Lacordaire Kindness & Humility

Sunday 1^st November 2009 All Saints

It is the solemnity of ALL SAINTS.

The Beatitudes of St. Matthew end, “Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven”. (5: 1-12).

We distinguish between the Canonised Saints, the ones named, and the so called UNKNOWN saints.

There are so many UNKNOWN people who have themselves have countless other UNKNOWN persons.

Of the great UNKNOWN of souls we speak of is the language of the restricted view of men and women.

In God’s view there is NO UNKNOWN or ANONYMOUS person.

There are so many hidden saints we do not know. We think of the likes such as an hidden, unknown person, in the figure of Saint Therese of Liseaux. There was a great-turn of people for St. Therese in so many places in the country out for the pilgrimages for the visit of the relics.

She would have belonged to the countless hidden souls. It is only by an exception, she is called to tell the “Story of a Soul”. She wrote she would spend heaven doing good for others.

St. Bede refers to the 'patronage' of saints, in the same sense we understand as St. Therese and hidden souls ‘doing good for others’.

It is a powerful reminder that such is our goal also, no matter unknown, is to love, pray and serve souls in this life and in eternity. There is that lovely phrase of Lacordaire, the Dominican re-founder of the Dominicans after the French Revolution. (Present at this Mass, two Dominican priests, and the students from the University Chaplaincy).

Larcordaire speaks of “Kindness and humility are almost one and the same thing”.

We ask for the gifts of the Holy Spirit for kindness and humility towards others.

MEDITATION OF THE DAY The Unity Between Humility and Kindness The Christian must be humble; and humility does not consist in hiding our talents and virtues, but in the clear knowledge of all that is wanting in us, in not being elated by what we have, seeing that it is a free gift of God, and that even with all his gifts we are still infinitely little. It is a remarkable fact that great virtue necessarily begets humility, and if great talent has not always the same effect, still it softens down a great deal of the uncouthness which clings inseparably to the pride of mediocrity. Real excellence and humility are consequently not incompatible one with the other; on the contrary, they are twin sisters. God, who is excellence itself, is without pride. He sees himself as he is, without however despising what is not himself; he is himself, naturally and simply, with an affection for all his creatures, however humble. Kindness and humility are almost one and the same thing. The kind-hearted naturally feel drawn to give themselves up to others, to sacrifice themselves, to make themselves little, and that is humility. Pride is more hated than any other vice, not only because it wounds our self-love, but because it shows a want of that virtue of kindness without which it is impossible to win love. Be therefore kind-hearted, and you will infallibly become humble. Your eyes, your lips, the features of your forehead will all begin to look different, and you will find that you will be sought after quite as much as you were formerly shunned. But how become kind-hearted? Alas! first of all, by beg­ging it earnestly and unceasingly of God, and then by striving always to seek others' pleasure and sacrifice our own to them. That is a long apprenticeship, but goodwill carries a man anywhere. FATHER HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE Father Lacordaire (+1861) was a great Dominican preacher who reefounded the Order of Preachers in France after the French Revolution. (Many years ago, in a secondhand bookshop, for 50p. I bought an 1875 volume of Rev. Pere Lacordaire, “God, Conference delivered at Notre Dame in Paris" - a rare find).