How can I follow Christ? Can an average person really strive for holiness? How can I know what God wants for me? How can I pray?
These questions deeply disturb those whose hearts have been touched by an encounter with Christ, but we should not be troubled by them. Infinitely.
Such questions are actually a repetition of the psalmist’s question: “How can I repay the Lord for all the goodness he has shown toward me?”P.S. These are the inspirations that move us to greater love, gratitude, dedication and sacrifice.
The holiness of ordinary peopleThe Teachings of God, a collection of eleven texts by Madeleine Delbrelle, declared Servant of God by Pope Francis in 2018, is a source of great inspiration and practical advice for the deeper journey towards God. It pulsates with tremendous energy and movement.
Delbrel was a social activist, writer and poet who died in 1964 at the age of 60 after dedicating her life to the poor in the suburbs of Paris. She founded a lay religious organization inspired by the life of Saint Charles de Foucauld, the French ascetic and martyr.
A mystic, Delbrel preached a spirituality of perpetual movement: she did not advocate an escape to heaven or the creation of an earthly paradise, but rather wished to see Christ carried to every corner of the world where human misery was “infinite.”
Her simple, straightforward style draws readers into a conviction of Christ’s saving work in surrendered souls, a work not only for their own benefit but for the benefit of countless others. Delbrelle considered the simplest everyday acts to be inseparable from prayer, through the mystery of God’s grace.
Published in full in English for the first time by Ignatius Press, her essays and notes are highly compelling spiritual reflections that offer a real glimpse of God’s presence in the situations of everyday life, especially for ordinary people in the 20th and 21st centuries.
And not only the loving presence of God, but perhaps even more importantly, the ever-present presence of God in the concrete realities of daily life and in his identification with the life of the Church.
Key to Delbrell’s book is a clarion call for evangelization in our cities and burgeoning suburbs, with their myriad diverse subcultures, at a time when parishes are like messages in a bottle floating silently through an increasingly Christian world.
For Delbrell, all Christians are called to live God’s holiness. in fact All evangelists, or missionaries, are “missionaries without ships.”
“Christ does not give his followers wings to escape to heaven, but a weight to drag them down to the deepest corners of the earth,” she writes.
“What may seem like a missionary’s unique calling is actually simply being accepted by Christ.”
The holiness of ordinary people The book contains many of her most important essays, including “Missionaries Without Ships” (dedicated to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of missions) and “Daily Bread” (a meditation on daily work and patient suffering).
Her poetic manifesto, “We, Ordinary People on the Street,” opens the book and serves as a wonderful introduction and summary of her spiritual writings.
In it, she exudes faith in God’s saving work in the style of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and expresses her firm conviction that all baptized people, not just those who have taken monastic vows, are called to lives of God-oriented silence, solitude, obedience and love.
“There are some whom God chooses and sanctifies,” she wrote.
“Some people just stay with the crowd and don’t withdraw from the world.”
“They have normal jobs, they have normal families, they’re normal single people. They suffer normal illnesses, they die normal deaths. They have normal homes, they wear normal clothes. These are people who lead normal lives. These are people we meet in every city.
“They love the doors that are open to the street, just as their brethren, hidden from the world, love the doors that are completely closed to them.
“We, ordinary people on the street, believe with all our hearts that this street, this world in which God has placed us, is a sacred place for us.
“We believe that we lack nothing, for if we lack anything, God has already given it to us.”
Following Jesus means walking with him on his path, with God’s will at the center, but for modern people, who are “caught up in a busy life that is likely to continue for a long time,” it also means not being able to be still or pray for long periods without being interrupted by the demands of others.
“We have to go, even if laziness begs us to stay,” she pleads.
“You have chosen to keep us in a strange balance, a balance that can only be achieved and maintained in motion, in momentum. A bit like a bicycle, which cannot stand upright unless the wheels are turning.
“We can only stay standing tall if we move forward and with compassion.”
It also contains a conviction about the redemptive power of submitting to God’s will in our “everyday sufferings” – be it waiting on a platform in the cold for a train that never arrives, the endless interruptions to leisure or prayer time, or the suffering we endure while doing a good deed.
Suffering through the liturgy, “something distant and incomprehensible, or worse, worldly and profane,” can also be part of God’s loving plan.
In that case, she writes, “we would be complicit in the humiliation of Christ.”
“In such a case it is better to throw ourselves, so to speak, on to him, and to achieve a common cause with him, than to risk finding ourselves among the soldiers who jeer at him.”
For Delbrell, a true Christian loves and suffers As The Church. Whether climbing the stairs of a dusty Parisian apartment to visit a shut-in, writing a letter, operating a machine, or teaching in a public school, through each of us, in our boredom and sorrow as well as our joys, Christ is present to all.
No one should be denied the presence of Christ in us, who calls us to a “heroic level” of charity: universal, complete, clear, pure charity with no expectation of seeing results.
Editors Gilles François and Bernard Pitot provide a timeline of Delbrel’s life, helpful annotations explaining the context in which each work was written, and information about her influence on her contemporaries and on the Church’s Second Vatican Council.
Pope Francis praised her apostolic zeal and hailed her as an example of an “ever outgoing heart” that challenges the cries of the poor, especially those who are poor in spirit.
But be careful. The Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeDelbrell is a very good book, but not really “safe” for readers expecting a feel-good spiritual book.
People picking up The holiness of ordinary people Seeking distraction and inspiration from boredom may ultimately propel you towards a whole new life or way of living your life.
