Ignorance Calls for Humility
August 4, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? Wow! Wow! Wow! We are now in the month of August, second month of the second half of the year 2026! How time flies! Time, indeed, runs fast! Lest we miss the point of the meaning of life, that is, time, I just remembered The Poem I came across the other day as I was searching for two other articles in the book, Family Occasions, Speaking Heart to Heart. Maybe I should share it in today’s post.
The Poem
I knelt to pray but not for long,
I had too much to do.
I had to hurry and get to work
For bills would soon be due.
So I knelt and said a hurried prayer,
And jumped up off my knees.
My Christian duty was now done
My soul could rest at ease…
All day long I had no time
To spread a word of cheer
No time to speak of Christ to friends,
They’d laugh at me I’d fear.
No time, no time, too much to do,
That was my constant cry,
No time to give to souls in need.
But at last the time, the time to die.
I went before the Lord,
I came, I stood with downcast eyes.
For in his hands God! Held a book;
It was the book of life.
God looked into his book and said
“Your name I cannot find
I once was going to write it down…
But never found the time.”
In spite of the length of this post addressed to the selfish, let’s see how you and I can live these days keeping in mind how the Church would be celebrating this week at least, from the Daily Roman Missal:
4 August
A man with vision overcomes obstacles and performs deeds that seem impossible. John Vianney was a man with vision: He wanted to become a priest. But he had to overcome his meager formal schooling, which inadequately prepared him for seminary studies.
His failure to comprehend Latin lectures forced him to discontinue. But his vision of being a priest urged him to seek private tutoring. After a lengthy battle with the books, John was ordained.
Situations calling for “impossible” deeds followed him everywhere. As pastor of the parish at Ars, John encountered people who were indifferent and quite comfortable with their style of living. His vision led him through severe fasts and short nights of sleep. (Some devils can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.)
With Catherine Lassagne and Benedicta Lardet, he established La Providence, a home for girls. Only a man of vision could have such trust that God would provide for the spiritual and material needs of all those who came to make La Providence their home.
His work as a confessor is John Vianney’s most remarkable accomplishment. In the winter months he was to spend 11 to 12 hours daily reconciling people with God. In the summer months this time was increased to 16 hours. Unless a man was dedicated to his vision of a priestly vocation, he could not have endured this giving of self day after day.
Many people look
forward to retirement and taking it easy, doing the things they always wanted
to do but never had the time. But John Vianney had no thoughts of retirement.
As his fame spread, more hours were consumed in serving God’s people. Even the
few hours he would allow himself for sleep were disturbed frequently by the
devil.
Who, but a man with
vision, could keep going with ever-increasing strength? In 1929, Pope Pius XI
named him the patron of parish priests worldwide.
5 August
Dedication of St Mary Major
First raised at the order of Pope Liberius in the mid-fourth century, the Liberian basilica was rebuilt by Pope Sixtus III shortly after the Council of Ephesus affirmed Mary’s title as Mother of God in 431. Rededicated at that time to the Mother of God, St. Mary Major is the largest church in the world honouring God through Mary. Standing atop one of Rome’s seven hills, the Esquiline, it has survived many restorations without losing its character as an early Roman basilica. Its interior retains three naves divided by colonnades in the style of Constantine’s era. Fifth-century mosaics on its walls testify to its antiquity.
St. Mary Major is one of the four Roman basilicas known as patriarchal cathedrals in memory of the first centres of the Church. St. John Lateran represents Rome, the See of Peter; St. Paul Outside the Walls, the See of Alexandria, allegedly the see presided over by Mark; St. Peter’s, the See of Constantinople; and St. Mary’s, the See of Antioch, where Mary is supposed to have spent most of her life.
One legend, unreported
before the year 1000, gives another name to this feast: Our Lady of the Snows.
According to that story, a wealthy Roman couple pledged their fortune to the
Mother of God. In affirmation, she produced a miraculous summer snowfall and
told them to build a church on the site. The legend was long celebrated by
releasing a shower of white rose petals from the basilica’s dome every August
5.
6 August
The Transfiguration of the Lord
All three Synoptic Gospels tell the story of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-9; Luke 9:28-36). With remarkable agreement, all three place the event shortly after Peter’s confession of faith that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus’ first prediction of his passion and death. Peter’s eagerness to erect tents or booths on the spot suggests it occurred during the Jewish weeklong, fall Feast of Booths.
