Magnanimity

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“As he passed on from there, Jesus saw a man named Matthew, sitting at work at the tax collector's place. And he said to him, ‘Follow me’” (Matt. 9:9).

There are many things tied up in those words, “follow me.” They are invitational, they are dynamic, they are challenging.

Our Lord invites Matthew to change his life, change his thinking, change his way of doing things, to come up onto a whole new level, to lead a supernatural life, a life of faith.

“Come, follow me, and I will make you into fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

“Leave the things that shackle the heart…and come with me in search of Love” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 790).

Our Lord invites us to find truth, beauty, and love in the things of this world as a pathway to Him.

This meditation is about magnanimity.

The strong words of Jesus demand a great response, a response from souls who are capable of greatness.

When Jesus passed on from there and He saw Matthew, He saw that capability. He saw a man of virtue. He was in the place where he should have been. He was doing what he should have been doing.

He saw somebody who was capable of building up His Church, and this is what He was looking for: a magnanimous soul, capable of great things.

The word “magnanimity” comes from magnum in Latin, which means great, and animus, which means soul: the greatness of soul.

Like all virtues, over time, with grace, we are capable of increasing that virtue, so as we grow all the time to have a greater soul.

It encompasses a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger and take risks, willing to do all sorts of things for noble purposes. Great ideals.

The ideals that Christ places before us are the greatest ideals that anybody could have in the whole world. We are called to try and transmit those ideals to many other people.

This is not the only occasion when Our Lord invites greatness of soul. He was always doing that. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations” (Matt. 28:19). All nations, go.

“Launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4). Move out of the shallow water, where things are safe and easy. I want you out to the dangerous water, the wind blowing in your face, because that's where the big fish, the big projects are.

The great challenges of changing society, of the evangelization of culture, of changing the world—that's where all those things take place.

There's a lot tied up in those words, “follow me.” “Come, follow me, and I will make you into fishers of men.”

I will mold your soul to be very effective over time, to make a difference, to leave an impact. I fill you full of my truth, beauty and love through your formation, so that you can let your light shine before men in all situations.

“That elevation or dignity of soul,” we're told, “which encounters danger and trouble with tranquility and firmness, which raises the possessor above revenge, and makes him delight in acts of benevolence, which makes him disdain injustice and meanness, and prompts him to sacrifice personal ease, interest, and safety for the accomplishment of useful and noble objectives” (Noah Webster, Dictionary of the American Language).

Every day of our life, Our Lord says those same words to us; every hour: follow me. Keep focused on those noble objectives that I've placed before you. The highest goals, great things.

We're called to aim high. Our Lord continuously invites people around Him to aim high, to think of doing great things.

The opposite of this virtue is smallness of mind: pettiness. ‘Oh, it's too big, I can't manage that. It costs too much effort, too much sacrifice.’

It's love of comfort, love of self, which is the continuous battle that God wants us to wage: the love of self, so that we move out of that comfort shell, and we focus on the great things He places in front of us.

A man had to go to find food for his family one time and he had three bullets in his gun.

He saw a rabbit and shot at it and he missed. Then he saw another animal and he shot and he missed.

So he had only one bullet left. Then he saw a big fat turkey up in a tree, so he lifted up his rifle to shoot the turkey.

He heard a voice inside him saying, ‘Aim high. Pray first. Stay focused.’

But then he saw a deer out of the left corner of his eye and the deer had more meat than the turkey. So he lowered the rifle to shoot the deer.

But then again, he heard the voice: ‘Aim high. Pray first. Stay focused.’

Then he saw there was a rattlesnake between his feet, and that posed the greatest danger to life and limb, so he lowered the rifle to shoot the snake.

But again, he heard a voice inside him: ‘Aim high. Pray first. Stay focused.’

He decided to follow this voice of conscience and lifted up his rifle to shoot the turkey. He shot the turkey.

The bullet ricocheted off a bone in the turkey, hitting the deer and killing the deer. The impact of shooting the rifle made him lose his balance, so he stood on the snake and fell backwards into a pond that was full of fish.

When he stood up out of the pond he had a dead turkey, a dead deer, a dead snake and plenty of fish with which to feed his family. The moral of the story is that we have to aim high and help many others to aim high.

In spite of our miseries, in spite of our weaknesses, there is a super-abundance of grace that is always lifting us up, helping us to look a little further, to dream of wonderful things.

