Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 The feast of all saints is a feast today to give us great hope because he's rather what you might call the little people that made it to heaven. They weren't spectacular but got saved, which is what we're shooting for too high is to get to heaven. Of course, God has a plan, who knows? But, uh, uh, you know, we don't want to cut him out of the picture. So obviously if he has a plan for someone here to be great Saint, we thank God for that. But, uh, uh, for the most part we're, we're just trying to take, get to heaven and not get on the church's calendar. And this is a day for everybody that made it to heaven without making it on the calendar. Now tonight I'll, I'll just start with a quote from the great Bishop and doctor of st Francis de sales and then we'll go with reflections on that from bless Saddam Marmion, which I'll use as a background, but I'll be interjecting my, my thoughts as we go.
Speaker 0 00:49 So anyway, here's that great Bishop and Dr. Church, st Francis de sales. We must not judge things according to our own liking, but according to that of God, this is a great secret. If we are Holy according to our own will, we shall never be truly Holy. We must be so according to God's will. Holiness is according to God's will. Bless it, Don Marmion notes. Divine wisdom is infinitely above human wisdom. God's thoughts contain possibilities of fruitfulness such as no creative thought possesses. That's why God's plan for our holiness, God's plan for our sanctification, God's plan for us to become saints is so wise. It cannot fail except through our own fault. God's plan is perfect. It can't fail to make us saints except their own fault. If we leave the divine idea of full freedom to operate in us, if we adapt ourselves to it with love and fidelity, it becomes extremely fruitful and they lead us to the highest levels of sanctity. God's plan can't fail.
Speaker 0 02:13 God's plan can fail. Man's plan, you can't get to heaven from here, but God's plan can't fail. He's got, he meets the job district. It can't be wrong. Okay? If we follow God's plan, we'll become saints. It's that easy. It's cut and dry. If we follow God's plan, we'll become saints. God wills our holiness. He wills it because he loves us with an infinite love and we ought to will our holiness in union with his will. He wills our holiness. He wills to make us sinks and making us participate in his very life. For that reason, he adopts us as his sons. See, that's the amazing, incredible thing about sanctifying grace. We've talked about that a lot. Supernatural life. Sanctifying grace is a created share in God's own life that he places into us and it makes us Holy. It gives us a share in his life and by giving us Sharon's life and makes us adopted sons, brothers, in that stance with our Lord Jesus Christ, it gives us a relationship to the heavenly father.
Speaker 0 03:31 We don't have of our own nature by our nature. We're born children of wrath. That's the whole thing that Adam did. We're sold down the river. We're born enemies of God. No one is born a Catholic. We're all born pagans. All of us. Baptism is where we're born again and we get sanctifying grace placed into our souls. This participated Sharon, God's life and that makes us, gives us the spirit of adoption as sons. Okay? It makes us heirs of his infinite glory and eternal happiness. Grace is the principle of holiness, supernatural and it's source supernatural and it's act supernatural and its fruits. God only gives us grace. He only gives us a spirit of adoption through his only begotten son, our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the only way to get grace. It's in him and by him and by him alone that God wishes to unite himself to us and that we can be United to him. No one comes to the father except through me, is what our Lord said, and he's God. And if he says, no one comes to the father except through me, he means exactly no one.
Speaker 0 04:55 Christ is the way. He is the only way to the relationship to the father, that he's the only way to sanctity. He's the only way that we can reach God. Without him, we can do nothing. Our Lord says himself without him. You're able to do nothing. He means in terms of holiness, we can certainly perform natural things, but by our nature, since we're born, children of wrath without Christ, we end up where everyone which is simple human nature ends up now down there without Christ, there is no path to heaven. Our holiness has no other foundation than the one foundation that God's established, which is union, which Jesus Christ. There's no other Fondation placed except that what has hadn't been placed, which is Christ Jesus, our Lord. God communicates this fullness of his divine life to the humanity of Christ. He communicates it to Christ, sacred humanity and through Christ sacred humanity and in the church, this divine life has communicated to all the souls according to the measure chosen by Jesus Christ.
