336. Nineteenth Wednesday of Ordinary Time
Meditations no. 308 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
God leads us steadily towards holiness.
Godās love for mankind is so great that it led him to assume our flesh, to dwell among us and to make our wretchedness his own: For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. God is patient with our defects, and tolerant with our feebleness: The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He leads us by the hand along the path of holiness and helps us at every moment to give what we can. And so we shouldnāt get discouraged when with the passage of the years we find that we are still full of defects. You are full of miseries. -Each day you see them more clearly. -But donāt let them frighten you. -He well knows that you canāt yield more fruit.
God is infinitely patient with us. But he also knows that we love him truly and that we really fight to be better every day. Through Faith and Love we can drive God crazy: he becomes deranged once again - he was already crazy on the Cross, and he is crazy every day in the Sacred Host - pampering us like a Father with his first-born child. Another sign of his love is the loving reproach we perceive in the depths of the soul after some ungenerous response on our part in the interior struggle. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? This loving reproof brings to mind the words of Sacred Scripture: My son, do not despise the Lordās discipline or be weary of his reproach, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves. That is why our Father prayed as follows: Make me into a saint, my God, even if you have to beat me into it I donāt want to be a hindrance to your Will. I want to respond, I want to be generousā¦ But what sort of a wan ting is mine?
God needs our help in sanctifying our brothers and sisters.
It is the Will of God that in the Work we all travel together along the path to holiness. In the task of our sanctification God provides us with his grace, he encourages and purifies us, but he also counts on our cooperation. It is the best expression of fraternal affection. If the mere fact of coming from the same town is sufficient for many people to be friends, says St John Chrysostom, what level of love must there not be among us, who share the same house, the same table, the same gateway, the same door, the same life, the same head; the same pastor and king and judge and creator and Father?
Nobody in the Work can feel alone: we are united by our common destiny to holiness. The constant concern my children should have for one another is a blessed consequence of our unity: nothing, no matter how small it seems, can ever be indifferent to us if it affects any of us in any way. And our Founder added: None of you is alone, none of you is a verse in isolation; we are verses of the same poem, a divine epic. And we are all concerned to keep this marvellous unity intact, this harmony that makes us so strong and effective in Godās service, ut castrorum acies ordinata, as an army in battle array.
The affection we have for one another ought to reflect as faithfully as possible the love God has for us. Put on then, as Godās chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience. This enables us to be understanding with othersā limitations, and to make allowances for their character and circumstances, as we find our heart expanding to the measure of the Heart of Christ.
Let us examine ourselves courageously, in the presence of God, to see how we can make a better contribution to the sanctification of the family of the Work, so that we are a stimulus to growth and not a hindrance to progress. Listen to our Father as he raises our awareness: I beseech you not to slacken your supernatural and human watchfulness over all your brothers and sisters: it is something you can express in a myriad of details of affection, in fraternal correction, and above all in the example of your works: we are all links in the same chain, and God will ask us to render an account of how we have helped the others to fulfil, to the end, their duties of holiness.
Fraternal correction is a very practical contribution to the sanctification of others.
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother, Jesus tells us in the Gospel of todayās Mass. Fraternal correction is an exquisite, and at times heroic, expression of true charity, which has its roots in the Gospel. In the spirit of Opus Dei it is regarded as one of the finest fruits of fraternity and one of the clearest signs of its presence. It is a participation in the sanctifying work of divine providence whereby God allows us to cooperate with him in the loving care of all his children.
Fraternal correction is a wonderful expression of fraternity; it is a āthermometerā of how faithful we are in putting the spirit of the Work into practice. Our Father wanted us never to shrink from fulfilling it: on the one hand it is a duty, while at the same time it is also a right. Donāt let any hypocritical excuse hold you back: apply the dose in full. But go about it with a motherly hand, with the almost infinite tenderness shown by our own mothers when they were treating the hurts and injuries, big or little, resulting from our childhood games and falls. When it is better to wait a few hours, by all means do so. But never wait longer than is strictly necessary. Any other approach would imply cowardice or a desire not to inconvenience ourselves, which is very different from prudence.
Fraternal correction is so important in the Work that our Father has reminded us very often: there is no good spirit in the Centre where fraternal correction is not practised. If we practise fraternal correction poorly it means that charity is not going well and that the embers of fraternal love need to be revived. And if we ourselves are not corrected, it is not because we are perfect, but because Christian charity is lacking. I insist that fraternal correction is a principal part of our Norms. Though it may at times be hard, it is always fruitful and supernaturally effective. This is so because you will mortify yourselves, speaking clearly and trying not to mortify others. In short, your intention will be upright and you will not be discourteous to anyone.
In the way we do it we have to try to be extremely tactful, realizing that we are not above falling into the same fault ourselves if God were to allow us to do so: not seeking, says St Augustine, something to reprimand, but what has to be corrected, And likewise, whenever we receive fraternal correction we have to bear in mind that it is a consequence of fraternal affection: the saints, says St Gregory the Great, consider as a work of charity the correction of what they did not do correctly.
This could be a good time to renew our sense of responsibility and to awaken the desire to remove the obstacles which impede our brothers or sisters from drawing closer to God, from going faster, from being more effective in their apostolate. It is also the time to renew our heart, and to ask God to increase our fraternal affection, and our readiness to show that affection.
Throughout her whole life, our Blessed Lady was an example of vigilant and loving charity. In Cana she gave us a practical demonstration of how to remedy other peopleās oversights. Let us entrust our resolutions today to her intercession.