Ave Maria Meditations
Preach the word. Be ready to do it whether it is convenient or inconvenient. (2 Tim 4:2)
In spite of sufferings of body and soul, life brings unspeakable joys, fleeting glimpses of the ultimate joy to come. But these loving glimpses cannot be life itself’. Life is effort, firm and persevering action and duty accepted and accomplished, the heroic conquest of the body by the soul, the serenity nothing can disturb, and eyes fixed on God. It is charity taking possession of us little by little, banishing everything that is not love.
Not to accept everything, but to understand everything; not to approve of everything, but to forgive everything; not to adopt everything, but to search for the grain of truth that is contained in everything. To reject no idea and no good intention, however awkward or feeble. To love others as Jesus Christ loved them, including suffering and death.
The first responsibility now for every one of good will is constantly preaching, by word and by example: the divine law of charity. Every Christian should be a voice crying in the desert, “Let us love!” Perhaps some heavenly breeze will carry these words farther than we imagine.
In arid times when duty seems difficult and daily responsibilities have no attraction, when all spiritual consolation is denied us and the beautiful light that illumines life is veiled, in these times humble prayer alone can steady us and give us hour by hour and day by day the determination to act “against our will”.
+Servant of God, Elisabeth Leseur