That's what the saints did. They dreamt of wonderful things. They changed the world. We are the beneficiaries of a great legacy of all the great people that have gone before us.

I was on a boat one time in Asia and a young fellow approached me, maybe half my age. He saw I was a Catholic priest, and his opening line was, “The history of the Catholic Church is a very sad history.”

He was obviously out to try and evangelize me. So, I had to say, “Stop right there. The history of the Catholic Church is the history of some of the greatest people that have walked this earth. Great achievements in health care, in education. It changed the face of the world.

“In the country that we live in, the Catholic Church owns and runs 30 percent of the hospitals, and in many other countries. And perhaps a greater percentage of schools. The missionary thrust of the Church has done incredible things in the last 2,000 years, and particularly in the last two hundred.”

We have an awful lot to be proud of. Great people who dreamt great dreams and fulfilled those dreams, and don't just own and run those schools and those hospitals, but run them at a very high standard; often, at a standard that you don't find in other places.

It's very interesting to see th e prestige of the Church in Asia. All the best schools and hospitals are run by the Church. People flock to them because there are standards there you don't find in other places, even where the percentage of Catholics is a relatively small percentage.

That's what we're known for. That greatness of mind is part of our legacy; that “launching out into the deep.”

“Now this period of the world's history is the period that's entrusted to us” (cf. J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 39), so that I, in my place, where God has placed me, live that greatness of mind and greatness of spirit to build up a whole new civilization.

A civilization of love. A culture of life. Build up the family and society. Build great human beings; great souls who can take their place in the future, who can be souls of great magnanimity, because they have seen it in other people's lives.

Somebody has blazed a trail in front of them, has shown them the way, how to think and dream of doing great things, whatever is necessary in each era of history.

The disposition to undertake great things for God and mankind always accompanies a holy life. It's our closeness to Christ that makes us think on a different level.

“I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10).

Christ invites us to think of all the people—every last soul; every last village; every last child.

At an ethics conference in Strathmore University a few years ago, there was a speaker, Margaret Roche, who talked about how there are something like 25,000 primary schools in this country.

Twenty-five thousand primary schools. She said that's where all the future policemen and lawyers and doctors and pilots and nurses are.

They're all in the primary schools. A rather interesting focus, orientation, to have.

Of course, nobody really thinks about the primary schools. They're sort of the last priority. But that's where the future is.

Great souls think about those primary schools and the souls in them—how to form them, how to build them, how to give good example, how to help them to have standards.

I read a history once of the La Salle brothers in Malaysia. In Asia, the La Salle brothers have done great things in education. Many schools and universities.

In the whole of the Malaysia peninsula, they ran the best schools for the last hundred years. They started in 1852.

It took them fifty years to compete with the British government schools. But after fifty years they took over and they went into the lead, and they've been in the lead for the last hundred years.

But somebody did a doctoral thesis in Oxford about this history—how they came there with nothing and then built up this great educational empire.

One of the things they did that was part of their spirit was to have a beautiful building in which the young children could come to learn. Part of their spirit was to build beautiful buildings.

They built the first three-story buildings in the whole of the Malaysian peninsula. Their buildings became well known in all different towns and places.

Now in Singapore their main school has been turned into the National Museum. In the center of the town with a statue of St. John Baptist dela Salle standing outside—in a rather secular country—sort of as a testimony of the contribution that had been made in the past.

Those three-story buildings became sort of heritage sites because of the vision and the planning of certain people.

Thinking out-of-the-box. Thinking new things and great things of investing in the future. Teaching young children, with their actions, what they see, what they hear, to rise to greatness so that further great contributions can be made.

The serious effort to struggle for sanctity is in itself the first manifestation of magnanimity. ‘I want to move out of myself. I want to be better. I want to improve.’

‘Even though I am faced on a daily basis with my own limitations, still I foster this goal, this yearning in my heart, which ultimately is a yearning for God.’

St. John Paul says there is a chasm in the human heart which can only be filled by God and the high ideals that He gives us.

The magnanimous person is not put off by difficulties or obstacles. We see this continually in the lives of the saints: contradictions, challenges, fences they had to cross.

They are not put off by all of this—by criticism or contempt—when it is necessary to endure them for a great cause.

We shouldn't be surprised if, in the enterprise of education, at times there come along great contradictions. It's part of the journey. It's par for the course.

They are there to help us to grow in holiness, to be more effective.

These periods of pandemic sort of fit the bill in all those things—all the contradictions and difficulties and challenges that come with it.

