Here is a wonderful rabbinical story.

Two brothers shared a field and a mill. Each night they evenly divided the grain. One brother lived alone. The other had a wife and a large family.

The single brother thought to himself, "I have only myself to care for but my brother has children to feed."

So each night he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s granary.

But the married brother said to himself, "I have children to provide for me in my old age but my brother has no one. What will he do when he is old?"

So every night he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s granary.

As a result, both of them always found their supply of grain mysteriously replenished each morning.

Then one night they met each other halfway between their two houses, suddenly realized what had been happening and embraced each other in love.

God witnessed their meeting and proclaimed, "This is a holy place, a place of love and here it is that my temple shall be built."

And so it was.

It is a holy life that we are called to. But it is a life unlike all others. Christ calls us to a life of loving others, of sharing with others, indeed of sacrificing our life for others.

It is a holy life but it can only be understood in the living.

Just as St. Theresa once said that loving God was only hard for those who don’t do it, so too is this life only hard for those afraid to live it.

Don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid of giving, of losing, of dying. Don’t be afraid because it is precisely in those "foolish" actions that you will begin to live.