It is not God's fault if we are not saints. In the Catholic Church we have Christ Himself in the tabernacle and from Him there emanate those seven wonderful channels of grace, the Sacraments. We have Mary for our Mother, and the angels and saints for our friends and companions. We have the many brilliant luminaries whose heroic sanctity has been scaled by Holy Church and set up before us to be imitated and to encourage us.
This is the briefest summary of the helps and incentives to holiness that are ours as Catholics. Why, then, are there not far, far more amongst us who might fairly be described as saints or saintly? Why are we ourselves not holier?
It is true that God never forces His gifts on a soul. "Behold," He says, "I stand at the gate and knock. If any man will hear My voice and will open to Me the door, I will come in and sup with him!" But He does not want to intrude; He waits to be invited; and if the invitation be for Him merely to step into the hall or the porch and remain there with other callers, there He will stay. It is surely sad discourtesy, but He will advance only when asked just as, on the road to Emmaus, He went into the house with the two disciples only after they had invited and, indeed, besought Him to do so.
The soul is His temple, in which His sovereignty must be supreme and undisputed. It is of the first importance to see if I am permitting some idol in that temple which, while not indeed excluding Him, still does prevent His grace from having entire control. There are many such idols and in my prayer today He suggests that I examine some of them.
There is the idol set up by Herod, who was slave to the unclean sin. Even if, through God's mercy, I have been delivered from this vice, it is still possible for traits to cling on which tie God's hands when He would use them to bestow more rich and more abundant gifts of grace on my soul. Herod lived for pleasure; he was a creature of impulse; in this dissolute prince there is a complete lack of any spirit of self-conquest.
Now, it cannot be questioned that we moderns are violently drawn to follow him here. The atmosphere we breathe favors an outlook on life that takes physical comfort and ease and selfindulgence for granted. We look at a movie and the philosophy of life therein depicted is, for the most part, amoral. God is left out and pleasure is enthroned in His place. No time or place here to impress us with the beauty of the soul in grace, but instead the worship of the body and display of physical charm as though these were the beall and endall. Not a suggestion here that this life is a passing show, a steppingstone to eternity; on the contrary every device is employed to make us forget these hard facts and to show us people whose only ideal is the narrow one hemmed in by the horizon of this world.
Is all natural enjoyment wrong, then, or at least is it the more perfect course to abstain from it whenever possible? No, God gave us the good things of the earth as a means to an end. They are intended by Him to help us on our journey to Him; therefore their object is, not merely to afford pleasure, but a pleasure that is going to help me to save my soul and reach that degree of holiness which God planned for me when He created me. To rest in such natural pleasure, to make it an end in itself, to enjoy it or try to enjoy it without any reference to God and my last end, is to turn it to a purpose for which it was never intended.
That is one reason why saintly people at least incline to less rather than more wherever there is question of such naturally enjoyable things. They distrust themselves; we are so violently inclined to give our heart up unreservedly to what it naturally loves, that they feel the need, for safety's sake, to exaggerate in the other direction. God must reign in their souls, and any creature that would even threaten to usurp His place must be resolutely curbed.
Jesus, give me this spirit of selfconquest. Surrounded as I am by opportunities of multiplying creature comforts, let me rather curtail them a little more each day, so as to ensure they will never dispute in my heart the place that is Yours, much less usurp it.