Speaker 0 06:13 So all the grace of the universe is communicated through Christ, sacred humanity and out to the church cause it's souls. And that grace is the only way to get to heaven. We have to make it clear to ourselves that we can only be saints according to the measure in which the life of Jesus Christ is in us. That's the only holiness that God's acts of us. That's what he's asking of us, to have his life within us. He's reaching out to us to have a life with us. He's proposing to have a life with us even though we start off as his enemies
Speaker 0 06:53 does this sound thing we can never sufficiently reflect upon when you do the stations of the cross, think of what that is. That's as an expression of his love for us, that he's going to die to get nailed to the cross for us even though we don't deserve it and even though he knows full well what we're going to do to him, it's not a surprise to him. When we sin, he saw that and yet he out of his love, he did that because he wants to have this relationship before with us now and hereafter. Okay. When you come in here and look at the statue of the sacred heart, think of that. The re, I mean that's just artistic, but the reason you can see the hearts, Toronto, the flames, that's an artistic way of showing his heart is so on fire with love for us.
Speaker 0 07:36 That's glowing through his chest when he appears to st Margaret Mary, it's not like it's outside. It's glowing, it's glowing. It's on fire with love for us, and he kept the wounds. He's reaching out. He kept the wounds. Those are the wounds showing how much he loves us and what's he doing right now? He's holding those wounds up to the father on our behalf. He's holding bear judgment on our behalf. That's why he kept the wounds. He's standing in front of the heavenly father on our behalf. He's living always to make intercession for us. As Saint Paul says in the book of Hebrews, we can only be Holy and Jesus Christ. Otherwise we cannot be Holy at all. There isn't a shred of holiness in anything naturally created. There's not a shred. The only holiness is available from God by supremely free act of his almighty will and that's what supernatural and it comes from Christ and sacred humanity.
Speaker 0 08:38 In the sacraments and in prayer to us. Okay. The first Christians, the Catholics are the very early ages, understood this clearly. They understood that God has given his only begotten son that he be for us, our wisdom, our sanctification, our redemption, our justice. They understood this divine plan. They understood that God had given to Christ his fullness of grace that we can find in him. They live by the doctrine that Christ was their life. That's why their spiritual life was so simple and bore so much fruit and they were living in times not unlike ours in a great monologue, gigantic cynical pagan society drenched in sin and sexuality and corruption. The only thing that changed, we have electricity. I mean, that's about it. The sins haven't changed at all. A giant Sada medical kingdom, just like the one we're living in. Let's remind ourselves that in these days that we live in Christ, heart doesn't love us any less and his arm isn't any less powerful than it was in those days. God is always standing ready to pour down his graces upon each and every one of us as abundantly and as usefully as he poured it down on the first Christians.
Speaker 0 10:10 There is no change in God. His love hasn't grown weak. He doesn't love us less than he loved them. He doesn't love us less
Speaker 0 10:28 then he loved Zan. He doesn't love us less than he loved them. All the means of holiness that they have, we've got, and besides that we have a couple of thousand years of examples of great saints to look towards that they didn't have. So we have an advantage in that way. Don't think that because we're living right now on all this evil's going on, we can't become saints. God knows what he's doing in any prime in history. When he places somebody, he's getting the graces to become a Saint in their particular historical circumstances. Don't think, Oh, if I lived a hundred years ago, I'd be, that's nonsense. He live right now. He knows everything he's got. He wants you to become a Saint right now, not a hundred years ago, not 800 years ago. Not whenever. Right now today he wants to become a Saint. The whole idea of the feast of all saints is it reminds us of how much hope we should have that he wants us to become seeds as well.
Speaker 0 11:34 Okay to offer. We're like naming the leper. If you've read, read about him in the, in the book of Kings, he said, this is the general, the Syrian army that has leprosy and he goes to lease. He is the prophet Lasher depending on which translation you see and he wants to get cured and then he gets mad because the profits cure is too simple. He says, and he took, he almost didn't get cured because he wasn't going to believe that Rafa just told him to go wash in the river Jordan seven times. He's like, I traveled all the way to hear that it's the same. It's not that complicated. Salvation is for everyone. This is the case. Some people make Catholicism really complicated and ornate and all this stuff and, and their exercises are more important than their relationship with him. The point of our relation or religion is a relationship with him and he's here.
