Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Everyday of the Year

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43. JESUS THE TRUE VINE

PRESENCE OF GOD - O my Lord and Redeemer, grant that I may understand the deep intimate ties that bind You to us, whom You have redeemed.


MEDITATION

1. Jesus is the “ one Mediator between God and men” (1 Tm 2,5); however, He did not will to effect the work of our redemption independently of us, but used it as a means of strengthening the bond between Himself and us. This is the wonderful mystery of our incorporation in Christ, the mystery which Our Lord Himself revealed to His apostles the night before His Passion. “I am the true vine; and My Father is the husbandman.... Abide in Me, and Jin you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (Jn 15,1.4).

Jesus strongly affirms that there is no redemption, no supernatural life, no grace-life for one who does not live in Him, who is not grafted onto Him. He points to the vine: the shoots will not live and bear fruit unless they remain attached to the trunk. Jesus wishes to actualize this close connection between Himself and us, a connection which is necessary for our salvation and sanctification. We cannot receive the least degree of grace except through Christ’s mediation, even as the smallest drop of sap cannot reach a branch which is detached from the tree.

Moreover, Jesus declares that, if we abide in Him, we shall not only have supernatural life, but we shall become the recipients of special attention from our heavenly Father, the “ Husbandman” of the mystical vine. In fact, our heavenly Father acknowledges us as His adopted children, loves us as such, and takes care of us, precisely to the degree in which He sees in us Christ, His only-begotten, His well-beloved Son. The grace of adoption, then, is wholly dependent upon our union with Christ, a union so close that we form, as it were, a “living part” of Him, as the branch forms a living part of the vine.


2. “ Abide in Me.” We can only abide in a place where we are already. Jesus tells us to “ abide” in Him because we have been grafted onto Him. This spiritual engrafting, an accomplished fact, was made possible for all men by Christ’s death on the Cross, and it became effective for each one of us at the time of our Baptism. Christ grafted us into Himself at the cost of His precious Blood. Therefore, we “are” in Him, but He insists further that we “ abide” in Him and bring forth fruit.

Baptism is sufficient to graft us into Christ, and one degree of grace will permit us to abide in Him like living branches, but we should not be content with this union only. We must show our gratitude for the immense gift we have received by endeavoring to become more and more firmly grafted into Christ. We must “live” this union with Christ, making Him the center, the sun of our interior life. “ Abide in Me” is not a chance expression. Christ wished to show us that our life in Him requires our personal collaboration with Him, that we are to employ all our strength, our mind, our will, and our heart that we may live in Him and by Him. The more we try to abide in Christ, the deeper our little branch will grow into Him, because it will be nourished more abundantly by the sap of grace. 

“Abide in Me and I in you.” The more closely we are united to Christ by faith, charity, and good works done with the intention of pleasing God, the more intensely will He live in us and bestow on us continually a new life of grace. ‘Thus we shall become, not merely living branches, but branches laden with fruit, the fruit of sanctity destined to bring joy to the Heart of God, for Jesus has said: “In this is My Father glorified, that you bring forth very much fruit” (Jn 15,8).


COLLOQUY

“O most high and eternal Trinity, Deity, Love, we are trees of death, and You are the tree of Life. O infinite God! How beautiful was Your creature when a pure tree in Your light! O supreme purity, You endowed it with branches, that is, with the faculties of the soul, memory, intellect, and will.... The memory, to recall You; the intellect, to know You; the will, to love You.... But this tree fell, because by disobeying it lost its innocence. Instead of a tree of life, it became a tree of death and brought forth only fruits of death. “This is why, O eternal, most high Trinity, in a sublime transport of love for Your creature, seeing that this tree could produce only fruits of death because it was separated from You, who are Life, You gave it a remedy with that very same love by which You had created it, grafting Your Deity into the dead tree of our humanity. O sweet, gentle grafting!... Who constrained You to do this, to give back life to it, You who have been offended so many times by Your creature? Love alone, whence by this grafting death is dissolved. 

