Feb 28 Sat
Does God want me to be perfect?
God calls everyone to holiness, without distinction of profession, age, and social standing, in each one’s walk of life.
“You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48), we read at the end of today’s Gospel. During these forty days of preparation for Easter the Church reminds us in many different ways that God expects much more of us -He expects a serious determination on our part to struggle for holiness.
Our Lord speaks not only to the Apostles, but to all those who really want to be his disciples. Our Lord has great demands to make on each one of us, according to our own circumstances. The Master calls us to holiness, without any distinction of age, profession, race or social standing. There are no followers of Christ who do not have a Christian vocation, a personal call to sanctity.
By divine inspiration, this teaching about the universal call to holiness is, since 1928, one of the central points of the preaching of St. Josemaría, who has reminded us again in our own times, in all possible ways, that, through Baptism, every Christian is called to the fullness of Christian life: to holiness.
The Second Vatican Council has declared anew this ancient evangelical doctrine for the whole Church: a Christian is called to sanctity in the very place that he occupies in society.
Today we can ask ourselves whether it would be enough for us to want to be ‘merely good’, without having to make a determined effort to be saints.
We can and we must exert effort to attain to sanctity, with an increasing love for God and for other people for God’s sake, through everyday things which we do over and over again, with apparent monotony.
“Sanctity for the vast majority of men implies sanctifying their work, sanctifying themselves in it; and sanctifying others through it. Thus, they can encounter God in the course of their daily lives.”
Sanctify work: do it well, faithfully fulfilling the virtue of justice and constantly striving to improve professionally.
Sanctifying ourselves at work: This will lead us to make it an occasion and place for dealing with God, offering it to Him, and living human and supernatural virtues.
Sanctifying others through work: Work can and should be a means of making Christ known to many people if we are exemplary in our Christian way of acting, full of naturalness and firmness.
The Church reminds us of the urgent task of being present in the world, to bring all earthly realities to God. This is what the first Christians did. This will only be possible if we remain united to Christ through prayer and the sacraments. The Lord spent his life on earth doing good. A Christian must be "another Christ." This is the great power of Christian witness. Let us ask Our Mother to help us be witnesses of her Son as we strive to seek holiness in our personal circumstances.