Speaker 0 12:22 You can go to all these other churches. He's here, he's here. That's the point of the religion. We don't want to lose ourselves, our inner life series for nothing if it isn't founded on Christ, okay? We have to find ourselves on Christ. He's our model. He's the only model of absolute perfection and we're called to imitate him. Remember that he's pulled God and man and we have to imitate him both as God and man. Okay. Father, how do we imitate Christ as God? Well, Christ is the son of God and in that sense is the most first and essential sense that we have to resemble him. How well he's the son of God, by nature and by right in virtue of the union of the eternal word, God, the son with human nature. We become sons of God by adoption and grace by virtue or baptism, but that's still real when God adopts.
Speaker 0 13:25 So he puts a nature into us, the changes us. That's the amazing thing about baptism. So we actually become sons of God by adoption and grace. Christ has sanctifying grace. He has it in the fullness and from his fullness. It flows out into us more or less abundantly, depending on what kind of life we're leading, but it's, it's substance. It's the same grace that Phil's created, so of Jesus Christ in our soul and deifies us in incarnation. He is constituted by right the son of God. We become sons of God, fire our incorporation in baptism and by staying in the state of grace, the first and most essential condition of our imitation of Christ is to be in a state of grace. It's not complicated to understand. Remember by nature, we were born, you were born sons of earth, children of wrath. Our nature thanks to Adam is corrupted. <inaudible>
Speaker 0 14:30 not completely, not in a Calvinistic way, but we, it's, we've got, we're essentially good with a strong tendency towards evil and we don't have grace. So we're heading down at the level of nature, but at the level of super nature, we're so pleasing to God that he moves in and dwells within our soul. Okay? So if first and above is bless it, Don Marmee and points out if first and above all where you're not possess in us sanctifying grace, which is the fundamental side of similar to it with Jesus, the eternal father will not recognize us for his own in all we do in our lives. Without grace is of no merit to make us partakers of everlasting life. We shall only be coerce with Christ if we're as brethren bike race. So we imitate him and his divinity by staying in the state of grace.
Speaker 0 15:25 And that's the most important. How do we imitate in his humanity, by our works, by our works that are flowing from this love? If we love him, we're going to show him love isn't just words. It's not just a set of rules. It's a relationship. If we love him, we show him, but what we do with our thoughts, but what we do with their words by what we do with our deeds in the first most essential act are keeping the 10 commandments. If you'll love me, if any man love me, he'll keep my commandments. Our Lord tells us this, they're 10 commandments. They're not 10 relatively good ideas or the 10 suggestions, they're 10 commandments. So we keep them because we love them. They're not, we're not keeping them out of fear. Although we should be a fear afraid if we break them. That's true. You know, because he's God. But we keep them because we love him, we love him and we don't want to do anything to damage that relationship with someone we love with someone. They went through all that for us and is waiting for us there. We don't want to do anything to damage that relationship. So we keep the commandments and we practice acts of virtue and the greatest one that we need to practice the imitate him as course is his charity that love all the seats were lovable.
Speaker 0 16:50 They had different kinds of personalities, different dispositions, different circumstances. One thing is never different. They're always lovable. We want to practice charity, see the ideas. We come here, he gives us strength, we receive him. So it's not something but someone receive at communion and we take that love out into the world cause he wants to live in us. He wants our eyes to be his eyes, our hands to be his hands, all words to be his words and a take that out wherever we are, it's a joint operation. You're, I can't go all the places you go, I can't see all the people you see. I have a mission of the church and so do you. And he expects us to do it and we have something they need. We have Christ, we have eternal life, we have the cure for hell.
Speaker 0 17:43 We have the path to sank and we have something, the people we come in contact need. We have to bring that out to them and we have to become Holy and bring that out to them and bring them back to Christ. Okay, let's close with a review. God's plan for our holiness is so perfect that it can't fail except on our side. God wills positively worlds to make us saints. He gives us a creative share his own life and he adopts us as sons. And brothers of Christ, our holiness. All our holiness is founded on Jesus Christ. We're called to imitate him both in his divinity and his humanity. To imitate him. His divinity is to stay in the state of grace and work on growing and sanctifying grace all the time. The imitate him and his humanity is to by our acts to keep the commandments and his spirit in acts of virtue, especially charity, to reach out to the others just like he reached out just like you reached out to you and I, and we didn't deserve it. To reach out to others, to live a life of love and to become saints and God willing, very great saints.
