In rebuking the Pharisees for misunderstanding the heart of the Mosaic Law, our Lord issued a declaration, unprovoked by the immediate context, that reverberates today: "[T]he things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile." (Matthew 15:18)
The explicit idea of a "second conversion" in the spiritual life was first broached by a Jesuit in the 1600s, Father Louis Lallemant, a novice master in France to one of the future North American martyrs, Saint John de Brébeuf.
The other day I was reading in Saint Francis de Sales that a person of a melancholy turn of mind, of a cold and disagreeable disposition, might love God as much as another...
In the supernatural order, the Church, after the manner of our blessed Lord, takes hold of this permanent character of love in the order of nature and elevates the promise "I do" to the dignity of a sacrament.
Our gaze turns to the many souls who have preceded us marked with the sign of faith.
Holy Scripture has said two things that may convince us of the importance of faithfulness in little things: "He that despises small things," we are told, "shall fall by little and little."
Faith at most makes us a hero. Love makes a saint.
"Everything that happens in corporal creatures redounds to the usefulness of man." - Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job