But this is all part of building a great cause: not getting put off, or slowed down, or hit for six by the different things that come along, because we are focused on the goal. We are aiming high.

We know that we are not alone; God is with us. “If God is with us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). And we know that the great ideals to which Christ has called us will be fulfilled.

“Follow me.” Think in a supernatural plane. Think with faith and with hope.

Christ knew that even though He was going to be crucified and rejected, not listened to in all sorts of ways, the seeds were sown in and through the lives of the apostles—the seeds of the great things that had to come in the future; the seeds of truth, beauty and love, which would give every person, for all eternity, a reason to live, to hope, to dream; and a reason to think of the purpose of their life and the eternal wedding feast.

The magnanimous person doesn't let himself be intimidated by human respect or a hostile environment.

All the early missionaries had to put up with a lot of hostility, misunderstandings. Rumor mongering or backbiting mean little to them.

They are much more interested in truth than in opinions, which very often are falsehoods or half-truths at best (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life).

In those words, “Follow me,” Our Lord invites us to show our greatness of spirit by envisioning and initiating great apostolic enterprises and carrying them through to completion.

Possibly, many that we will not see the end of them on this earth, but will contemplate them from heaven.

Sowing those seeds with our journeys, with our efforts, with the talks we give, with the conversations we have, with the good things we try to spread around in society—so other people can hopefully see that we have this greatness of soul in our human relationships, in our evaluations and dealings with other people.

We look on other people as children of God, as also being capable of great ideals—that means all people, of all religions, of all backgrounds.

Magnanimity leads us to love everybody and to see their goodness and their capabilities. We are interested in all souls. “Tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10).

Lord, don't let us be short-sighted or small-minded, or have a timid spirit. Help us to have that largeness of heart.

Give us the energy “to break out of ourselves and be ready to undertake generous tasks that will be for the benefit of all” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 80).

“The magnanimous person,” we are told in Friends of God, “devotes all their strength unstintingly to what is worthwhile. As a result, they are capable of giving themselves.

“They are not content with merely giving. They give their very self and thus come to understand that the greatest expression of magnanimity consists in giving oneself to God” (Ibid.).

One of the reasons why we enjoy the lives of the saints or the stories and books that are coming out now about married couples or individuals who have done great things before us, like Blessed Guadalupe or Dora, is because there we see their greatness of soul.

They inspire us. They speak to us, and they speak to us at a very deep level. They mean more to us than all the other things that we might be exposed to.

There is no greater proof of magnanimity than this total dedication to Christ, a dedication without measure, without conditions.

People who went off to different countries to do great things, starting with nothing; and we know some of the story, but we don't know all of it.

“‘But I say this to you who are listening,’ said Our Lord. ‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who treat you badly. To anyone who slaps you on one cheek, present the other cheek as well. To anyone who takes your cloak from you, do not refuse your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you. And do not ask for your property back from someone who takes it. Treat others as you would like people to treat you’” (Luke 6:27-31).

Part of this virtue is to have this big heart, like the heart of Christ.

The Gospel exhorts us to “bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us” (cf. Luke 6:28)—those who cause us difficulty or contradiction, or don't answer us nicely, or cause us problems.

We are invited to do good without expecting anything in return, to be merciful “as our Heavenly Father is merciful” (cf. Luke 6:36), to pardon everyone, to be generous without measuring and calculating.

Our Lord ends by saying, “Give and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over… For the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38). It's a great business, it's a great enterprise, it's worthwhile.

Greatness of soul proves itself in that willingness to forgive, in matters large and small, whether it be people who live close to us or people who are far from us.

We are told in the Furrow that it’s not Christian to go about the world “with a list of grievances in our heart” (cf. J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 738).

It's so easy to carry a list there, a list of grievances for which I have to try and get my own back a little bit, cherishing rancorous thoughts and memories.

These things shrink the spirit; make us incapable of the human and divine ideals to which Our Lord calls us with His words, “Follow me.”

In the same way that God is always ready to forgive everyone, everything, our capacity to forgive must have no limits. The number of times doesn't matter.

The seriousness of the wrongs done is irrelevant, as is the status of the persons who are supposedly guilty of those offenses.

St. John Chrysostom says, “Nothing makes us like unto God so much as being always ready to forgive” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Matthew’s Gospel).

On the Cross, Jesus did what He had taught: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:24).

These words show the greatness of soul of Christ's humanity. “Love your enemies…pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28).

