I have been mentored and learned a great deal about spirituality and life in general. I now know the real importance of living a life based on love, mercy and justice — not just the meaning of the words.
There are places God has glanced
with lightest touch of hand, some swept,
palm to earth, and some in which God’s hand
sinks into soil like a sculptor’s hand in clay, that shout …
“I was mad at Mother Theodore!” Sandra confesses. For years, Sandra had struggled with corneal degeneration. Prayers for Mother Theodore’s intervention seemed to fall on deaf ears.
"I wandered around the grounds complaining,” Sandra explains. “I ‘heard’ a voice saying, ‘Tell my story.’ Well, I said, ‘I am telling MY story!’ But the voice came again, and I realized it was HER! Telling me to tell HER story! I decided to do it.”
Holy Week is coming up next week, a week wherein we remember Jesus’ suffering and his triumph over death. It seems an opportune time to reflect on the pain in our lives. We all experience pain, physical, mental or spiritual. But what we do with that pain matters.
So what is your gift? What can you lay down beside the manger? What would you give if you could give anything in the world?
We are used to thinking of saints in the past tense. It seems incredible that saints might walk among us today, but they do. What do they do that the rest of us don’t? Not much, really. Sainthood is less a way of doing than a way of being. As Mother Theodore said, “Let us never forget that if we wish to die like the Saints, we must live like them. "
What Francis speaks is Christ-centered, Gospel-centered common sense. Let us rejoice that we have a Pope who speaks for the poor, who challenges those in power, who will not be shut up by nay-sayers who call him a false prophet.