Let us do works of worth for eternity

Let us do works which are of worth for eternity. Let us do them together with Jesus. Let us be with Him. This is of worth for eternity; otherwise it is good for nothing. We tend to do things for effect and desire the praise of others. More often than not we receive no praise but are rather beaten and persecuted and there is no effect – it seems to us that we just wasted our time, energy… You can say: “Well, that’s how things are, but You know, Lord, that I acted in faith.” And then it is of worth for eternity, and the fruit will come later. The greatest crisis of Christians today is that they have not been instructed on how to respond properly to particular situations and so they flee the “battlefield”, give up and fall away because they have not learned the mystery of the cross: i.e. to give thanks to God and to make steps of faith. There was no one to teach them. The priests spoke just phrases about love…

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” Therefore, if we are to bear fruit which can give a blessing to us, to other people, to people around us, we must be united to Jesus. The vital question for a Christian is: Where is Jesus? That’s the main thing. Mother Angelica, a religious sister in America, had a missionary TV studio which cost a large amount of money. One day it caught fire. But Mother Angelica had only one concern at that hard moment – neither the money nor the mission destroyed but only Jesus in the Eucharist in the chapel of the premises. She just kept repeating: Where is Jesus? Where is Jesus? Until a Sister came carrying the Eucharist in the ciborium.

Or another example: When asked what he should do if his religious order was dissolved, St Ignatius said: “I would need 15 minutes of prayer before the Eucharist and then I would say: Lord, I accept!”

We have to be free. We often build something and the devil ruins it. But the Lord will then give something else, so let us praise Him and not fall into depression. The basic thing is: To be with Jesus, to call on His name. In the hour of death, the hour of suffering and darkness, we will not be able to do anything else. We will be dying physically only once, but we can die spiritually every day – i.e. renew the mystery of baptism. We need to be with Christ. We need to live the liturgy, to be transformed, to live a new life with Christ crucified and risen, to live the Pentecost.

Download: Let us do works of worth for eternity