Today in Rome Pope Francis will canonize Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, as well as Pope Paul VI. For your consideration and meditation below is a prayer by Archbishop Oscar Romero entitled “The Long View”

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
Which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Pope Paul VI presided over the final sessions of the Second Vatican Council which lasted from 1962-65, modernizing the Roman Catholic Church and bringing it forward into the world. Under his leadership the liturgy was permitted to be celebrated in the vernacular and increasing roles for the laity were initiated. As well, an emphasis on improved relations with people of other faiths – ecumenism – was introduced.