created to live in community. And that is true because we are made in the image of the Trinity who is an eternal community, right? An eternal communion of three Persons. So we can never let go of that.
The primary way we experience community is obviously through marriage and the family; but then that extends out to the broader community of the Body of Christ, the Church; and then even beyond that into the broader community of the human family, of everyone created as a child of God.
Going back to our encounter with Christ and how this fits into neighbor. When I look at Christ, I look into the face of Christ. Contemplating the face of Christ, He mirrors back to me who I am. He mirrors back to me my value and my dignity.
(Editor’s note: How can we look at the Face of Christ Crucified and not know that we are deeply loved? How can we not know that each human person is deeply loved by Him, for He died for all, that all might have life, and life in abundance in and through Him!)
We must do the same for each other. When you look into my eyes, I mirror back to you who you are, the value of who you are as a person.
When you look at me, the questions that come unconsciously to your mind are, “Do you see me? Do you care?” And the immediate next questions that come to mind are, “Does anybody care?” And, “Does God?”
So can you see how important our interaction with our neighbor is? Because if they are not experiencing through us that human love, how can they experience the love of God? We must do that for one another.
God puts into our path every day the persons He desires for us to encounter. We don’t have to go looking. What we need to do is pray for the grace of eyes to see as Christ sees. To see my neighbor, to see the person in front of me, as Christ sees them. To be able to see their need and then meet it, right? So realizing what my limitations are, what am I called to do? The question is, what is best for the person in front of me at this moment? I may not always be able to help them, but I can know somebody to refer them to. Always in that mutual self-gift. This is what we can do on a daily basis, and what we are called to do, one person at a time.
When we take this into the broader social picture, realize that this is really a form of evangelization, and we cannot evangelize a culture that we don’t love. There are going to be opinions that we disagree with. There are going to be views that are objectively wrong that we cannot condone. We must work to correct those, but we have to do it in a spirit of love. We have to love others back into Truth.
Discernment in practice…
Now, discernment in practice. St. Ignatius tells us, first look at your state of life. Am I married? My first obligation is to my spouse and to my family, right? We have to have that life/work balance. My second vocation is what I do and how I bring Christ into the world.
We have to make our choices based on that. The demand of love in front of me! Who’s the person that God has put in my path at the moment and how must I love them? In one of his homilies, Bishop Vasha, talking about Lazarus at the door, said each of us must ask ourselves daily, “Who’s at my doorstep?”
Finally, what’s the need of my local Church? Am I helping to fulfill that need or am I off doing my own thing. That’s something to look at.
“May God Our Lord be pleased and continue to bless our poor work, so insignificant in comparison to what He deserves, but all that He’s asking of us. That’s all He wants of us. And in doing that we will come to union with Him and we will bring others to Him one person at a time. Be what you are supposed to be – a saint! For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
End of Reflection by Sister Mary Clare, O.C.D.
