From Our Founder
How different the holy Church would be this very day if, years ago, we had
been filled with a spirit of humility and compunction, of patience and ready
obedience, with the spirit of the Publican, who stood afar off, not
venturing to raise his eyes to heaven, but only saying, “Lord, be merciful
to me, a sinner” (Lk. 18:13). Or if, like St. Paul, we had begun by saying,
from the bottom of our hearts, “Lord, what would you have me do?” Or if,
like St. Catherine of Siena, we had been able to cry: “Thanks be to Thee,
Eternal Father! . . . I was sick and you gave me . . . a medicine against a
secret infirmity that I knew not of, in this precept that in no way can I
judge any rational creature, and particularly Thy servants, upon whom oft
times I, as one blind and sick with this infirmity, passed judgment under
the pretext of Thy honor and the salvation of souls.”
H. Lyman Stebbins
March 1987
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