Jun 23 Mon
Should I offer to God the best?
The purpose of our life is to give glory to God. But there are many good things in this world, and they are capable of diverting our attention from focusing on God. We have no better way of giving glory to God than by living our Christian vocation with ever-greater love.
“God's love is a jealous lover. He is not satisfied if we come to meet him with conditions. He longs for us to give ourselves completely, without keeping dark corners in our hearts, where the joy and happiness of grace and the supernatural gifts cannot reach. Perhaps you are thinking, ‘If I say 'yes' to this exclusive Love, might I not lose my freedom?’"
“Each one of us has at some time or other experienced that serving Christ our Lord involves suffering and hardship; to deny this would imply that we had not yet found God. A soul in love knows, however, that when such suffering comes, it is only a fleeting impression; the soul soon finds that the yoke is easy and the burden light, because Jesus is carrying it upon his shoulders as He embraced the wood of the Cross when our eternal happiness was at stake.”
“But there are people who rebel against the Creator, in a sad, petty, impotent rebellion, and they blindly repeat the futile complaint recorded in the Psalms: Let us break away from their bondage, rid ourselves of their toils. They shrink from the hardship of fulfilling their daily task with heroic silence and naturalness, without show or complaint. They have not realized that even when God's will seems painful, and its demands wounding, it coincides perfectly with our freedom, which is only to be found in God and his plans."
“Such people barricade themselves behind their freedom. "My freedom! My freedom!" they cry. They have their freedom, but they don't use it. They look at it, they set it up, a clay idol for their petty minds to worship. Is this freedom? What use is this treasure to them, if there is no commitment guiding their whole life? Such behavior goes against their very dignity and nobility as human beings. They are left aimless, with no clear path to guide their footsteps on this earth. You and I have met such people. They then let themselves be carried away by childish vanity, by selfish conceit, by sensuality."
“Their freedom turns out to be barren, or produces fruits which, even humanly speaking, are ridiculous. A person who does not choose, with complete freedom, an upright code of conduct, sooner or later ends up being manipulated by others. He will lead a lazy, parasitic existence, at the mercy of what others decide. He will let himself be blown away by any wind whatsoever, and it will always be others who make up his mind for him."
“We give more glory to God by offering him our best talents as a holocaust, than by making vain use of them. God is pleased when we offer him the best that we have, what we value most. Nothing is too great to give him. Furthermore, we are children of God, and our obligations as children towards God our Father are not the same as those that can be imposed on strangers. To the children fall duties involving more sacrifice and more generosity, which would never be accepted willingly by hirelings."