Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we commemorate St. Charles of Sezze, a Franciscan saint not so well known, but nevertheless very amazing. Born in 1613, died in 1670, he was a master of the spiritual life, a master of prayer.
And speaking of prayer, we know that many people want to have a life of prayer. God calls us to a life of prayer. That desire is there for many people, but few actually have a life of prayer. The goodwill is there, but frequently people—and this could be us as well—think that things first have to line up perfectly for them to have that life of prayer, for it to become a reality. They have to be free from distractions first, then they can pray. They have to be free from the busyness of life, then they can pray—free from worries, free from desolation, free from difficulties—then they can pray.
And sometimes we think that, well, the saints prayed because God made things line up for them.
They were free from all that we have to struggle with: free from desolation, free from distractions, et cetera. That's why they prayed. But in reality, the saints didn't have these perfect conditions that we sometimes imagine, because these perfect conditions don't even exist except in our imagination.
St. Charles of Sezze, one of the things that he discovered when he became a friar and began to live the life of the friar, he was that, wow, you know, there was a lot of work. There was a lot of distractions. There was a lot of difficulties to face. And he had to pray in the midst of all these difficulties.
He couldn't wait for them to go away.
Again, to have a spiritual life, to have a life of prayer, is not to wait for these things to go away, not to be free of all of them, but to learn how to pray in the midst of them.
When he was cooking, for example, because he was a lay brother—he had a lot of work. One of the chapters in his biography, in fact, because he wrote an autobiography, one of the chapters in his autobiography is entitled, A Lot of Obedience and Not a Lot of Time to Pray, because he was assigned many tasks that left him little time to dedicate just to prayer alone. So, when he was cooking, he didn’t wait until he was done. He talked to God about cooking, talked to Our Lady about the cooking he had to do, asked his guardian angel to help him with the cooking, or with the gardening, with the sacristy, with the pantry, with the soup kitchen, with the infirmary when he was helping the sick or he himself was sick.
And when he was distracted or tired, or was feeling dryness, terrible dryness and desolation and sadness, he didn't wait for these to just go away. And then he would pray. He would bring God into these distractions, into these desolations, into the dryness, into the sadness. He would pray his rosary through the sadness, do his meditation, his reading through all of these seeming obstacles. He brought God into them. And again, that's how we have a life of prayer.
We don't wait for these things to go away. We bring God into all the circumstances of life because these circumstances are part of God’s divine providence for each and every one of us. Again, the saints didn't wait for perfect conditions to pray. We can't either.
We can use our very conditions, situations, seeming obstacles to pray, and then in this way, have a life of prayer and become saints as well.
Praised be Jesus and Mary …