Can't Do It Alone, Babe...

Someone recently told me that he does not worry about how anyone else is saving his or her own soul ~ he is only trying to save his own. I must beg to differ...
There is an old saying that goes something like, "To go to Hell in a handbasket...alone. To go to Heaven, hand in hand, two by two..."
And that is how it works, as Our Lord has so lovingly warned us.
The missionaries have always had the right idea ~ even to giving up their entire lives to convert a group of people sadly lacking the Faith, creating Saints as they went ~ the same with the cloistered Orders...days and nights spent in constant prayer for the conversion of sinners, for one another.
There are a few victim souls who have made their prayer lives available to Him in ways that the rest of us can only imagine...or maybe we can't! Maybe the concept of being a victim soul, one who is given permission by the Church to be impaled upon a spiritual cross of suffering...maybe that concept is beyond our meager understanding. Maybe God gives this grace to so few because He knows that the rest of us could never stand it!
How many of us would even have the Faith we have today if someone somewhere else had not offered up a day of pain for our immortal souls? Should we not do the same for someone else? Who knows how many would be lost if they had not been the happy recipient of a grace gotten for them by a soul somewhere far away, someone they have never even met?!?
He has even gone so far as to give each soul a Guardian Angel to guard and protect, to admonish and to lead to eternal life...reminding us at every turn, every day, every moment even...and to this friend, this helpmate ~ do we listen? do we obey?
One of the most important parts of an Angel's job is to inspire his charge to greater Charity. The virtue of Charity is by its very nature, active. A prayer for someone is an act of Charity. An act performed for another is an act of Charity. A thought given to someone else, is an act of Charity.
And as this is all Charity in action, who can argue that we are only concerned with saving ourselves? Everything we do, say, think, pray for...all should be for another. If we pray for our own intentions, let it be because we are begging God to grant us greater Charity!
The greatest and most loving example of the virtue of Charity in action, who was of course, Our Lady Herself, thought of nothing for Herself ~ ever. All that was in Her mind and heart was for Her Son and for the rest of mankind, which makes Her the best of all Mothers.
Since He has given Her the power to dispense His graces to anyone who asks for them, we should all be entreating Her to grant us this wonderful gift ~ the gift to live for and give to others.
It is only in this way that we will find our own happiness, our own love, our own salvation ~ and our flight to eternal bliss will indeed be hand in hand with all those for whom we have given of ourselves throughout our own lifetimes!