Our Contact with the Mysteries of Jesus

Summary. — I. We associate ourselves with Christ’s mysteries in meditating on the Gospel, and, above all, in uniting ourselves, in the Liturgy, to the Church, the Bride of Jesus. — II. Variety and fruitfulness of the grace contained in the mysteries set before us in the Liturgy. — III. The dispositions that we ought to have in order to derive full benefit from the contemplation of these mysteries are faith, adoration, love.

HE mysteries that Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word, lived here below were lived for us ; in them, He shows Himself as our Model, but, above all, He wills to make only one with our souls as being the Head of one mystical body of which we are the members.

Such even is the virtue of these mysteries that it is always active and efficacious ; from Heaven, where He is seated at the right hand of God His Father, Christ continues to communicate the fruit of His states to souls so as to realise in them a divine resemblance to Himself.

Participation in the mysteries of Jesus requires the co-operation of the soul. If God reveals the secrets of His love towards us, it is in order that we may accept them, that we may enter into His views and designs, and adapt ourselves to the Eternal Plan, apart from which neither holiness nor salvation are possible. If Christ opens to us the unfathomable treasures of His states and mysteries, it is that we may draw from them and make them bear fruit, on pain of being, at the last day, cast out of the kingdom into the outer endless darkness, like the negligent servant in the Gospel.

But we do not seek for what we do not know ; the will does not attach itself to a good that the intelligence does not set before it : Ignoti nulla cupido.

How then, now that Christ has taken His sensible

Christ in His Mysteries. 2 presence away from us, are we to know His mysteries, their beauty, harmony, virtue and power ? Above all, what are. we to do in order to be put into life-giving contact with’ them and thereby to reap the fruits which will transform our souls and effect in them union with Christ, the indispensable condition for being numbered among His disciples ?

This is what remains for us to see so as to complete the exposition of this truth that the mysteries of Jesus are ours as much as they are His.

I

The knowledge of Jesus and of His states is to be derived first of all from the Gospel.

These sacred pages, inspired by the Holy Spirit, describe the life of Jesus upon earth and contain His teachings. It is sufficient for us to read these pages, so simple and so sublime—but to read them with faith—in order to see and hear Christ Himself. The soul who, in prayer, often has recourse to this unrivalled book, comes little by little to the knowledge of Jesus and of His mysteries, penetrates. into the secrets of His Sacred Heart and understands that magnificent revelation of God to the world which is Jesus : Qui videt me, videt et Patrem+. For this book is inspired; light and power go out from it to enlighten and strengthen souls that are upright and sincere. Happy are they who open it every day! They drink at the very well-spring of living waters.

Another way of knowing the mysteries of Jesus is by associating ourselves with the Church in her liturgy.

Before ascending into heaven, Christ said to the Apostles upon whom He founded His Church : “ All power is given to me in heaven and in earth?... As the Father hath sent me, I also send you’... He that heareth you, heareth me” *... And this is why the Church is like an extension, throughout the ages, of the Incarnation ; she replaces Jesus with us ; she has inherited the divine tenderness of her heavenly Bridegroom ; from Him she has received as dowry, with the power of sanctifying souls, the riches of grace acquired by Jesus upon the Cross on the day of their mystical espousals.¹

We can then say of the Church, all proportion guarded, what her Bridegroom said of Himself: she is for us the way, the truth and the life—The way, because we only come’ to God through Christ Jesus, and we can only be united to Christ by being incorporated (in fact or in desire) in the Church, by baptism.—The truth, because with all the authority of her Founder, she has the custody of the truths brought to us by Revelation which she proposes to our belief—Finally, the life, because by the public worship which she alone has the right of organising, by the sacraments which she alone administers, she distributes the life of grace to souls and maintains it within them.

You at once see that we sanctify, ourselves according to the measure in which we allow ourselves to be taught and guided by the Church, for, says Jesus to His Bride, “ He that heareth you, heareth me’’; and to hear Jesus, is not that to go to the Father ?

We know that it is especially by the liturgy that the Church brings up the souls of her children in order to make them like unto Jesus and thus perfect that image of Christ which is the very form of our predestination *.

Guided by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus Himself, the Church unfolds before the eyes of her children, every year from Christmas to the Ascension, the complete cycle of Christ’s mysteries, sometimes greatly abridged, sometimes in their exact chronological order, as during Holy Week and Paschal time. She thus makes each mystery of her Divine Bridegroom to be lived over again by an animated and living representation ; she makes us pass through each stage of His life. If we let ourselves be guided by her, we shall infallibly come to know the mysteries of Jesus and above all enter into the thoughts and feelings of His Divine Heart. Why is this ?

