“Holiness is not the luxury of the few, but a simple duty for your and for me.” (Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta).
What is it to be holy?
We live in a modern secular world, which is just another way of saying that nobody really cares about whether they are holy or not. And I have been thinking about that today because I have been thinking about how it is that people can develop in holiness… After all, the greatest desire of any human soul should be to know, love and serve God and to grow in holiness until we can be with God eternally in Heaven.
And I have been reflecting on that today. Yous see, I recently read the words of Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who said, “Holiness is not the luxury of the few, but a simple duty for your and for me. So let us be holy as Our Father in Heaven is holy. The more you are intimately in love with Jesus, the more holy you will become. The more holy you become, the more you will be a channel of His live, compassion, and presence to the poor.”
And I have been thinking about what that means in a practical sense. Who was the most Holy Person to ever walk the earth – with the exception of Christ, who is God Himself? Well, it is the Blessed Virgin. She was the most Holy Person to walk the earth. So I have been reflecting on what that holiness looked like for her and in her… And I came to the conclusion that like most IMPORTANT things in this world, it probably looked particularly unremarkable.
I am sure that the Blessed Virgin was beautiful – but there are no accounts of her earthly beauty (other than in her glorified body as visionaries and Saints have seen her). But she was most likely beautiful in a manner that only became apparent after time in her company in realising that she was HOLY in a manner that the world had never known. After all – the only other woman born without Original Sin had been Eve – and we can see where poor Eve led the rest of us… Eve’s holiness could not withstand the Garden of Eden and a single temptation. But the Blessed Virgin’s holiness withstood all the vigour of Earthly life – and a difficult Earthly life – full of trials, poverty, sacrifice, misjudgement, gossip and suffering…
And when you think about that in a practical sense, it means that the Blessed Virgin never once cursed or swore. She never once gossiped or thought unkindly of another. She never once put in less than her total effort into any task that she did. These little acts of holiness are actually HUGE… Because they mean that not once – not even in the smallest of things – did the Blessed Virgin get it wrong. And this is because she was so Holy and being so HOLY, she was always fixated on deep intimate love of God. Her LOVE for God was so consuming that she did not make time enough to sin – not because she could not make the time, but because she WOULD not…
And I have been thinking about that today, because it seems that I am making an awful lot of time for other things, and it seems to me today that I should be turning to the Blessed Virgin for guidance on where to put my time…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.