Doing what you can do.

Check out a piece over a Fr. Longenecker’s blog.  Excerpt:

[…]

It was on the way home that the phrase, “Silver and gold I have none” kept echoing through my brain and I realized that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me about the poor. I don’t have the resources to help them as I would wish. However, what do I have? I have the same apostolic faith of Peter and James. I can best serve them as a priest.

[…]

It’s worth the read, and it echoes my sentiments as well.

Each of us has a vocation.  When we live that vocation as best as possible, listening to God also in prayer about what perhaps must be changed or renewed, then God will work through us and give us all the actual graces we need to do His will and  strive for -by His merits – our salvation.  Why will God help us in this way?  If we are true to our state-in-life as it is here and now, then we are playing the role God gave us from before the creation of the world.  He knew everyone of us before the creation of the universe.  Of all the possible worlds He could have created, He created this one and you are part of His plan.

With God’s help we do what we can do and God will provide.

Fraternal kudos to Fr. Longenecker.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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2 Comments

  1. FloridaJoan says:

    Father Z,

    Fr. Longenecker , yourself and all faithful priests and clergy have the faithfuls’ many thanks for all you do. The flock needs feeding and needs faithful caring shepherds to help do the job. The last sentence in Fr. L’s blog ” Instead I will serve them as a priest. It’s all I can do. … ” says it all. Being a faithful priest is your all ! Thank you for caring for us. You are in our prayers.

    pax et bonum

  2. Elizabeth D says:

    At my St Vincent de Paul volunteer job we help the homeless to store their belongings. We also give out things like large sturdy backpacks. But we also give out a variety of Catholic Truth Society booklets that I order from the UK (I am in WI). We don’t make anyone take them, they are available in a bin that says “free Christian books”, some are individual booklet Gospels (ie just Luke or just John), others “Hope in Adversity”, “Words of Encouragement”, “Sexuality and Love”, ones about how to pray, even booklets of Catholic catechesis or apologetics. The clients who take them sometimes comment that they like them. Only once did someone go on an anti-Catholic rant there and it wasn’t because of the books. I personally think it is respectful to care about people’s spiritual well being not only their physical well being. I also commissioned a mentally ill homeless woman who is a very good artist to do a portrait of St Benidict Joseph Labre, a Saint who was a mentally ill homeless man, which I have framed there. I think it is basically true that it is more difficult to have a beneficial spiritual influence on someone when they can see you do have some means to help their material destitution, but you are telling them “goodbye and good luck, keep warm and well fed, but do nothing for them in practice.” But we do this together, so the fact that the priests are not always the ones serving meals at the soup kitchen (though they can do so, my priest does about once a week) is not a problem as long as others who are visibly members of the same Body are doing so.

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