249. Ninth Saturday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 241 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Christian life means a struggle.

The whole of St Paul’s life must have been passing before his mind’s eye as he wrote these words to Timothy: I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. Eternal happiness is awaiting us in heaven, with all God’s immense love, if we are faithful. But like St Paul, we have to fight constantly and tenaciously, out of love for God, in the hope of winning the prize.

As we know, sanctification is the work of grace: it is the action of the Holy Spirit in our soul, and all we are asked to do is correspond with this continual gift. But even when we are well disposed and want to let ourselves be guided by the Paraclete, we will always need to be on our guard, by means of prayer and sacrifice, because the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

What’s more, the soul can get ill just as the body can: we are capable of behaving like criminals or imbeciles. On this earth, my children, there are no saints: we are all sinners, and we can commit any folly, even that of losing our own soul. That’s why I keep telling you that we have to struggle all the time, and what matters is that we should never give up.

If it is a war, then we’ve got to wage it well and use all the means at our disposal. When a soldier at the battlefront runs out of ammunition because he failed to prepare for the battle properly, he’s lost: his defeat is a foregone conclusion.

We can lose battles, but not the war. If you are beaten in some skirmish, go straight to Confession. But remember, my children, that we can’t really afford to lose a single battle, because we never know when it may be the last one. We have to fight as though every combat is the decisive one, the one that is going to settle the outcome of the war.

God is very good, my daughters and sons; he loves us like the most loving of fathers; he is always ready to forgive and offer a new welcome to the child who comes back repentant after wasting half his property.

But we can’t be bad children to such a good Father. That’s why I lay so much stress on the importance of the last battle, in the conviction that any job, any work, any victory, provides the possibility of offering up the whole of our life to God.

God is constantly seeking us out, with fatherly and motherly love for us. He is always on the watch for our return. He dwells lovingly in our souls, and he won’t go away as long as we struggle sincerely; in fact, when we are struggling hard against venial sin and our imperfections, that is when he is happiest to be there. It isn’t just that he’s there: he makes us savour and draw life from the awareness of his love.

Feed your heart on God’s love. Give it entirely to him! And fill your heart with love for your neighbour as well; and if it is true charity it will pass through the most sacred and merciful Heart of Jesus, and through the most pure Heart of Mary, God’s Mother and ours.

Never letting our soul become muddied; always being docile in order to keep it clear.

In this spiritual combat which fills our soul with peace, besides the great enemies of selfishness, pride, laziness, and sensuality, we also have to face up to smaller but no less dangerous enemies who conduct a sort of guerrilla warfare and grant no truce, but aim to wear down our strength and prepare the ground for a massed assault.

People who seek to indulge the heart in consolations, however small, are simply mad, because they have a horrible time; and as well as having a horrible time they risk permanently losing their happiness on earth, and their eternal life too. I promise you I don’t know a single person who has left their way who is still happy. If they had the chance to undo what they have done, they wouldn’t hesitate for a moment! They have found out that they suffer at the time and afterwards too. Let’s learn from other people’s experience, my children!

What we have to do at every moment is persevere and take precautions. We won’t let our soul become muddied over with bits of dirt produced by imagination, self-love, human respects, invented grievances, whims and complications in our struggle, which have nothing to do with what our Lord is asking us for.

In the spiritual life you need docility of soul, and I am sure that my children will always obey. It may happen that you don’t agree with something you are told, and then you need to have the humility to say so: to say, “I’m going to find that very difficult, but with God’s help I’ll do it.” Don’t think that difficulties like that mean you are worse; I’d say you’re actually better, because you have lost some of that childish naivety, and you’ve acquired the maturity to be able to go against your natural inclination, cheerfully. I’ve almost always had to go against the grain, so I do understand the resistance one can feel; but if we overcome that resistance it makes our docility all the more meritorious.

Let’s take great pains over our interior life, by being demanding on ourselves and allowing other people to make demands on us. Our warfare, our interior struggle, is continual, and our Lord asks us to have the faithfulness and daring to follow him generously. It’s sometimes difficult, but let’s not exaggerate either: we all tend to be rather too understanding towards ourselves. I can tell you that, however big an obstacle may appear to be, God’s grace and love will never fail us, and so we will win through if we want to.

God gives us the means to be faithful in the ascetic struggle.

Everything, absolutely everything, can be overcome with a smile on our lips or with the interior joy of knowing that we are serving. And we overcome things by prayer and mortification, and by hoping in God. I am grateful to each of my sons and daughters for your fidelity, because you each realize that your total self-surrender is necessary. We’ll only fail if we abandon the means God has given us. Be demanding on yourselves; think about how you have to go at God’s pace at every moment Be demanding because you are mindful of the future too; aware that the authentic spirit of the Work will still be the same when centuries have gone by. Don’t forget that all of that depends on each of you individually.

Talk about your life sincerely in the confidential talk, which you go to for the spiritual remedies your soul needs: that’s very important indeed. I assure you that without spiritual direction, without contrite Confession, there can be no interior life. Every soul needs to have demands made on it; that’s why I ask you so insistently to take great care of these means.

Receive the Sacrament of Penance with loving care. It makes me really happy to go to Confession: in fact I’m overjoyed, because I know that our Lord is forgiving me once again. I love being in the role of the prodigal son, and I am convinced that going to

Confession in a devout way teaches us greater sorrow, and therefore greater love. Without getting scruples, we find that there comes to our mind a whole set of points where we could have been more generous, more dedicated, better children of God.

We have to make sure we are constantly immersed in God: we need it, and other people need it too. People come to each of you to find the strength and security in the faith that they see in your lives. Ask, like the Apostles: Adauge nobis fidem! Increase our faith, so that souls can find the certainty of God in all of us.

Don’t get proud when you win some battle in your interior life or the apostolate, because the victory is always due to God’s grace and the good dispositions of the person listening to us. We are nothing but poor, useless instruments, who want to be faithful, and can be. And if we are faithful in fulfilling the duty of every second, our Lord’s grace will not fail us at decisive moments. We have to realize that now is always the time to be united, all together like a rock, steady, solid, and strong, so that Christ can rely heavily on us. Ut castrorum acies ordinata! United like an army in battle array.

My daughters and sons, I want to say this once again: what matters is not the starting, but the finishing. Starting is certainly something, but finishing is everything. And so I ask our Lord and his blessed Mother, through St Joseph - the best advocate we could have - that you and I may be constant and persevering in our love, and faithful to our vocation. That way, we will do a lot of good to souls and to the Church, and what is more, we will win the treasure of eternal happiness in heaven.