Holiness
June 23, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? We have just laid to rest Nora last Friday, the 19th. She finally accepted God’s hand and she did it in such a peaceful silent last breath at around 10:46 in the morning of the 15th. She was blessed to have received all the sacraments before she breathed her last. After which she was also blessed. The following days were as beautiful and peaceful but festive? She looked radiant; no changes in the way she was prepared and made up to rest. I am simply impressed at how well she looked during last four days until the morning of the funeral.
The Lord takes good care of the ones who also know how to take good care of the Lord in their lives. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt 6:33). I personally have witnessed this in her life.
I have heard or read that all brides are beautiful and I am sure as I always assure others that you and I will look as beautiful when in the end the good Lord calls us to Himself. Iba si Our Lord magmahal; palagi at hanggang langit. Kaya pataasin ang pananampalataya, palakasin ang pagtitiwala, at pasiklabin ang pagmamahal sa Panginoon. (Our Lord loves differently; always and for eternity in heaven. That is why increase your faith, strengthen your hope and inflame your love.)
Let us get back to business and continue with the second word of Christ on the Cross about the secret of holiness (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
7 Secret of Sanctity
There is only one thing in the world that is definitely and absolutely your own, and that is your will. Health, power, possessions, and honor can all be snatched from you, but your will is irrevocably your own, even in hell. Hence, nothing really matters in life, except what you do with your will. It is that which makes the story of the two thieves crucified on either side of Our Lord, for here is the drama of wills.
Both thieves at first blasphemed. There was no such thing as the good thief at the beginning of the Crucifixion. But when the thief on the right heard that Man on the central Cross forgive His executioners, he had a change of soul.
He began to accept his sorrows. He took up his cross as a yoke rather than as a gibbet, abandoned himself to God’s will, and, turning to the rebellious thief on the left, said: “Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly: for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done no evil” (Luke 23:40–41).
Then from his heart already so full of surrender to His Savior, there came this plea, “Remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom.” Immediately there came the answer: “Amen I say to thee: this day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42–43).
Thou. We are all individuals in the sight of God. He called His sheep by name. This word was the foundation of Christian democracy. Every soul is precious in God’s sight, even those whom the state casts out and kills.
At the foot of the Cross, Mary witnessed the conversion of the good thief, and her soul rejoiced that he had accepted the will of God. Her Divine Son’s second word, promising paradise as a reward for that surrender, reminded her of her own second word thirty years before, when the angel had appeared to her and told her that she was to be the Mother of Him who was now dying on the Cross.
In her first word, she asked how this would be accomplished, since she knew not man. But when the angel said she would conceive of the Holy Spirit, Mary immediately answered: “Be it done to me according to thy word”: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Luke 1:38).
This was one of the great fiats of the world. The first was at Creation, when God said: Fiat lux, “Let there be light”; another was in Gethsemani, when the Savior, pressing the chalice of redemption to his lips, cried: Fiat voluntas tua, “Thy will be done” (Matt. 26:42). The third was Mary’s, pronounced in a Nazarene cottage, which proved to be a declaration of war against the empire of evil: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, “Be it done to me according to thy word.”
The second word of Jesus on
Golgotha and the second word of Mary in Nazareth teach the same lesson:
Everyone in the world has a cross, but the cross is not the same for any two of
us. The cross of the thief was not the cross of Mary. The difference was due to
God’s will toward each. The thief was to give life; Mary to accept life. The
thief was to hang on his cross; Mary was to stand beneath hers. The thief was
to go ahead; Mary to remain behind. The thief received a dismissal; Mary
received a mission. The thief was to be received into paradise, but paradise
was to be received into Mary.
Each of us, too, has a cross. Our Lord said: “If
any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me” (Mark 8:34). He did not say: “Take up my cross.” My cross is not the same
as yours, and yours is not the same as mine. Every cross in the world is
tailor-made, custom-built, patterned to fit one and no one else.
That is why we say: “My cross is hard.” We
assume that other persons’ crosses are lighter, forgetful that the only reason
our cross is hard is simply that it is our own. Our Lord did not make His
Cross; it was made for Him. So yours is made by the circumstances of your life,
and by your routine duties. That is why it fits so tightly. Crosses are not
made by machines.
Our Lord deals separately with each soul. The crown of gold we want may have underneath it the crown of thorns, but the heroes who choose the crown of thorns often find that underneath it is the crown of gold. Even those who seem to be without a cross actually have one.
No one would have ever suspected that when Mary resigned herself to God’s will by accepting the honor of becoming the Mother of God, she would ever have to bear a cross. It would seem, too, that one who was preserved free from original sin should be dispensed from the penalties of that sin, such as pain. Yet this honor brought to her seven crosses and ended by making her the Queen of Martyrs.
There are, therefore, as many kinds of crosses as there are persons: crosses of grief and sorrow, crosses of want, crosses of abuse, crosses of wounded love, and crosses of defeat.
There is the cross of widows. How often Our Lord
spoke of them, for example, in the parable of the judge and the widow (Luke
18:1–8); when He rebuked the Pharisees, who “devour the houses of widows” (Mark
12:40); when He spoke to the widow of Naim (Luke 7:12); and when He praised the
widow who threw two mites into the temple treasury (Mark 12:42–43). Widowhood
may have been particularly dear to Him, because His own Mother was a widow, for
Joseph, His foster father, was presumably already dead.
When God takes someone from us, it is always for a good reason. When the sheep have grazed and thinned the grass in the lower regions, the shepherd will take a little lamb in his arms, carry it up the mountain where the grass is green, lay it down, and soon the other sheep will follow.
