When you feel discouraged, read the saints!

I'm reading the Autobiography of  St. Anthony Mary Claret. What an incredible priest!

Who needs the "new evangelization" when we had great saints like this giving us a sound prescription for an effective evangelization based on tried and true methods!

We need to get back to the "old" evangelization!

St. Anthony was born about two hundred years ago. Nabi's posts make me think of him because of his call for virtue in the clergy! That, without doubt,  is the beginning of an effective evangelization.

Here's what St. Anthony said about the sinful culture of his own day:

The sole reason why society is perishing is because it has refused to hear the word of the Church, which is the word of life, the word of God. All plans for salvation will be sterile if the great word of the Catholic Church is not restored in all its fullness.

He saw a major part of the problem as a failure in virtue among the clergy who lacked humility and shared society's greed for the pleasures of the world. Sound familiar? He himself, although a bishop and friend of royalty, was a modern St. Francis of Assisi who walked everywhere and embraced poverty. He gave endless missions, wrote hundreds of books and pamphlets promoting the faith for both children and adults, brought hardened sinners to confession.... Thank God his superiors ordered him to write his autobiography. Like St. Therese, he likely never would have told his story if he hadn't been under obedience to his superiors.

What a different world this would be if even a handful of our clergy had the gentle, but fervent zeal, of this great priest who preached humility, poverty, meekness, modesty, and mortification as the great tools for evangelization.

If you want a spiritual director for our time, read St. Anthony's Autobiography. It's out of stock at the publishers (TAN Books), but you can order it at Amazon. It would make a great Christmas present for your pastor.