I just read an article that said it’s actually good for children to grow up with a few germs and little dust because they’ll develop stronger antibodies that way. Well, my children are developing the immune systems of Hercules.
Academy for Purification
It’s not that I will to be such a “relaxed housekeeper,” I just can’t get a grip on the laundry that never gets put away and breeds in the laundry baskets. I earnestly desire that all my socks would remain happily married to their mates, and I fervently desire to weed through my closet for the next St. Vincent DePaul clothing drive. Somehow, I just can never make it happen. I know that my role as heart of the home is a dignified and respectable one. I want to bring up my children in holiness and peace. It’s important that they say their prayers, get plenty of rest, eat their vegetables, and brush their teeth.
They should be well fed before Mass so they’re not spilling Cheerios all over the freshly vacuumed church carpet during the consecration. I realize that I should set out their clothes the night before so that we don’t experience mayhem when even St. Anthony can’t locate the lost loafers, and yet, try as I may to get out the door on time with peace, joy and everyone’s sippy cup, I find myself invariably dealing with the unexpected poopy diaper that throws the whole universe off-kilter.
But “what I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate: for I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want to do” (Rom 7: 15-25). In every way God reveals to me my weaknesses that He may be revealed as my strength. “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly of the world who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29).
I always thought that if I just did my part in life, tried my hardest, and gave it the ol’ college try, that things would go well. After all, didn’t God say, “I set before you here this day a blessing and a curse; a blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord and a curse if you do not” (Dt 11: 26)? I’ve learned that in God’s academy for the purification of souls, things often look their worst when God is doing His best.
Who says miracles aren’t still happening today? We witness the miraculous multiplication of clutter in our small townhouse on a regular basis. Having no basement or garage provides a daily opportunity for heartfelt prayer: “Jesus mercy; Mary help.” Bsides, I have the awesome privilege of possessing both Jewish and Catholic guilt. My mother, who was immaculate from her conception (not to be confused with the Blessed Mother, who is the Immaculate Conception) is from the school of “If you just clean the shower doors every time you get out of the shower you’ll never have to deal with that nasty build-up.” She has an invisible holster belt to hold the Windex and paper towels that she draws out automatically (spritz, spritz) after every smudge, drop or drizzle. So when my house gets out of control, so does my mind. Instead of it just being an issue of making some slight revisions in my life to facilitate a change (i.e. just tackle a little laundry at a time), it becomes a moral issue in my mind as if I am the sum total of the dusty nightstand.
What Was I Saying?
What does all this have to do with holiness? Everything. It’s the day in, day out, awful and awesome, stupid and stupendous things in our lives that God uses to perfect us. In the words of Father Corapi, “We are all called to be great saints,” so, “strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees” (Heb 12:12) and get ready to strike your prayer-card pose: one day the Vatican may need it for your cause.
Did you ever have one of those drunken moments with the Lord? I don’t mean after consuming a bottle of Chardonnay by yourself. I mean one of those times where you truly give yourself — heart, mind, body and soul — to God. You’re loving Him so much and you’re palpably feeling just how much He loves you, too. It goes something like this: “Yes Lord, whatever You want me to do, I will do. Wherever You send me, I will go. I surrender all to You. Yes Lord, please make me a saint. Oh, and Lord, I want to be with You right away in Heaven so I’ll just do my purgatory on earth and I’ll offer You all my prayers, works, joys and sufferings for the salvation of souls, for my sins and the sins of the whole world.”
Then you wake up the next morning, still a little hung over, “to smell the coffee” — that spilled all over the floor when you were trying to clean up the eggs that your two-year-old played catch with in the kitchen. “Blessed be Jesus, thank You for everything,” you pray through gritted teeth as you discover that your computer is down and the cell phone you were going to use to call your important client at 2PM just died. Never fear, you can go to a pay phone, except that you have no money till payday. “Uh, Jesus… about last night…”
No Servant Is Greater Than His Master
There is a reading I would like to share with you from my tattered and torn Streams in the Desert devotional, which has carried me through many a peak and valley in my walk with God.
“God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world” (Gal 6:14).
