You Must Be Drawn

[rich]

You Must Be Drawn

"Our Lord said: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent
me draws that person." This is a great commendation of grace!
Do not make judgments about whom God draws and whom he does not
draw, unless you wish to fall into error. Accept this once and for
all, and understand it: you are not yet drawn to God? Pray that you
may be drawn!"
--St. Augustine--Sermon on John 26, 2

Prayer: Lord, heal and open my eyes that I may recognize your will.
Put to flight my foolishness that I may know you. Show me the road I
must travel that I may see you. Thus aided, I hope to do all you have
commanded me.
--St. Augustine--Soliloquies 1, 5

<<>><<>><<>>
September 2nd – Bl. Margaret of Louvain, Virgin and Martyr

In the sixth book of his “Dialogue on Miracles”, dealing with
Singleness of Heart, the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach
tells the story of this young girl whose cultus in the diocese of
Malines was confirmed in 1905. She was born at Louvain about the year
1207 and went into domestic service with a relative named Aubert. He
was an innkeeper and a good and charitable man, who would entertain
pilgrims and necessitous travellers free of charge. Margaret entered
whole-heartedly into these good works, but the recollected way with
which she went about them and her indifference to the attentions of
men got her the nickname of “the proud Margaret”.

About the year 1225 Aubert and his wife determined to become
religious. Having sold their business and made the necessary
preparations, they were spending their last night at home when they
were visited by some evil-disposed men under the pretence of saying
good-bye. Margaret was sent out to get some wine for the visitors, and
while she was gone they set on Aubert and his wife, murdered them, and
seized their money which they had by them to take to the monasteries
to which they were going. On her return with the wine the robbers
carried off Margaret and at a lonely spot near the river Dyle proposed
to kill her too, as a witness to their crime. One of them offered to
marry her if she would keep silence, but she refused, and thereupon an
extra ten marks was added to the share of one of them to make away
with her. “He, taking the innocent lamb like a cruel butcher, cut her
throat, stabbed her in the side, and threw her into the river.” The
body was found and, in consequence of the supernatural light and
angelic voices that were reported to accompany it, was taken by the
clergy to St Peter’s collegiate church at Louvain and buried in a
special chapel in their churchyard. Miracles were vouchsafed at this
tomb and there Bl. Margaret has been venerated from that day to this.

Concerning this story the novice in the Dialogue asks “What would you
say was the cause of martyrdom in the case of this girl?” To which his
preceptor replies “Simplicity and an innocent life, as I have already
said. There are different kinds of martyrdom, namely, innocence, as in
Abel; uprightness, as in the prophets and St John Baptist; love of the
law, as in the Machabees confession of the faith, as in the apostles.
For all these different causes Christ the Lamb is said to have been
‘slain from the beginning of the world’.” All Christian virtues, being
protestations of our faith and proofs of our fidelity to God, are a
true motive of martyrdom.

The Bollandists, in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. i, find
nothing to add to the account given by Caesarius, but they supply
evidence regarding the later cultus, and translate from the Flemish a
relation of a number of miracles wrought at the shrine. Several
booklets of a popular kind have been printed about Bd Margaret in
modern times; the most note worthy, by M. G. Ollivier, originally
appeared as an article in the Revue Thomiste, vol. iv (1896), pp.
592-618. The Dialogue of Caesarius was published in English in 1929.


Saint Quote:
The poor and the sick are our owners and they represent the very
person of Jesus Christ.
-- Saint Luigi Scrosoppi of Udine

Bible Quote:
Religion pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to keep
oneself unspotted from this world. (James 1:27)


<><><><>
On The Foundation of Humility [III]

No one can review his past life without finding therein motives enough
and to spare for humbling himself before Almighty God. "We have
sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, we have
revolted; to us belongeth shame and confusion of face" (Dan. ix. 5,
7). If ever we are inclined to think much of ourselves, we have only
to look back on our past years; on the deliberate sins against
charity, against truthfulness, against purity; on the pride, the
selfishness, the self-will, the neglect of God that have stained our
lives.

Besides the actual sins, how many infidelities to grace! God has been
so liberal with His graces, and I have been so negligent in availing
myself of them. How many I might have earned if I had been faithful
and had not wilfully turned aside from what God asked of me to follow
my own will and pleasure. What cause for humiliation of myself! If
others who have perhaps lived and died in sin had had my graces, would
they not have made a far better use of them than I have? To me, O God,
shame and confusion of face! I must throw myself on Thy mercy and
humbly beg forgiveness.

When, moreover, I look at what I now am, I find fresh cause for
humbling myself. I might have been a saint if I had been more
faithful, and now I am one of the vilest of sinners. My soul in the
sight of God is disfigured by sin, as a body is by the ulcers and
sores that spoil its natural beauty and comeliness. I abound with
faults innumerable; I am unworthy to appear in the presence of God. "O
hide Thy face from my sins, blot out all my iniquities!"