Homily from Paray-le-Monial:
The Celebration of St Margaret Mary’s 100th Anniversary of Canonization
May 13, 2020
Monseigneur Benoit Riviere Eveque d’Autun
(Translation into English provided by Paray-le-Monial)
We are called by divine Providence to celebrate the joy of the response of Margaret Mary to this love, on the day of the centenary of her canonization; we are in a testing and difficult situation which in French we call “lockdown.” With you I see this as an invitation to grow even more in simplicity and discretion, but also in this totally free obedience to what God shows and points out to us. St Margaret Mary took up a consecrated life, which is in it nature, a fraternal life and a life of prayer to be hidden away with Christ.
Lockdown forces us more than is usual to drop that which is superficial, that which is merely an appearance and to come down to what is essential. Our present day world basically dreads hypocrites, those who pretend, and those whose mouths are full of good advice but who do not live according to what they say. The present day world, at its best, prefers to follow the humility and discretion of the true servants of peace.
Margaret Mary entered the Visitation Convent out of pure a love for Christ, of which she felt the truth and presence very early on, in the freedom of childhood, then during a painful adolescence, and then in the years of enclosement and service here, at the Visitation of Paray-le-Monial.
The readings for her feast day, which we have just heard, are for us today brilliantly encouraging:
In the place of inner struggle
In the place of thirst for pure love,
Finally in the place of the prayer of adoration.
The inner struggle will only cease with the final breath, it is the victory of Christ crucified in ourselves and in the world. It is the grace of being strengthened by the action of the Holy Spirit. As St Paul said, when addressing the entire Christian community of Ephesus: “May God the Father grant you the power through his Spirit to strengthen the inner man.”
The human heart has such a need to be strengthened by the Spirit of God. Without the Holy Spirit, we shrivel up like oysters which close at the first movement of the air; without the Holy Spirit, the slightest ordeal paralyses us in fear and doubt.
In Christ, drawn and united with him by grace, the inner man grows, he becomes real, more real than the psychological ego; the inner man is capable of listening and speaking without fear, he is capable of loving in truth and in the greatest chastity.
The place where St Margaret Mary wanted to completely devote her life, a “Visitation Convent,” [is] a Magnificat House and one of humble family service. It is there that we are protected against illusions, and above all it is there that we are moved into the spaces of pure love. We suffer, in our human experiences which are often wounded, indeed deeply spoiled by sin, we suffer from not loving enough and also from not being loved enough.
The love of Christ, this love of the true and beloved Son of the Father, goes beyond, so says the apostle Paul, everything that we can experience. In no way does this mean cancelling out or minimizing the love of one’s creators, it means that all the treasures of knowledge are found in the heart of Christ. It means that in Christ, we find the vocation of man and woman to know and love God beyond everything, to know and love our brothers [and sisters] in humanity in this love, which is given to us by God himself.
Do you want to know if you are on this path? Ask yourself about the love that you have towards your neighbor. The apostle Paul says how much this love is in fact given to be known in the Church: in a fraternal community, “…with all the saints you will be capable of understanding the breadth length, height and depth of this love.”
And the Gospel allows us to hear once more, together with St Margaret Mary, with Claude la Colombiere, with the living witnesses of the friendship of God, the so respectful, so good call of Christ: “come to me because I am gentle and humble of heart.” Jesus is the ultimate humble one, he’s the ultimate poor one, he is the most sure friend of the human heart. To receive him, to follow him, to offer ourselves with him is to enter the fullness of thelvoe of God. It is to know life.
Prayer is a durable, continuous listening to this invitation of the gentle and humble Christ: “come to me all you who suffer under the weight of the yoke.” Prayer is inseparably the active response to what God urges us to see and do; it is the anti-lockdown of the heart, it is the most extensive and must fraternal intake of breath that it could be.
To adore God through the Son in the Holy Spirit liberates when this act of adoration is translated into the most humble, the most discreet, and the most ordinary acts of human life in relation to others. True adoration raises us up to the filial dignity, which sin had spoiled. The adoration of the heart of Jesus gives room for the conversion and the gift of ourself.
No circumstance will be able to prevent human liberty to believe in the infinite love manifest in Christ, to struggle to love, and to adore in a spirit of action of grace and in the participation of the offering of Jesus.
Saint Margaret Mary, pray for us! Teach us to love the gentle and humble heart of Christ and to offer ourselves with him.