Program 4 of Light for Freedom- We can be a Saint Anywhere

Cecilia: Thank you for being with us for another program of Light for Freedom.

Gregory: Thank you so much, Cecilia. And it’s a gift to be with each one of you.

Cecilia: The topic we have today is very important. It’s very interesting because it means we can be a saint in any place we are, no matter if we are single, we are married, we are in difficult circumstances. We can be a saint. What does that mean?  

Gregory: To fulfill the sanctity of God’s call in our lives we are all being called to sanctity, the sanctity of God’s transforming love and mercy within our souls. This sanctity is fulfilled in and through love for God in offering our lives as eternal and living sacrifices daily.

Yes, wholly, fully surrendering our lives to God in all circumstances of our lives. The saints are those who have gone before us on the path of God’s love and have accomplished great things for God. Who have suffered martyrdom, who had suffered love for the power of the Cross and redemption of the Cross in their lives. Who have offered their lives as eternal martyrs, not in death, but in life, through the power of the Holy Spirit living and breathing within us.

When I was a child, I used to lay in the grass and I would look up to the sky. Yes, through the wind and the sunlight falling in the trees, I could feel the presence of God’s love in and all around me. And I understood that God existed, that God is love, that he is in me and all around me. To become saints of God’s love, we must conquer our human nature, our fallen nature, in allowing God to perfect us in his graces.

Because the scripture says that we are more than conquers in Christ and that love fulfills all things in our lives. The ultimate path of sanctity is the ultimate path of humility, to be transformed by Christ in living his example each day. Not our example. As our Lord said, Father, not by my will, but your will.

We should not become stagnant or complacent in faith but truly believe that we are all called to be saints of God. And how do we fulfill our sanctity? It is through the power of prayer that heals and transforms us, a prayer that strengthens us, and most importantly unites our hearts to the heart of God each day.

It is by living in a state of prayer and living in a state of repentance, seeking to keep our hearts purified in the hope of God’s mercy through the forgiveness of our sins and allowing God to redeem us each day. And allowing him to take us to new heights of love. Love, love, love that is everything, that fulfills all things- love fulfilled in all aspects of our lives, in our families and our friendships, in our work.

Yes, love is the answer to all things and it’s the resolution to life. And it is love through the power of faith, putting faith and prayer in action in our lives, to put love in action. Because Jesus said, there is no greater gift than this than to lay down your life for your brother and that the least that you do for one another, you do for me.

We are being called to share in the suffering of Christ, for the redemption of his children, for their salvation through acts of faith, and through living the fulfillment of the virtues of the Spirit of God within our lives. Yes, through charity, forgiveness, kindness and mercy in service to others.

Mother Teresa’s life was an eternal sacrifice of love in serving others and abandoning herself to the love of service for God because she saw the face of Christ in her brothers and sisters. She led a life of sacrifice to give to others her heart by first surrendering and offering her heart and life to God.

The faith is not complicated. It is simple, but we complicate it. We grow in sanctity through the practice of the faith, through receiving the power of the sacraments and living the sacraments in our daily lives.

Receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation as often as possible. There we may meet Jesus in the confessional of love, where we join our hearts to his heart and where he grants us his mercy to transform and heal us and to purify us. By doing so, we are sanctified and we are prepared to also receive the sanctity of God’s love in the Holy Eucharist where our Lord is calling us to be consumed by his love and to receive the Holy Eucharist in our hearts and to live it from within our hearts each day. How can we receive the Eucharist by turning our hearts on our brothers and sisters?

Jesus said the least that you do for your brother, you do for me. In the Last Supper, he said do this, fulfill this, in memory of me and where he washed the feet of his apostles. Yes. He gave us that example to wash the feet of others in holy love.

Do you understand, Cecilia?

Cecilia: Yes, Gregory. How can we think in our ordinary lives about sanctity? I mean, sometimes we have a lot of work. We have a lot of pressures. We are suffering a lot. What do you suggest we do at the first moment of the day, to offer everything to God and make all the things a prayer, a big prayer for sanctity?

Gregory: I would like to speak about the life of Blessed Carlo Acutis who is in the process of being canonized in which he devoted his life to loving God in a simple way in his desire to practice the faith, the example of our Lord, in charity and kindness and love towards others and in his desire to attend Holy Mass and receive the Blessed Sacrament as a young boy and throughout his life. He died at the age of 15.

In his short life, he honored and adored the living presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, to love Jesus above all things and to love his brothers and sisters. His sanctity was through loving God, and like Mother Teresa, putting love in action in glorifying God through his acts of love for God in faith. In glorifying God through loving his brothers and sisters, he found joy.

The fullness of the joy of loving God each day in his life in which each day he abandoned himself, and each day, to answer your question, I desire to abandon myself to God, to surrender my life in asking God, when I first arise through the prayer of the Our Father in saying, Father, how can I fulfill your will? Guide me, strengthen me through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Lead me in your love, to love you and to love others. How can I serve my brothers and sisters this day? How can I serve my brothers and sisters in love? And it is also through the power of prayer in the silence of the night, where I contemplate the love of God and receive his presence and holy love within my heart in my desire to express to him, Lord, take me as you desire. Take me that I may give you my all.

