Dear Saints,

We’re a week into the Easter season, and if the magnitude of what Jesus did for love for us still has you overwhelmed, you’re doing something very right! Death’s defeat is a staggering reality; perpetual awe is the right response.

Awe-struck, however, is not the same thing as paralyzed - quite the contrary. Far from rendering us immobile, proper amazement should energize us to take up our part in Jesus’s life-restoring mission. And for that, we need to know where to begin.

Unsurprisingly, we must start where Jesus started: humility. It has been said that humility is to charity what the foundation is to a building. It’s only in emptying ourselves of vanity, self-admiration, selfish interest, and pride that we allow God to fashion and fill our hearts with his loving spirit. Humility stretches the soul’s capacity to receive the divine gifts of God’s own life: wisdom, piety, fortitude, counsel, understanding, knowledge, and fear of the Lord. Once we receive those gifts, we become their conduits. In other words, they become the tools with which we build his kingdom on earth just as it is in Heaven: firmly upon the cornerstone the builders once rejected.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