IC
I:18, 23rd Sunday of Year A
Since it is a minor feast, the Nativity of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, September 8, is not celebrated when it falls on a Sunday. The
Church is given more to rejoicing on a saint’s death day than on his birthday,
since it is the day of his entry into heaven. These facts should not deter us
from a personal observance of her birthday, as an expression of our love for Her. The Imitation of Christ speaks of using the
saints as our models.
Whether we wish it or not, we are influenced by the lives of
others with whom we must converse, live, work, read about or merely recollect.
A good person can have a salutary and wide reaching influence for the good of
others, just as we are obliged to avoid a wicked person because he may be a
snare for us, an occasion of sin. Parents sense this keenly when they moderate
the company their children keep. And since the evil tendency is the norm
rather than the exception in fallen human nature, one cannot take lightly the
regulation of his personal contacts with others, choosing his associates
wisely, as much as it is in his control.
The anti-hero, the bad role model, is frequently adulated
today because strictures of moral license are loose.
Democracy is often hailed for the freedom it confers on the
individual. In the political sense, this component of our American way of life
brings us many advantages. Its negative side, however, is that often fails in
the moral sphere. Equality of respect for everyone can often blunt our sense of
moral discrimination. It is thought, for example, that the majority should rule in moral
issues, or that everyone should have a right to do whatever he pleases. But
another negative consequence is that the democratic ideal has too often done
away with persons of stature, persons of extraordinary character, of virtue.
Commonness has pervaded the moral climate and there only seldom emerges a
person worthy of emulation. The expression “the common man” whatever its good
associations should make us wary of applying it as an ideal standard of
conduct. We need heros and
heroines to inspire and to elevate our thoughts and to motivate us to ascend to
something higher than the relatively low level of common achievement. Human
opinion with regard to things such as what is good food, good art or music, has
proved to favor what is banal. In our insistence on equality, we often lose our
moral perspective and fail to see a hierarchy of goods according to a real
measure of their worth. This is an impoverishment of the human spirit and we
thus tend to lose our sense of dignity, let alone our aspiration to greatness.
If only we could be aristocratic in mind, without haughtiness in
self-estimation, we would enjoy all the richness of the nobility.
Having before our imagination the valor of the many holy men
and women of ages past ought to be an incentive for the imitation of their
accomplishments. Holiness of life is not some distant ideal attainable by the
few but one that is in the grasp of anyone who wants to purse it. Saints are heros not because of a special talent of mind or skill they
may possess, but because they employed their energies to achieve sanctity.
While our lives may hardly resemble the social circumstances of many of the
saints, yet we can always find in their conduct the motivating spirit behind their
deeds and make application to our own condition. The saints, for example,
followed the doctrine of Christ and shunned self love. They were strict with
themselves in self-denial. They endured long and heavy temptations to sin. They
fasted; they were assaulted by demons; they prayed with great frequency and
fervor. Often they would forget their bodily needs in devoting themselves to
Christ. They renounced riches that were available to them, wanting to imitate
the poverty of Christ. They did not seek to make many friends, but made it
their aim to cultivate friendship with God. Their virtues are not those
applauded by the world: humility, obedience, patience, charity.
Much of the carelessness of people’s lives today, much of
their lukewarmness–to say nothing of their increasing
moral degeneracy–can be attributed to the removal of
the lives of the saints from our imaginations. We do not often see their images
any longer, or read their life stories. We fill our appetites for greatness
with the snacking on TV, media and sports stars who
are already only too much like ourselves in poverty of virtue.
Today on our Mother’s Birthday let us raise our minds to the
one human person who excelled all others in achieving holiness. “Perfect
disciple of the Lord,” the Church calls her. And let us not neglect the vast
number of canonized saints that are meant to spur us on to holiness and to
attain fellowship with them in heaven.