In spite of the texts’ agreement, it is difficult to reconstruct the disciples’ experience, according to Scripture scholars, because the Gospels draw heavily on Old Testament descriptions of the Sinai encounter with God and prophetic visions of the Son of Man.
Certainly Peter, James and John had a glimpse of Jesus’ divinity strong enough to strike fear into their hearts. Such an experience defies description, so they drew on familiar religious language to describe it. And certainly Jesus warned them that his glory and his suffering were to be inextricably connected - a theme John highlights throughout his Gospel.
Tradition names Mt. Tabor as the site of the revelation. A church first raised there in the fourth century was dedicated on August 6. A feast in honour of the Transfiguration was celebrated in the Eastern Church from about that time. Western observance began in some localities about the eighth century.
On July 22, 1456,
Crusaders defeated the Turks at Belgrade. News of the victory reached Rome on
August 6, and Pope Callistus III placed the feast on the Roman calendar the
following year.
8 August
St Dominic (1170-1221)
If he hadn’t taken a trip with his bishop, Dominic would probably have remained within the structure of contemplative life; after the trip, he spent the rest of his life being a contemplative in active apostolic work.
Born in old Castile, Spain, he was trained for the priesthood by a priest-uncle, studied the arts and theology, and became a canon of the cathedral at Osma, where there was an attempt to revive the apostolic common life described in the Acts of the Apostles.
On a journey through France with his bishop, he came face to face with the then virulent Albigensian heresy at Languedoc. The Albigensians (Cathari, “the pure”) held to two principles - one good, one evil - in the world. All matter is evil - hence they denied the Incarnation and sacraments. On the same principle they abstained from procreation and took a minimum of food and drink. The inner circle led what some people regarded as a heroic life of purity and asceticism not shared by ordinary followers.
Dominic
sensed the need for the Church to combat this heresy, and was commissioned to
be part of the preaching crusade against it. He saw immediately why the preaching
was not succeeding: the ordinary people admired and followed the ascetical
heroes of the Albigenses. Understandably, they were not impressed by the
Catholic preachers who travelled with horse and retinues, stayed at the best
inns and had servants.
Dominic therefore, with three Cistercians, began itinerant preaching according to the gospel ideal. He continued this work for 10 years, being successful with the ordinary people but not with the leaders.
His
fellow preachers gradually became a community, and in 1215 he founded a
religious house at Toulouse, the beginning of the Order of Preachers
(Dominicans).
His
ideal, and that of his Order, was to link organically a life with God, study
and prayer in all forms, with a ministry of salvation to people by the word of
God. His ideal: contemplata tradere:
“to pass on the fruits of contemplation” or “to speak only of God or with
God."
9 August
St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)(1891-1942)
A brilliant philosopher who stopped believing in God when she was 14, Edith Stein was so captivated by reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila that she began a spiritual journey that led to her Baptism in 1922. Twelve years later she imitated Teresa by becoming a Carmelite, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Edith abandoned Judaism in her teens. As a student at the University of Göttingen, she became fascinated by phenomenology, an approach to philosophy. Excelling as a protégé of Edmund Husserl, one of the leading phenomenologists, Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She continued as a university teacher until 1922 when she moved to a Dominican school in Speyer; her appointment as lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich ended under pressure from the Nazis.
After living in the Cologne Carmel (1934-38), she moved to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. The Nazis occupied that country in 1940. In retaliation for being denounced by the Dutch bishops, the Nazis arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942.
Pope John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta in 1987 and canonized her in 1998.
Quote:
In his homily at the canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II said: “Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholics and Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: ‘Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed.’”
Addressing himself to the young people gathered for the canonization, the Pope said: “Your life is not an endless series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in his good hands.”
Now let us continue with the third word of Christ from the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
6 A Word to the Selfish
The third group in the world who need to feel the impact of the Cross are the selfish. By the selfish is here understood all those who feel that salvation is either an individual matter or else the concern of a particular class; that religion has no other right to exist than to remove the impediments of a selfish existence by slum clearance, social security, more playgrounds; and that all else, such as the regeneration of man from sin, or the culture of the soul, is a snare and a delusion.
When the selfish become learned, they define religion, in the language of a contemporary philosopher, as “what a man does with his own solitariness.” When the selfish are in distress, they ask, “Why should God do this to me?” When the selfish sin, they say, “What harm does my sin do to anyone else?”
