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.