45 — “I AM THE LIFE”

Presence of God. — O Jesus, source of life, pour Your life ever more into my soul.

Meditation

1 — Jesus announced His mission thus: “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10, 10). And what is the life He gives us? It is the life of grace, which is a participation in divine life.

Jesus is the Incarnate Word, and as Word He possesses by nature divine life in the same mode and measure as the Father: “As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted also to the Son to have life in Himself” (Jn. 5, 26). This fullness of divine life, by reason of the hypostatic union, is reflected in Christ’s Humanity. Placed in direct contact with Divinity, to which it is personally united, Jesus’ most holy Humanity is flooded by divine life, that is, it receives the maximum participation in it through such “a fullness of grace that a greater cannot be conceived” (Myst. Corp.). The sanctifying grace that inundates Jesus’ Soul is so full, perfect, intense, superabundant that theologians do not hesitate to call it “infinite grace.”

In Christ, St. Paul affirms, “it pleased (the Father) that all fullness should dwell” (Col. 1, 19), and St. John presents Him to us as “full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1, 14). But Jesus does not want to keep these immense riches only for Himself: He wants to have brothers and sisters to whom to share them; for this reason He embraces His most painful Passion and, dying on the Cross, merits for us, His members, that grace which He possesses with such fullness. Christ thus becomes for us the source, and the only source, of grace and supernatural life: He is so “full of grace and truth” that “from His fullness we have all received” (Jn. 1, 14 and 16). Thus, then, divine life reaches us: from the Father to the Word, from the Word to the Humanity that He assumed in His Incarnation, from this Humanity, which is Christ’s holy Humanity, to our souls.

2 — Like everything that exists outside God, grace too is created by God. As God, that is, as Word, Jesus is, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the creator of grace. But now we consider Jesus as our Redeemer, therefore as Man, and as such He is the Mediator of grace, that is, the One who merited it for us and dispenses it to us. In fact Jesus, through the infinite treasury of grace He possesses, was able to merit it also for us. And not only did He merit it once for all by dying for us on the Cross, but continually applies it to our souls, produces it in us: grace is infused and develops in us by His living and actual action. In this way Jesus gives us life, is life for us, unique source of our supernatural life. For this reason Jesus’ grace is called “capital grace,” that is, the grace of the Head who merits it and gives it to the members.

And here are two most precious practical consequences. Whoever wants to have grace, supernatural life, must go to Christ, be incorporated into Him and live in Him: “He who has the Son has life—teaches the Evangelist—he who does not have the Son does not have life” (1 Jn. 5, 12).

The grace that sanctifies our souls is, in its essence, identical to that which adorns Jesus’ most holy Soul (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 8, a. 5); without doubt the measure and perfection are immensely different, but the nature is the same. Therefore grace has in us the same sanctifying power, the same tendencies as it has in Jesus’ Soul: it tends to sanctify us by making us live in union with God and for His glory; Jesus, therefore, by giving us grace, has truly communicated His life to us, has placed in us the seed of His holiness, and we can live a life similar to His.

Colloquy

O Jesus, how sweet it is for me to contemplate Your most holy Humanity filled with all the treasures of divine life! To fix my gaze directly on Your Divinity as eternal Word is very difficult for me, but to consider it participated in Your Humanity is easier and more accessible; here thought finds rest and never ceases to admire Your greatness. O Jesus, Your Soul is so rich in grace, so luminous, and so full of divine life that in it is reflected all Your glory as Only-Begotten of the Father, and Your Humanity appears to me as the sole mediator and source of all grace, of all divine life that can be shared with men and women. But then this Humanity, so holy, so glorious, so united to God, I contemplate torn in the hard torment of the Cross: all that is glory is hidden, one sees only pain, death, total annihilation. But from the bleeding wounds behold a splendid source of life flowing: by Your death, O Jesus, You merited to communicate grace to us, and You Yourself became our only source.

O Jesus, I run to You, I draw near to You as the thirsty one runs and draws near to the spring of waters. “Give me, O Lord, of Your water and I shall never thirst, because the water You give me will become in me a fountain springing up to eternal life” (cf. Jn. 4, 13 and 14). O Jesus, Your Apostles, unwilling in any way to leave You, once said to You: “You alone have words of eternal life” (ibid., 6, 69); oh, far more than words of life, You have, indeed, are life itself, and to us You dispense it!

But, Jesus, permit me a question: if that sanctifying grace that comes to me from You and vivifies my soul is, in its nature, the same that inundates Your most holy Soul, why then am I so unlike You, so far from holiness?

I understand: if You gratuitously give me Your grace, You do not want, however, that it grow in me without the cooperation of my free and good will. Very often there is in me a hard struggle between the demands of Your grace and those of my bad nature and, alas, how many times nature has the upper hand over grace! Lord, give me strength to conquer and deny myself at every cost. Let Your grace, Your life, triumph in me for Your glory, for the glory of Your redemptive Work.

“Let all my spirit, all my heart, all my body; all my life live for You, my sweet life. I will love You, Lord, my strength; I will love You and live not for myself, but for You.”