Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:01 Let's imagine that we're all standing around looking at a great big chunk of Marvel that's been cut out of a marble. Corey, what's it gonna look like to most of us? Just a big old piece of rock, but what would it look like to great artists, great artists. I'm going to like them, my clan Angelo, and look at a chunk of marble like that and what is this great artistic guy that they've been blessed? What can stare at that chunk of rock and see right to the exterior, to the roughness and all the flaws, a beautiful sculpture and it's potentially hidden inside. And so even if this great artist turned to the rest of us and could describe exactly what he saw, what he could envision this, this rock being transformed into so that we also could see it, there'd still be none a difference between his vision and ours is he could also see what it would take to create that sculpture.
Speaker 0 01:00 What kind of tools that he's going to need, the blows he's going to have to strike and so forth in order to bring away that rough surface. And I want to cover this sculpture into view and there's still another difference between that great sculptor and someone like us. Whereas if the rest of us sit on a project to sculpt that marble, even if he gave us the tools, we'd probably just make a big mess out of it, hammering away and knocking things here and there, but he has the ability to take his nod and his chisels and actually bring this vision into reality. He can actually take a rough piece of marble and bring a beautiful statue into view. Now imagine it's somehow for that great artist started working. This great big chunk of marble somehow was given feelings so it could feel the blows being struck at by the chisel.
Speaker 0 01:55 Every time he swung them out into the chisel, everything he could feel everything from the great big chunks be knocked off right to the final stage instead of the really smooth posh. And imagine this piece of marble is also given a voice. What sort of noises would it most likely make during this process? Would it be happy and giggling? Thanking him every time he struck it? Or would it be hurting? Suffering? It may be doing a little whining or crying. Okay. Obviously, chunks and marble don't have feelings, but if they did getting carved into beautiful works of art wouldn't feel good, would it? So what's your point, father? Well, it's pretty obvious what we're talking about. You were really the chunks. Marble and God is the great artist. Only God can see the beautiful sane that's hidden under the rough surface. Our fallen sinful, selfish state, huh?
Speaker 0 02:56 Only God has the power to bring forth the Saint when he's working with the material. I cuss because of course, except of course for the blessed mother, we're all damaged goods. Thanks a lot Adam. But God doesn't use a mallet and a chisel when he's trying to sculpt us into sanctity. What tools does God use to form people into saints? What instruments does God use to shape us? To bring us towards sanctity? What does God use? Jeezy. Saint Paul writes about it in Romans eight 28 quote, we know that to them that love God, all things work together under good to such as according to his purpose are called to be saints. Closed quote in there where the God, we know that to them that love God. All things work together under good all things. God uses everything he's got. He uses everything. Think what the Holy ghost is telling us here for those that love God all things, every single creature works together on the good for those whom he is calling to become saints.
Speaker 0 04:18 Those who love God, those who are called to be saints. That's us. That's why he let you be a Catholic. That's what he expects of you as a Catholic. All things work together for our good. If we love God, they work together for our good. That means that everything is meant to help us become Holy. Every single thing, God has a purpose for every single creature, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. Every single Christian we come in contact with is meant to sculpt us, to help us in our path to becoming Holy, to make us more like him. He's the absolute master sculptor who looks at us and sees the possibilities, spiritual possibilities hidden in there, and then his infinite wisdom. He picks the perfect instruments to bring that spiritual beauty forth. Every creature would come in contact with is meant to make us to become Holy, make him become more like God.
Speaker 0 05:20 What about the things we don't like? Come in contact with? What about creatures that really hurt us? Let's go back to our imaginary chunk of marble that has feelings every time the chisel hit that chunk of marble, it would hurt, right? Suppose the chunk of marble. Besides how many feelings and being able to tell us what it was feel could wiggle and squirm and Dodge and maybe even Floyd. The pillows of the chews that would that. What kind of sculpture, what result from this moving piece of marble every time you try and do it, it's wiggling and squirming and try to get out of the way of the of artist's blows. Would there be a beautiful work of art at the end of all that? Probably not. It'd be like trying to handle it in shallow. It's moving around and wiggling and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 0 06:07 Okay. The same principle applies to us. God, the master sculptor has a purpose for allowing us to come into contact with a creature. We don't like a creature that really hurts us. He's infinitely wise and he also loves us and so if he allows us to suffer, it must be necessary to help us become more Holy. If he allows us to suffer, it must be necessary to help us become more Holy. He's infinitely wise and he loves us. He isn't tormenting us if he allows us to suffer. This is critical to understand. It must be necessary for in our process of growing in holiness, but something like suffering will only help us become Holy, become more like God. It only works to the degree that we submit to his Holy will.
