Transcription
And of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us pray together in the words of our Lord. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Welcome my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. On the 1st of November, we celebrate the feast of all saints. Yesterday, we celebrated the eve of all saints, which is known as Halloween. And I know there's a lot of talk out there of people saying Halloween is diabolical. It shouldn't be permitted by any parish or by any Christian or any Catholic parent. But when you really study the origins of Halloween, it's good. It falls. It of course it comes into the occult as well. It may have started with an ancient Celt Celtic festival in Samhain, celebrated over 2,000 years ago.
But the Catholic Church is known to have taken things that at one time were destined for secular or pagan use and consecrate them whereby they are hereto for destined for sacred use. Case in point, over 21 Catholic churches in Rome were at one time pagan temples or offered up places where offerings of animals were made to pagan gods, deities. One example is the Pantheon. Pent in Greek, theon means many gods. And now it's a Catholic church. So the church has the authority, has the power to take that much like your own soul or your body, which at one point was under the law of sin and evil like original sin when you were born, and then make it sacred through rituals, through prayers. So you received baptism, and that which was corrupt became incorrupt. Now your body is here to for destined for the resurrection day for eternal incorruptibility and immortality, provided you carry out your life on earth according to the dictates of your conscience by doing good and avoiding evil and following God's commandments.
The same thing with a structure. It's easier for the church to convert an evil pagan structure to something good than a free human will. So if the church can convert your soul, so much more can it do so with a structure and even with a date like Halloween. So the word Halloween literally means hallow, like we say in the Our Father prayer, hallowed be thy name, which is holy. Ancient English is hallow for holy, and eve. The ancient English for Eve is in. So hallowed in is holy eve. That's what hallowing means. In that sense, there's nothing diabolical or evil about it. And therefore, it is the eve of today's feast of all saints. The feast of November 1st of all saints. Okay?
Now, people of course, they will always use occasions to attack the church. They'll say, for example, the church allows a pyramid with an all-seeing eye in it. I've seen it in this basilica or that basilica, whether it's in Washington or in Rome, Italy, or in Greece, wherever. And therefore, evil has entered the church. What they don't realize is that the pyramid with the all-seeing eye was first used by the church and then adopted by secret societies. Same thing with the cross and the peace symbol. Same thing with other um images, structures like the two horns like you see in Moses' statue made by um Michelangelo in St. Peter and St. Paul church in Rome. They say, "Oh, two horns means the devil." Not initially. The two horns initially meant the high priesthood. Remember, Satan at one point was holy. He was Lucifer. He fell. The horns remained. But when he was good, those ones represent the infusion of knowledge to the mind, streams of light. And Catherine Emmerich talks about this when she describes how Adam appeared in Eden before Eve and the angels. She talks about rays of light issuing forth from his forehead that surrounded him with a halo. So when Michelangelo sculpted Moses in that famous statue in St. Peter and St. Paul Church in Rome, just between the Coliseum and the um Venice Square, he has horns. The bishop wears a miter with two horns. So horns is always the symbol of the high priesthood, but it could also be used for perversive evil practices. So that doesn't mean that just because something's used for bad, like Halloween, means we got to condemn it and condemn all celebrations thereof. It can be observed as a sacred feast.
There are pagan customs that accompany some of the observances in America and other places I know that where they wear these ghoulish costumes or diabolical images, which in my opinion has no place in Halloween. It perverts the nature of it. But that doesn't mean we throw away the eve of holy saints, which is hallowed in, hallowed eve. Okay.
So on to something more meaningful. Um, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the occasional ups and downs the soul seeking to live in God's divine will every day encounters throughout its entire life. This never ends, by the way. Happens with all the saints. It happened with Jesus Christ. Just look at him on the cross, his last day. Abandoned by his apostles hours before. Look at Mary, right? Shunned by all the people in her hometown, who considered her son now a criminal and dressed up on purpose by Herod and then by Pilate and then by the centurions to look like a criminal. And it happened with Luisa Piccarreta. It happened with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Happened with Faustina Kowalska. And the list goes on and on. So ups and downs, vicissitudes, oscillations on the inside are occasions for the soul to unite itself with the interior passion of Christ. If you don't believe me, just read the reflection of the Hours of the Passion of the 8:00 p.m. hour. I won't go into that now. I'll go back to that in a moment if I do recall to do so. Um, but right now, I'd like to just introduce you to this darkness and this brightness that occurs in the soul that seeks to live in God's divine will.
