In Conversation with God – Volume 3 Part 2: Weeks 7 - 12 in Ordinary Time

by Francisco Fernández-Carvajal

They all continue to be children of God, capable of conversion and of reaching eternal life. Trusting in everyone’s capacity to rectify his errors, charity will impel us to devote ourselves to prayer, to give good example and to do apostolate and practise fraternal correction. If at some time we suffer through particularly painful offences, injustices or calumnies, we should ask for Our Lady’s help.

What a good act of faith this is for us to pray many times!: Jesus, I believe, but grant firmness to my faith! Teach me to back up my faith with deeds, to weep for my sins, and to trust in your power and mercy!

Faith is a gift of God, and only He can increase it in the soul. He is the one who opens the heart of the believer so that it can receive supernatural light, and that is what we should be praying for. But at the same time, certain interior dispositions are necessary: they are dispositions of humility, of purity, of openness ... of love which opens the way to a greater and greater security.

What care ought we to take of the frequent confession of our faults and sins, if this sacrament cleanses us and disposes us to see the Lord more clearly already here on earth!

is only with prayer that we will overcome the stubborn obstacles that balk our progress, manage to overcome temptations ourselves and help many of our friends to find Christ. Commenting on this

The Cross in our mind, on our lips, in our heart, in all our works: this is the weapon of conquest – a sober and mortified life lived without fleeing from the lovable sacrifice that unites us with Christ.

Christ’s teaching should reach out to the whole world; in fact, in our time there are many parts of the world, once Christian, that are in need of a new evangelization. The Church’s mission is universal, embracing persons from every conceivable background, of different ages, cultures, ways of living.

Mortifying the imagination in order to live in the present: hic et nunc.

If we live in the present, we will succeed in rejecting unreal fears of imagined future dangers which our fantasy enlarges and distorts. At times, too, the conjectured crosses our imagination depicts put us out of touch with reality. Then we suffer uselessly, instead of joyfully accepting the little crosses God offers his children to carry each day, crosses that can fill them with peace and joy.

God’s plans do not always coincide with ours, with those we forge in our imagination, in our dreams. God’s plans, in one way or another, always demand detachment from everything that enchains. If we are to follow Christ, our soul must be free.

We should eliminate all useless expenditure, avoiding what can be called impulse spending. We will require to use our time well and generously in the affairs of God. We must be generous also in supporting works of charity, taking good care of clothes, furniture, household utensils and so on ...

It is the little things that make a job perfect, and worthy therefore of being offered to God. But it is not sufficient that what we are doing is good (work, prayer ...); it also has to be well finished.

If we give attention to little things, we will live each day to the full, and will know how to fill each moment with the sense of preparation for eternity. To do this, let us frequently ask Mary for her help: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us ... now, in every ordinary little situation of our life.

These are actual graces, free and transitory gifts from God that affect each soul in their own particular way. What a lot of actual graces we have received each day! What a lot more we will receive so long as we do not close the door of our soul to that silent and most effective action of the Sanctifier!

Our free response to God’s grace must occur in our thoughts, in our words and in our deeds.[480] Faith alone is not enough to enable us to co-operate adequately. God asks for our personal effort, for deeds, for initiative, for effective desires ... Although Our Lord through his death on the Cross merited an infinite treasury of grace, those graces are not granted to us all at once, and their greater or lesser abundance depends on how we correspond. When we are prepared to say yes to Our Lord in everything, we attract a veritable cascade of gifts.[481] Grace, love for God, inundates us when we are faithful to the small insinuations of grace each day – when we live the heroic minute in the morning and try to give our first thought to God; when we prepare well for Holy Mass and struggle to reject those distractions that try to separate us from what is really important; when we offer up our work ...

Beside Mary we will always find Joseph, her most faithful spouse, who knew how to carry out especially well and so promptly what God manifested to him by means of an angel. We can turn to him throughout the day, and ask him to help us to hear clearly the voice of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the many details of our workaday life that are sometimes so very small, and ask for the fortitude to put these divine promptings into practice.

To achieve the holiness we are called to by God, we must bring under control our inclination to evil and our passions because, after original sin and also as a result of personal sins, they are no longer rightly subject to our will. To follow Christ we must be master of ourselves and be able to guide our steps in a definite direction. As has been rightly said: we are like a man with a donkey; either the man leads the donkey or it leads him; either we control our passions or they control us.[492] When there is no mortification, it seems as if your spirit were growing smaller, shrinking to a little point. And your body seems to grow and become gigantic, until it gains control. It was for you that Saint Paul wrote: ‘I buffet my own body, and make it my slave; or I, who have preached to others, may myself be rejected as worthless’.[493]

Whoever keeps his word is faithful. The person who fulfils his commitments to God and to others is loyal. However, our society often falls into doubt and relativism. Many people, irrespective of their age, seem to be ignorant of the noble obligation to keep their word, to fulfil the commitments they once assumed with complete freedom, or to behave in accordance with the decisions they have made before God or man, in civil or religious life. Difficulties may arise, but the faith and teaching of the Church and the example of the saints show us that it is possible to live these virtues. God does not deny his grace to those who do what they can.

Sanctity requires a fight against conformity, against lukewarmness, against an easy-going worldly attitude. It demands heroism – not in extraordinary situations that we are unlikely to encounter, but in continual fidelity to our task in the unremarkable duties of each day.

All the pain God allows, whether it be of body or of mind, serves to purify the soul so that it may yield more fruit. It is of the mystery of suffering that we have to see it always as a grace from Heaven.

Avoiding negative, and often unjust, judgements on others is a sign of humility.

Strive to acquire the virtues you think your brothers lack, and then you will no longer see their defects, because you yourselves will not have them.[675]

Two roads there are, two attitudes to life. One is to look for the most comfortable and agreeable way, to pamper the body and avoid sacrifice and penance; the other to seek the will of God even though it takes an effort to guard the senses and keep the body in check.

To share the Redemption, to co-operate in the sanctification of the world, to save souls for eternity: could there be a greater ideal to fill one’s life?

To celebrate or attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar properly is the best service we can offer Jesus, his Mystical Body and the whole human race. Next to Mary, in the Holy Mass we are particularly united with the whole Church.