The selfish were on Calvary’s hill in their representative, who was the thief on the left. He had heard the blasphemy and pride of his companion thief broken when, out of a consciousness of sin, he called to the Lord for mercy, but the experience left him untouched. One can be so close to God physically and yet miss Him spiritually.
Turning to the Lord on the central Cross, the thief on the left, in the supreme expression of selfishness, cried out with bitterness of soul: “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us” (Luke 23:29).
He was the first Marxist! Long before Marx, he was saying “Religion is the opium of the people.”
A religion that only thinks of souls when men are dying, which bids them look to God at the moment when the courts are inflicting injustice, which talks about “pie in the sky” when stomachs are empty and bodies are racked with pain, which talks about forgiveness when the social outcasts — two thieves and a despised proletarian, a village carpenter — are dying on a scaffold, is a religion that is the opium of the people.
“Save thyself and us”: how modern! Salvation is for a class! Not everyone! Communism speaks only for the proletariat: “Save thyself and us.” Fascism speaks only for the nation: “Save thyself and us.” Nazism speaks only for the race: “Save thyself and us.” The rich speak only for their class: “Save thyself and us.”
Not a word about the salvation of the world; about His people, whom He loved; about the Gentiles, to whom He would send His Apostles; and above all else, not a word about His Beloved Mother, beneath His Cross, whose heart was already pierced by seven swords.
If there was to be salvation for the thief on the left, it was not to be spiritual or moral, but physical: “Save thyself and us!” Save what? Our souls? No! Man has no soul! Save our bodies! What good is religion if it cannot stop pain, step down from a gibbet, rescue a class, or pamper selfish interests? Christianity is either a social gospel, or it is a drug.
Our Lord did not answer that selfish thief directly, but He did answer Him indirectly when, looking down from the Cross, He addressed Himself to the two most beloved creatures on earth — Mary, His Mother, and John, His disciple. But He did not address them as “Mary” and as “John.”
If He had called them by their names, they would have remained what they were; representatives of a certain class. If He had said “Mother,” she would have been His Mother and no one else’s. If he had said “John,” he would have been the son of Zebedee, and the son of no one else. So He called Mary “Woman” and John “Son.” “Woman, behold thy son. . . . Son, behold thy mother” (John 19:26–27).
He was saying that religion is not what a man does with his solitariness, but what he does with his relationships. And as if to prove for all time that religion is not selfishness, either of an individual or a “set” or a class, He called Mary and John into a relationship as wide as the world. In a certain sense, He de-classified them.
She was no longer to be His Mother alone. As He was the new Adam, she would be the new Eve. He had told her, about a year and a half before, that there were other ties than those of flesh and blood — namely, the spiritual bond among those who do the will of God. “Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and my sister and mother” (Mark 3:34–35).
Now He establishes that new relationship. As she was His Mother by the flesh, she would now be the mother of all “who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).
To herald her in this new relationship as the Mother of Christians, He calls her “Woman” — it was a high summons to universal motherhood.
And John, who up to this point is the son of Zebedee, is not called John — for that would have been to keep the ties of blood. He is addressed as “Son.” “Son, behold thy mother.”
Jesus was the firstborn of Mary’s flesh, but John was the firstborn of her spirit at the foot of the Cross; and perhaps Peter was the second, Andrew the third, James the fourth, and we the millionth and millionth born.
He was setting up a new family, a new social relationship. In that context, economic and social questions would be settled, and not otherwise. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Luke 12:31).
Religion is not an individual affair! A man can no more have an individual religion than he can have an individual government or an individual astronomy or mathematics. Religion is social — so social that it is not limited to the criminal class, as the thief believed, nor to any class, race, nation, or color. All these views are too aristocratic.
Snobbery can exist among proletarians as well as among dukes. The new totalitarian systems have produced “blue bloods” just as obnoxious as some of the blue bloods of monarchy.
This word of Our Lord furthermore reveals that all social duties flow out of these spiritual relationships. He did not say: “John, take care of my Mother,” nor did He say: “Mary, look after John as you would me.” No! Having established a new relationship between Mary and John — namely, that of motherhood and sonship — the duties flowed quite naturally.
Religion is made the sharing of responsibilities. Mary had raised her Child, but now she was to adopt others and love them as sons, poor indeed though they were in comparison.
