The Mysteries of Christ Are Our Mysteries

SUMMARY. — I. How St. Paul dwells upon the mystery of Christ. -- I]. How much God desires that this mystery should be known. — III. Such knowledge is the true basis of piety and a source of joy. — IV. Threefold reason whereby Christ’s myteries are ours : — Christ lived them for us ; in them He shows Himself to us as our Exemplar ; in them He unites us with Himself as the members of His Body. —- V. The virtue of these mysteries is ever actual.

HEN we study attentively the Epistles of St. Paul, it is evident that for him all is summed up in the practical knowledge of the mystery of Christ.

He writes to the Ephesians : “ According to revelation, the mystery has been made known to me, as I have written above in a few words ; as you reading, may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ... to me the least of all the saints, is given this grace, to preach among the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all men, that they may see what is the dispensation of the mystery which hath been hidden from eternity in God” ’.

It is of this mystery, although ineffable, that I intend, with God’s grace, to speak. I will presently show to what an intimate degree this mystery is ours: it is the very subject of this first conference.

First it will be useful for us to consider for a few moments how St. Paul spoke of this important and fruitful truth of which Christ in person appointed him the herald. And from whom better than from him can we learn how vital the knowledge of this mystery is for our souls !

I, Eph. 11, 3-4, 8-9.

Christ in His Mysteries. I

As you know, it is on the morrow of his conversion that St. Paul receives the mission of making known the name of Jesus. From this moment, he has nothing more at heart than to fulfil this mission. If he undertakes numerous and perilous voyages’, if he preaches without intermission in the synagogues, at the Areopagus, before the Jews, before the learned men of Athens and before the Roman procurators ; if, even in prison, he writes long letters to the faithful ; if he suffers a thousand persecutions 2, it is in order that he may carry the name of Christ “before Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” *.

It is above all from his preaching to the pagan nations of whom he was constituted the apostle, that we grasp most vividly with what intensity St. Paul lives by this mystery. He comes before the pagan world so as to regenerate, renew and save it. And what does he bring to this corrupted society whose utter depravity he describes in such terrible terms*? Does he bring the advantages of birth ? the wisdom of philosophers ? the knowledge of the learned ? the strength of conquerors ?

The Apostle has none of these things. He declares that he is “as one born out of due time’’® ; he writes to the Corinthians : “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” °... He reminds the Galatians that it was in infirmity of the flesh that he preached the Gospel to them heretofore’. Thus he brings neither an attractive appearance, nor the prestige of learning, nor the authority of natural wisdom, nor splendour of eloquence, nor charm of human language ; all this he disdains : Non in sublumitate sermonis aut sapientiae... non in persuasibilibus humanae saptentiae verbis... non in sapientia hominum ®.

What then does he bring ? Nothing but Christ, and Him crucified : Non enim judicavi me scire aliquid inter vos nisi Jesum Christum, et hunc crucifixum ®. He sums up all his preaching in this knowledge ; all his doctrine is contained in this mystery.¹

He is so penetrated with it that he makes it the one object of his prayer for his disciples : ‘‘ For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... that He would grant you... to be strengthed by His Spirit with might unto the inward man, that... you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth [of the mystery of His Son] ; to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled [by Christ] unto all the fulness of God” ?.

What a wonderful prayer! How it makes us realise the Apostle’s innermost conviction and the ardour of his soul to make this conviction shared by others !

Moreover, this prayer is unceasing. ‘“ We... cease not to pray for you, and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of this will, in all wisdom, and spiritual understanding” : In omni sapientia et intellectu spiituali?.

Why, then, does St. Paul constantly revert to this subject to the point of making it the one doctrinal theme of his preaching ? Why does he offer to God such earnest and continuous supplications for his Christians ? Why does he burn with longing to see the mystery of Christ not only known but experienced by all Christians ? For notice that he addresses his epistles, not only to a few of the initiated, but to all the faithful of the Churches that he has founded. These lines are intended to be read publicly in the Christian assemblies. What is his underlying motive in all this ?

The Apostle himself reveals it in his letter to the Colossians : “I would have you know what manner of care I have for you... that [your] hearts may be... instructed in charity, and unto all riches of fulness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus, in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ” *.

