46 — THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS

Presence of God. — O Jesus, make me understand how my soul lies under the powerful, sanctifying touch of Your Most Holy Humanity.

Meditation

1 — “A power came forth from Him and healed them all” (Lk. 6, 19), says the Gospel speaking of Jesus and the astounding miracles He worked. At the touch of His hand the blind saw, the deaf heard, the mute regained speech; so great was the power that went out from Him that for the poor woman with the hemorrhage it was enough to touch the hem of His garment to feel herself instantly healed. And with the same ease with which He healed bodies, He purified and sanctified souls by remitting sins. “Which is easier, to say: ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say: ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has... power to forgive sins... I say to you” - He said to the paralytic - “rise, take up your bed and go home” (Lk. 5, 23 and 24). To forgive sins belongs to God alone. If therefore Jesus, visibly man, says of Himself that He has the power to forgive sins, He affirms that He is God and that divinity works in His Humanity. His Most Holy Humanity, full of grace and power, is precisely the instrument His Divinity uses to spread around Him every grace and every life.

As once in the regions of Palestine, so today, glorious in heaven, Jesus’ Most Holy Humanity continues to emit the same power and the same force; and this power reaches our souls, acts interiorly in them, purifies them, transforms them, sanctifies them. “The interior influence from which grace comes to our souls belongs... to Christ, whose Humanity, precisely because it is joined to Divinity, has the power to justify” (St. Thomas, III, q. 8, a. 6, co.).

2 — In the redemptive, sanctifying work of Jesus, we distinguish two phases. The first, painful, which He lived here on earth and which ended with His death on the cross, by which He merited grace for us. The second, glorious, begun with His resurrection and still continuing, since Jesus Himself continues to distribute to our souls that grace He merited for us on Calvary: “To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Eph. 4, 7). It is Jesus who, day by day, applies grace to each one of us, who makes it grow and develop in us: we live continually under His influence. “As the head commands the members” - says the Council of Trent - “as the vine penetrates all the branches with its sap, so Jesus Christ exercises His influence on all the just at every instant. And this influence precedes, accompanies, and crowns their good works and renders them pleasing to God and meritorious before Him” (Sess. VI, can. 16).

Jesus, says St. Paul, “is always living to make intercession on our behalf” (Heb. 7, 25); living in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar, living in heaven, where He sits glorious at the right hand of His Father showing Him the reddened wounds of His Passion, He not only continuously intercedes for us, but He Himself chooses, determines, and distributes to each one graces according to the measure of His gift” (Myst. Corp.). He is therefore, not only in the fullest sense, but also in the most actual sense, the source of all our life. “Christ is our life” (cf. Col. 3, 4), exclaims St. Paul, because, as St. Thomas explains, “He is the mover of our life.”

Colloquy

How I love, O Lord, Your Most Holy Humanity! O eternal Word, did You not become man precisely to make Yourself nearer to us, to encourage us to come to You without fear, to lead us to Your Father? How then could I, O Jesus, willingly leave You or forget You, even for a little while?

“O Lord of my soul, my Good, my sweet crucified Jesus, is it not from You that all good things have come to me? Everything can be endured with You, a Friend so good, such a valiant Captain who entered sufferings first. You help and encourage, You never fail, You are a faithful friend. I have always recognized, and still recognize, that we cannot please God, nor does God usually grant us His graces except through Your most sacred Humanity, O Christ, because in You the Father, as He once said, finds His delight. Blessed the soul that truly loves You and always has You with it! Since I have been with You, I have found every kind of good” (T.G. Vi. 22,3-7).

O Jesus, my sweetest Redeemer, if I could not follow You through the roads of Palestine, if I cannot see You in heaven where You sit glorious at the right hand of Your Father, always occupied in interceding for me, yet each time I wish I can find You living and throbbing in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar. What an immense gift You gave me by leaving me in the Eucharist Your Most Holy Humanity! It is true, as God I can find You everywhere, but as Man, as my Redeemer, I find You in the consecrated Host; yes, my poor nature needs to find You also thus, in the integrity of Your Person as God-Man, needs to approach You and to see You not only spiritually, but also as reality. And I think especially of those precious moments in which, receiving You sacramentally, Your Most Holy Humanity is in direct physical contact with my soul. Then I do not touch only the hem of Your garment, like the poor woman with the hemorrhage, but my humanity touches Yours, and not only touches it, but is nourished by it, because You come to me as food. O Jesus, if the influence of Your Humanity was so powerful as to heal and justify all who approached You, what will You not be able to work in my soul in those moments of contact so intimate and profound? O Jesus, forgive my sins, heal, purify, sanctify my soul; grant me those dispositions of profound humility, of living faith, of ardent love that render me capable of receiving the fullness of Your divine influence.