34 — DESIGNS OF PEACE AND LOVE

XXIII Sunday after Pentecost

Presence of God. — O Lord, fulfill in me Your designs of peace and love, making me rise to a life fully fervent.

Meditation

1 — Despite high ideals, despite the desire for holiness, we always find ourselves full of misery, always in debt to God and, justly, when approaching Him, our soul trembles: how will He receive us? Will He not reject us? But the response is so different from what we would deserve: “My intentions toward you, says the Lord, are intentions of peace and not of affliction. You will call upon me and I will answer you. I will bring you back from the place of your captivity.” These consoling words, which we read today in the Introit of the Mass, throw open our hearts to the sweetest hopes: despite everything, God loves us. God is always Father and wants to free us from the slavery of our passions, our weaknesses. Then spontaneously there rises to our lips the humble invocation of the Collect: “O Lord, may Your goodness free us from the chains of sin which through our fragility we have contracted.” Humility, the sincere recognition of one’s own wrongs, is always the starting point for conversion.

St. Paul speaks to us of conversion in the Epistle (Phil. 3, 17-21; 4, 1-3): “Many times I told you, and even weeping I tell you, many proceed as enemies of the cross of Christ... and have no other thought than for earthly things.” Practically, every time we flee sacrifice, every time we protest in the face of pain, every time we go in search of egoistic satisfactions, we behave as enemies of the cross of Jesus and thus our life becomes too earthly, too bound to creatures, too heavy to tend toward heaven. We must convert ourselves, we must free ourselves, we must remember that “our citizenship is in heaven,” and therefore it is necessary to embrace willingly the labors of the journey of return to the blessed homeland. To encourage us St. Paul sets before us the splendors of eternal life: “Jesus Christ will transform the body of our misery so that it may be conformed to the body of His glory.” Behold “the intentions of peace,” behold the great designs of love that the heavenly Father has for us: to free us from the slavery of sin and to conform us to His Son until making us partakers of His glorious resurrection. Marvelous intentions, but which will not be realized if we do not cooperate with them. “Consequently, O my brothers, beloved and longed for, my joy and crown — supplicates the Apostle — remain thus firm in the Lord.” Firm, that is, stable in conversion, firm in humility, in trust, in love for the cross.

2 — Today’s Gospel (Mt. 9, 18-26) is a living sample of that transformation which God wishes to accomplish in us, it is an example of the manner in which He actualizes His intentions of peace in those who go to Him with humble and trusting heart. First the woman with the issue of blood: her malady is tenacious, for twelve years it has resisted every remedy; the poor woman, humiliated and ashamed, does not dare, like other sick persons, to present herself directly to Jesus; on the other hand, her faith is so great that she thinks: “If I can only touch even the hem of His garment, I shall be healed”; she approaches Him furtively and grazes the edge of His robe. Jesus perceives that light touch and, turning around, says: “Be of good cheer, O daughter, your faith has healed you.” No question, no external supplication, but what moves the Lord is the prayer of that humble, confident heart, full of faith.

As Jesus healed the woman with the issue of blood, so He wishes to heal our souls, but awaits dispositions similar to hers. We content ourselves too much with prayers on the surface of our lips while the heart is cold and absent; Jesus, instead, looks at the heart and wants the prayer of the heart: cry of humility, of confidence, cry that goes straight to strike His divine Heart. Moreover, when we are more fortunate than the woman with the issue of blood! She succeeded only once in touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, while our soul every day, by means of Holy Communion, comes in contact with His Body and His Blood. Oh, if we had faith the size of a mustard seed!

The second miracle follows. The daughter of Jairus is not sick, she is dead; but for Jesus it is no more difficult to raise the dead than to heal the sick. He, as true Lord of life and death, “took the maiden by the hand and she arose.” Jesus is our resurrection, not only for eternal life, when at His sign our body will rise glorious and reunite with the soul, but He is our resurrection even in this life: resurrection from the death of sin to the life of grace, resurrection from a lukewarm life to a fervent life, from a fervent life to a holy life.

With the humility and trust of the woman with the issue of blood, let us approach Jesus and let us pray Him from the heart to accomplish in us His designs of love, snatching us from the gray mediocrity of a spiritual life still encumbered by the bonds of egoism, to launch ourselves decisively toward holiness.

Colloquy

“O Lord, how badly do we repay Your friendship, when we so soon return to being Your mortal enemies! Ah, how truly great is Your mercy! Can one perhaps find a more patient friend than You? If even once only this should happen between two friends, would they not lose the memory of it so easily, nor would their friendship remain so close as before. Instead, how many times do we fail toward You! And yet, for how many years do You continue to wait for us! Blessed be You, O my Lord and my God, who bear us with such compassion as to make one believe that You forget Your greatness so as not to punish so black a betrayal as it deserves!” (T.G.P. 2, 19).

“O Jesus, You are my peace, because through You I have access to the Father, because it has pleased the Father to pacify by the Blood of Your Cross all that exists both on earth and in heaven.

“Behold Your work in every soul of good will; behold the labor that Your immense love, Your excessive love, urges You to accomplish in me. You wish to be my peace. With the Blood of Your Cross You will pacify everything in the little cycle of my soul. You will fill me with Yourself, You will bury me in Yourself, You will make me live again with You Your very life.

“O Jesus, if I fall at every instant, I will have myself raised by You with a wholly trusting faith. And I know that You will pardon me, that You will cancel everything with jealous care; still more: You will despoil me, You will free me from all my misery, from all that hinders divine action, You will bind all my powers which You will make Your prisoners. Then shall I have passed wholly into You. Then shall I be able to say: ‘It is no longer I who live, my Master lives in me’” (E.T. II, 12).