This last phrase shows us how convinced St. Paul is that we have all things in Christ : Quomodo non etiam cum illo omnia nobis donavit 21; that in Him “ nothing is wanting” to us : /ta wt nihil vobis desit in ulla gratia * ; and this Christ Who was “ yesterday ”, is “ to-day, and the same for ever ” *.²

To raise the fallen world, St. Paul brings only one means: —Christ, and Christ crucified. It is true that this mystery is a stumbling block for the Jews and foolishness for the Grecian sages‘, but it contains the virtue of the Divine Spirit 5, who alone can renew the face of the earth” °.

{n Christ alone can be found all the “ wisdom, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption ” * of which souls have need in all ages. And this is why St. Paul makes the whole formation of the inward man consist in the pratical knowledge of the mystery of Jesus °. II

Moreover, in this, the Apostle, instructed by Christ Himself ®, is only the faithful echo of His Divine Master.

In that ineffable prayer after the Last Supper*, in which our Saviour allows all the tenderness of His blessed soul to overflow before His enraptured disciples, at the supreme moment of His earthly existence, we hear these words : “ Father... this is eternal life : that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” : Haec est autem vita aeterna: ut cognoscant te solum Deum verum, et quem misisti Jesum Christum ™.

We thus learn, from the lips of Jesus Himself, from the infallible Truth, that all Christian life—of which eternal life is but the regular unfolding and natural term—is

1. Rom, vm, 32. — 2. I Cor. 1, 7.— 3. Hebr. xu, 8. — 4. I Cor. I, 23.— 5. Ibid. m, 4, 12. 6. Ps. cut, 30. — 7. Cor. 1, 30.— 8. Cf. Ephes. m, 816-1 and Col, 1, 27-25. ‘‘ How often we lose our time in barren speculations, in laborious roundabout ways, while in Christ we have at our disposal so simple a means of going straight to God and of living in habitual union with Him !... And when the anthorised messengers of the Eternal Word, instead of giving Christ, ‘‘ the Resurrection and the Life, ’' to souls,...give them the insipid dilutions of human thought and literature, powerless to satisfy their hunger and thirst, we cannot refrain from asking with the Apostle St Paul: ’Where are the faithful dispensers of the Gospel?” Hic yam quaerituy inter dispensatores ut fidelis quis inveniatur. Cardinal D. J. Mercier. Devotion to Christ and to His Blessed Mother.— 9. Gal.1, 16-18. — to, Joan, xv, 1- 26. — 11, Ibid. xvu, 3. : summed up in the practical knowledge of God and of His Son,

You will at once say that we do not see God : Deum nemo vidit unquam>. That is true. We shall know God perfectly only when we see Him face to face in eternal beatitude.

But, here below, God manifests Himself to our faith through His Son Jesus. Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the great revelation of God to the world : Ipse illuxit in cordibus nostris... in facie Christi Jesu? Christ is God appearing amongst men, conversing with them, under the skies of Judea, and showing them by His human life how a God lives among men, in order that men may know how they ought to live so as to be pleasing to God.

It is, then, upon Christ that all our gaze ought to be concentrated. Open the Gospel : you will there see that three times only does the Eternal Father cause His voice to be heard by the world. And what does this Divine Voice say to us? Each time the Eternal Father tells us to contemplate His Son, to listen to Him, that He may be thereby glorified : “ This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him”: Hic est Filius meus dilectus... spsum audite*, AW that the Father asks of us is to contemplate Jesus, His Son, to listen to Him, so as to love _ and imitate Him, because Jesus, being His Son, is equally God.

And we ought to contemplate Him in His Person, in all the actions of His life and death, in all the states of His glory. Our Lord, being God, the least circumstances of His life, the least features of His mysteries, are worthy of attention. Nothing is little in the life of Jesus. The Eternal Father looks upon the smallest action of Christ with more delight than He looks upon the whole universe. Before Christ’s coming, God makes all converge towards Him : after His Ascension, God makes all revert to Him. ' All was foreseen and prophesied concerning Christ ; all the more particulars of His life, all the details of His death were marked out by Eternal Wisdom and announced. by the Prophets long before their realisation.³

Why, then, did God take care to prepare for the coming of His Son so long in advance ? Why did Christ leave us so many divine teachings ? Why did the Holy Spirit inspire the sacred writers to note so many details of seeming insignificance-? Why did the Apostles write such long and urgent epistles to their churches ?

