So much of the good we can do can echo down the years. Make it a habit to do one good act a day for someone else, and consider a day wasted when that goal goes unfulfilled. Doesn’t have to be something major. It can be as simple as giving a smile to a passer by, being patient with someone having a bad day or lightening the load of someone who momentarily has too much on their plate. We can have good, as well as bad, habits. Develop your good habits and make others the beneficiary of them.
If you have a Legion of Mary in your diocese, good. If you have one in your parish, great. Sit in on a couple of weekly meetings. Go into the vast field of mission work with them. Be transformed while lifting the spirits of your neighbor. Do something beautiful for God -St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta.
“So Fr. Andrew just talked about the idea that these things have spiritual resonance, all the things we do in our life; I’m going to come at it from the other angle. We tend to try to pursue the spiritual as spiritual; that’s what Sir Isaac Newton’s alchemy is. We want visions, we want experiences, we go out and, because we’ve still got this bifurcation, we realize, “I have all this… I’m a materialist. I have this mindset. I need to get this spiritual back,” and so we start pursuing purely spiritual experience in this sort of purely spiritual way. And there are folks out there who just bounce around from mysticism to mysticism and from meditative practice to meditative practice, trying to chase after that experience. But since the reality is that the spiritual underlies the material, the only way to get to the spiritual is through the material. These always go together.
“This is why St. Paul says, “I can have all visions, I can speak in the tongues of men and angels, I can have all gifts and prophesy. I can do all these things, and if I don’t have love, I’m nothing; I’m worthless. I’m garbage; it’s pointless.” Love is the way we approach these things. So if you want to get the spiritual back in your life, and you want to really get it, the real thing, not the counterfeit—you want to get the real deal—then the next time you see—and you won’t have to wait long—the next time you see someone who needs someone to smile at them, smile at them. The next time you see someone who needs someone to talk to them, or, more importantly, listen to them, listen to them. The next time you see someone who needs help, help them. And you’ll be amazed at how, as you start doing those things, the spiritual starts to come alive for you. You start to understand the world more.
“You’re not going to go and find the spiritual on its own and add it to the material you already have, but through love you’re going to draw close to God, and your nous will begin to be cleansed. You’ll get your mind right, and you’ll start to see what it is that’s been going on around you this whole time, and you’ll start to understand. And that’s also why St. Paul tells us in Hebrews that faith, which should be translated “faithfulness,” is the substance of things hoped for. When we’re faithful, all of a sudden all of those hopes and dreams, all of these things that we’re just sort of believing by faith or intuition, suddenly have substance, suddenly become real to us.
“So that’s my closing thought. There’s a very practical way to try to get back to where ancient people were, and it’s not through estotericism or even mysticism; it’s through loving your neighbor, in very real and very practical ways that every single one of us can start doing right now if we really want to.” -Fr. Stephen De Young
Before COVID hit at the mission we had a very active group Crusaders for Christ. Similar to Legion of Mary but less record keeping.. informal. Members performing spiritual and corporal works of mercy. The group is starting up again.
Question, Nate, is loving your neighbor the same as respecting him?
CAM.
God bless your ministries.
This past Thursday, after having given her communion, I handed a blind resident a small gift for her. A Pieta cast out of heavy plastic. I didn’t tell her what it was. As she probed the mini sculpture for 3 minutes or so, she started to cry tears of Joy. It’s the Pieta! And she took it to her cheeks and kissed it.
Her smile and tears filled me with awe.
Give the very best.
Give Jesus.
???
What does your neighbor need?
Did the Good Samaritan need to administer respect in order to administer first aid?
Philip, you are an inspiration! The Bethlehen Wood Carvers come to our mission. I always find something for the younger generation to be blessed sacramentals. Also having Masses said for the living and the dead. The bigger parishes are sometimes a year out though, but religious orders and foreign missions are grateful for the donations. I do it for birthdays, wedding anniversaries, illness, crises, souls. Even appreciated by non Catholics. Who cannot appreciate receiving extra grace?