Our Lord has always asked that same greatness of soul from those who are His own. St. Stephen, the first martyr, asked pardon for those who killed him (Acts 7:60).

Our Lord invites us to pardon the comparatively trivial, incidental things that happen to us each day—little words, little gestures, little things—because people may not know what they are doing or saying.

And if there is any backbiting or serious defamation that is ever aimed at us, then we shouldn't let slip the opportunity to offer something more valuable in return.

This is what greatness of soul does—lifts us up onto a different plane.

Magnanimity leads us to be generous and to move other people to be generous. One of the great aspects of our apostolate is that: fostering generosity in people.

Faced with something that is really worthwhile—noble ideals, apostolic tasks—a great soul gives of his own without reserve: money, effort, time.

That is what we are involved in. We have come to give everything that we have. Sacrifice must be a holocaust—our time, our energy, our whole being.

We know that no matter how much we give, we receive more. “Give and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:38).

Lord, help us to give what is ours with generosity, asking ourselves if we really give ourselves. We follow that path, the specific vocation Our Lord has asked of each one of us, with promptness and short steps.

“And he got up and followed him” (Matt. 9:9). It was an immediate response from Matthew. And immediately, he thought apostolically; organized a dinner party.

Many publicans and sinners were at table with Jesus and his disciples. Matthew must have had many colorful friends.

If we were to organize a party and come to see, ‘What sinners can I invite?’ We might have to say, “I think I am the greatest sinner that I know.”

But Matthew had a lot of colorful friends, and he reached out to them and he convinced them to come.

Greatness of spirit, because he had discovered something fantastic. He had met Jesus Christ. This was worth everything.

St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Taking on great endeavors for the good of mankind, or alleviating the needs of many people, or giving glory to God, can occasionally lead to the expenditure of large sums of money, and to putting one's material goods at the service of those great works” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II. II. Question 134).

Large sums of money. The saints didn't worry about money, because they knew that God had all the money.

I heard somebody say once, a priest-architect, in Asia many years ago, saying, ‘I never worry about money. Plenty of money in this world. I just worry about how to get it.’

Interesting nuance. Great souls think about how to get it. They think very practically, down to brass tacks.

They try and get great sums to do great things for God, for society, for the world.

The magnanimous person does all that he can, without hesitation or misgivings. Living the virtue of prudence, they evaluate the circumstances, but not with fearful or shrinking souls.

The great cathedrals of the world are examples of this, built in ages where there were far fewer human and economic resources than there are now.

Perhaps there was a livelier faith. Those monuments of stone are like constant reminders of the great things that people have gone before us have done. How they thought, how they dreamt.

From the earliest times, the Church has always “sought the use of fine arts,” said the Second Vatican Council, so that “all things set apart for use in divine worship should be worthy, becoming, and beautiful” (Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, December 4, 1963).

We are very much the receivers of this great spiritual legacy, giving the best to God, reflecting truth, beauty, and love in the things of the liturgy and lifting up the whole standards of countries in this area.

In some ways, it's what the work of the Catering is all about: very focused, aiming high, taking care.

Good Christians have given whatever they considered of the greatest value for worship, or to honor Our Lady. They've been generous in their donations and alms for the things of God and to alleviate the hardship of people in greatest need.

In our apostolate, we have to try and infect people with that spirit—to see that it's worthwhile giving. It's a beautiful thing to help people to find their joy in the act of giving.

The greatness of soul that Our Lord asks of us will lead us not just to be very generous with our own time and economic means, but also to assist others to feel moved themselves to help. What can they do according to their means, for the good of their fellow man?

An 85-year-old man told me once, visiting Strathmore University, “You know, I'm so happy to be involved in this project, thinking, What can I do? Here at 85, I can still do something. I can earn a greater place in heaven. Full of enthusiasm. So happy that this opportunity has come along. It was a great bargain. I've used these last years of my life to go higher. I'm really looking forward to the prize.”

It's a rather interesting business-like proposal.

There is a certain greatness of soul to rise to great things in the latter years of their life. That generosity always brings people closer to God.

So often the greatest favor we can do for our friends is to encourage and foster their generosity. It enlarges their heart, it rejuvenates them, makes them capable of more love.

Our Lady had greatness of soul. She rose to all the challenges of her vocation.

She said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47).

Mary, may you help us to practice this virtue, particularly on the feast of the apostles. May we always be apostles, so that our soul too can truly magnify the Lord, as yours did.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JSD