Was it in order that these teachings should remain buried, like a dead letter, in the depths of the Holy Scriptures Certainly not, but so that we should search out, as St. Paul desires, the mystery of Christ ; that we should contemplate His Person, and study His actions ; His actions reveal to us His virtues and His will. We ought to contemplate Him, not by means of a merely intellectual study—such study is often dry and sterile—but in omni sapientia et itellectu spiritualt, in a spirit full of heavenly wisdom, which will cause us to seek in the Divine Gift for the truth that will enlighten our lives. We ought to contemplate Him so as. to conform our lives to this Model Who renders God accessible to us, to draw divine life from Him in order that our thirst may be fully quenched : Haec est autem wita aeterna.

II

This knowledge acquired by faith, in prayer, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is truly the fountain of living water springing up unto everlasting life : Fons aquae sahientis in vitam aeternam. For—and here is a great truth upon which more light will be thrown in the course of these conferences—the Eternal Father has placed in Christ Jesus, all the graces, all the gifts of sanctification that He destines for souls. We can only go to the Father by Christ : Nemo venit ad Patrem, nisi per me? ; without Christ, we have nothing, but with Him we have everything,

‘ we “can do all things” , “ for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally ”. Whosoever under- - stands the mystery of Christ, and lives by it, has found the pearl of great price of which the Gospel speaks® ; the treasure that alone is worth all other treasures : for with it eternal life is gained.⁴

The more we know Christ, the more we enter deeply into the mysteries of His Person and of His life, the more we study, in prayer, the circumstances and details that Revelation has given to us,—the more also will our piety be true and our holiness real +.

Our piety must be based upon faith and upon the knowledge that God has given to us of supernatural and divine things. Piety that is only founded upon sentiment is as fragile and as ephemeral as the sentiment that serves for its base : it is a house built upon the sand which falls at the least shock. On the contrary, when our piety is based upon convictions which themselves result from a deep knowledge of the mysteries of Jesus, the only true God with His Father and their common Spirit, it is like an edifice built upon the rock, that is to say, it cannot be shaken : Fundata enim erat super petram?.

This knowledge is for us a never failing source of joy.

Joy is the sentiment that is born in a soul, conscious of the good it. possesses. The good of our intelligence is truth ; the more this truth is abundant and luminous, the deeper is our inward joy.

Christ brings us truth, He is the Truth itself, truth full of sweetness showing us the munificence of our Heavenly Father ; from the bosom of the Father where He ever dwells, Christ reveals to us the divine secrets * which we possess by faith. What a feast, what satisfaction, what joy for the faithful soul to contemplate God, the Infinite and ineffable Being, in the Person of Christ Jesus ; to hear God speaking in the words of Jesus ; to discover what are God’s sentiments, if I may thus speak, in the sentiments of the Heart of Jesus ; to contemplate the Divine actions, to penetrate into their mystery, in order to drink therefrom, as at the source, the very life of God : Ut impleanuni in omnem plenitudinem Dei !⁵

O Christ Jesus, our God and our Redeemer, Revelation of the Father, our Elder Brother and our Friend, grant that we may know You! Purify the eyes of our heart so that we may contemplate You with joy ; silence the noise of creatures that we may follow You unimpeded. Reveal Yourself to our souls as You did to the disciples of Emmaus, while expounding to them the sacred pages which spoke of Your mysteries, and we shall feel “our hearts burn within us”? with the longing to love and attach ourselves to You !

IV

In the following conferences we shall have the joy of lingering. over each of the principal mysteries of Jesus, of contemplating His actions, of gathering up His words. We shall see how inexpressibly divine and profoundly human are all the actions of the Incarnate Word ; we shall see that each of these mysteries contains its own teaching, bears its special light, and is for our souls the source of a particular grace of which the object is “to form Jesus within us”,

The mysteries of Jesus have this characteristic that they are ours as much as they are His.

We have here a fundamental truth upon which we can never meditate enough, and of which we must never lose sight, for it is singularly fruitful for our supernatural life.

