Part one (2): The Christian Life Must be a Continuation of the Most Holy

What Must be Done in the Course of Your

Whole Life to Live a Christian and

Saintly Life and to Make Jesus

Reign in Your Soul

Nature of the Christian Life

1. the Christian Life Must be a Continuation of the Most Holy

Life Which Jesus Led on Earth

Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, King of angels and of men, is not only your God, your Saviour and your Sovereign Lord, but is also your head and you are "members of his body," as St. Paul says: "of his flesh and of his bones" (Eph. 5, 30). You are consequently united with Him in the most intimate union possible, that is, the union of members with their head. You are united with Him spiritually by faith and by the grace. He gave you in Holy Baptism. You are united with Him corporally in the union of His Most Sacred Body with yours in the Blessed Eucharist. It necessarily follows that, just as the members are animated by the spirit of the head, and live the same life, so you must also be animated by the spirit of Jesus, live His life, walk in His ways, be clothed with His sentiments and inclinations, and perform all your actions in the dispositions and intentions that actuated His. In a word, you must carry on and perpetuate the life, religion and devotion which He exercised upon earth, This doctrine rests upon a very solid foundation, for it receives confirmation repeatedly from the sacred words of Him Who is Truth Itself. Do you not hear Him saying in several places in His Gospel: I am the Life" (John 14, 6); "I am come that they may have life" (John 10, 10)? "You will not come to Me that you may have life" (John 5, 40). "I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know

that I am in my Father: and you in me, and I in you" (John 14, 19-20). That is to say, just as Jesus is i n His Father, living His life, which the Father communicates to Him, so also you are in Jesus, living by His life, and He is in you, giving you this same life. And thus He lives in you and you live in and with Him.

St. John, the beloved disciple, explains that God has given to man the gift of eternal life, which life is in His Son, and he who has in himself the Son of God has life; and, on the contrary, he who has not the Son has not life (I John 5, 11-12). God sent His Only Begotten Son into the world that you may have life, and you are in this world even as Jesus is, that is, you have taken His place here, and ought to live as He lived (1 John 4, 9; 17).

Again in the Apocalypse he says that the well-beloved Spouse of your souls, Jesus Christ, cries out incessantly: "Come. And he that heareth, let him say: Come and he that thirsteth, let him come; and he that will, let him take the water of life freely" (Apoc. 22, 17), meaning, let him draw from Christ, the fountain-head, the waters of true life. Furthermore, it is written in the Holy Gospel that one day the Son of God stood up among a great multitude of people, and cried out with a loud voice: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink" (John 7, 37).

What does the holy Apostle St. Paul constantly preach to you, if not that "you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God" (C0L. 3, 3), and that the Eternal Father has given you life with Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ (Eph. 2, 5)? This means that He makes you live not only with His Divine Son, but also i n His Son and by the life of His Son. Does he not also tell you that you must manifest and show forth the life of Jesus in your bodies (11 Cor. 4, 10-11), and that Jesus Christ is your life (C0L. 3, 4), and that He is i n you, and abides in you? I live," he says, "now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2, 20). For if you study well the rest of the chapter containing these words, you will find that St. Paul is speaking not only of himself, in his own name, but also in the person and in the name of every Christian. Finally, in another passage, addressing the followers of Christ, he says that he prays God to make them worthy of their calling, and to accomplish powerfully in them all the desires of His goodness and

Nature of the Christian Life 5

the work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in them and they in Him ( 1 1 Thess. 1, 11-12).

All these sacred texts show quite clearly that Jesus Christ must live in you; that you must not live except in Him; that His life must be your life, and your life must be a continuation and expression of His. Also you have no right to live on earth except in order to bear, show forth, sanctify, glorify and cause to live and reign in you the name, the life, the qualities and perfections, the dispositions and inclinations, the virtues and actions of Jesus.

11. Confirmation of the Foregoing Truth

To understand more clearly this fundamental truth of Christian life, and to establish it more solidly in your soul, bear in mind that our Lord Jesus Christ has not simply one body and one life, but two. F irst , there is His own personal body, which He received from the Blessed Virgin, and the personal life which He lived in human form in this world. There is also His mystical body, namely, the Church, which St. Paul calls Corpus Christi, "the body of Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 12, 27). And His second life is the life by which He dwells in this mystical body, and in all true Christians who are the members of the Church. The passable and temporal life of His natural body was ended at the moment of His death. But the life of His mystical body He wills to continue until the end of time, in order to glorify His Father by the acts and sufferings of a mortal, suffering and laborious life, not only for the space of thirty-three years, but until the end of the world. Thus the passable and temporal life of Jesus in His mystical body, that is, in all Christians, has not yet reached its accomplishment, but develops itself from day to day in each true Christian and will not be perfectly complete until the end of time.

