Meditation for November 23, Wide Catholicity

How well these two words go together. Wide means compre­hensive. Catholicity means universality. It is almost a repetition. But not a useless repetition, however. It could happen that, living in a relatively narrow milieu, my Catholicity should confine itself within the limits of what I see and hear and touch. I must break this wall in thought to reach out as far as the most distant regions, wherever there is a soul in need.

During a recreation at Granada, the brothers of St. John of the Cross saw him construct a little mound of gravel stones, dividing it into several piles, after which he put aside a little pebble and remained a long time looking at it as if riveted to the spot. They asked him for an explanation. He said that this little pebble rep­resented for him the least of the souls reached by the preaching of the Gospel, in relation to the number of human beings upon earth - for every two thousand inhabitants living on the earth were there not still a thousand pagans?

I will often think of this little pebble of St. John of the Cross, or rather of what it represented for him, that I may enlarge my intentions to take in the needs of the world; to grieve that Our Savior is so little known; to pray for the spread of Christianity in pagan countries; to recommend foreign missionaries frequently to Our Lord.

"O my God, increase in me the spirit of the Father and let this be my constant desire, Thy Kingdom Come!"

_________________
Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)