Good morning, Digital Neighbors! A blessed Sabbath and Saturday to all you fine souls milling about on Locals and Substack.

How about a morning reflection from one of the great spiritual masters, St. Francis de Sales? For many outside of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the role of the saints can seem perplexing. All Christians are called to worship God alone, of course, but some mistakenly think that honoring the saints (living or dead) takes away from that worship. Sadly, there are some whose focus remains only on the saints, or on inspirational pastors and preachers. When that happens, the attention becomes misplaced and can even slide into a form of idol worship if it is not ultimately directed toward God.

Yet our neighbors are never irrelevant. After all, St. John warns us that we are deluded if we claim to love the God we cannot see while failing to love the neighbor we can see. The two great commandments sum up the Law and the Prophets so that we might live in accord with God’s will: to love God first and foremost, and our neighbor as ourselves. All our friends in faith—living or dead—should lead us closer to God, show us the path of discipleship, and inspire us that we too can cooperate with God’s grace and bear abundant fruit. Blessed Saturday, my friends.

Seasons of Life

All of the seasons of life come together in the soul.
Sometimes we feel winter’s sterility, distraction,
distaste, and boredom, sometimes spring’s dew,
with the fragrance of holy blossoms, and sometimes
a burning desire to please our good God.
What remains is autumn, and even then we may
see no great harvest.

Yet it often happens that in threshing the wheat
and pressing the grape we find a greater yield than
we had expected. We want it always to be spring
and summer, but there must be vicissitudes of the
interior life as well as the exterior.

Only in heaven will everything be springtime
in its beauty, autumn in its fruitfulness, and summer
in its ardor. There will be no winter there; but here
winter is necessary for the work of abnegation and
for the thousand minor but beautiful virtues that
we exercise in a fallow time.

Let us, then, continue to put one foot in front
of the other. Provided our hearts be true, we will walk aright.

St. Francis de Sales. Roses Among Thorns: Simple Advice for Renewing Your Spiritual Journey – (Sophia Institute Press)

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