Think good; Do good; Be good!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

September 23, 2024 - Remembering St. Pio of Pietrelcina

Proverbs 3:27-34; Luke 8:16-18

Yesterday we reflected on our call to be good and the difficulties involved! The first reading today has a wonderful set of practical tips for a happy living. Those tips can altogether be summarised in the phrase: think well of all; speak well of all; do good to all. This is the runway to happiness, but rarely taken by people today!

We prefer to complicate our lives, make it distrustful, enigmatic and suspicious. Neither are we happy nor do we allow others to be happy. While it is so simple to be happy and make others happy, we prefer to complicate lives. We fear that people would take us for granted, and make a fool of us, and so we choose to be unhappy!

At times, that is the fact! We choose to be unhappy and we are experts at making ourselves unhappy over anything at all. Jesus today seems to tell us, "you want to be happy? choose it! manifest it! Let it be seen in your lives, in your choices!" Lighting the lamp and putting it on the stand, is the metaphor to living a life that is God-worthy and making it known to others that they may be challenged. The simple formula to begin with is what is said in the first reading; in other words: think good! do good! be good!

St. Pio of Pietrelcina, or simply said, Padre Pio... taught this in other terms. He said: to fail in charity is like wounding God in the pupil of his eye. What is more delicate than the pupil of the eye? To fail in charity is like failing against nature. What defines our nature is charity, in thoughts, deeds and our very being.