Some are of the false impression that when you live in God's divine will, or when you desire to, all darkness is banished forever. And they'll quote Luisa and some people to justify it. Certainly, God does talk about the divine will banishing all darkness. Yes, he does. But this must be understood according to what's called in theology the analogy of faith. That means you cannot read one line of Luisa's writings without understanding the whole import, the whole content. Same with sacred scripture. I can quote to you at least 100 lines of sacred scripture that will contradict other lines of sacred scripture. Therefore, you cannot take one line in and of itself and interpret it. It has to be understood and read within the optic of the whole context of the sacred message of scripture and of this, in this case, of Luisa's writings.
But um, when it comes to darkness, okay, how do we deal with that? You know, because this, this is necessary for growth in degrees in the divine will. It is not pleasant. Nobody likes it. In fact, most people abhor it and run from it because they don't understand the great good it does. And that's the purpose of my reflection today, to help you better understand the importance, the value, the essential uh dynamic of being put to the test in order to grow. I mentioned this before and I'll say it again. The soul is just like a muscle in as much as in order for it to grow, it has to have both rest and resistance. Today, I'm talking about the resistance. That's the darkness, the opposition. That's the heavy weight that you're asked to bear. And when you're carrying the cross, Jesus is resting in you. And when you're feeling consolation, you're resting in Jesus. And he's taken up your cross. This back and forth oscillation, vicissitude, ups and downs is essential to growing God's divine will.
Now, before I get to the 8 p.m. hour reflection, which I mentioned in passing, hope I remember to cite it before I finish this talk, I want to address parenthetically something that came up to me about four days ago. Somebody passed on to me an email saying, "Father, is this true?" Apparently, a newsletter was being sent out by a group of the divine will, and it contains what's alleged to be a statement from the Roman Observer magazine in Rome. In Italian, it's called L'Osservatore Romano. Now, this Roman Observer magazine is reported by this community of the divine will and by others that are it states that on July 9th, 1997, in the edition of L'Osservatore Romano, Pope St. John Paul II wrote about the divine will, following in the following letter to the Rogationist Fathers on the centenary of the death of their founder, St. Hannibal Mary di Francia. And then it quotes: "This is not another devotion, nor renewed charism to illuminate a part of the attributes of God, but it is the holiness of God himself."
Okay, I'm going to stop right there. This long paragraph is fake. It's false. It's not true. It's misinformation. And why am I bringing this up? Because it's already been circulated throughout several divine will groups, and they're still circulating it now. I'm not condemning the people who are promoting it. I know this group, this group is misinforming other people, and this is dangerous. So that's why I'm addressing it. I have to do it as a theologian, as a pastor, as a carer of souls, because if I don't, you're going to go on in ignorance thinking these are the words of Pope John Paul II. And they're not. He never said these words. Now, the question is, who would do such a thing? Who would do such a sinful thing? That's serious. They're bearing false witness. And I will tell you what, problems will follow this letter that's being circulated, this newsletter. It should be pulled from the market immediately. It should be pulled from all emails immediately. And what makes it worse is this is from a community that has the bishop's approval. So you have to be careful here. Very careful. You know, why throw oil into the fire? The divine will has enough problems. The last thing we need is people promoting it. I'm assuming good intention put it out, but it's going to do damage. There will be people out there that hate the divine will already, and they're going to, you know, I said this a thousand times and I'll say it a thousand and the first time. People who are devoted to the divine will, how you research number one, identify and separate the primary source from the secondary source from the tertiary source. Case in point, the consecration to Russia. The Blessed Virgin Mary spoke to Lucia. Okay. Mary is the primary source. Lucia, the secondary source. Lucia receives it directly from Mary that these requirements must be made in order for Russia to be consecrated to my heart, which has been asked since 1917. And that was effectively done and accepted by Mary in 1984, thanks to JP2. And then the tertiary source are people who comment on Luisa's words. Okay. Primary source, the Blessed Mother. Secondary source, the person who receives from the primary source, namely Lucia. She's the secondary source. Tertiary source, people who comment on Lucia. In this case, Pope John Paul II. And they responded to me within seven hours. The primary source. Did these people who put this out do this? No. Why not? Again, I'm not judging their intentions. I'm just trying to stop the damage being done by people with good intentions. That's what I'm trying to do. And it's h this is not the first time this has happened. The people who read the article and then the tertiary source, people who spread the article, comment on it, blah, blah, blah. So I'm trying to start this in its tracks on the inside.