“Was Your charity content, having made this union? No, eternal Word, You watered this tree with Your Blood. This Blood by its warmth makes it grow, if man with his free will grafts himself onto You, and unites and binds his heart and affections to You, tying and binding this graft with the bond of charity and following Your doctrine. Since it is through You, O Life, that we bring forth fruits of life, we wish to be grafted onto You. When we are grafted onto You, then the branches which You have given to our tree bear fruit” (St. Catherine of Siena). 
How encouraging it is to think, O Jesus, that my longing to be united to You is not a vain fantasy, but is already a reality! It is a reality because You have willed to graft me onto You as a shoot is grafted onto the vine, so that I live wholly by this union with You. Oh! grant that my soul may become always more closely united to You, and may always be ready to receive the vital sap of grace which You produce in me, Your branch!

44. THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Holy Spirit, grant that I may be rich with the “ fullness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery... of Christ Jesus” (Col 2,2).


MEDITATION

1. “I am the vine; you, the branches.” On these words of Jesus, which describe our union with Him, the whole doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ is founded. Only the figure is changed: instead of the vine, we speak of the Body of which Christ is the Head and we are the members. In explaining this doctrine, St. Paul aptly paraphrases what Jesus had previously said. “As the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ.... Now you are the Body of Christ, and members of member” (1 Cor 12,12.27). The thought in both descriptions is evidently identical: as the branches are part of the vine on which they grow and from which they are nourished with one sap; as the parts of the human body form one body and have a single life; so we, being incorporated in Christ, make but one body with Him and live of His Life. ‘This is the Mystical Body of Christ “ which, ” St. Paul teaches, “is the Church” (Col 1,24). Christ is the Head of this Body. “ Christ is the Head of the Church.... He is the Savior of the Body” (Eph 5,23). 

The Father “ hath made Him Head over all the Church, which is His Body...and His fullness” (cf. ibid. 1,22.23). One Body, one life which comes to each of its members from the Head. “Christ Our Lord vivifies the Church with His own supernatural life; by His divine power He permeates the whole Body and nourishes and sustains each of the members...very much as the vine nourishes and makes fruitful the branches which are joined to it” (Mystici Corporis). The fact that every Christian has life in Christ and lives of the very life of Christ is reaffirmed in these words.


2. Our union with Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, is certainly not to be understood as being identical with the union that exists among the various members of a physical body. In fact, although we are incorporated in Him, each one of us preserves “intact his own personality” (ibid.). But neither should we understand this union to be a mere moral union, such as exists, for example, among members of the same organization. No, it is something much more profound, it is a mysterious union, and in this sense is called mystical, but it is no less real and vital. It is a union which comes from there being present in all the parts of the Body of the Church “ a distinct internal principle, which exists effectively in the whole and in each of its parts, and whose excellence is such, that of itself it is vastly superior to whatever bonds of union may be found in a physical or moral body. This principle is...not of the natural but of the supernatural order. Essentially it is something infinite, uncreated: it is the Spirit of God, who, as the Angelic Doctor says, ‘ one and the same for all, fills and unifies the whole Church’ ” (ibid.). 

The Holy Spirit, “the soul of the Church” (ibid.), is the bond which intimately and really unites and vivifies all the members of Christ, diffusing grace and charity in them. He has been “ given to the Church with most copious effusion, so that its members from day to day might become always more like the Redeemer” (ibid.) Therefore, it is not a question of a symbolical, metaphorical union, but of a real union, so real that it surpasses all the others “ as grace surpasses nature, and immortal realities surpass perishable realities” (ibid.). It is a reality so great that it embraces not only our earthly life but, provided we preserve it, it continues to be the source of our happiness for all eternity. Indeed, “ grace is the seed of glory.”
We are members of Christ. This is our greatness and our glory, infinitely surpassing all earthly dignity and glory.


COLLOQUY

“O my beloved Spouse and loving Word, You engender the Body of the Holy Church in a way which You alone know and understand.... By means of Your Blood, You make a well-organized, well-formed Body of which You are the Head. The angels delight in its beauty, the archangels admire it, the seraphim are enraptured by it, all the angelic spirits marvel at it, and all the souls of the blessed in heaven rejoice in it. The Blessed Trinity takes delight in it in a manner beyond our comprehension ” (St. Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi).

