October 24, 2004
Last Sunday I gave my first monthly spiritual conference at
Holy Innocents Church in Manhattan. It was the first time I preached there
since last December. It was a wonderful experience to be back and to see so
many faithful souls, some of whom have been coming to my spiritual conferences
for twenty-five years. The question that kept coming to mind was, why was
I ever sent back from the doors of death, which I approached three times in
less than two weeks? I have to say that God apparently did not want me to
die; it was not yet my time. Rather than feeling rejected, I know that I must
have some work yet to do. I hope that I will be able to do it, and do it the
best that I can. I will be grateful for your prayers.
Along these lines, it is good for us to recall that we all have something
to do. Every one of us is here to do things, which may not seem important
to other people. When your ugly face appears on television, you can forget
personal limitations and begin to think you’re important. God deliver
me from such thoughts. Each person has a role and a task to do. Cardinal Newman
says each one of us is a link in a chain; each has something to do that is
just important as what the archangels do. We don’t even know it in this
world, but in the next we will be told what it was.
The important thing is to be willing to do what God asks you to do, whether
it be great or small, humble or even painful. In the hospital I met a number
of young people who will be paralyzed for the rest of their lives. I hope
that the grace of the Holy Spirit will tell them that they are called to pray
and to offer their sufferings. I didn’t know how to say that to them.
They had little religious background, but the Holy Spirit can say it to them
very effectively. Let each one of us try to do our appointed task and ask
to be led in that appointed task by God’s Providence and to be enlightened
in that appointed task by the Holy Spirit.
Let’s also ask Christ to be in our hearts that we will do it in a Christlike
way at least some of the time. If we did it in a Christlike way all of the
time, we would be saints.
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father benedict
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