The Veneration of Emma Raducannu

 I was so pleased with this young girl Emma Raducannu.    She was a young girl who worked very hard at her tennis and because she had put so much into it she won the American Open.      Now there are thousands of young people who have been inspired by her example and wish to to do just what she did.    She is a figure of the success they want, and they have vowed to follow her example.    She is venerated by them.   They hold her in high esteem, and that is what the word venerate means.

Now that is how our young should be looking at the saints of the Church.   Like Emma they are just human beings and will always be human beings, but they shaped their lives to be close to God, and found themselves in love, the love they had for Jesus, and the love Jesus had for them.   "There is a greater joy in Heaven over one sinner who does penance, than over ninety nine just people who need not penance"   What this passage from scripture means is that all in heaven know what is going on in the world, and not just God.

When I read the biography of St Therese of Lisieux, my heart raced with joy and I so wanted to love Jesus in her way.  Then I read of the early Christians who went joyfully to death in the arenas.  O yes, yes, but perhaps not so enthusiastically.     Yes there are so many saints the Church praises and offers us as examples.   But there are saints in Heaven who are very much closer to us..   They are the family members we have lost in this world.   I have a sister who did not lead a particularly goo Catholic life, and yet whether she is in Heaven or Purgatory, I often hear in my mind her voice complaining to me when she sees me slacking in my love for the Church and Jesus.    I am so grateful that God was kind to her in her Judgement, and she was not sent to Hell.   I believe in Hell only because Jesus said there was,  and he said that people do end up there.     Without prayer and devotion as Catholics to the Blessed Sacrament, yes I stress the Blessed Sacrament, we could so easily lose our souls.  We must put on the armour of Christ, and pray constantly to our saints to be there for us.   And may I add that the Blessed Sacrament is a gift to the Catholic Church.   And through the prayers of the Mass, those outside the Church who do not share our beliefs are saved by this Sacrament.    We do not in the Catholic Church believe that only Catholics are saved.

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