Why I admire President Monson.
Christ’s denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees included the caution that the outward observances of the law were less important than the “weighter matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” (Matt. 23: 23.)
James, the brother of Jesus and Presiding Bishop of the New Testament Church, whom I regard as the unidentified “Teacher of Righteousness” taught that “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1: 27.)
Thomas Monson’s lifelong ministry to the widows, elderly and fatherless is sincere, real and lasting. One of the widows to whom he paid a visit a few short months ago was my wife’s grandmother, the great-grandmother to my children. At the time, she was confined to an assisted-living home. Without any advance notice President Monson showed up on a stormy Sunday afternoon. Due to the weather conditions, the care center had decided to cancel their Sacrament Meeting. He came through the storm, put the meeting back into place, and conducted this Sabbath celebration for the confined, elderly widows and widowers.
He lives that “pure religion” which includes the “weighter matters” that, above all else, we ought not leave undone.
Virtues are worthy of recognition. I like to take a lead from the Egyptian judgment scale and to weigh a man’s heart against a feather to decide another man’s worthiness before God. For with what judgment we judge we shall be judged. (Matt. 7: 2.)
Thank you for sharing this.
Thought this might apply:
“The moment you are aware of your holiness it goes sour and becomes self-righteousness. A good deed is never so good as when you have no consciousness that it is good—you are so much in love with the action that you are quite unself-conscious about your goodness and virtue. Your left hand has no idea that your right hand is doing something good or meritorious. You simply do it because it seems the natural, spontaneous thing to do. Spend some time in becoming aware of the fact that all the virtue that you can see in yourself is no virtue at all but something that you have cunningly cultivated and produced and forced on yourself. If it were real virtue you would have enjoyed it thoroughly and would feel so natural that it wouldn’t occur to you to think of it as a virtue. So the first quality of holiness is its unself-consciousness.
“The second quality is its effortlessness. Effort can change a behavior, it cannot change you. Think of this: Effort can put food into your mouth, it cannot produce an appetite; it can keep you in bed, it cannot produce sleep; it can make you reveal a secret to another but it cannot produce trust; it can force you to pay a compliment, it cannot produce genuine admiration; effort can PERFORM acts of service, it is powerless to produce love or holiness. All you can achieve by your effort is REPRESSION, not genuine change and growth.
The Way to Love
~ Anthony De Mello
The true measure of a man is how he protects & provides for women & children, (the widows & the fatherless). Only a few rare righteous men today live their religion & their ‘most important duty as men’ & do this.
The neglect of single women & children was the greatest sin of Sodom, that brought down fire from heaven. Homosexuality was nothing to this sin. Today it is the same, the widows & the fatherless, (single women) are being neglected, forgotten & unprotected. We are worse than even Sodom. For even many men in the Church, who should honor their Priesthood, even make their wives single & their children fatherless.
This example of Pres. Monson looking after single women & children is probably the most vital lesson he will ever teach us.