It is an error, even a heresy,
to want to see the devout life
banished from the company of soldiers,
the worker’s shop, the court of princes,
the home of married couples…
because wherever we are, we can and
we ought to aspire to the life of perfection.
--St. Francis de Sales,
Introduction to the Devout Life
Holiness is not something one achieves on one’s own. It isn’t a matter of sculpting a statue of one’s self to be placed in some niche or store window for the admiration of passerby.
Holiness is never the result of human effort; it is not something that one can attain by dint of some training or by using some human means alone. Holiness is a divine-human adventure: it was God who entered human history and it is He who leads people into His own propre life.
Holiness is incorporation into Jesus Christ: the baptized person becomes one with Christ. One’s whole life consists in making this reality come alive. One must become each day a little more what one already is at baptism and what Jesus Christ is by nature: a Son of God.
There can be no doubt about it: all are called to holiness and each one precisely where he or she is, according to their condition.
--François Corrignan,
The Universal Call to Holiness:
St. Francis de Sales
Image source: Bumpei Usei, The Furniture Factory (1925), https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2015/09/04/arts/design/art-for-the-workers-sake/s/04LABOR-slide-EZLX.html
Source of quotations
Source of quotations
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