Behold at Your feet, O Lord, a very poor creature: weak, feeble, inclined to evil, and capable of every sin, a worthless creature, like the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is not, a wretched creature, who has nothing good in itself and is unable to do anything that is good. Yet, O Jesus, true Son of God, image of the Father, the beginning and the end of all things, Ruler of the universe, Savior of the world, You bend down to me, miserable as I am. You take me, and unite me to Yourself, so closely that I become one of Your members. Then you give me Your life, You make me live Your very life. O Lord, O infinite beauty and holiness, how can You bear to have as one of Your members such a wretched, unworthy creature? You not only do this, but You want to do so, for You have said, “Abide in Me. ”

Can I refuse to accept Your invitation and Your command, O Lord, when I know that You Yourself wish to make me an integral part of Your Mystical Body? O Lord, if I could only realize the greatness, the value of this infinite gift which You offer me, and understand the meaning of this sublime reality—to live in You and by You, as the branch lives in the vine, as the member in the body! What do I lack, O Lord, for my sanctification, for my life of union with You? You have already given me much more than I ever could have desired. O Lord, make me sense the profound reality of this great mystery which brings me into such close union with You. Let it dominate, illumine, and direct my whole life; let everything else fade before it. Grant that I may never seek or desire anything except this reality, and let the deceptive vanities of the world have no attraction for me. Make me have a deep, lively sense of the duty and sweet necessity of being a member worthy of You, and grant that my actions and my life may be such as to do honor to You. 

45. “I AM THE LIFE”

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, Fount of life, may Your life ever increase in my soul.


MEDITATION

1. Jesus explained His mission in these words: I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly” (Jn 10,10). What is this life which He gives us? It is the life of grace, which is a participation in His divine life. Jesus is the Incarnate Word; in His divine nature as the Word, He possesses divine life in the same way and to the same degree that His Father possesses it. “As the Father hath life in Himself, so He hath given to the Son also to have life in Himself” (ibid. 5,26).

This plenitude of divine life reverberates in Christ’s humanity by reason of the hypostatic union. His sacred humanity, placed in direct contact with His divinity, to which it is united in one Person, is inundated with divine life; that is, it receives the greatest possible participation in it through “such plenitude of grace that no greater amount can be imagined ” (Mystici Corporis). The sanctifying grace which fills the soul of Jesus is so plentiful, perfect, intense, and superabundant that theologians do not hesitate to call it “infinite grace.” “ Because in Him [Christ], it hath well pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell” (Col 1,19), affirms St. Paul; and St. John describes Him as being “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1,14). But Jesus does not wish to keep all this immense wealth for Himself alone; He wishes to have brethren with whom He can share it. For this reason He embraced His sorrowful Passion; by dying on the Cross, He merited for us His members that grace which He possesses in such great plenitude. Thus Christ becomes the one and only source of grace and supernatural life for us. He is so “full of grace and truth” that “of His fullness we have all received” (ibid. 1,14.16). Here, then, is how divine life comes to us: from the Father to the Word; from the Word to the humanity which He assumed in His Incarnation, and from this humanity, which is the sacred humanity of Christ, to our souls. 


2. Grace, like everything that exists, apart from God, is also created by God. Jesus as God, that is, as the Word, is, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Creator of grace. Let us now contemplate Jesus as our Redeemer, therefore, as Man, and as such, the Mediator of grace, the One who merited grace for us, in virtue of His own infinite treasure of grace, and who also bestows it upon us. He not only merited it for us once for always by His death on the Cross, but He is continually applying it to our souls and producing it in us. Thus grace is infused and made to grow in us by means of His living and ever-present action. In this way, Jesus gives us life; He is Life for us, the one source of our supernatural life. For this reason the grace of Jesus is called “ capital grace,” that is, grace belonging to the Head, who both merited it and dispenses it to His members.

