53 — JESUS, MASTER OF HOLINESS

Presence of God. — I always have need of You, divine Master, for You alone are holy and can teach me the true way of holiness.

Meditation

1 — The knowledge of God in which, as Jesus said, eternal life consists, is not the kind that merely enlightens the intellect, but the kind that, by urging our will to love God known, governs our whole life so as to please Him. And so Jesus, after making the heavenly Father known to us, teaches us what we must do to be pleasing to Him: “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mt. 5, 48). In this brief formula the divine Master reveals two truths to us: the model of all holiness is God, because God alone is the fullness of perfection, without any shadow of defect or lack; God’s will for us is that we too be perfect, and we shall be so in the measure in which we seek to copy in ourselves God’s very perfection.

But how can a poor human creature copy in itself God’s perfection? Jesus, our life and our Master, makes this possible for us. Grace, together with the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus merited for us and continually gives us, raises us from the human level and transports us to the supernatural, divine level, whereby we are made partakers of the divine nature, of divine life. Faith makes us partakers of God’s truth, of the knowledge God has of Himself and of all things; charity makes us partakers of the infinite charity with which God loves Himself and loves His creatures.

Yet God’s perfection, God’s holiness, we cannot see, because God “dwells in inaccessible light and no man can see Him” (I Tim. 6, 16), but Jesus is its Revealer, and reveals it to us in Himself, in His works, in His words.

Behold then Jesus, perfect Master of holiness: He tells us that God wills us holy, shows us in God the supreme and infinite ideal of holiness, and enables us to set out toward this sublime ideal.

2 — By saying to us “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” Jesus proposes to us a model of perfection we can never exhaust: the perfection of the greatest saints is nothing compared with God’s perfection. Jesus therefore teaches us not to be complacent, not to be satisfied with the perfection attained, with our progress and efforts: they are always nothing before the lofty ideal He has set before us. And therefore He teaches us never to stop, never to say “enough”: however much we may progress, we shall never progress enough. For who, for example, can become just as God is just, merciful as He is? As long as we are on earth, our holiness consists precisely in continually tending toward God’s perfection; “strive without sloth, strive without interruption,” St. Augustine urges us. Of God’s infinite perfections Jesus revealed to us in a special way charity; and therefore, by inviting us to imitate Him, He asks first of all an intense exercise of charity toward God and neighbor. The precept of charity, like that of tending to perfection, has no limits: however much we love God, we shall never succeed in loving Him as lovable as He is, that is, as He deserves; and however much we love our neighbor, we shall never love him as God loves him. Jesus therefore invites us to rise toward a perfection, toward a holiness that has no limits and that requires from us continual advance, progress, ascent. What we can do will always be little, always nothing compared with so high an ideal, but the Lord is satisfied with this little, provided that we engage in it all our good will.

Colloquy

O my divine Master, what a sublime ideal of perfection You place before my soul! Yes, with Your help I desire to walk this road with the sole aim of following Your teachings, doing God’s will, pleasing the heavenly Father. But if, comparing myself with the saints, I see myself so defective, what will it be if I place my misery before God’s infinite perfection? Yet there is no doubt, O Jesus, Your words sound clear and bright in my mind: “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

And then I find nothing better than to imitate the brilliant and bold gesture of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Instead of becoming discouraged, I say to You with her: “O Lord, You could not inspire desires that are impossible to fulfill: despite my littleness, I can therefore aspire to holiness. To grow, O Jesus, is not possible for me! I must of necessity bear myself as I am, with my innumerable imperfections; but I want to seek the means of going to heaven by a little way, very straight and very short, a little way absolutely new. We live in a century of inventions: now one no longer tires oneself climbing stairs; for the rich, the elevator conveniently replaces them. I too would like to find an elevator, because I am too little to climb the steep and difficult stair of perfection... The elevator that must lift me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! I have no need to grow in order to climb into them; on the contrary, I must remain little, and indeed become so more and more” (T.B.G. St. 9).

O Jesus, Your arms are Your Spirit whom You have sent me and Your grace which You have given me, sanctifying grace and actual grace, with which You continually sustain and support the steps of the one who trusts in You. I must admit it: if so many times I become discouraged, if I find the way of perfection too difficult and burdensome and stop, thinking that this effort or that generous act exceeds my strength, it is precisely because I forget to have recourse to You, to throw myself into Your arms, to implore Your help. O sweet Master, You who never abandon us but are always ready to help us in the measure in which we have recourse to You, grant that I may know how to take continual refuge in You with full confidence, invoking Your help in every difficulty.