John had fulfilled his sonship to Zebedee, but now he was to take on new duties as Mary’s son and so live that he would never do anything of which his Mother would be ashamed. Mary continued her duty of bearing the burden of others, for we find her on Pentecost in the midst of the Apostles, mothering the Infant Church as she mothered the Infant Jesus.
John, too, could never forget that word son, which he heard from the Cross, as we find him some years after the Ascension writing to the Infant Church: “Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God” (1 John 3:1).
There is no Messianic race, no Messianic class, no Messianic color. Our Lord died for all men, and thus set up a new series of relationships with God. And from out of this new set of relationships, slum clearance and social justice and all the rest follow — but not otherwise.
Hence, Our Blessed Lord said nothing about slavery because He knew that slavery would never be eradicated until men saw themselves related to one another on the basis of equality as children of God.
He did not discourse on the need of child clinics. He first proclaimed the value of a child to a pagan world by becoming a child among children.
He said nothing about the necessity of democracy. But He laid the foundation for it when He told Pilate what we, over seventeen hundred years later, wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all rights and liberties come from God.
He said nothing about the rights of labor. He first dignified it as a vocation by working as a carpenter.
He said nothing about treating servants decently, but He girded Himself with a towel and washed the feet of His Apostles. “And whosoever will be first among you, shall be the servant of all” (Mark 10:44).
The classic example of the effect of the new relationship was the slave Onesimus, who ran away from his master, Philemon. The slave came to Paul, who made him a Christian. Paul then asked the slave to return to Philemon bearing a note in which Onesimus is called “my own son whom I have begotten in my bands. . . . Do thou receive him as my own. . . . Receive him . . . not now as a servant . . . but a most dear brother especially to me; but how much more to thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord” (Philem. 1:10–16). He was no longer a slave because he was a Christian.
What barriers St. Paul would have broken down in his League of Nations: “There is neither Jew nor Greek” (that means, no race or political distinction); “there is neither bond nor free” (no economic distinction); “there is neither male nor female” (no sex distinction); “for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
When Chile and Argentina were about to go to war, it was the suggestion of a woman that the cannon of the two nations be melted, made into a statue of Christ and placed in the Andes at the border of each and be called “The Christ of the Andes.” And it bears this inscription: “Sooner shall these mountains crumble than this pact of peace, entered into at the feet of Christ between these two nations, shall be broken.” And that pact has never been broken!
Someday someone will read the Gospel: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ” (Matt. 19:19); that is, love the other’s interest as you do self-interest. Not until all groups see themselves as bound in a new relationship to the common good, will they sacrifice their own special interests.
So long as every individual exists for himself, we shall have social discontent; so long as every class seeks only its own interest, we shall have class warfare; and so long as each nation seeks its own interest exclusively, we shall have war.
After listening to that third word to the Cross, we know that the equal distribution of economic goods does not make men brothers, but that, by making men brothers under the Fatherhood of God, economic goods are distributed. Equality of possessions does not make men brothers, but being brothers makes for economic equality.
The prodigal son thought he could have peace through distribution of economic wealth, but it was not until he had restored relations with his father that the distribution worked.
Communism of things will never work until we start with a communism of personal relationships. Individual selfishness cannot be corrected by class selfishness. Selfishness is insanity.
The author of Peer Gynt writes of the inmates of an insane asylum: “It is here that men are most themselves — themselves and nothing but themselves — sailing with outspread wings of self. Each shuts himself in a cask of self, the cask stopped with the bung of self and seasoned in a well of self. None has a tear for the other’s woes or cares what any other thinks.”
Centering on self, they hate themselves. Doing always what they like, they hate what they do. Having their own way, they block the way and lose their way. Unable to get along with themselves, they cannot get along with anyone else.
No wonder a young product of a progressive school once asked: “Must I always do what I want to do?” It is by no accident that this age, which believed in self-expression, has ended in self-disillusionment and disgust.
Our Lord spoke to the hating, raging, anti-Christian Saul on the Damascus road: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad” (Acts 26:14). He used the figure of an ox hurting itself by kicking against the sharp nails of the cart. He was saying in effect: “When you rebel against me, you are rebelling against yourself. You persecute me, but you — you are perishing.”