I am not a saint, I am weak and I am a sinner. But I desire to love God and to be obedient to his will each day understanding that in our fallen nature and in seeking his graces and blessings, we are being perfected, renewed, restored through the power of our Lord’s passion and blood, his sacrifice on the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins and the power and the life of his resurrection living within us.

The joy of the hope of the resurrection, in which the power of darkness has no power over the light of the Cross, has no power over the light. For the Cross is love, and love is the Cross. And when we desire to follow the path of Christ in humility, the path to the foot of the Cross each day where we offer our hearts and our sufferings and our joys, our desperation, our loneliness, our fears, our despairs, every need with intention. And asking God to help us, to guide us and to be our strength. Because the scripture says we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.

How do we live the example of Christ more fully? We also do so through the power of receiving the light of the faith through reading the Holy Scripture. Because our Lord said, I am the Word made flesh and the gospel of message is the path to sanctity. The gospel message and living the gospel message is as Christ called us to live who he is within us, living and breathing within us. His heart of love, beating with our hearts of love so that we can give everything to God and our brothers and sisters.

The power of the gospel message brings light and truth in moments of darkness and storms in our lives. For me, each night in the silence of prayer, in the secret place which David speaks of in Psalm 91 is a place of such unity with the love of God’s mercy, through prayer that brings light and grants us a deeper faith.

The scripture says, draw close to God and he will draw close to you. In prayer and in reading the scripture, we draw closer to God by adoring him. Yes. To live in a state of love and adoration for God and recognizing that God is in everything and he is everywhere.

There are many paths of sanctity- through love, obedience and discipline, in the humility of living the gifts of faith, hope and love each day.

Do you understand, Cecilia?

Cecilia: Yes, yes, Gregory. I want to share with the audience about Maximilian Kolbe. Do you remember that?

Gregory: Of course.

Cecilia: That is a very important man who was a prisoner in Auschwitz as a consequence of the Second World War. He was a friar, a Franciscan friar. The Nazis put him in prison because he was a Catholic, a bold Catholic, a monk. And he offered his life to save another person from the death penalty.

Gregory: These are the words of the scripture to lay down our life for our brother.

Cecilia: That is what he did. When I think of him, I see the possibility of being sent to any place.

Gregory: I believe that we all are called through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the communion of saints- each of us has a particular saint that we are drawn to because of their lives of faith, love and sacrifice. Because love is fulfilled through sacrifice for others and giving ourselves to others as Maximilian Kolbe did.

Cecilia: Just to finish the story so the audience knows, Maximilian Kolbe offered his life because others were going to die, ten of them who were prisoners in the same cell. They were going to die because one prisoner ran away and the Nazis killed ten for each person that escaped. They chose ten people from the group to die.

One began to cry and say, I am a father, I am a husband, I don’t want to die. Maximilian asked if I could offer his life in exchange for the man’s life.

Gregory: Yes, it is perfect because St. Anthony of Padua’s first discourse to the Franciscan community after St. Francis died was three words- love, love, love.

Cecilia: There’s another thing I would like to ask you to tell the audience about eternal life. What does sanctity for eternal life mean? The question is that this life does not finish with death. We have heaven.

Gregory: There is no sin greater than God’s mercy to forgive, to redeem us for the gift of salvation, to prepare us in accepting God, our Lord as our Savior, to save us. And in that mercy, in the sacrifice of his love, we have the gift of eternal life.

And I believe that we are all called to saints to be saints of God’s love each day as St. Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed Carlo and St. Maximilian Kolbe. They gave us great examples to follow the path to heaven. The path to heaven.

Cecilia: Because we are here on earth to go to heaven.

Gregory: Love is the path to heaven.

And I want to share with you, my brothers and sisters, that love is not an ideal concept. It is a reality and a gift of God that we pray for each day- the gifts of faith, hope and love to be instruments of faith, hope and love for others.

Each day I say this prayer. Because prayer also produces peace. And I call upon the Holy Spirit, which our Lord said is the Spirit of his love. To fulfill love in all things is to fulfill our call to sanctity.

Our Lord said to be not afraid and that love casts out all fear in our loneliness and our pain, and our desire to grow to seek God with all of our hearts.

I desire to fulfill not only this program but all of the programs of Light for Freedom. First for my love for God and the commitment to loving each one of you, a desire to love my brothers and sisters to say that wherever we are, we are free in faith because faith is light and light produces freedom.

We are free because our Lord said he came so that the blind may see and to set the captives free in his love. Our Father gave our Lord Jesus as a gift and sacrifice of love for our redemption.

Do you have any further thoughts?

Cecilia: No, just to invite our brothers and sisters to seek sanctity.

Gregory: To believe nothing is impossible for God to purify us in such a state of his grace and draw us so close and be united to him, his heart, and love that we live in a state of grace, of purity and of hope in God and who we can be, of who we can truly be in him.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Thank you so much.

Cecilia: Thank you, Gregory, thank you. See you in our next program.