The ups and downs, vicissitudes, the oscillations, the resistance that the soul, like the muscle, experiences in order for the soul to grow in the divine will. Okay. Now, God will use life's events, both good and bad, without condoning the bad, for those who love God to bring them closer to Him. How does He do it? We must unite every interior experience, heartbeat, affection, desire, intention, proclivity, inclination with that of Christ. Unite ourselves with Him. If you read the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will book, many times she says in these daily meditations, "Give me your sufferings, your miseries, your weakness, your sins, and I will burn them all in the in the flame of my love." Jesus says the same thing in Luisa's volumes. So we shouldn't hesitate to come to God as we are, with a contrite heart, asking Him to make us the perfect icon of His will and of His mercy. And in order to do that, He has to shape and mold us. How does that work? Through the darkness. That's the purpose of the darkness. It purges, much like fire purging clay that will be molded into a vase or a vessel.
St. Hannibal says in the 8 p.m. hour of the Hours of the Passion, "Let us suppose that Jesus places us in the circumstance of exercising patience." See what Hannibal says. He doesn't say, "Let us suppose I'm in an impatient situation." No, he says, "Let us suppose that Jesus places us in the circumstance of exercising patience." In other words, everything that happens to us on the inside, God permits. So Jesus was put in the desert to be tested by the Holy Spirit. Luke states this in his gospel. The Spirit thrust Jesus into the desert. Why? To be tested in His humanity. Jesus did not resist. He went willingly. So suppose Jesus, Hannibal says here, places us in the circumstance of exercising patience. He receives so many grave offenses from souls that he feels moved to resort to chastisements to strike them. And here he gives us the opportunity to exercise patience. See where I'm going here? In order to avoid sending chastisements upon the world, Hannibal is here saying that Jesus is looking for victim souls willing to take upon themselves impatient situations, injustices thrown upon them by others, and offer them up to avoid chastisements. That's the only way God can avoid chastisements. And Maria, this is Mary's constant theme. Offer up mortifications twice a week because through prayer and fasting, you can avert wars. That's a chastisement, and suspend natural laws. That's averting chastisements too. So here Hannibal says, "The Lord experiences many grave offenses from souls that he feels moved to resort to chastisements." And here he calls us to help Him by giving us the opportunity to exercise patience. And we must give Him honor, bearing everything in peace, just as He does. Our patience will snatch from His hands the chastisements which other souls draw down. Our patience will snatch from His hands the chastisements that other souls will draw down because Jesus in us will exercise His own divine patience. And this applies not only to patience but to all the other virtues.
