Be A Saint!

I've been browsing around on eBay to find more missals and other books to sell to the people at the Latin Mass and and at our parish's next yard sale.

I love what one seller has on the page with the description of the item he/she's trying to sell. This person prays for anyone who buys at least one item from him/her and wants to be kept in our prayers.

The paragraph ends with "....the only tragedy in life is not to have become a saint."

How true. It reminds me of something Father says that the thing that matters most is that one is in a state of grace. This matters even more than if you have food in the house-or whether you're dead or alive.

In fact Father did tell us in one of his homilies that one mother said to her sons, "As much as I would hate to see you dead, I'd rather you die and be in a state of grace than to be alive and in mortal sin."

And some people have been murdered for going along with what the Lord wants of them rather than to commit some sin so that they could live (in the physical sense.) These people have been rewarded for losing their lives for their obedience to God-no time in Purgatory-straight to Heaven! These are the martyrs.

I've read about how and why some of them have been killed-many have even been killed for refusing to commit a mortal sin.

A friend of mine started a group on Facebook about St. Maria Goretti, who went to Heaven at age 11. Some young man wanted to make her give up her virginity and murdered her because she refused. The Lord miraculously kept her alive for 24 hours while she prayed for the man and witnessed to him about the Lord. Eventually he repented and talked about how the young Saint had helped him come closer to the Lord.

Sure other things matter. I was very unhappy about the check for my rent bouncing-but this is better than being in a state of mortal sin. Hearing Father's words about a state of grace being what really matters was a real comfort to me. When I saw him last Saturday night at the mostaccioli dinner, I told him about how I thought of his words about being in a state of grace. I told him that if I didn't hear him talking about a state of grace like that I probably would have had a "nervous breakdown" over the bad check. True, overdrafts like that also need to be taken seriously.

But like everything else on this earth even bad checks don't "hold a candle" to mortal sin.