It is an inexhaustible source of confidence for a soul that loves Jesus to know that He Himself unites her intimately with each of His mysteries. This truth gives rise to acts of gratitude and love which yield the soul entirely to Him who so generously wills to give Himself and unite Himself to her.

But is not this truth a dream, a chimera? Is it truly a reality ¢ Yes, it is a reality, a divine reality ; but faith alone receives it as love alone has given it : Et nos... credidimus caritati ?.⁶

How -is it that Christ’s mysteries are our mysteries ? For a threefold reason.

First of all, because Christ lived them for us.

Undoubtedly, love for His Father was the underlying » motive power of every act in the life of the Incarnate Word, At the moment of completing His work, Christ declares to His Apostles that it is because He loves His Father that He is about to deliver Himself up : Ut cognoscat mundus quia diligo Patrem*. In that wonderful prayer which He then makes, Jesus says that He has accomplished His work which was to glorify His Father upon earth : Ego te clarificavi super terram ; opus consummavi quod dedisti mihi ut faciam?. Indeed at each instant of His life, He could say in all truth that He only sought the good pleasure of His Father : Quae placita sunt ev facio semper ®*.

But His love for the Father is not the only love with which Christ’s Heart beats ; He loves us too and in an infinite manner. It was veritably for us that He came down from Heaven, in order to redeem us and save us from death : Propter nos et propter nostram salutem ; it was to give us life: Ego veni ut vitam habeant, et abundantius habeani*. Ue had no need to satisfy and to merit for Himself, for He is the very Son of God, equal to His Father, at Whose right hand He is seated in the heights of Heaven ; but it was for us that He bore everything. For us He became Incarnate, was born at Bethlehem, and lived in the obscurity of a life of toil ; for us He preached and worked miracles, died and rose again ; for us He ascended into Heaven and sent the Holy Spirit ; He still remains in the Eucharist for us, for love of us. Christ, says St. Paul, loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for her, that He might purify and sanctify her and win her to Himself °.

So then, Jesus lived all His mysteries for us, in order to give us to be one day where He is, by right, in the glory of His Father. Yes, each of us can say with St. Paul : Drlexit me, et tradidit semetipsum PRO ME®. Christ Jesus “loved me, and delivered Himself up for me”. And His immolation was but the crowning point of the mysteries of His earthly life ; it was for me, because He loved me, that He accomplished all things. ~™ Thanks be to Thee, O my God, for this unspeakable Gift that Thou didst make to us in the Person of Thy Son, our Salvation and our Redemption : Gratias Deo super menarrabili dono ejus* !⁷

Another reason whereby the mysteries of Jesus belong to us is that in all of them Christ shows Himself to us as our Exemplar.

He has come to be our Model. It is not only to announce salvation to us and to work out in principle our redemption that the Word becomes Incarnate ; it is also to be the ideal of our souls. Christ Jesus is God living in our midst ;— God appearing amongst us, rendered visible and tangible, and showing us by His life as well as by His words: the way of holiness. We have no need to seek elsewhere than in Him for the model of our perfection. Each of His mysteries is a revelation of His virtues. The humility of the manger, the labours and self-effacement of His hidden life, the zeal of the public life, the depths of His immolation, the glory of His triumph, are virtues which we ought to imitate, sentiments we ought to share, or states in which we ought to participate. At the Last Supper, after having washed the feet of His Apostles, thus giving to the Twelve an example of humility, Christ their Lord and Master said to them : “I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also” *. He might have said the same of all that He did.

He said moreover : “I am the Way”: Ego sum via? ; but He is the way only in order to go before us : “ He that followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” . Jesus, through His mysteries, has, so to speak, shown all the stages which, in the supernatural life, we must follow after Him ; or rather, He Himself draws the faithful soul with Him in the way that He runs as a giant : Exsultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam. “1 created souls in My image and likeness”, said our Lord to⁸

St. Catherine of Siena? ; “even more, in taking human nature, I made Myself like to one of you. Consequently, I do not cease working to make your souls like to Me, as far as they are capable of it, and I endeavour to renew in them, when they are tending towards heaven, all that took place in My Body”

This is why the contemplation of Christ’s mysteries is so profitable for the soul. The life, death and glory of Jesus are the example of our life, death and glory. Never forget this truth: the Eternal Father accepts us only inasmuch as He sees in us a resemblance to His Son. Why is this ? Because it is to this very resemblance that, from all eternity, He predestinated us’. There is no other form of holiness for us than that which Christ showed to us ; the measure of our Peniccn On is fixed by the degree of our imitation of Jesus.

