While angels have tongues of gold and fiery hearts, we stutter and are lukewarm. Let us do what we can; that is the reason to help one another, to pray for others, to show mutual love that will grow ever more, for we are weak and need to lean on one another in order to follow our Lord Jesus on the painful path He has laid out for us: “Take up your cross and follow me.”
I am sending you a little flower that I picked for you while I prayed for you in the catacombs by the tomb of Saint Cecilia on her feast day: may this flower from the martyr, just like mine (I picked one for myself as well), remind you of how this saint suffered and that we should desire to suffer ourselves. That is our advantage over the angels! If they were not in a state of perfect bliss, they would surely envy us for being able to suffer for our Lord Jesus and with Him!
(Charles de Foucauld /1858–1916/, letter to a Trappist monk, November 29, 1896)
