Aug 18th - Another Thing

Various saints fill today, some martyrs, some just holy people.
Blessed Victoria Rasoamanarivo. Often in the world we want spectacular results. Usually though, it is the little things that make the difference. Tent revivals are all well and good as are the altar calls they prompt, but sometimes it is the simple act of education, doled out with love and care that shows God to others.
Blesseds John-Baptist Duverneuil, Michael-Aloysius Brulard, and James Gagnot. We often focus on the English persecutions and forget about the French purges two centuries later. Let us recall and lean on those who inspire others through education, simple and sincere lifestyles, and full martyrdom.
If religion and the Faith were just another human thing, if they were only directed toward humanity, then there is no point to these lives or our own - we are folded into ourselves. In order to live day to day you would have to focus myopically and short term. You would have to ignore the big questions as you pretend to answer them or at least be satisfied with believing there is an answer that you just have not thought about or that some one else has supplied for you.
Fortunately there is another thing: God.
I read Let It Enfold You by Charles Bukowski which I thought was a powerful view into the mind that lives in itself but discovers the hint of what we know to be true (Romans 1:19).

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If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty [too] is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.

-- I Corinthians 15:12-19