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Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

St. Maximilian Kolbe – Sketch by Brie Schulze

Saint Maximilian Kolbe is a tremendous example of how God’s grace can move us to acts of love for our brothers.  With all the extraordinary things Fr. Kolbe did during his life – his extraordinary leadership, the extraordinary impact he had on the Catholic world in a terrible moment of persecution, spreading the devotion to the Immaculata, etc – he was still able to see the true value of his life.  He did not consider himself more important or more deserving to remain alive than any of the other prisoners in Auschwitz.  With all the wonderful things he had accomplished, and all the wonderful works he could still do for the Lord, God’s grace permitted him to see that the ultimate value of his life was only to be found in laying it down for someone else. read more

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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We have a tendency to exaggerate the virtue of the Holy men and women who went before us.  While we must certainly say that the Canonized Saints exhibited heroic virtue, that does not mean they were not also sinners like us in need of a savior.  In fact, had the Saints not needed a savior, they would not even be Christian.  God’s grace works hiddenly within us to perfect what He wants to perfect in us so long as we cooperate with His work.  Sometimes we may be distressed to witness the lack of perfection or even the apparent total lack of goodness in our hearts and in our lives.  This too is the work of grace, inviting us to allow God to do His work within us.  The ups and downs of our spiritual and human life can lead us to a point near hopelessness  – this is something even Elijah the Holy Prophet of God experienced.  He was ready to throw in the towel, to give up and die.  He saw how much of a poor sinner he was and how he “was no better than his fathers.”  God responds to this sadness and exhaustion not with a new teaching or with a rebuke, but with something very simple: food. read more

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Saint Clare, Virgin

St. Clare – Sketch by Brie Schulze

Saint Clare is this lesser known companion of Saint Francis whose life in some ways surpasses that Seraphic Doctor.  Saint Francis’ life was love turned outward towards the world through the blessed prism of Lady Poverty.  Saint Clare’s life was the intimate love of the soul alone with its God lived out in a cloistered community of like-minded consecrated women.  Love, by the action of grace, is stretched beyond its human limits both outwardly and inwardly.  And love, if it remains poor without claiming any dues, can be fully transformed by the divine motion of the Holy Spirit.  Saints Francis and Clare were driven to choose lives of radical poverty because the taste of divine love reshaped their entire understanding of what they needed in this world.  They came to understand poverty as the way in which their hearts could drink deeply from the fountain of Love.  “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” read more