Every now and then Our Lord takes a lamb from the parched field of a family up to those heavenly green pastures, so that the rest of the family may keep their eyes on their true home and follow through.
Then there is the cross of
sickness, which always has a divine purpose. Our Blessed Lord said: “This
sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God: that the Son of God may
be glorified by it” (John 11:4). Resignation to this kind of cross is one of
the very highest forms of prayer. Unfortunately, the sick generally want to be
doing something else other than the thing that God wants them to do.
The tragedy of this world is not so much the pain in it; the tragedy is that so much of it is wasted. It is only when a log is thrown into the fire that it begins to sing. It was only when the thief was thrown into the fire of a cross that he began to find God. It is only in pain that some begin to discover where Love is.
Because our crosses differ, soul will differ from soul in glory. We think too often that in heaven there is going to be somewhat the same equality in social positions that we have here; that servants on earth will be servants in heaven; that the important people on earth will be the important people in heaven. This is not true.
God will take into account our crosses. He seemed to suggest that in the parable of Dives and Lazarus: “Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented” (Luke 16:25).
There will be a bright jewel
of merit for those who suffer in this world. Because we live in a world where
position is determined economically, we forget that in God’s world the royalty
are those who do His will. Heaven will be a complete reversal of the values of
earth. The first shall be last and the last first, for God is no respecter of
persons.
A wealthy and socially important woman went to heaven. St. Peter pointed to a beautiful mansion and said: “This is your chauffeur’s home.” “Well,” said she, “if that is his home, think what mine will be like.” Pointing to a tiny cottage, Peter said: “There is yours.” “I can’t live in that,” she answered. And Peter said: “I’m sorry, that is the best I could do with the material you sent me.” Those who suffer as the thief did have sent ahead some fine material.
It makes no difference what
you do here on earth; what matters is the love with which you do it. The street
cleaner who accepts in God’s name a cross arising from his state in life, such
as the scorn of his fellow men; the mother who pronounces her fiat to the
divine will as she raises a family for the kingdom of God; the afflicted in hospitals
who say fiat to their cross of suffering are the uncanonized saints, for what
is sanctity but fixation in goodness by abandonment to God’s holy will?
It is typically American to feel that we are not doing anything unless we are doing something big. But from the Christian point of view, there is no one thing that is bigger than any other thing. The bigness comes from the way our wills utilize things. Hence, mopping an office for the love of God is bigger than running the office for the love of money.
Most of our misery and unhappiness come from rebellion against our present state coupled with false ambition. We become critical of everyone above us, as if the cloak of honor that another wears was stolen from our shoulders. Rest assured that if it is God’s will that we do a certain task, it will be done, though the whole world would rise and say nay. But if we get that honor by the abandonment of truth and humility, it will be as bitter as wormwood and as biting as gall.
Each of us is to praise and love God in his own way. The bird praises God by singing, the flower by blooming, the clouds with their rain, the sun with its light, the moon with its reflection, and each of us by the patient resignation to the trials of his state in life. In what does your life consist except two things? Active duties and passive circumstances. The first is under your control; do these in God’s name. The second is outside your control; submit to these in God’s name. Consider only the present; leave the past to God’s justice, the future to His providence. Perfection of personality does not consist in knowing God’s plan, but in submitting to it as it reveals itself in the circumstances of life.
There is really one shortcut
to sanctity; the one Mary chose in the Annunciation, the one Our Lord chose in
Gethsemani, the one the thief chose on the Cross — abandonment to the divine
will.
If the gold in the bowels of the earth did not say fiat to the miner and the goldsmith, it would never become the chalice of the altar. If the pencil did not say fiat to the hand of the writer, we would never have the poem; if Our Lady did not say fiat to the angel, she would never have become the House of Gold; if Our Lord did not say fiat to the Father’s will in Gethsemani, we would never have been redeemed; if the thief did not say fiat in his heart, he never would have been the escort for the Master into paradise.
The reason most of us are
what we are, mediocre Christians, “up” one day, “down” the next, is simply
because we refuse to let God work on us. As crude marble, we rebel against the
hand of the sculptor; as unvarnished canvas, we shrink from the oils and tints
of the Heavenly Artist. We are so “fearful lest having Him we may have nought
else beside,” forgetful that if we have the fire of Love, why worry about the
sparks, and if we have the perfect round, why trouble ourselves with the arc?
We always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters, when really what matters is what we let God do to us. God sent the angel to Mary, not to ask her to do something, but to let something be done.
Since God is a better artisan than you, the more you abandon yourself to Him, the happier He can make you. It is well to be a self-made man, but it is better to be a God-made man.
God will love you, of course, even though you do not love Him, but remember if you give Him only half your heart, He can make you only 50 percent happy. You have freedom only to give it away. To whom do you give yours? You give it either to the moods of the hour, to your egotism, to creatures or to God.
Do you know that if you give
your freedom to God, in heaven, you will have no freedom of choice because once
you possess the perfect, there is nothing left to choose? And still, you will
be perfectly free because you will be one with Him whose heart is freedom and
love!
— Seven Words of Jesus and Mary
Somebody just shared the following: “You can always twist the hand of the devil anytime he comes to do something.” And it is true! I just did it around 12:45 this afternoon. I cannot but thank Our Lord for letting me do it. That confirms what is mentioned above. It is not what you do that matters; what really matters is what we let God do to us.
It is again time to talk to God about the above ideas. There is so much to consider even if there is
just one main idea, right? Life is indeed,
colorful and could be made more and more meaningful every step of the way. See what comes out in your conversation with
Our Lord in those quiet moments you have set to talk with Him every day and
make sure you heed what He tells you and I will do the same.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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