This is why St. Paul writes: «I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, i n my flesh, for his body, which is the church» (Col. 1, 24). And what the Apostle says of himself may be said of every true Christian, when he suffers anything in a spirit of love and submission to God. It may also be said of all the other actions performed by a Christian on earth. As St. Paul assures us that he fills up the sufferings of Jesus Christ, so also every true Christian, who

is a member of Jesus Christ, and united to Him by grace, continues and accomplishes, by every act he does in the spirit of Jesus Christ, the actions which Christ Himself performed during His earthly life. Thus, when a Christian prays, he continues and accomplishes the prayers of Jesus Christ. When he works, he continues and accomplishes Christ's laborious life. When his relations with his neighbor are inspired by charity, he continues and accomplishes Christ's public life. When he takes his meals or his rest in a Christian fashion, he continues and accomplishes the subjection to these necessities that Christ willed to have in Himself. It is the same for all the other acts he performs in a Christian manner. For this reason St. Paul declares that the Church is the fulness of Christ (Eph. 1, 22-23), and that you are all tending to the perfection and the fulness of His maturity (Eph. 4, 11-13), that is, to His mystical age in His Church, which Will not be completed until the Day of judgment.

You can understand from this the nature of the Christian life. You see that it is a continuation and fulfilment of the life of Jesus, and that all your actions must be a continuation of the actions of Christ. You have to be so many other Christs upon the earth, in order to perpetuate here His life and works, and to do and suffer everything in a saintly and divine manner, in the Spirit of Christ, that is, with the holy and divine dispositions and intentions which Jesus Himself showed in all His acts and sufferings. As this divine Jesus is your head and you are His members, and as you are bound to Him by this union, incomparably closer, nobler and more elevated union than the union between the head and the members of the natural body, it necessarily follows that you must be animated by His spirit and live by His life more perfectly than the members of a natural body.

These truths are very great, very important, and call for intent consideration. They oblige you to do great things, and should be well thought out by those who desire to live a Christian life. Therefore, study them frequently and attentively, and so learn that Christian life, religion, devotion and piety truly and properly consist in continuing the life, religion and devotion Of Jesus on the earth. Consequently, not only religious but also all Christians are bound to live a completely holy and divine life and to perform all their actions in a

Nature of the Christian Life 7

holy and divine spirit. This is not impossible, nor is it even so difficult as many imagine. On the contrary, it is very pleasant and easy for those who remember to lift up their mind and heart frequently to Jesus, and to unite themselves to Him in all that they do, following the practices of the exercises which will be presented further on.

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Your only right to live on earth is to continue the holy and perfect life of your Head, Christ. Now there are four things which you must frequently consider and adore in Christ's earthly life, four things which you must try, as far as possible, with the help of His grace, to express and carry on in your life , because they are the four foundations of Christian piety and sanctity. Without them it is not possible to be a true Christian. Hence it becomes necessary to discuss, at this point, each one in particular.

Iii. First Foundation of Christian Life and Sanctity: Faith

The first foundation of the Christian life is faith. St. Paul declares that if you would go to God and have access to His divine majesty, the first step you must take is to believe; for "without faith it i s impossible to please God" (Heb. 11, 6). Faith is the substance and foundation of the things hoped for (Heb. 11, 1). It is the cornerstone of the Kingdom of Christ. It is a divine and celestial light, a participation i n the eternal, inaccessible light, a beam radiating from the face of God. To speak in accordance with Scripture, faith is, as it were, a divine character by which the light of the countenance of God is imprinted upon the soul (Ps. 4, 7). It is a communication and a kind of projection of the divine light and knowledge which were infused into the holy soul of Jesus at the moment of His Incarnation. It is the science of salvation, the science of the saints, the science of God, which Jesus Christ drew forth from the bosom of His Father and brought down to you on earth, to dispel your shadows, to enlighten your heart, to give you the knowledge necessary for the perfect love and service of God, to submit and subject your mind to His truths which He still teaches you both through Himself and by Holy Mother Church. By faith you can express, continue and fulfil in yourself the submission, docility, the voluntary and undarkened subjection, with which His human mind regarded the lights imparted and the truths taught to Him by His Heavenly Father. Faith, then, being 8

given to you by God, is a continuation and fulfilment of the loving and most perfect submission of the human mind of Jesus Christ to the truths revealed to Him by His Eternal Father.

