"Be Mindful of your dignity, O Christian." - St. Leo

God was made man that man might be made god (St. Augustine, Serm. 13 de Temp.).





Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness (Genesis 1:26).





"Show me a penny. Whose image and inscription hath it?" They answering, said to him, "Caesar's." And he said to them: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's: and to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20: 24-25).





Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19).





Few there are who know the privilege of such a dignity; fewer still who ponder it with the gravity it deserves. We are living temples of God, we carry God Himself in their hearts, and that therefore we should walk divinely with God and converse in a manner befitting such a guest (Cornelius a Lapide, In Os. 1:10).





"Contemplate Me in the core of your heart and you will see that I am your Creator and you will be happy" (Said by Jesus Christ to St. Catherine of Siena, recorded in her Life, I, chap. 10).





If God humbled Himself to become man, it was in order to exalt men and to make them gods (St. Augustine, Serm. 166).





We are called gods, not only because we have been raised to supernatural glory, but because we now possess God dwelling and abiding in us. Otherwise, how are we temples of God, according to Paul, possessing the Spirit dwelling within us, unless the Spirit be God by nature? (St. Cyril, In Joan., I, 9).





Only the indwelling of God makes a soul a temple of God (St. Thomas, In 1 Cor., 3:16, lec. 3).





That which the most exalted creatures never could have been able to say, that which would fill the loftiest heavenly powers with terror and consternation, we say confidently every day: "Our Father, who art in heaven." A marvelous fellowship. (St. Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 72).





"Ah, daughter, how few are they who love Me in truth! If people loved Me, I should not hide My secrets from them" (Said by Jesus Christ to St. Teresa of Avila, recorded in her Life, chap. 40).





To unite us to God Himself; to establish a vital relationship between our soul and the inner life of God, such is in very deed the the love of God as manifested. It was to make possible this union, these vital relations with God Himself, that [Jesus Christ] desired to unite Himself to human nature (Sauve, Le culte du Coeur de Jesus, 24).





The profound submission of a holy humility, the disdain of self, and the awareness of our own baseness do not debase us, but rather they enable us to fly to the height of perfect union with God (Blessed Henry Suso, Union).





By simple attention in watching our own interior, we perform excellent acts of virtue and make prodigious advances in perfection; whereas, on the contrary, by neglecting our interior we incur incalculable losses (Lallemant, Spiritual Doctrine, V, chap. 3; art. 1).










Likewise the great supernatural facts, such as the fact of Lourdes, are rather easily grasped by the clean of heart. They quickly see the supernatural origin, meaning, and import of these facts. Then, while learned men discourse endlessly without being able to reach a conclusion, God does His work in the clean of heart. Finally, [after humbly engaging in more profound learning,] the soul delights in returning to the simplicity of faith of the patriarchs, to the words of the psalms, to the parables of the Gospel (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life).








When we do everything wholeheartedly, love increases continually (St. Therese of Lisieux).








Once we are convinced that God dwells within us, we abandon ourselves with sweet truth into His hands, we confide all our interests to His care, and thus we enjoy perfect peace and serenity: "Thou makest a tranquil heart, great peace, and festive joy" (The Imitation). Now, there is no disposition more favorable for spiritual growth than inward peace: "In silence and in solitude the devout soul maketh progress" (The Imitation) (A. Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life, no. 1223).

24 May 2010

An Easy Way to Become a Saint

Fr. Paul O'Sullivan's book, An Easy Way to Become a Saint, is available from TAN Books for $8.50 and from Amazon.com for $7.

See the second blog post on this book here.

Foreword

AN EASY WAY TO BECOME A SAINT

These words will come as a surprise to many readers, but greater will be their surprise on perusing the following pages to see how true the words are.

1. To be a saint is to love God. Now what is easier than to love a God who is infinitely good and who loves us with infinite love?

Our hearts were made expressly to love Him, just as our eyes were made to see, our ears to hear. Surely there can be no difficulty in doing that for which we were expressly made.

2. To be a saint is to do all our actions for love of God. He made us to love and serve Him. He gave us our wonderful faculties to use for our own happiness and benefit, but He asks us to do all we do for love of Him. In return, He will give us a rich reward for our every action. This is what St. Paul tells us to do: "Whatever you do in word or work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" (Col. 3:17).

Thus another infallible and easy way to become a saint is to do all we do for love of God.

3. God has given us a beautiful religion made especially for our poor human hearts, a religion of peace and love, a religion which gives us abundant helps to correct our faults and defects, a religion that gives strength to the weakest and consoles the most broken-hearted. Those who practice this all-wise and consoling religion are truly saints.

The one difficulty in performing these three duties is not so much our weakness as our lamentable ignorance. We do not love God, simply because we do not know Him. We have been living with utterly erroneous ideas about Him. We look on God as a stern God, a God of majesty, whom we reverence, but fear; we only think of Him as a God of justice who punishes our sins. There we stop. That, as such, is a caricature of God, for God above all is a God of sweetness, mercy, and love, a God who loves us most tenderly and desires our love in return.

We do not offer our actions for the love of God because we do not realize that our every thought, word and act give God pleasure and obtain for us great merit, if only we do them for love of Him. But because we do not realize this fact, the countless acts of the day, which might so easily bring us immense rewards, are utterly lost.

How imperfectly understood is our glorious Religion!

By many it is looked on as a hard duty that must be performed. They look on the Ten Commandments as restrictions to their liberty, instead of seeing them as they are--the surest guarantees of their happiness.

The treasures of joy and consolation which our Religion offers, the helps and strength it gives are little known. Prayer, instead of being a pleasure, is looked upon as a penance. The Sacraments, which are very rivers of grace, are little appreciated, little used. All this owing to ourignorance. In a word, what we most need is an intelligent grasp of our divinely beautiful and all-wise Religion, one which will secure for us not only a high degree of holiness but the greatest possible measure of happiness.

The prevailing idea of many is that holiness implies leading a sad and austere life; whereas, true holiness gives us immense joy, consolation and strength.

Many too think that it is practically impossible to be a saint, or at least extremely difficult.

We offer our readers in this booklet many easy but infallible means of reaching a high degree of sanctity.

(Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, O.P., An Easy Way to Become a Saint, p.xi-xiii; available from TAN Books; published with permission.)

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