Striving To Serve. By: C.C.

"With gentleness and peace, make your small efforts to better serve the Divine Goodness, but do not be frightened by the difficulties that crop up. What good, what precious thing has ever been obtained without effort and hard work? On our part, it is only necessary to remain faithful to our resolution to reach the perfection of holy love by doing all we can to make it perfect. If we do not do that we are not aiming very high." (St. Francis DeSales)

  The ultimate goal of our Christian journey is to aspire toward holiness. We are each called by God to live a life that surrounds the teachings of Jesus and the virtues that He taught us. It is through reading the Gospels and learning about Christ's first followers where we come to understand the meaning of our own Christian lives and our true vocation as believers.
   We are called not only to live faithfully with belief, but to also act out of our faith and the values that we hold dear to us as followers of Jesus. In order to do this we are required to make constant effort to serve our Lord and the "Divine Goodness" for which we yearn. We must strive daily in our dealings, conversations, meetings, and our times of conflict to respond with "holy love". This is something that requires hard work and mortification.
   As St. Francis DeSales reminds us "what good, what precious thing has ever been obtained without effort and hard work?". Sadly, our world promotes the "easy fix" all to often. May we each strive to glorify God and serve our Lord despite the difficulties and challenges. May we turn to our Lord in prayer with perseverance each day and ask for the strength, courage, and faith to serve Him. May we come to realize that in striving to reach holy love, we must also love what is holy and let the Lord work through us. Amen (C.C.)