Amazing grace(s)

Pere (French word for "Father"...even though he's Irish) Sean told me and the Aussie (Gary, the Australian seminarian here with me...in France) that we'd be able to go with him this weekend to Ars!  You know that place where the Cure of Ars lived, St. John Vianney, one of the greatest Saints that ever lived, the patron Saint of Priests, the one who could read souls in the confessional - yeah that's where I am probably going this weekend! Father Sean will be preaching a brief "boost" mission to increase the spirit of Eucharistic adoration there in Ars (they have perpetual adoration there.)

Also possibly (briefly) to Paray le Monial where the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus were given to St. Margaret Mary. (It also happens to be the place where our community was officially, canonically established a few years ago.)

Cool anecdote about the Cure Of Ars (SJV!) - Lacordaire, known as one of the best preachers of all time and a French Dominican Priest, was asked by someone if he had heard of Pere Jean Vianney as they were contemporaries.  Pere Lacordaire, in humility, responded to the effect of "I have heard of him and all I know is that when I preach people say "he's good!" but when the Cure of Ars preaches people say "God is good!"

That's what the Saints do.  God is so explosively visible in them that one cannot help but praise God for His beautiful work of art - the Saint! A man, having once encountered the holy Priest of Ars in France walked away and declared "I saw God in a man!"

In all the baptized the Trinity dwells by grace but in the Saint God is no longer hidden.  May our lives be hidden with Christ in God that God may no longer be hidden from the world!  May we become, like Our Lady (the greatest of Saints!) a "living monstrance" and a true "God-bearer" to the world.

O if Christians knew their dignity! Then the world would come to know its own dignity at having been bought at the price of God's blood, Jesus' blood!

How precious we must be to Him - He died for you! Will you live for Him?

--MM