Holiness of life is not the privilege of a chosen few - it is the obligation, the call, and the will of God for every Christian.
Interpretation
Holiness is a universal calling for all Christians, not just a select few.
In this quote, Mother Angelica emphasizes that holiness is not an exclusive gift reserved for a small group but is instead a fundamental duty and aspiration for every Christian. It reflects the idea that all believers are called to live a life of holiness, which is a responsibility entrusted to them by God.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a church sermon to inspire the congregation.
I am not like a pebble on the beach - a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child - the only fruit of his creative powers.
I must not permit the evil capabilities of human nature to sour my faith in the tremendous good that is possible despite the frailty of that nature.
The sinner who suddenly realizes God's love for him and then looks at his rejection of that love feels a loss similar to the death of a loved one. A deep void is created in the soul and a loneliness akin to the agony of death.
Our memories are our own, and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the past for any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing over past incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.
Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.
Love has been defined, analyzed, explained and excused. It has been the cause of wars, feuds, heroism, martyrdom, inordinate passion, and beautiful friendships. It pulls two people of opposite temperaments together into a married state and permits them to live happily. It makes friends understand each other without the necessity of words.
Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.
I glory in the distinguishing grace of God and will not, by the grace of God, step one inch from my principles or think of adhering to the present fashionable sort of religion.
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: theyβre only animals.
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
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