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What Holiness Is Not (and what it is...)
Holiness is not about having many religious feelings and spiritual consolations. It is not about being more moral than others, or more superior, and lording it over others and judging them. It is not about saying many prayers, nor doing many penances and much fasting, nor about having many religious devotions. Holiness is not about active outside involvement in some great cause.It's also not about extraordinary mystical experiences such as bilocutions, stigmata, levitations, luminescence, nor even ecstasies and visions.
But most importantly, holiness is not impossible.
So, what is holiness and what does it have to do with Moms?
posted by Holly at 2:22 PM
2 Comments:
Holiness is instead, conformity to the Will of God in loving union with Him.
To conform ourselves as Moms to the Will of God means three things:
1) that we are faithful to Catholic teaching on faith and morals
2) that we fulfill faithfully the duties of our state in life (hence our mother's rule)
3) that we are open then to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit (which will never lead us to contradict the first two points mentioned).
Holiness is about the restoration of absolute integrity to our persons, through both our personal efforts and the efforts of God through grace. It means our intellects are formed in truth, and our wills actively choose it, and our hearts, transformed by grace, correspond with complete assent to following Christ and choosing good over evil always.
Holiness is , through our fidelity, making ourselves available to God , and in this, Christian mysticism definitely plays its part. Mysticism means the very action of God Himself upon our souls through infused (or ‘given') contemplation. It is meant to be a part of every Christian's life, and corresponds to a mature stage of growth in Christian prayer.
Holiness is about giving our "Fiat" to God and placing ourselves at the service of Him and our family, and all those we come into contact with. How? By love – which is availability, acceptance and help, and always seeks the other's true and whole good.
Holiness is about becoming ‘who we are', also known as humility, where we know who we are; know our weaknesses and strengths; where our good actions conform fully to the intent of our hearts. This moral perfection, far from leading us to condemn others, makes us more and more aware of our own sinful tendencies – as we see in some of the saints, who agonized with fear that they would not be with God, even though all others clearly saw that the saint 'reeked' God...
Most importantly, Holiness is union with God, and this is possible - on earth. All the Doctors of the Church not only teach this, but witness this.
And it is possible for us Moms too - in fact, God is asking it of each of us.
P.S. Sorry about all those funny little symbols in the above post - don't know where they came from! :-)
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