St. James, pray for us. 

I suppose you could chalk it up to Providence or simple serendipity, but of all days to randomly visit the Society, I pick the feast of St. James. 

Well, happy feast day to me. 

A reading today spoke of the Sons of Thunder and their mother's presumption (not to mention their own). The Matthean account is a bit dry, but I can imagine the droll response filling the room, "Can you drink the chalice that I will drink?" Christ of course understanding his challenge in its infinite shades of meaning and, likely, John and James not truly understanding it at all. 

I feel like this quite often in my discernment: presumptuous and ignorant, unable to fully apprehend what I'm asking for, embarrassed but convicted. I suppose that that is a natural part of the Christian life, this living with the awesome knowledge that God, the Author of All Things, desires our company. And for eternity no less. In much, much smaller terms it reminds me of being an adolescent in high school and this handsome, talented young man, a classmate of mine, wanted to be my friend. I was shocked! Me? Chubby, spotted, awkward me?! You are joking, surely. 

But no. And we have been friends ever since. 

How much more humbling is it then with God, for Whom we have no adequate analogy?

We are all of us called to be holy, no matter our station in life. We are not all called to martyrdom as was St. James, but there is never a time when a Christian can truly live safely in the world. Not and be committed to the Faith. It may not be a fuller's staff or the stones of an irate mob or a Herodian blade or a public crucifixion, but the dangers of the world, the flesh, and devil are real and they press about the faithful at all times. They demand renunciation; they demand apostasy; they demand lukewarmness. And in things large and small we must refuse.