Men, nations, and systems always destroy themselves by seeking an order other than that based on the brotherhood of all men under the Fatherhood of God! Class consciousness must be transformed into “brother consciousness,” or the world will perish. Freedom from God is really the freedom to destroy ourselves.
To the selfish comes the lesson from the Cross! Begin to live for others, and you will begin to live for self. Religion implies social relationships.
We did not wait until we were twenty-one and then, after studying the Constitution, decide to become Americans. We were born American — born out of the womb of America. So likewise, in the spiritual order, we are born out of the womb of the Church. It is the Church founded by Christ that makes us Christian; it is not you or me, as a Christian, who adds our individuality to other individuals to form an institution!
Never, therefore, say: Religion is a purely personal matter. You can no more have your personal religion than you can have your personal sun. If your personal religion unites you to God, and my personal religion unites me to God, then is there not a common relationship between us to a common Father?
When we go to a concert, do we not give attention to the music, that is, do we not allow ourselves to be determined by something outside ourselves? Do we think that when people attend concerts, each one should do whatever he pleases, call out his own selections, take the baton from the conductor, or whistle his own tune?
Then why, when the subject is religion, where the Conductor is God, should we insist on our own individual ideas, or say religion is “what I think about God.” Rather, religion is what God wants it to be. Hence, I must seek His will, not mine, discover His truth, not my opinion.
Nor is it true to say: “The way I conduct my own life is nobody’s business but mine,” or “It harms nobody else.” Could you throw a stone in the sea without causing ripples that would affect even the most distant shore? How, then, do we think our moral actions can be devoid of social repercussions?
Morality is essentially a relationship of a threefold character: a relationship between myself and my conscience, between myself and my neighbor, and between myself and my God. You cannot think of a single wrong deed in the world that does not disturb all three relationships — even secret sins.
Take, for example, a strong hatred which never expresses itself in violence. First, it disturbs your relation to yourself: physically, by upsetting your stomach; spiritually, by creating a tension between an ideal and a failure to attain it; and morally, later on, by remorse of conscience. Secondly, it disturbs your relation to your neighbor, by diminishing the content of love in the world. And if enough individuals did exactly what you did, it could cause a war. Thirdly, it disturbs your relation to God, for if I am a motor made by God that runs best on the fuel of divine love, which God supplies, it follows that I upset both myself and my happy relation to Him by trying to run the motor on the fuel of hate.
All quarrels, disagreements, wars, strifes, and dissensions begin with a false declaration of independence — independence from God and independence from our fellow man.
That, incidentally, is why the Jews on the one hand, and the Christians on the other, are on the wrong track when they try to break down intolerance by protests within their own group.
The Jews will never crush anti-Semitism so long as they protest against intolerance only within their ranks, or within their press, and completely ignore the intolerance shown to Christians. And the same is true of Christians. Not until they both protest out of a common relationship until the Jew defends the Christian and the Christian the Jew, will there be peace.
One of the reasons there has been such a great decline of belief in the divinity of Christ outside the Church is because a proper understanding of the relationship existing between Christ and His Mother has been destroyed.
Would you, as a son, have much regard for anyone who said he liked you, but who refused to speak to your mother? Well, do you think Our Lord can feel any differently, particularly since He gave His Mother to us on the Cross?
Why not then, as a remedy for all selfishness, begin seeing ourselves bound to one another in every increasing relationship, first as common creatures of God, then as sons of the Heavenly Father, as brothers of Christ, as members of His Mystical Body vivified by one Spirit, governed by one Head, and as children of Mary, our Mother, to whom — as her children who never grow up — we say in the language of Mary Dixon Thayer:
Lovely Lady dressed in blue
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your
little Boy,
Tell me what to say!
Did you lift Him up,
sometimes,
Gently, on your knee?
Did you sing to Him
the way
Mother does to me?
Did you hold His hand
at night?
Did you ever try
Telling stories of the
world?
Oh! And did He cry?
Do you really think He
cares
If I tell Him things —
Little things that
happen?
And Do the Angel’s
wings
Make a noise?
And can He hear Me
if I speak low?
Does He understand me
now?
Tell me, for you know!
Lovely Lady dressed in
blue.
Teach me how to
pray!
God was just your
little Boy,
And you know the
way.
— Seven Words to the Cross
I suggest
you take your time savoring this post. And
as you go by portions talk to Jesus about the thoughts during those quiet
moments of conversation and prayer. Listen
and take note of what He says every time.
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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