“Give me a free hand;” this is the reported response that Jesus gave to Saint Margaret Mary when she asked, “What must I do?”[i] This is how saints are made. For it is of His fullness, we have received grace upon grace.[ii] For each of us there are but two options and no middle road. We can either reach for the glory of heaven, to be saints, or we can reject God, turn away from Him and be lost forever. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”[iii] And while we are not yet perfect, we are being perfected in Christ by being conformed to him, into the pattern of His life, death and resurrection.[iv]
Hopeful expectation
If we ourselves choose this ultimate good placed before us, by his grace, in faith and hopeful expectation, we may expect to arrive at our goal, the shores of our heavenly homeland.
For God will make us capable of a filling his command, “Be perfect.” By his work in us and on us as we are changed by him. By means of the sacraments, His chosen means of confirming grace and by our cooperating with all the helping grace is He gives, he draws us closer and closer until our wills can choose nothing other than Him. But we must cooperate. This means willing the end and all the means to this end.
Divinized by Him
And why? Because He first loved us. He was thinking thoughts of peace, while we were still far off.[v][vi] But when God became one of us by taking on a fleshly human nature, He showed us firsthand what divinized humanity is through this union. He became like us that we could become like Him.[vii] “But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.”[viii]
Clothe us, Lord God,
with the virtues of the Heart of your Son
and set us aflame with his love, that,
conformed to his image,
we may merit a share in eternal redemption.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. R. Amen.[ix]
[i] Quote attributed to Saint Mother Teresa.
[ii] Jn 1:16.
[iii] CS Lewis. The Weight of Glory.
[iv] Phil 3:10-11.
[v] Jer 19:11.
[vi] Rom 5:8.
[vii] St Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54, 3: PG 25, 192B.
[viii] 2 Cor 3:18
[ix] Collect of the Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Posted for All Saints Day, November 1, 2021
