Daily Thought For December 23, 2014

Ordering Things Towards God

Speaking to men and women striving to reach sanctity in the midst of the world - businessmen, academics, agricultural laborers, office-workers, mothers and fathers - Monsignor Escriva said: The ordinary Christian has to reconcile two aspects of his life that can at first sight seem contradictory. There is on the one hand 'true poverty' which is obvious and tangible and made up of definite things. This poverty should be an expression of faith in God and a sign that the heart is not satisfied with created things and aspires to the Creator; that it wants to be filled with love of God so as to be able to give this same love to everyone. On the other hand, the ordinary Christian 'is and wants to be one more among his fellow men', sharing their way of life, their joys and their sorrows, working with them, loving the world and all the good things that exist in it, using all created things in order to solve the problems of human life and to establish the kind of spiritual and material environment that will foster personal and social development. 

Achieving a synthesis between these two aspects is to a great extent a personal matter. It requires interior life, which will help us assess in every circumstance what God is asking of us.

If we struggle effectively to live detached from the things we have and use, Our Lord will find our hearts clean and wide open to him when he comes to us again on Christmas Night. What happened in the inn at that time will not happen in our hearts: it was full, and they had no room for him there at all. 

from In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez Volume 1 pp. 210-211