There is, finally, a third reason, deeper and more intimate, which makes Christ’s mysteries our own. Not only did Jesus live them for us, not only are they examples for us, but furthermore in His mysteries, Christ makes but one with us. There is no truth upon which St. Paul insisted more strongly than upon this, and my most ardent wish is that you should understand all its depth.

We make one with Christ in the divine thought.

It is a Him that God the Father chose us : Elegit nes in ipso* ; not apart from Him. God does not separate us from His Son Jesus ; if He predestinates us to be conformable to the image of His Son, it is in order that His Son may be “the Firstborn amongst many brethren” Praedestinavit nos conformes fieri tmaginis Fila sui, uv sit ipse primogemtus in multis fratribus *.

This union which God wills to realise between His Son

1. Life by Bl. Raymund of Capua. It was to thesame Saint that the Eternal Father vouchsafed to say: ” Know well, my daughter, that all the mysteries, ail the actions accomplished in this world by my Truth, whether with the disciples, or apart from them, were representative of. what passes in the inmost soul of my servants and of all men. You may draw from these facts a lesson and a ruleoflife. They should be meditated upon in the light of reason, and the most uncultured minds as wellas the most subtle, ordinary intellects as well as the highest, can. derive profit from them ; each can take part in them, if he will. Dialogue. — 2. Rom. vi, 29. — 3. Eph. I, 4.— 4. Rom. vit, 29.

Jesus and the elect is so intimate that St. Paul compares it to that which exists between the members and the head of the same body. The Church, says the great Apostle, is the body of Christ, and Christ is its Head?’ ; united, they form what St. Augustine calls the “ whole Christ” : Totus Christus, caput et corpus est ; caput unigenitus Dei Filius et corpus ejus Ecclesia?. Here we have truly the divine plan : Deus omnia subjecit sub pedibus ejus ; et ipsum dedit caput supra omnem Ecclesiam*. Christ is the Head of this mystical body which He forms with the Church, because He is its Chief and the source of life for all its members. The Church and Christ are, so to speak, one and the same being : Membra suwmus corporis ejus, de carne ejus et de ossibus ejus*. God the Father unites the elect to His Divine Son in such a manner that all Christ’s mysteries were lived by Him as Head of the Church.

See how explicit St. Paul is on this point : “God”, he says, “who is rich in mercy, for His exceeding charity wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ... And hath raised us up in Him, and hath made us sit together in the heavenly places, with Jesus Christ ; that He might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of His grace, in His bounty towards us in Christ Jesus” *®. This thought is repeated more than once under the pen of the Apostle : God has buried us together with Christ : consepulti enim sumus cum ILLo®; He wills us to be one with Christ in His Resurrection and in His Ascension : conresuscitavit nos, consedere fecit nos in ILLO.

Nothing is more certain than is this union of Christ with His chosen ones in the Divine thought ; what makes Christ’s mysteries ours is, above all, because the Eternal Father saw us with His Son in each of the mysteries lived by Christ and because Christ accomplished them as Chief of the Church. I might even say that, on account of this, the mysteries of Christ Jesus are more our mysteries than they are His. Christ, inasmuch as He is the Son of God, would not have undergone the abasements of the Incarnation, the sorrows and sufferings of the Passion; He would have had no need of the triumph of the Resurrection, which succeeded the ignominy of His death. He went. through all this as Head of the Church ; He took upon Himself our miseries and our infirmities : vere languores NOSTROS ipse tulit? ; He willed to pass through what we ourselves must pass through, and He merited for us the grace to follow after Him in each of His mysteries ?.⁹

For neither does Christ Jesus separate us from Himself in anything that He does. He declares that He is the Vine and we are the branches*, What closer union can there be than that, since it is the same sap, the same life which circulates in the root and in the shoots ? Christ unites us so closely to Himself that all that is done to whomsoever it may be who believes in Him, it is to Himself that it is done: Quamdiu fecistis uni ex his fratribus meis minimis, mila fecistis*. He wills that the union which, by grace, attaches Him to His disciples, should be the same as that which, by nature, identifies Him with His Father: Ut unum sint, sicut tu, Pater, in me, et ego in te®. This is the sublime end to which He wills to lead us through His mysteries.

