Transform
“How happy and prudent is the man who strives to be now in this life what he desires to be found at his death.” (Saint Thomas a Aquinas).
Change is really hard work. I rarely meet anyone who is comfortable with change or wants to do it.
And when change is offered to people, they often find a whole raft of reasons to make that change insupportable.
I have had many times in my life when change was difficult. Sometimes it is changing school or job or even career. Other times the change is in personal relationships – like getting married or separating from other people. Change can be positive, like making new friends, and negative, like losing old ones.
The most difficult change that I can imagine is a change in behaviour.
I was speaking to a psychologist who is a friend of mine, and he told me that behavioural change is the most difficult and slow change that a human being can expect to make.
Perhaps this is why Saint Monica became a Saint by praying for her wayward husband and her son. Her husband converted to Catholicism prior to his death and her sinful son, Augustine, became a bishop after his conversion and later a Saint and Doctor of the Church.
And I have been reflecting on that today. You see, if Saint Monica had given up after one year, or even ten or twenty or thirty years, her husband and son would have been damned. If she had thought to herself that it is all hopeless and there is no point after a few decades, there would be no Saint Augustine. God was relying on the prayers of that wife and mother to change the fate of a couple of souls. But it was more than that… How many souls came to God because they listened to the words of Saint Augustine? How many sinners reformed to follow in his example? How many pleasing sacrifices of the Eucharist did that Saint offer with his own two hands because of the perseverance of his mother?
And that is what is required for transformational change!
And that sort of change is the powerful change. Saint Thomas a Kempis said, “How happy and prudent is the man who strives to be now in this life what he desires to be found at his death. For it will give a man great confidence of dying happily, if he has a perfect contempt of the world, a fervent desire to advance in virtue, a love for discipline, the spirit of penance, a prompt obedience, self-denial, and patience in bearing all adversities for the love of Christ.”
And I have been thinking about that as I become disheartened by my prayers for the conversion of others. For it seems to me that there is no amount of patience that I would be unwilling to bear for the conversion of a soul who might one day please my Beloved as Saint Augustine did many many many moons ago…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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