Oh, here the Lord is, when we experience interior aridity, desolation, darkness, resistance, trouble, uphill battles, resting in us, allowing us through our exercise of the virtues in these difficult moments to snatch from His hand chastisements drawn upon the earth by other souls, and at the same time to perfect us in uniting ourselves more intimately with Him and amass more merit. Do you think that the great saints who attained the heights of holiness and at the same time were harassed by the devil were displeasing to God because God allowed the devil to harass them? Quite the opposite. St. Padre Pio, when he was physically left in a pool of blood by the devil after he already attained the heights of holiness, was asked by one of the conquerors why does God allow this to happen to you? And he replies in his epistles. He has all of his his four-volume epistle set. He says, "So that I can offer up this for the salvation of souls. The suffering God allows the devil to impose upon me, I offer up for the salvation of souls. I am enabled to grow in holiness more, more in intimate holiness with God, amass more merit." So these are the three reasons Father gave, and he knew that, and that's why he welcomed it. He never said, "God, stop it. Take the devil away." He understood exactly why God was allowing this. He called on his angel one time, I remember, and he was a little bit with his Italian humor, irritated with him. He was being beaten by the devil one time, and he looked up and he called upon his angel for assistance. And his angel praying to God, singing hymns. And he looks at his angels and said, "Why are you singing hymns and I'm here suffering? You're supposed to be helping me." And the angel basically said to him, and this is I'm paraphrasing from his epistle, "Your sufferings offered up with your intention are saving souls from hell, and they're glorifying God and increasing my accidental glory, and I'm glorifying God for the glory you've given me." He say, Pio says, "Well, that's that's great, but come down here and help me now. I need your help." And he did. The angel eventually did and helped him. But do you see the paradox? Satan becomes an instrument in God's hand for the advancement of the souls in God's will who love Him. You may say Satan is the left hand of God. To his own unawares, he's doing God's will. Now, certainly, those people who do not love God and are harassed by Satan use it for their own damnation because they don't turn to God like the saints do.
And God will never allow a soul to be tested beyond its strength. Jesus tells this to Luisa in Volume One. It's taught by St. Augustine and it's taught by the church. Well, now that I brought it up, I'm going to have to pull it up. Where in Luisa's Volume One does Jesus say this? And then I'll go back to the theme that I'm addressing here. See, if you have Volume One that was recently put out with footnotes, I t it it mentions it there and it's available on the website um learning to live in God's divine will. Be its strength of these periods. I found it's found in subtitle 15 of Volume One, and I'll quote to you this passage. Jesus continued, "Do not afflict yourself, Luisa. Know that I will never allow the demons to tempt you beyond your strength. If I allow them to test you, it is for your own good. For I never place a soul in battle for it to perish. Rather, I first first measure its strength." And everyone's strength is different. First I measure its strength, then impart to it my grace, and only then do I place it in battle. So see, before God allows Satan to test us, troubles to assail us, and evil to beset us, He first measures our individual strength, which is unique to each and every human being. Number two, then He gives us His grace, and only after He's done both, He puts us in battle. And then He adds to Luisa after stating, "First I measure its strength, then I impart my grace. Only then do I place it in battle. And if the souls happen to fall, if some souls happen to fall, it is because they have failed to remain united to me in prayer." That is huge. This is the blueprint on how to defeat Satan. Constant prayer. A daily steadfast regimen of prayer is essential. I gave in one of my talks about a year ago why most people keep falling back into sin. It's because they don't have a consistent daily regimen of prayer. They have prayer, but it's not consistent. It's up and down according to what's what comes each day. If it's a difficult day, they don't pray at all. They're too worried or they're absorbed in their problems, and that's a distraction from Satan. And if everything's easy and fine, they don't pray either because now they can do everything they want. Go fishing, go sailboating, and do this and that. And then they go, see, see the paradox of life is when we have all the time in the world, we have no time to pray. And when we have all these troubles like thorns, sorry, like seeds that were thrown among thorns, we're choked by the anxieties of life and by the troubles that the devil puts upon us. So the devil hits us in both directions with consolation and desolation. And this is why the will that transcends the highs and lows of our external existence is under God's command. Not the intellect, not the memory. The will. The will commands the intellect. The will commands the memory. Satan can enter the intellect and the memory without your consent. But the will can cast him out. And that's why the will is the greatest of the three faculties and the repository of all the acts done in God's divine will that turn to your favor on judgment day. So the will commands the intellect and the memory to make time for God every day, to set aside time to have a consistent daily steadfast regimen prayer life. If the will does not do that, there is no way you're living in God's divine will. If you are not following a daily consistent regimen of prayer, you are not living in God's divine will. There's no way you can do that. You can say, "Well, I come and go. You know, I pray once in a while, and when I'm in those prayer moments, I invoke God's will, so I'm living in it." Well, my question to you is, is that really living? Living implies continuity. Visiting does not. I would say you're visiting God's will. You're not living in it. Okay.