Two precious, practical consequences follow from this. One who desires to possess grace and supernatural life must go to Christ. He must become incorporated in Him and live in Him. “He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son, hath not life” (1 Jn 5,12). The grace which sanctifies our souls is, in its essence, identically the same as that which adorns the sacred soul of Jesus (St. Thomas, III, q.8, a.5). Of course, they differ immensely in measure and perfection, but the nature of the grace is the very same. Hence grace in us has the same sanctifying power, the same tendencies as it has in the soul of Jesus. Thus it can sanctify us, making us live in union with God and for His glory. By giving us grace, Jesus has truly communicated His life to us; He has planted in us the seed of His sanctity, so that we can live a life similar to His own. 


COLLOQUY

O Jesus, how delightful it is to contemplate Your sacred humanity which contains all the treasures of the divine life! I cannot gaze directly at Your divinity, O eternal Word, but it is easy for me to contemplate it in Your humanity; there my thoughts rest, and never cease admiring Your immensity. O Jesus, Your soul is so rich in grace, so luminous, so filled with divine life that Your glory as the only-begotten Son of the Father is fully reflected in it. Your humanity seems to me to be the one mediator and the source of all grace and of all divine life which can be given to mankind. But then I contemplate this sacred humanity as it was lacerated in the bitter torment of the Cross, this humanity which is so glorious and so closely united to God. All its glory is hidden; I see nothing but sorrow, death, and total annihilation. Yet, from those bleeding wounds there gushed forth a marvelous fountain of life: by Your death, O Jesus, You merited grace for us and have become Yourself its one and only source. 

I run to You, O Jesus; as one who is thirsty runs toward a spring, I draw near You. Give me, O Lord, of Your water, and I shall thirst no more because “ the water You give me will become in me a fountain which will spring up into life everlasting” (cf. Jn 4,14). The Apostle, who did not wish to go away from You, once said, “ Thou hast the words of eternal life” (ibid. 6,69). Oh! You have much more than words of life. You are Life itself, and You give life to us! But Jesus, let me ask one question. If that sanctifying grace which comes from You and gives life to my soul is, by its very nature, the same kind of grace that fills Your sacred soul, why am I so unlike You, so far from sanctity? 

I know the answer. You give me Your grace gratuitously, but You do not make it increase in me without the cooperation of my free will. There is very often a bitter struggle in me between the demands of grace and the claims of my evil nature. Alas! How often nature conquers! O Lord, I beg You, give me the grace to overcome and sacrifice myself, no matter what the cost. Let Your grace and Your life triumph in me for Your glory, and for the glory of Your work of redemption. “May my mind, my heart, my body, my life, be wholly animated by You, my sweet Life! I will love You Lord, my strength; I will love You, and will live, no longer through my own efforts, but through You ” (St. Augustine). 

46. THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, give me the grace to understand that my soul is always under the powerful, sanctifying influence of Your sacred humanity. 


MEDITATION

1. “Virtue went out from Him, and healed all ” (Lk 6,19), the Gospel says in speaking of Jesus and the astonishing miracles which He worked. At the touch of His hand, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dumb spoke. The power which went forth from Him was so great that the poor woman suffering from the issue of blood had only to touch the hem of His garment to feel herself instantly cured. It was just as easy for Him to purify and sanctify souls and to forgive sins, as it was to heal bodies. “Which is easier to say: Thy sins are forgiven thee, or to say: Arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins (He saith to the paralytic), I say to thee: Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house”
(ibid. 5,23.24). To remit sins is the prerogative of God alone. If, then, Jesus, says of Himself, who is visibly a man, that He has the power to forgive sins, He affirms that He is God and that the divinity works in His humanity. Indeed, His sacred humanity, full of grace and power, is precisely the instrument which His divinity uses to bestow all grace and life. 

The sacred humanity of Jesus, now glorified in heaven, continues to impart the same power and virtue it once did in the districts of Palestine, and this power, being imparted to our souls, influences them from within, purifies, transforms, and sanctifies them. “The interior influence from which grace comes to our souls belongs...to Christ, whose humanity, because it is united to His divinity, has the power to justify ” (St. Thomas, IIIe, q.8, a.6, co.).