Speaker 0 07:17 It only works to that degree if we're trying to Dodge and squirm all the time. It's just like this wiggly piece of marble that you never really can't hit it. Get a good straight blow on. Okay. Along these lines, the late great father Dan has some comments that are really worth pondering, worth meditating over. It's a lengthy quote, but it's worth listening to quote, if God is to achieve his purpose, we must submit to his action without reserve, without anxiety, curiosity and murmuring like a trusting child, but so often we're like spoiled children. We pay sincerely, we think for God to make us Holy. Then God takes us at our word. He begins to work in us in the best way possible at that moment for his purpose, he starts to work on us and the contact of some creature with us. It may be a disagreeable duty, maybe a change of job.
Speaker 0 08:16 It may be a contradiction, a provocation by someone we don't like and maybe a headache or other physical illness. It may be a regulation by the boss and maybe the interference with our plans and maybe refuse of a permission or misunderstanding. It may be anything we do not like great or small, but at the first site, contact with the creature, which is God's instrument for sanctifying us, for making us more Holy. We begin to scream and kick and yell, no, no, not that. Don't work in me in that way. Why does this have to happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why do things have be this way? Why do they have to act like that in such a manner? We go on and on like pouting immature children complaining and rebelling against God's wisdom and his goodness. Thus, we persist in proving the insincerity of our prayers to God, that he take us into his hands and make us Holy.
Speaker 0 09:21 We are not and cannot be sincere and our desires or prayers to be perfect or to be Holy unless we refuse to make peace with a habit of complaining and murmuring. I can't. Scott's will unless we are willing to develop a habit of recognizing his working in us through creatures. Unless we work to trust police met without rebellion, without resentment to the action of our loving father on us. His children. This submission is not to the unpleasant thing. His submission is not to the evil that we bear, but our submission is to the action of God which has taken place. We submit to the will of God, which is bringing about this suffering or this pain we call evil. Close quote, father Dan, we're not sincere about becoming Holy unless we refuse to make peace with a habit of complaining and murmuring against God's will.
Speaker 0 10:28 We're not sincere. We have to refuse to make peace with that. We may complain where they Amer, but we've got to be fighting that tenancy. In other words, just as our imaginary chunk of marble could never be sincere about wanting to be carved into beautiful sculpture, and it kept crying and whining every time the artist actually took it seriously and struck the ball. So also we'll never be sure he's about being sculpted into saints unless we strive to grow up, spit out our thumbs, quit whining and complaining about the stuffing annoyances that happened to us in a brace. The will of God. Keep in mind the submission is not to the unpleasant thing. We are not submitting to suffering as such or submitting to the action of God in our lives can use her comparison to this chunk of marble again, in order to become a beautiful sculpture or imaginary chunk, and Marvel is not sitting there in brace and he's close to the chisel as such, even though the bloods are striking it, it's not directly submitting the bullets from the chisel, but rather the will of the artist that's going to use those blows as a main of bringing forth this are okay.
Speaker 0 11:42 It's not the same. You have to undergo it. It's something that has to be under gone. We're not embracing suffering as suffering, okay? We're bracing the will of the artist who's chunking, who's setting out to make us Holy. That's what we want to embrace, okay? St John of the cross at Greg cock for the church, he used to say quote one blessedly God, in times of adversity is worth more than a thousand acts of gratitude in times of prosperity. Close quote. That's the attitude we want to have. Bless God for what he's doing in our lives. We're not blessing him for the suffering. We're blessing because he's bringing something forth good by means of his suffering. If we just left, it's prefers to directly like the suffering. That's not what God requires of us. Love of the cross doesn't have anything to do with liking the cross.
