In God's own time...

THE WORD AND THE SAINT 

September 27, 2024 - Remembering St. Vincent de Paul

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11; Luke 9: 18-22

Two great enemies to spiritual health, as spiritual masters point out are: Anxiety and Curiosity! Anxiety is against faith because it points to a lack of trust in the Lord; and Curiosity is lack of patient acceptance of the present.To both these, and to many other spiritual ailments the corrective given is Surrender!

In short, surrender can be described as the assurance that in God's time everything will happen. Patience, trust and the unfailing confidence in God's goodness, are the ingredients of this mentality of surrender. Especially when things aren't going the way we would want them to, we need this quality to remain sane and secure.

In the Gospel today, we find Jesus as a personification of this quality. He was neither curious nor anxious about his mission on earth. That is why he was more interested about their personal conviction than the public opinion; and he was stern that they don't go about frenetically spreading their conviction and forcing it on people, but to let them arrive at that conviction through their own experience too!

The saint whom we celebrate today, Vincent de Paul possesd this mentality of surrender deep in his heart. That was indeed the starting point from where he could do all that he did, found congegrations and initiate associations which would generously serve the needy part of the universe, thus righting what could be going wrong everywhere in the world. 

That serenity on Jesus' part or even on the part of Vincent De Paul comes from the attitude of Surrender, an assurance that everything will be made beautiful IN GOD'S OWN TIME.