Prevail

Day's Saints

Adalbert of Magdeburg, Bishop & Benedictine
John of Pulsano, Bendictine

Gospel
Mt 5:43-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."

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Choose your weapons by which you will prevail.

He tells us to be as perfect as His Father. We have not seen Him with our earthly eyes, and seldom with spiritual eyes, yet a time will come when we do not see Him with earthly eyes at all, and we must grow in faith for the day when we will need all our strength to see at all.

Demons behold a beauty beyond what we can see with our earthly eyes, but they cannot appreciate it, or come to love the Lord, because they are caught up in everything evil, and are filled with an unquenchable hate for the human race. He is limited in what he can do himself, but God is not limited in any way, and His children were made to create galaxies and to revel in the splendours of the universe made by Him, and so, constantly give praise to God by their very being.

It should be obvious the source of the vile occurrences in the world, and the very goodness of God's creation ought to speak to His glory and the depths of His love. There is a mortal combat, therefore, between brothers and sisters, one striving to take what is not theirs, and the other, striving to protect the people God created to be His children. 

Blessed are the children of God, for He loves them. I rejoice in their goodness, and bless Him for humbling me so that I may participate in seeing this marvel of holy goodness, and the pangs of His cross with which He reminds me I am His. I am weak and incapable of much, but He accomplishes all that needs to happen, because He is our way to succeed. We do succeed in pleasing Him, and He awaits our attempts at reaching out. He will therefore reach out to us, to compensate for our weakness and frailty, and He will deem our efforts as His glory and will be more than glad to wear them as a cloak of honor.

Therefore, children of the cross, rejoice in God, whether calamities befall your or not, for so long as you love Him, and do what is loving amongst yourselves, you will bless Him who needs no blessing and receive what you did not deserve, because His love is greater than what you deserve.

No one who has given Him everything they have or everything they are, will lack for His love and admiration. This is the strength of the saints that made the martyrs keep their place and not run off in fear to lose their lives. They received their lives back again and enriched by divine grandeur so that they were forever content to be in and of Him forever.