Nonetheless, Jesus talks about in Volume 11, three types of live ways of living in Israel. Imperfectly, perfectly, and completely. Even the souls who living in the divine will imperfectly strive for a daily steadfast prayer life. God sees their intention, and He acts as if what they did was done, even if they couldn't do it, because their intention was sincere, informed, and upright. So Jesus tells Luisa, "I never place a soul in battle for it to perish. Rather, I measure its strength, impart my grace, and only then do I place it in battle. And if some souls happen to fall, it is because they have failed to remain united to me in prayer." No longer sensibly experiencing my love. Here it's desolation, darkness. They don't experience the consolation anymore. This is where they're feeling resistance. No longer sensibly experiencing my love, they go about begging for love from other creatures. Isn't that so true? We feel abandoned. This person took his love or her love away from me. That person rejected me. They they're no longer paying attention to me. So, I have to replace their love that they took away with someone else's love. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. It's psychologically a sound approach to not sulk in the corner and feel unloved when people have abandoned you, but rather go out, talk to people, meet people. But that's not replacing God. You see, you're speaking and finding God in and through others. That's one approach. Another approach is when there is no one else available, you have no choice but to turn to God, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when the apostles fell asleep more than once. So Jesus says, "No longer sensibly experiencing my love, these people go about begging for love, begging for love from other creatures, whereas I alone could fulfill and satisfy the human heart." Such souls do not let themselves be guided by the short path of obedience, but trust more in their own human judgment than in the judgment of those who guide them in their stead. So what wonder is it if they fall? Here the Lord is saying there are many people in the church today that answer to no one but themselves. They badmouth the Pope. They badmouth the Magisterium. They think their wits will save them, and they will end up in hell on their butts. But I didn't know. But I thought this. But I thought that. And they end up in hell on their butts. See, Jesus is telling Luisa that the only way to get to heaven is through the sure path of obedience. But people, the majority, the majority of Christians today do not look to the church to obey it. They look to it either to confirm their own instincts or their own instincts or inhibitions or judgments, thoughts, opinions. And then they agree with it when they concur with these. Okay. The minority of the people today do what Jesus asks them. Well, how can I say that? Just look at the statistics. They don't lie. How many people go to church on Sunday in the Catholic Church? About a about a quarter. A quarter of the pie goes to confession and communion. That that in itself is a statement. The vast majority, they're not putting God at the center of their life. And it's been like this for a long time. But this thing, this will change when God will visit us very soon. And through His Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, that will express Himself both externally and internally through fire, will thin the ranks, leaving a remnant of meek individuals to inherit the earth.
So Jesus tells Luisa, "What uh wonder is it if they fall? They have not let themselves be guided by the sure path of obedience, but trust more in their own human judgment than in the judgment of those who guide them in their stead." That's the church, church authorities. Therefore, what I ask of you is steadfast prayer, Luisa. That's daily prayer without changing. Even if you should suffer the pains of death, you must never neglect your daily prayers. That what you are accustomed to doing. Now, Luisa's routine of daily prayers and pious exercises included throughout her life: number one, meditating on the infant Jesus and His blessed Mother's womb. Remember the novena she did every year before Christmas. Two, in the house of Nazareth. Uh, she would uh behold Jesus in through her imagination, her interior or mind's eye, interior vision, observe the holy family of Nazareth in contemplative prayer, and try to um imitate them who were vying to obey each other. Three, she would behold God in all things. She would exercise acts of humility, self-annihilation. Four and five. Six, she frequented sacramental confession. That's a prayer because you have to prepare for it, and you have to recite the act of penitential act. And she did acts of gratitude, of charity, in a spirit of sacrifice, and she complied with the confessor's counsel, meditated on the Hours of the Passion. She made 33 visits to Jesus interiorly in the Blessed Sacrament while offering Him an acts of adoration and reparation. She did her divine acts in her body and soul throughout the day, from morning till evening. She consecrated herself at the beginning of the day through the prevenient act, and we knew that which is known as the present act. Throughout the day, she did her rounds of pious pilgrimage throughout creation, uniting all things in and through creation with God and in God. And she also did corporal and spiritual works of mercy, frequenting the sacraments, and the list goes on and on. She never changed this rhythm of her life of daily prayer.
