Saints Making a Difference – Weekly Message 06-09-2015

Dear Fellow Digital Missionary, pax Christi:

Did the saints change the world? In the obvious sense, no, they didn’t. There have been thousands of saints in the history of Christianity, and yet today we still live in a world inundated with sin and myriad forms of injustice. The saints didn’t change that situation; they didn’t turn earth into heaven. Only God can do that, and he has promised that he will do it, at the end of history: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away…” (Revelation 21:1).  

And yet, each saint did change a world. Each saint changed their own unique, personal world, the world of relationships and interactions that God’s providence built up around them. As St. Francis put it centuries ago: where there was doubt, the saints sowed faith; where there was darkness, light; where there was despair, hope; where there was sadness and injury in their own lives and in the lives of the people they came into contact with, the saints rekindled joy and brought pardon. And that is all God asked of them. He didn’t ask them to change the whole world, but simply to be his messenger to their own corner of human time and space. In being faithful to that call, the saints didn’t rid the world of evil, but they did make a difference that will resound for all eternity.  

We can do the same. We can alter eternity by being channels of God’s grace for our own unique world of relationships and interactions. We can become saints. This is, in fact, our calling, a calling that flows from the inscrutable and inexhaustible love that God has for each of us.  

Every June the Church’s liturgy bends over backwards in order to draw our attention to that love. The feasts of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Body and Blood of Christ are like trumpet calls from heaven. They turn our hearts and minds towards our true origin and destiny – both of which are bound up with a love that will never rest until it has embraced us (warts and all) to the full.  

Do you want to change your world? Do you want to grow in holiness (God’s name for happiness)? Listen for those trumpet calls this month. Create space in your life for the voice of God to resound and reverberate and redirect. Let God set your agenda, and no one else. To help that happen, you may want to dip back into some of our more popular Retreat Guides, the ones that open up new vistas (and remind you of old ones) regarding the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist: Fire and Thorns: A Retreat Guide on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Food for the Journey: A Retreat Guide on the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

I will be praying that each one of us hears the trumpet call from eternity in a fresh, exhilarating way this month. And I don’t want to finish without thanking you for all your encouragement and support. We haven’t stopped receiving truly remarkable testimonies about how our small efforts to evangelize the digital continent are contributing to your faith-journeys. That’s why RC Spirituality is here, and as long as we are able, we will keep on doing our best to make that happen.

Peace in Him, Fr. John Bartunek, LC