Speaker 0 12:34 It means that we know the person, the divine person who the cross is coming into our life has a perfect plan. If we just don't rebel and if we embrace that cross, it's just the right size to unlock the door of heaven for us. Okay, let's get practical. How can we develop the habit of not complaining and whining when we're suffering and instead of trusting him and submitting to his perfect plan? Well, we already know this technique. We make a particular resolution. We talked about that a few weeks ago. Be like this. I love you Lord, and to prove that I love you. I resolved today. Every time I'm tempted to whine or complain about my job, my husband, my wife, my friends, my neighbor, my health. I'm going to say this little prayer. Thanks God. We write it down. We write it down at the least we can do it for trying to overcome a fault is right now we write it down and then every morning we renew that resolution.
Speaker 0 13:33 At lunch we ask God for the grace to make the exam and well then we asked, did I keep my particular resolution? We thank God if we did, we apologize if we didn't and we renew that resolution from lunch to separate. At supper we do this basically same thing or renew our resolution till bedtime. At that time we look back and our concessions become a progress report on how we're doing in concrete. Our fault of complaining and whining about God's action in our life. If we want to make even more rapid progress, we can make Holy communion begging God for the grace to overcome our whiteness. We plan out what we're going to ask before we go to community and then after community we spent 15 to 30 minutes talking to God about our particular problems and begging him for mercy and ask him to keep us from wasting all the graces and the sufferings that he's been so kind to send into our lives.
Speaker 0 14:33 Then we make a spiritual contract with him. We tell him Lord, that until the next time when we go to communion, every time we say something like, thanks God or performed some little action like Kuching over our heart or pinching or something like that. We mean to repeat by that action everything. We just spent the last 15 to 30 minutes talking to them about what you mean to repeat all that by the simple action and we ask range that repeat those things to our Lord as well. And then from time to time we just touch her heart or pinch our fingers deliberately or save the little aspiration and we've renewed everything that we just poured out, all those prayers who just poured out our Lord and communion. They're so carious from communion to communion and everybody here should read and read and reread this wonderful little book called uniformity with gods.
Speaker 0 15:19 Well, there's a donor that has been generous enough to give sounds, so before you leave today, we got him at the doors. Make sure you leave with one of these. Got a picture of Saint Alphonsus on the cover. That's an extra good deal too. It's written by Saint Alphonsus. It's like the quote of Maddick, scripture, doctors, saints, all these things and how do unite ourselves with God's will. It's the quota magic. You got 25 little pages that will fit your pocket of this kind of practice. Okay. Submission to the will of God is an absolutely crucial concept for Catholics to understand. Just the first sermon. We'll unpack those things. There's a lot of things implied in this. If you read this, you really cottoned onto a lot of wonderful links that'll help people with common spiritual. It's like they're augers, they're clogged spiritually. They don't realize some of these things that God's trying to do in their life and when they do it can change things.
Speaker 0 16:09 It won't necessarily change the exterior circumstances, but it'll change you profoundly when you start realizing what's going on in your life and what God is trying to do there, and instead of resist him and being like a squirmy piece of jelly, you know, we can become these kind of marbles, but he can carve something beautiful out of, okay, it's a secret of the saints. That's what we're here to become. Heaven forbid any of us have to live a hundred years, but even if we have to live a hundred years, that's just nothing in the light of eternity. It's basic training for eternity. We're here to become saints. Everything. He God's given us an opportunity to love him more and more and more. When we say that kingdom come, thy will be done. Do we mean it? We'll find out as we start crashing uniform can as well, especially in suffering.
Speaker 0 16:57 Read this book, make a particular resolutions, make chameleons, start working on this conformity with God's will. We're here to be saints. Remember what Saint Alphonsus says? Those who say God is not wishing to solid, to become saints. Make a very great mistake. Yes. For Saint Paul says, this is the will of God, your sanctification, God, which says all to be saints and each one according to his state life, the religious as a religious, the priest as a priest, the married as married, the man of business as a man of business, soldier as a soldier, and so of every other state in life, God wishes and saw to be saints.
