This year’s Pro Sanctity theme 2001-2002

for the annual Celebration of the Universal Call to Holiness is

 

Holiness in Daily Life!

 

Our theme this year is centered on the phrase: “Vita Quotidiana Esperienze di Santita, which we can translate as:  Holiness in daily life.”  Since we belong to the Movement, we know that this is not only a possibility, but we have seen it in our lived reality.  Each day we have the opportunity to grow anew in the love and presence of God.  Each day God showers gifts and blessings on us, not because we have earned them, but because God is so good.

 

As we know , God is good all the time, not only when we are aware of our blessings.  Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, at the beginning of the new millennium, has spoken of the “high standard of Christian life.”  Each of us can daily say to ourselves:  “Christ calls me to live a holy life.”

 

The Lord knows that daily life is filled with trials and diffculties in remaining faithful to Him.  He knows that it is not a matter of blending into the world and being just like everyone else, and not a matter of accepting the standards of the world.  We have been blessed with a call to follow Christ who is the one that the world longs for and that every heart seeks!  The same Christ walks with us on our journeys, sometimes so hidden, sometimes so obvious.  And it is the same Christ who is with us in our sorrows, sufferings, loneliness, trials and defeats as well as in our joys, hopes, friendships, celebrations and victories!  He is with us in our prayer, our sacrifice, our integrity, our truthfulness.  These are our daily building blocks for the great Cathedral of Holiness that the Lord wants to build in our lives.  This union with Christ in daily life is itself an experience of holiness.  When Christ tells us, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”(Mt. 5:4), he is not thinking that you will find holiness in some far away galaxy.  He calls us to a life of sanctity in this life:  in our poverty, our humility and our simplicity.  And there, united with him and with one another, we will learn once more that daily life is an experience of holiness.

 

 

-Rev. Andrew Vaccari—Spiritual Advisor - Brooklyn New York