So Jesus tells her, "What I ask of you is steadfast prayer. Even if you should suffer the pains of death, you must never neglect your daily prayers, that which you were accustomed to doing. The more you find yourself in the state of interior darkness, Luisa, the more you ought to invoke the help of the one who can set you free." Now, John of the Cross states in his Dark Night of the Soul work, it's chapter nine. "It is most fitting and necessary if the soul is to pass to these great things that this dark night should first of all annihilate and undo it, bringing the soul into darkness, aridity, affliction, and emptiness. For the light which is to be given to it is a divine light of the highest kind, which transcends all natural light, and which by nature can find no place in the understanding." Luisa was going through this dark night, of which St. John of the Cross spoke, especially in her teen years, 13 to 16. Didn't leave her after 16, they just lessened. And Jesus tells her that the more you experience this interior darkness, the more you ought to invoke the help of the one, meaning God, who can set you free. Jesus relates, as we know in Matthew 22:44, um, that the more Jesus' agony in the garden intensified, the more earnestly He prayed. Similarly, the more Luisa's interior darkness increased, the more earnestly she was to pray to God. And Jesus adds, "What is more, I want you to place yourself blindly in the hands of the confessor without examining what he tells you, for you will be surrounded by darkness and will be like one who without eyes needs a hand to guide her. Your spiritual eyes will be perceiving things through the voice of the confessor, which like light will enlighten the darkness about you. The works of your hands will be directed by the virtue of obedience, which will act as your guide, sustain you, and make you arrive safely at bay."
Okay. Now getting back to the ups and downs, vicissitudes in life, the resistance, the um desolation, the soul experiences. I wish to share with you from a psychological approach what is going on here. Okay? Because it's very important to address, and then I'll conclude with the feast of all saints that we celebrate. Um, first, this uh this darkness. There was a person that had come to me several years ago, among others, that for about 10 years was going through an interior struggle. And um, this person was often saying, "If only this had happened in my life, things would be different." Or, "If this had happened, this would not have been the case today." Or, "If I didn't make this bad decision, I would not be in the situation I am in." In other words, this person was regretting a lot of regrets of the bad things that happened to them, often times at his or her own hand in the past. "If only had this not been, I should not have..." A lot of regret, a lot of guilt. And this was intensifying the darkness tremendously. This person could not advance in faith or in spirituality because this person was stuck in a state of depression, chronic depression. They could not grow in prayer, had no need, desire to pray. They felt abandoned by God, could not trust in God, and could not allow God to forgive him or her. This made it impossible for this person to find or to get along with a spouse. They were isolated. And this is exactly what the devil wanted. The devil had this person by the throat, and they had no idea that the devil was choking them.
So, how could this person move forward? You see, this person, I'm going to address this from a psychological perspective, was looking at "if only" in the past as something that was essential to the present, upon which the present depended, and were rejecting the precise shape of the cross Jesus had offered them in the past and is offering them in the present. By saying, "If only I did this in the past," they are effectively rejecting the specific shape of the cross Jesus offered them in the past and He's offering them now. You see, if they had simply accepted what Jesus had given them, they could have said, "I have been crucified with Christ." As Paul says in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ." In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus faced a great temptation, an "if only" temptation. Had I only done this, let's say Jesus' humanity, not His divinity, would have said, "If only I would have approached Judas a different way, he would not have been lost. If only I would have said to those hundred disciples about my body and blood, if I said it in a more delicate way, maybe they wouldn't have left." If there were a lot of "if onlys," Jesus could have gone back to and said, "If only I did this." If only Jesus faced His supreme "if only" temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane. But He triumphed over it by accepting the twisting and turning wood of the cross according to the fashion of the Father's design. Jesus did not design the cross. He accepted it as it was presented to Him by the Father. You see, from the cross and the grave, there's obedience to the Father's will. There's love, trust, surrender to the Father. And Jesus turned this attitude this person had that came to me. "If only I did this. If only I didn't have this cross in my past. If only I didn't have to deal with this bad memory or bad action of mine that's cost me the future of the rest of my life." If only this person followed Jesus' example by taking up the cross, not patterned by the person, but by God's providence, and followed Him, the depression would dissipate. It will be the beginning of the end of the darkness.