Moreover, all the graces that He merited by each of His mysteries, He merited them in order to distribute them to us. He received the fulness of grace from His Father : Vidimus eum plenum gratiae ; but He did not receive it for Himself alone ; for St. John at once adds that it is of this fulness we have all received : Et de plenitudine ejus nos omnes accepimus® ; it is from Him that we receive it, because He is our Head and His Father has made all things subject to Him : Omnia subjecit sub pedibus ejus ; et ipsum caput supra omnem Ecclesiam.

So His wisdom, His justice, His holiness, His strength have become our wisdom, our justice, our strength : [Christus] factus est NOBIS sapientia a Deo, et justitia, et i. Isa, Lim, 4. — For the development of these ideas, we refer the reader to the Conference The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, in our preceding volume, Christ, the life of the soul. — Habeant licet singult quique vocatorum ordinem suum et omnes Ecclesiae fiulti temporum sint successione distincti, universa tamen summa fidelium, fonte orta baptismatis, sicut cum Christo in passione crucifixt, im resuyrectione rvesuscitati, in ascensione ad dexteram Patvis collocati, ita cum ipso sunt in hac nativitate congeniti. S. Leo, Sermo XXvVI, in nativit. Domini VI, 2. — 3. Joan, xv, 5. — 4. Matth. xxv, 40. —5. Joan. XvIr, 21. — 6. Ibid. I, 16. sanclificatio, et redemptio?. All that He has is ours ; we are rich with His riches, holy with His holiness. “© man”, says Ven. Louis de Blois, “if thou dost truly desire to love God, behold thyself rich in Christ, however poor and destitute thou art of thyself. For thou mayest humbly appropriate to thyself that which Christ did and suffered for thee” ?.

Christ is truly our own, for we are His mystical body. His satisfactions, His merits, His joys, His glories are ours... O ineffable condition of the Christian, associated so closely with Jesus and with His states ! O surprising greatness of the soul to whom nothing is lacking of the grace merited by Christ in His mysteries ! ta ui nihil nobis ‘desit in ulla gratia !

V

It is true that in their historical, material duration, the mysteries of Christ’s terrestrial life are now past ; but thew virtue remains, and the grace which gives us a share therein is always operating.

In His glorious state, Christ no longer merits ; He could merit only during His mortal life until the hour when He drew forth his last breath upon the cross. But the merits that he had acquired, He never ceases to make ours. Christ was yesterday, He is to-day, He lives throughout the ages: Christus heri, et hodie, ipse et in saecula*. Never let us forget that Christ Jesus wills the holiness of His mystical body : all His mysteries are to bring about this holiness : Dilexit Ecclesitam et seipsum tradidit pro ea, ut illam sanctificaret*. But what is the Church? The small number of those who had the privilege of seeing the Man-God living upon earth ? Assuredly not. Our Saviour did not come only for the inhabitants of Palestine who lived in His time, but for men of all times : Pro omnibus mortuus est Christus®. The gaze of Jesus, being divine, fell upon every soul ; His love extended to each of us ; His sanctifying will remains as sovereign, as efficacious as on the day when He shed His Blood for the salvation of the world.¹⁰

If the time of meriting has ceased for Him, the time of communicating the fruit of His merits endures and will endure until the last of the elect is saved. Christ is ever living : Semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis }.

Let us raise our thoughts up to Heaven, up to the sanctuary whither Christ ascended forty days after His Resurrection ; and there let us behold our Lord ever before the face of His Father : Introivit in caelum, ut appareat NUNC vultui Deo pro nobis?. Wherefore does Christ ever stand before the face of His Father ?

Because He is His Son, the Only-begotten Son of God. “ He thought it not robbery to be equal with God” ®, since He is the true Son of God. The Eternal Father looks upon Him and says to Him : Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genm te*. Now, at this very moment, Christ is there before His Father, and He says to Him: Pater meus es tw® : “Thou art My Father”, I am truly Thy Son. And inasmuch as He is the Son of God, He has the right of | beholding His Father face to face, of treating with Him as equal with equal, as He has the right of reigning with Him for ever and ever.

