The Holy Spirit calls. Our answer? That’s our choice.
A Rosary Meditation … The Third Glorious Mystery, the Descent of the Holy Spirit. “Now they who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” Acts 2:41. Must’ve been some sermon, huh? Or maybe it wasn’t so much the sermon as it was the action of the Holy Spirit on willing hearts. “They who received his word.” We have to be open to God to really hear anything, don’t we? God calls to everybody one way or another. I’m not sure exactly how that works at times but then I’m not supposed to walk by sight but rather I’m supposed to walk by faith. We all are. So I have faith that God calls out to all people, each individual, at some point in our lives. I don’t need to know or understand anything else. What’s more important than any persons understanding, mine or yours, is the response of the one called. Because that response determines our eternity. Did you know that God has never sent not one human being to hell? Not one. We do that ourselves by way of our choices, and we all have choices. Now, we can SAY that we didn’t have any choice in any given matter but that doesn’t make it so, does it? The people there with Peter 2,000 years ago had a choice. Remember that it says “they who received”, which tells me there were some who rejected. It’s always up to us. We always have a choice. What we do with the opportunity, because that’s what a choice is, is altogether up to us.
Today …
Legend has Vitus, the only son of a senator in Sicily, become a Christian when he was twelve. When his conversions and miracles became widely known to the administrator of Sicily, Valerian, he had Vitus brought before him, to shake his faith. He was unsuccessful, but Vitus with his tutor, Modestus, and servant, Crescentia, fled to Lucania and then to Rome, where he freed Emperor Diocletian‘s son of an evil spirit. When Vitus would not sacrifice to the gods, his cure was attributed to sorcery. He, Modestus, and Crescentia were subjected to various tortures from which they emerged unscathed, and were freed when during a storm, temples were destroyed and an angel guided them back to Lucania, where they eventually died. So much for the legend. What is fact is that their cult goes back centuries and that they were Christians who were martyred in Lucania. A great devotion to Vitus developed in Germany when his relics were translated to Saxony in 836. He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and is the patron of epileptics, those afflicted with St. Vitus’ Dance (named after him}, dancers, and actors, and is a protector against storms.
Quote … “You are the one who must choose your place.” James Lane Allen
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