Remember, we are not authorized to shape our own cross. We are not. We have no authority by God to choose the dimensions, the weight, the size, the shape of our cross. We have no choice and we do not have the authority to choose. God chooses that for us. And that includes our defects, our sins, however great they are, and our good, charitable choices and actions in life. It includes the whole gamut of good and evil, our cross. So the cross that we receive is never like anyone else's cross. And it's not supposed to be. We don't become a saint by constantly seeking freedom from all uncomfortable constraints and irritations. This is part of the devil's trick. Oh, you're not fully free from uncomfortabilities, from difficulties, from troubles. So that means you have to live in constant regret of your past. That's the devil's voice. That does not make us a saint. Freeing ourselves from uncomfortable constraints and irritations or troubles. That does not make you a saint. As with any good work of art, the edges and the limits give life to its beautiful form. On all holiness is about the contours, the dimensions, the edges, the right form that God decides. Grace transforms. Grace conforms. Grace reforms. Grace informs our life with the form of Christ's cross. Grace is infinitely superior to evil and can not only reverse evil, but can avail itself thereof to bring about not just the good that previously existed, but a greater good. So much so that had that evil not existed, we would not experience this great grace and great goodness. This is the whole message of Jesus to Luisa when He quotes St. Augustine, "Culpa." Happy thought. Thank God there was original sin because through it we now inherit a greater glory that we would not have had there been no original sin. It's great for those who are saved. It's hellish for those who are lost. So, it's a 50-50 gamble. And it's not a gamble really. It's a decision that's made throughout tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of choices in life. We have a choice to be saved to the last breath we take.
So this person's "if only" in the past were hemmed in a frame within which God can paint His masterpiece. They didn't see that the devil was keeping this person blind from seeing that your past failures are the tapestry, the raw material, the essential means by which God can paint His masterpiece. And I told this person, "Did you not know that some of the greatest saints were the greatest sinners? Is that a coincidence?" We become holy by allowing God to frame our life according to and patterned after the measure, the width, the height, the length, the depth, the form, the shape of the cross He permits through providence in our lives. That includes our evils and our goods. He foresees it all. Some people have this crazy idea that, oh, God did not expect me to commit this grave sin in the past, and therefore my life is doomed. As if God is not omniscient. Of course, He foresaw that. God foresees everything. And the fact that He foresaw all the great evils you did and permits you still to be holy is proof positive that He's using that for your betterment and for the betterment of all. Remember Maximilian Kolbe in the bunker of Auschwitz? He didn't ask for that cross. Do you think St. Maximilian Kolbe said, "Oh God, I'm praying that I end up in the gas chamber, wherever I'm die by lethal injection or starve to death, one of the two." No, he never expected that. But what did he do? This is the attitude of the saints. He allowed God to frame his life, cutting his edges and painting away. Even in a starvation bunker, he was able to create a work of art the church would later canonize and that would bequeath to him two crowns of martyrdom and virginity.
But not all hardships and sufferings are willed by God for our life. We know sometimes we are the carpenter of our own cross. But even there, God enters and can use that like original sin. Suppose you have a broken relationship, and this has come to me quite often, and the person is regretting it, "I should not have behaved as I did in the past. I kind of drove it into the ground after repeated bad attitudes and behaviors or whatever. I feel guilty. I feel guilty. I feel guilty." Much of discernment is the art of discerning limits, of judging what the proper limits are that are needed to protect your primary vocation and commitment in life. And when you come to your limits, then you discover your boundary. And that involves failure. You can't know your limit until you hit failure. It's like an athlete. He doesn't know his potential until he rivals it with other athletes better than him and fails in the process. Then he becomes better and becomes better, and he expands his potential. Our souls are expansive too. So when we face trials or hardships, we need to learn our limits. And that's what failure is about. That's one of the great gifts of life's crosses. They expose our weakness and limits. The cross that Christ shapes exposes our weakness and limits. It's what I think Jesus means when He said to St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient, for power is made perfect in weakness." Now you understand that meaning. Paul was pushed to his limit, and he discovered his weakness. He said, "I can't do this. I'm insufficient." And Christ said, "That's exactly where I want you." Because now you're discovering your limit, and in failing, not being able to go beyond this point, you expand through my grace. So my grace is sufficient in you. For power is made perfect in weakness. Power is made perfect because of in our exposed weakness, our limits are exposed by the trials we face. We learn what are the delimiting borders of our vocation, of our potential, of our calling in life in which we are to live out God's will.