It is by this light and this divine science that you possess perfect knowledge, so far as it is possible in this life, of all things whether in God or not in God. Reason and human science often lead you into error because they are too weak and limited to penetrate to the knowledge of the things of God, which are infinite and incomprehensible. Human intelligence and knowledge also deceive you, because they are too full of the darkness and obscurity of sin to attain to a genuine knowledge even of things outside of God. But the light of faith, being a participation in the truth and light of God, can not possibly deceive you; indeed, it shows you things as God sees them, that is, in their truth, and just as they exist in the eyes of God.

Consequently, if you contemplate God with the eyes of faith, you will see Him just as He is and, in a certain manner, face to face. Although it is true that faith is accompanied by obscurity and permits you to behold God, not clearly as He is seen in heaven but as through a cloud, darkly, nevertheless, faith does not debase His supreme greatness to fit the capacity of your minds, as does science. Faith penetrates His shadows and His darkness, and goes straight to the infinity of His perfections, making you know Him as He is, infinite in His Being and in all His divine perfections. Faith lets you know that everything that is in God and in Jesus Christ, God and Man, is infinitely great and admirable, infinitely adorable and lovable, infinitely worthy of adoration, glory and love for His own sake. Faith shows you that God is true in His words and unfailing in His promises; that He is all goodness and gentleness and love towards those who seek Him and put their trust in Him, but that He is nothing but terror and severity towards those who abandon Him, and that it is frightful to fall into the hands of His justice. Faith gives a most certain knowledge that Divine Providence directs and guides all things that happen in the universe, with great holiness and wisdom, in fact, in the best way possible. His disposal of all things deserves to be infinitely adored and loved by all creatures that are subject to His order, whether in justice or in mercy, in heaven, on earth o r in hell.

If you look at God's Church in the light of faith, you will see that as Jesus Christ is her Head and the Holy Ghost her Guide, it is not possible for her to wander from the truth in anything, nor to stray away into falsehoods. So too, all the ceremonies, customs and functions of the Church are instituted in a most holy manner, and everything she forbids or commands is legitimately forbidden or commanded. Also everything she teaches is infallibly true, and you must be ready to die a thousand times rather than to diverge, even i n the slightest degree, from her inspired truth. Finally, you are obliged to pay singular homage and reverence to all the things that exist in the Church, as holy and sacred objects.

If you look at yourselves and all the things in the world by the light of faith, you will see most clearly that you are, of yourself, only nothingness, sin and abomination, and that everything in the world i s nothing but smoke, vanity and illusion.

This is the way to look at everything: not in the vanity of the senses, nor with the eyes of flesh and blood, nor with the short-sighted and deceptive view of reason and human science, but in the truth of God add with the eyes of Jesus Christ, that is, with that divine light which He drew forth from His Father's bosom, by which He beholds and knows all things, the light He has communicated to you that you might see and know all things as He sees and knows them.

Iv. Faith Should be Your Guide in All Your Actions

Just as you must consider all things in the light of faith if you would truly know them, so also you must perform all your acts under the guidance of that same light, if you would do them in a holy manner. As God is led by His divine wisdom, and the angels by their angelic intelligence, and men deprived of the light of faith by reason, and men of the world by worldly maxims, and voluptuaries by their senses, so Christians must direct themselves by the same light that directs their head, Jesus Christ, that is, by faith, which is a participation in the knowledge and the light of Christ.

So you must try, by every means, to study the divine science of faith and never to undertake anything except under its guidance. To that end, at the inception of your every act, especially your more im

portant actions, place yourself at the feet of the Son of God and adore Him as the author of faith and its fulfilment, as the One who is the true light, enlightening every man that comes into this world.

Admit that of yourself you are but darkness, and that all the light of reason, science and even of human experience is often but obscurity and illusion, in which you can place no confidence. Renounce the prudence of the flesh and the wisdom of the world. Ask Jesus to destroy them in you, as His enemies, and not to let you obey their laws, their views or their maxims, but that He may enlighten you with His heavenly light and guide you by His divine wisdom. Beg Him to make known what is most pleasing to Him, and to give you grace and strength to cling firmly to His words and promises, and to close Your cars resolutely to all opinions and persuasions of human prudence; that you may courageously prefer the maxims of faith which He taught you by His Gospel and His Church, rather than the reasoning and arguments of men who base their conduct on the standards of the world.

To this end, it would be a very good thing to read each day on your knees, either in Latin or i n English, a chapter of the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, so as to learn the life your Father led, and, through the consideration of His acts, His virtues, and His words, to become familiar with the rules and maxims upon which He based His conduct, and upon which He wishes you to base yours. Christian prudence consists in renouncing the maxims of the world, in calling upon the spirit of Christ to enlighten you, to guide you by His maxims, and to lead you in accordance with His truths, His actions and His virtues. This is what is meant by basing one's conduct upon the spirit of faith.