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."