If you look at a river, it runs very fast, right? Some often times it's rapidly and powerful. Wears down the rocks and um the river runs swift and powerful and clean because it has sharp edges that define it. The river didn't start running fast all of a sudden. Over the course of decades, it formed this bed, and the rocks have conformed to the power of the water shearing its edges to now make the river flow more quickly. Without this riverbed, the sharp edges, it would diffuse into a murky swamp filled with deadly, probably poisonous creatures. So you see, the limits are the rocks of the water's expanses, and the water constantly pressing against those limits enables it to move more quickly over time. But we have to discern what are the crosses that God wants us to embrace in life in the present. The crosses of the past we necessarily embrace. We have to, because they're given to us by God's providence. Even if it's through our own goodwill or bad will, they're nonetheless the result of God's providence. But in the present, we have to pray for discernment to discern. There was a prayer I think it was by um a man named Reinhold Niebuhr, when something like, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." That's discernment. "God, grant me courage to change the things I can." That's discernment. And "God, grant me wisdom to know the difference." That's discernment. So we are to avail ourselves of the grace of God that is right at our fingertips today. Don't look in the past and meditate on it to the point of depression, but rather look at it through modern lenses, through the work of grace in you today that is availing itself of all past, good and bad, in order to make you that perfect masterpiece that God has intended from all eternity.
May God bless. Oh yes, one more before I give you the final blessing. The feast of Holy Saints. I said I wouldn't comment on that, very briefly. Today or the feast of Holy Saints. It already began in the second century where the first, the holy martyrs were soon joined by the apostles as the first witnesses of our faith. Right? There was the great persecution under the imperial Rome, and other men and women who lived heroic Christian lives became part of the object of veneration as well. Relics started to be gathered together, and they were proved to be efficacious. When relics were placed on people or on individuals afflicted by illnesses or spirits, they would be freed. So the first non-martyr to be venerated was St. Martin of Tours. But then there followed other martyrs, the first martyrs after him. But by the end of the 11th uh say century, um, there was um, there were reliquaries formed where they would take these relics and now distribute them through people, and these would be very instrumental also in a process for canonization because through these relics, miracles would happen, and miracles are necessary for canonization. But the solemnity of the saints began, although it by the end of the second century, devotion to the saints began, but by the in the East in the 4th century, the solemnity started to take root. The solemnity of All Saints, and it was observed, started to be observed on the 13th of May, 13th of May in Rome, May to the 13th, the day of Our Lady of Fatima, and on November 1st in England and in Ireland, beginning in the 8th century. So in the 4th century, it was observed on May 13th in Rome, and then in the 8th century on November 1st in England and Ireland. It was the later, it was the November 1st date, the later date that Rome eventually adopted in its martyrology in the 9th century. So today we celebrate November 1st, the feast of All Saints, and tomorrow the feast of All Souls. Now I want to mention to you that there's an octave in this year of hope for obtaining a two plenary indulgences a year for a deceased, I'm sorry, a day. Two plenary indulgences a day for a deceased soul. And this is especially the case at the first days of November is known as the octave of All Souls. From the 1st to from the 2nd to the 9th, the feast of All Souls. The 2nd of November to November 9th inclusive. Um, no, November 10th. I'm sorry, I got one day off. November 2nd to November 10th. That's nine days. So I would encourage all of you to offer up two plenary indulgences a day for two deceased souls.
May God bless you and keep you always in His most holy will. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. [Music]