They were living to themselves; self with its hopes and promises and dreams still had a hold of them; but the Lord began to fulfill their prayers. They had asked for contrition, and had surrendered it to be given them at any cost, and He sent them sorrow; they had asked for purity, and He sent them thrilling anguish; they had asked to be meek, and He had broken their hearts; they had asked to be dead to the world, and He slew all their living hopes; they had asked to be made like unto Him, and He placed them in the furnace, sitting by “as a refiner and purifier of silver,” until they could reflect His image; they had asked to lay hold of the Cross, and when He had reached it out to them it lacerated their hands.
They had asked they knew not what, nor how, but He had taken them at their word, and granted them all their petitions. They were hardly willing to follow Him so far, or to draw so nigh to Him. They had upon them an awe and a fear, as Jacob at Bethel, or Eliphaz (the friend of Job) in the night visions, or as the Apostles when they thought they had seen a spirit, and knew not that it was Jesus. They could almost pray Him to depart from them, or to hide His awfulness. They found it easier to obey than to suffer, to do than to give up, to bear the cross than to hang upon it. But they cannot go back, for they have come too near to the unseen Cross, and its virtues have pierced too deeply within them. He is fulfilling to them His promise, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me”(Jn 12:32).
But now at last their turn has come. Before, they had only heard of the mystery, but now they feel it. He has fastened on them His look of love, as He did on Mary and Peter, and they can but choose to follow….
Had they chosen for themselves, or their friends chosen for them, they would have chosen otherwise. They would have been brighter here, but less glorious in His kingdom. They would have had Lot’s portion, not Abraham’s. If they had halted anywhere — if God had taken off His hand and let them stray back — what would they not have lost? What forfeits in the Resurrection?
But He stayed them up, even against themselves. Many a time their foot had well nigh slipped; but He in mercy held them up. Now, even in this life, they know that all He did was done well. It was good to suffer here, that they might reign hereafter; to bear the cross below, for they shall wear the crown above; and not their will but His was done on them and in them.
If “Jesus, Son though He was, learned obedience through what He suffered,” how much more do we need to learn the lesson at the College of the Cross. No servant is greater than his master. We are given an awesome and wonderful opportunity to “make up for what is lacking in the suffering of the body of Christ” (Col 1:24).
As we abandon ourselves to Christ we will see that so often we can do all that appears to be “the right thing” and produce a bad result, and do nothing right and produce the desired outcome. We find that God’s power is greater than our lack of power and His function is greater than our dysfunction. Ultimately we find that “all is grace.”
God calls us to complete and total abandonment. It is when we “delight in the Lord” that He grants us our heart’s desire” (Ps 37:4). This is where the supernatural indifference of the saints comes from: joy or pain, consolation or dryness, light or darkness, adulation or criticism, honey or gall, health or sickness, life or death — “it’s all good” because it comes from our Father, and “Father knows best.”
Holiness is not about doing what we want, but it is about doing what He wants us to do in love and for love. St. Thérèse, the Little Flower, wanted to be a missionary to make Love loved. But instead of sending her out into the mission fields, God called her to be hidden in a four-walled enclosure.
We are called to love God by giving Him ourselves in total surrender, uniting our will to His. He longs for us to rest confidently on His breast, believing in the love He has for us and rejoicing even in our weaknesses. Little Thérèse understood that “it is our state of misery which attracts His mercy.” St. Paul wrote, “Gladly, therefore I will glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Cor 12:9).
The path to holiness is an incredible journey we make carried on the wings of God’s love. It’s the day in, day out, awful and awesome, stupid and stupendous things in our lives that God uses to perfect us. It is in the midst of the mess that He will make us holy, not in spite of it. Face it: we are all going to suffer; the question is, Will it be redemptive, will it produce the fruit of holiness within us? Holiness is a by-product of living your life for God. Do His will, embrace your daily crosses and He will do all the rest within you, making you into the saint that He calls you to be. The words of St. Paul will become your own: “For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ…to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by being conformed to His death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:8-11).
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Cindy Burdett is a convert to the Catholic Faith from Judaism. Her “Kosher to Catholic” conversion story has delighted audiences around the country. She is available to present her conversion story to groups or parishes. Contact her via email at koshertocatholic@yahoo.com for speaking fees and availability.
