Abbey-Roads2

Evangelization. 

Cathy of Recovering Dissident Catholic has a post which relates well to the topic of Evangelization.  Her thoughts reminded me of St. JoseMaria Escriva’s famous homily “Passionately Loving the World”.  Here is a snippet from that homily:

“You must understand now, more clearly, that 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.

I often said to the university students and workers who were with me in the thirties that they had to know how to “materialise” their spiritual life. I wanted to keep them from the temptation, so common then and now, of living a kind of double life. On one side, an interior life, a life of relation with God; and on the other, a separate and distinct professional, social and family life, full of small earthly realities.

No! We cannot lead a double life if we want to be Christians. There is just one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is this life which has to become, in both soul and body, holy and filled with God. We discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things.” - St. JoseMaria Escriva

The teachings of St. JoseMaria seem to me to be complimentary to those of St. Therese of Lisieux and her “little way” - a sort of practical expression perhaps.  At any rate - they are extremely compatible.

“Bring your hand and put it into my side, do not be unbelieving but believe.” - Gospel for the feast of St. Thomas.

Jesus doesn’t seem to be rebuking Thomas here, rather answering his prayer, when he stated days before, “Unless I see…”  We all have doubt, without doubts, we would not be compelled to seek the truth.  Jesus didn’t tell Thomas not to doubt, he called him to have faith.  Faith is vastly different from doubt.

I think Little Therese demonstrates that in her trial of faith, that horrible Nietzsche-like dark night she suffered at the end of her life.  Her nature led her to doubt - yet her heroic virtue of faith sustained her - she believed without believing as it were.  Kierkegaard wrote about such things.