2. We distinguish two phases in Jesus’ work of redemption and sanctification. The first phase is His sorrowful life on earth, which ended with His death on the Cross; by it He merited grace for us. The second is His glorious life, which began at His resurrection and still continues, since Jesus Himself is always bestowing upon our souls the grace He merited for us on Calvary. “But to every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the giving of Christ” (Eph 4,7). Day after day, Jesus applies grace to each of us and He causes it to increase and develop in us, so that we live continually under His influence. “As the head rules the members,” says the Council of Trent, “as the vine sends its sap through all its branches, so does Jesus Christ exert His influence at every moment over all the just. This influence precedes, accompanies, and crowns their good works and makes them pleasing to God and meritorious in His sight” (Sess. VI, Can. 16). 

Jesus is “always living to make intercession for us,” says St. Paul (Heb 7,25). He is living in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar and He is living in heaven, where, seated in glory at the right hand of His Father, He shows Him the reddened wounds of His passion, thereby making continual intercession for us. In addition, “He is Himself choosing, determining, and distributing graces to each one according to the measure of His gift” (Mystici Corporis). Christ is then—in the fullest sense, in the most actual sense—the source of all our life. “Christ is our life” (cf. Col 3,4), St. Paul exclaims, because, as St. Thomas says : “ He is the source of our life. ”


COLLOQUY

O Lord, how much I love Your most sacred humanity! O eternal Word, did You not become man in order to be closer to us, to encourage us to come to You fearlessly, in order to lead us to Your Father? ‘Then, how could I, O Jesus, be willing to depart from You or forget You, even for a short time? “O Lord of my soul, my only Good, my Crucified Jesus, whence have all good things come to me save from You? With so good a Friend, so good a Captain at my side, who came forward first of all to suffer, I can bear everything. You help and give strength; You never fail; You are a faithful Friend. I see clearly that if we are to please God and He is to grant us great favors, He wills that this should be done through Your most sacred humanity, O Christ, for in You, as the Father has said, He is well pleased. Blessed the soul who loves You in truth and has You always at its side. When I see You near me, I have seen all blessings” (T.J. Life, 22).

O Jesus, my dearest Redeemer, if I could not follow You along the roads of Palestine, if I cannot behold You in heaven where You are seated in glory at the right hand of Your Father, always interceding for me, I can, nevertheless, every time I so desire, find You living in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar. What an immense gift You have bestowed on me by leaving Your sacred humanity in the Holy Eucharist! As God, You are everywhere, it is true, but as man and my Redeemer I find You in the Sacred Host. My poor human nature needs to find You in the integrity of Your Person as God made man; it needs to be able to approach You and possess You, not only spiritually, but even in a physical reality. I am thinking especially of those precious moments after Holy Communion, when Your sacred humanity is in direct physical contact with my soul. At that time I am not merely touching the hem of Your garment, like the poor woman in the Gospel, but my human nature is touching Yours, and not only touching it, but is being nourished by it, for You come to me as Food. O Jesus! if the influence of Your humanity was so powerful that it could heal and justify all who drew near to You, what can it not effect in my soul during those moments of close, profound contact? O Jesus, forgive me my sins; heal, purify, and sanctify my soul; give me those dispositions of profound humility, lively faith, and ardent love which will enable me to receive the fullness of Your divine influence. 

47. THE SOUL OF JESUS

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, permit me to contemplate Your soul, the chosen temple of the Holy Spirit, and grant that, following Your example, I, too, may become a temple worthy of Him.


MEDITATION

1, Although grace was created equally by the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, without any difference or distinction, its diffusion in souls is usually attributed especially to the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, to whom everything that concerns the work of sanctification is referred by appropriation. In this sense the tremendous gift of grace which filled the soul of Jesus must be attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. The soul of Jesus possesses every supernatural gift because “the Holy Spirit dwells in Christ with such plenitude of grace that no greater plenitude can be imagined ” (Mystici Corporis). This plenitude of grace, which is a created gift, corresponds to the plenitude of the Holy Spirit, who is the uncreated Gift. Jesus, the only One who “received this Spirit in an unlimited degree” (ibid.), has received from Him the immense capital of grace which permits Him to merit it for all of us. 