But St. Paul adds that it is for us that He uses this right ; it is for us that He stands before His Father. What does this signify but that Christ stands before the face of His Father, not only by right of being His Only-begotten Son, the object of the divine complacency, but as our Mediator. He is called Jesus, that is to say Saviour ; this name is Divine, because it comes from God, it was given by God*®. Christ Jesus is in Heaven, at the right hand of His Father as our Representative, our High-Priest, and our Mediator. It was in this capacity that, here below, He did the Father’s will unto the last iota and in all its details, and that He lived all His mysteries ; it is in this capacity that He now lives at the right hand of God, presenting to Him His merits and unceasingly communicating the fruit of His mysteries to our souls, in order to sanctify them : Semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis.

What a powerful motive of confidence it is to know that the Christ Whose life we read in the Gospels, Whose mysteries we celebrate, is ever living, ever interceding for us ; that the virtue of His Divinity is ever operating ; that the power possessed by His Sacred Humanity (as the instrument united to the Word) of healing the sick, consoling the afflicted and giving life to souls, is ever the same. As in the past, Christ is still the infallible Way that leads to God, the Truth that enlightens every man coming - into this world, the Life that saves from death : Christus heri, et HODIE, ipse et im saecula.¹¹

I believe, Lord Jesus, but increase my faith! I have full confidence in the reality and plenitude of Your merits, but strengthen this confidence ! I love You, O Jesus, You Who have manifested Your love in all Your mysteries, in fimem, but make my love ever greater.

Footnotes

1. 1.11 Cor. 1, 5 sq. — 2. Ibid. x1, 26.— 3. Act. rx, 15.— 4. Rom. I 24-32. — 5. I Cor. xv, 8.— 6. I Cor. m1, 3.— 7. Gal. rv, 13.— 8.1 Cor. D, I, 4-5. — 9. Ibid. uy, 2. ↩

2. 1. Eph. m1, 14, 16, 18-19. — 2. Col. 1. 9,— 3. Ibid. 1, 1-3.
   ↩
3. 1. Joan. 1, 18, — 2. II Cor. 1v, 6. — 3. Matth, mI, 17 and XVH, 5: ‘Joan, XII, 28.
   ↩

4. {. Joan. Iv, 14.— 2. Ibid. xtv, 6. — 3. Philipp. tv, 13. — 4.Col.m, 9. —5. Matth. x11, 46. ↩

5. 1, Vitam Domini Jesu die ac nocte tamquam pretiosissimam mar gavitam in arca pectoris tui veconditam habe. Hanc ubique tecum circumfer, hanc internis oculis progrediens quiescensque aimantey inspice, secundum Dei donum quod sese cordi tuo insinuaverit. Blosius, Canon vitae spiritualis, C. 19. — 2. Matth. vir, 25. — 3. Joan. xiv, 6.— 4. Ibid, 1, 18. ↩

6. 1. Iic. XXIV, 32. — 2.1 Joan. Iv, 16.
   ↩
7. 1. Joan. xiv, 31. — 2. Ibid. xvi, 4. — 3. Ibid. vim, 29. — 4. Ibid. X, 10.— 5. Eph. v, 27.— 6. Gal. Ht, 20.
   ↩
8. 1. II Cor. 1x, 15.—— 2, Joan. xm, 15. — 3. Ibid. xtv, 6. — 4. Ibid. viz, 12.— 5. Ps XVIII, 6.
   ↩
9. 1. I Cor. x11, 12sq.; Eph. v, 23.— 2.De Unitate Eccles. 4. —~ 3. Eph. I, 22. — 4, Eph. v, 30.— 5. Ibid. m1, 4-7. — 6. Rom. vI, 4.
   ↩
10. 1. I Cor. I, 30.— 2, Canon vitae spiritualis, c. 37. — 3. Hebr. xu, 8. 4. Ephes. v, 25.— 5.11 Cor, v, 15.
    ↩
11. 1. Hebr. vu, 25.—2. Hebr. rx, 24. — 3. Philipp. 11, 6. — 4. Ps. u, 7.— 5. Ps, LXXXVIII, 27. — 6. Matth. I, 21.
    ↩