19 September 2013
Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Our first reading from the Letter to Timothy speaks to the importance of setting an example in love, speech, conduct, and purity. Paul seemingly admonishes us in his letter to model our lives on something between Teresa of the Little flower and Mr. Rodgers.
The call to sanctity can be a challenge because it carries with it the image of holiness and its subsequent behavior that seems to transcend both our patience and abilities. To my best reading of the Acta Sanctorum, the Little Flower never drove a van load of grade school children to soccer practice.
Heroic sanctity does not necessarily demand the stuff of legend; it is the protagonist of the parables. Sanctity, like the small lamp, the mustard seed, the bit of yeast, begins with all those little things that grow, grow to bring about the kingdom of Christ.