The soul of Jesus is uniquely beautiful, holy, intimately united to the divinity, and all this to such a degree that the Holy Spirit “ takes delight in abiding in it as His chosen temple” (ibid.). He dwells in it with such plenitude and sovereignty that He inspires, directs, and guides all the actions of Jesus, and that is why the Holy Spirit “ is correctly called the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of the Son” (ibid.). The Gospel tells us several times that Jesus “acted under the influence of the Holy Spirit” (cf. Lk 4,1). This happened, not under certain special conditions, but always; the sacred soul of Jesus was not moved by any other impulse, by any spirit other than the Holy Spirit. 


2. Jesus, by His Passion and death, merited for us, not only grace, but even the very Author of grace, the Holy Spirit, whom He had promised to the Apostles and whom He had sent to them at Pentecost. We too receive the Holy Spirit through Jesus; it is always He who, together with the Father, sends us the Holy Spirit. This divine Spirit “is bestowed from the fullness of Christ Himself according to the measure of the giving of Christ” (Mystici Corporis). We receive the Holy Spirit according to the measure of our union with Christ; the Holy Spirit, in turn, unites us to Christ. In fact, as St. Paul says, “ Now if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ be in you...the Spirit liveth, because of justification” (Rom 8,9.10).

To live in Christ is to live in the Holy Spirit, it is to be a member of His Mystical Body, to be a temple of His Spirit. The grace merited for us by Christ and dispensed to us by Him is diffused in us at the same time by the Holy Spirit. Each increase of grace is caused simultaneously by the creative action of the Holy Spirit and the mediation of Christ. “ Christ is in us by His Spirit whom He communicates to us and by means of whom He acts in us in such a way that it may be said that everything that is divine is accomplished in us by the Holy Spirit and also by Christ” (Mystici Corporis). 


COLLOQUY

O Jesus, You are so rich, so divine, and so all-powerful that Your gifts are not limited to created things, however sublime they may be, but reach their culmination in the uncreated Gift, in the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is conformable with Your dignity as God-Man, O Lord Jesus, that the Spirit of Love, the substantial Love which proceeds from the Father and the Son, should be Your Spirit. But that You have wished to give me, a poor creature, this divine Spirit, is a mystery so sublime that I am lost in it. I can only understand, O my dear Redeemer, that I owe this Gift to You!

What return shall I make You, O Jesus, for Your infinite Gift? Oh! if I could at least live and act in such a way that Your Spirit, the Holy Spirit, would find in my soul a temple not too unworthy of Him! I know that Your Spirit dwells within me, because You have given Him to me. Yet, He cannot fully possess me, nor lead me swiftly to sanctity, nor hasten my journey to God, because He often finds resistance in me instead of docility. O my Jesus, do not permit me to resist Your Spirit; do not let me grieve Him by my blindness and obduracy!

“O power of the eternal Father, come to my aid! Wisdom of the Son, illumine the eye of my intellect! Sweet clemency of the Holy Spirit, inflame my heart and unite it to Yourself. I confess, O sweet, eternal Goodness of God, that the mercy of the Holy Spirit and Your burning charity are trying to inflame my heart and unite it to You, together with the hearts of all rational creatures.... Burn with the fire of Your Spirit, consume and destroy, down to the very roots, all love and affection of the flesh, in the hearts of the new plants which You have deigned to graft onto the Mystical Body of Holy Church. Deign, O God, to carry us away from worldly affection into the garden of Your love, and create in us a new heart and a clear understanding of Your will, so that, despising the world, ourselves, and our pride, and filled with the true fervor of Your love ...we may follow You for Yourself alone, in chaste purity and fervent charity!... “O Holy Spirit, come into my heart; by Your power draw it to You, O God of truth; grant me charity with fear...warm me and inflame me with Your most sweet love ” (St. Catherine of Siena). 

48. LIVING IN CHRIST

PRESENCE OF GOD - Grant me, O Lord, to understand the joy and the responsibility You have given me, in communicating Your life to me: that I may die to self and live solely for Thee.


