Saints Conjoin us with the Supreme Being
Our heart is crammed so full with sensuous passions and mundane desires, that there is no room for love for the divinity. If we try to force this love in, it is spilt out and immediately evaporates. To fill this heart with love for God, we must first evict those passions and desires, and then charge it with love for God. It is common experience that a thing which is obtained repeatedly and in abundance cloys us. Let us now try to acquire something which will not so cloy; and there is only one thing which answers to that description: it is God.
A very high-ranking officer gets a stamp made of his signature, and authorises a trusted subordinate to use it at his discretion and in his name. Similarly, God gave the saints His name, to be used at their discretion, and to give to a deserving person.
As a human being, there is little distinction between us and a saint, except that while he acts as he preaches we only talk tall and glibly, but if anyone crosses our path of selfishness, we talk ill of him. We dislike a person who loves to do what we love to. We talk approvingly of moral principles, but do not act up to them. Let us therefore learn to practise what we preach.
One does not take a railway train for its own sake, but for reaching a certain destination. Similarly, saints leading a family life did not do it for the pleasure of it. They always strove to save ignorant souls, without ever deflecting from their spiritual level. They have provided us with the support of the Lord just as a drowning person may be saved by casting a rope to him. One who lives in the company of a saint himself becomes a saint in course of time, just as the wood of a tree in the vicinity of a sandalwood tree acquires the same scent. Indeed, the greatness of a saint lies in leading an ordinary person to spiritual height without his performing austere disciplines.
Even righteous persons feel that their mind is not yet purged of passions. But if we merely harp on these passions every now and then, they may thereby multiply rather than diminish. So just ignore them, only see that the body does not act up to them. Then they will automatically diminish.
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