MEDITATION

1. “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (Jn 3,5). We can attain to God and His kingdom only through Christ, through our incorporation in Him. This was effected in us by “water and the Holy Spirit,” on the day of our holy Baptism. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again ”; and this means truly a new birth, because in Baptism we receive the seed of a new life. Before we receive this Sacrament, we have only a human life; afterwards, we participate in divine life. Because we have become incorporated in Christ as His members, we receive the Holy Spirit, who diffuses Christ’s grace in us. St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For as many of you as have been baptized
in Christ, have put on Christ” (Gal 3,27). On the day of our Baptism, we are born in Christ and in Him we have become that “ new creature” born not of the flesh, but of the Spirit, “ born not of blood...nor of the will of man,” but solely “of God” (Jn 1,13). Being born in Christ, we are to live in Christ and walk in Christ, following the exhortation of the Apostle, “Walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and confirmed in the faith” (Col 2,6.7). Baptism gives us our birth in Christ; the other sacraments are not only to restore, but also to root, invigorate, and build up our life in Christ.

2. “O God...grant that we may be made partakers of His divinity, who has condescended to become partaker of our humanity.” We may say that this prayer, which the Church repeats at the Offertory of every Mass, has been answered beforehand, because, from the day of our Baptism, we have been made partakers in Christ’s divinity. However, this gift, bestowed on us without any merit on our part, requires our cooperation. “Recognize your dignity, O Christian,” St. Leo exclaims, “and having become a sharer in the divine nature, beware lest you return to your former baseness by unworthy conduct. Remember the Head and Body to which you belong. ” 

Every sin, fault, or voluntary negligence dishonors Christ, our Head, and grieves the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. A consecrated soul, however, cannot remain content with merely avoiding sin; we must also strive to make Christ’s life increase in us. In the life of nature, we grow without the help of our own wills; but this is not true of the life of grace. Without our cooperation, it is possible for this life to remain stationary in us for twenty, thirty, fifty years after our baptism, after hundreds of confessions and Holy Communions. What a tremendous disproportion! We may be adults, or even aged in years, but children according to grace! We must grow in Christ; and He must increase in us. The words of St. John the Baptist form our program, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3,30). See what the development of grace in us exacts—the death of the “old man” with his bad habits, faults, and imperfections, so that the “ new man,” the Christ-life in us, may grow to perfection. 


COLLOQUY

“O Lord, how little we profit from all the blessings Thou hast granted us! Thy Majesty seeks methods and ways and inventions by which to show us Thy love; yet we, inexperienced in loving Thee, set so little store by them that, unpracticed as we are, our thoughts pursue their habitual path and cease pondering on the great mysteries of Thy infinite love. How miserable is the wisdom of mortal man! How uncertain is His foresight! Do Thou, who foreseest all, provide the necessary means whereby my soul may serve Thee according to Thy will, and not its own.... May this self of mine die, and may Another, greater than myself and better for me than myself, live in me, so that I may serve Him. May He live and give me life; may He reign and may I be His captive, for my soul desires no other freedom. 

“How can one be free who is separated from the Most High? What harder or more miserable captivity is there than for the soul to have escaped from the hand of its Creator? Happy are they who find themselves laden with the strong fetters and chains of the gifts of God’s mercy, so that they are unable to gain the power to set themselves free.... O free will, thou art the slave of thine own freedom, unless thou be pierced through with fear and love for Him who created thee!” (T.J. Con, 1 — Exc, 17).

“O Lord, when I think that I have the terrible power to paralyze the action of grace, the action of the Holy Spirit within me, I realize that the greatest mercy You can show me is to captivate my freedom by Your love, so that it may be Your willing prisoner forever. O my Jesus, I beseech You to take away from me the freedom to frustrate Your graces, to live a purely human life, as though no seed of divine life were implanted in me. Oh! I know that I am very distracted, very forgetful; I am superficial, I allow myself to be ensnared by all kinds of attractions and preoccupations with exterior material things, and I forget the supernatural realities which my senses do not perceive, although they are the beautiful realities. Your love alone, O Lord, can conquer the great inconstancy of my mind and heart, and establish them in You, so that my life may become interior, rather than exterior, centered on You and Your grace instead of on myself and the things of earth."