The Church, knowing the secret of her Bridegroom, takes from the Gospel the pages which best place each of these mysteries in relief ; then, with perfect art, she

DE CHRIST IN HIS MYSTERIES illustrates them with passages of the psalms, prophecies, the epistles of St. Paul and the other Apostles, and quotations from the Fathers of the Church. She thus places the teachings of the Divine Master, the details of His life, and the substance of His mysteries in a clearer and fuller light.

At the same time, by the choice of readings from the Holy Scriptures and sacred authors, by the aspirations that she suggests to us, by her symbolism and ritual, she places our souls in the attitude demanded by the meaning of these mysteries, she fosters in our hearts the requisite dispositions in order that we may assimilate the spiritual fruit of each mystery in the greatest possible measure.

II

For although it is always the same Saviour, the same Jesus, pursuing the same work of our sanctification, each mystery, however, is a fresh manifestation of Christ for us; each has its special beauty, its particular splendour, as likewise its own grace. The grace that flows for us from the Feast of the Nativity has not the same character as that which the celebration of the Passion brings to us ; we ought to rejoice at Christmas, to feel sorrow for our sins when we contemplate the unspeakable sufferings whereby Christ expiated them. In the same way, the inward joy that floods our souls at Easter arises from another source and has another splendour than that which thrills us when we celebrate the coming of our Saviour upon earth.

The Fathers of the Church speak more than once of what they call the vis mysterii, the virtue and signification of the mystery which is being celebrated. In each of Christ’s mysteries we may apply to Christians what St. Gregory of Nazianzen said of the faithful at the feast of Easter : Nthil autem daturus est tantum, quantum si se ipse obtulerit hujus mysterii rationem probe intelligentem, “We cannot offer a gift more pleasing to God than to offer ourselves with a perfect understanding of the mystery. ”

Some there are who see nothing in the celebration of Christ’s mysteries beyond the perfection of the ceremonies, the beauty of the music and liturgical ornaments, the harmony of the ritual. There is all this ; and that is excellent.²

First of all because the Church, Christ’s Bride, having herself regulated all the details of the worship of her Bridegroom, their perfect observance honours God and His Son Jesus. “It is an established law for all the mysteries of Christianity, that to reach our intelligence they must first be placed before our senses. This had to be so in order to honour Him Who, being invisible by nature, willed to appear under a sensible form for love of us’ ?.

Next, it is a psychological law of our nature — matter and spirit — that we should pass from the visible to the invisible. The outward elements of the celebration of the mysteries serve as rungs in a ladder whereby our souls may rise to the contemplation and love of heavenly and supernatural realities. This is, moreover, as we sing at Christmas, the dispensation of the Incarnation itself : Ut dum visibiliter Dewm cognoscimus, PER HUNC in invisibilium amorem rapiamur *.

These outward elements, therefore, have their use, but we must not exclusively stop at them ; they are but the fringe of Christ’s garment ; the virtue of the mysteries of Jesus is above all interior, and it is this virtue that we must seek before all. Holy Church asks of God more than once as the fruit of Communion itself to give us the right apprehension of the virtue proper to each mystery so that we may be penetrated by it and live thereby : Ut mysteria quae solemni celebramus officio, purificatae mentis intelligentia consequamur*. This is to know Christ “in all wisdom, and spiritual understanding ” *.

1. Bossuet, Seymon upon the Word of God. — 2. The Holy Council of Trent expressly teaches us as follows, on the subject of the rites of the Mass, the primordial act of the Liturgy : Cum natura hominum ea sit ut non facile queat sine adminiculis exterioribus ad rerum diwinarum mediiationem sustolli, proplerea pia matey Ecclesia rvitus quosdam.... instituit, ceremonias item adhibuit quo mentes fidelium per haec visibtha veligionis et pietatis signa ad rerum altissimayum... contemplationem excitarentur. Sess. XXII, 2,5. This doctrine can be perfectly applied to the whole liturgy. — 3. Postcommunion of the Epiphany and Transfiguration. See also the Postcommunion for the Octave of the Epiphany : Ut mysterium.... et puro cernamur intuitu et digno percipiamus affectu. — 4. Col. I, 9.

Christ’s mysteries, are truly not only examples, and subjects of contemplation ; they are likewise sources of grace.

It is said of Jesus that when He was upon earth “ virtue went out from Him, and healed all” : Virtus de illo extbat et sanabat omnes. Christ Jesus is ever the same ; if, with faith, we contemplate His mysteries, either in the Gospel or in the liturgy that the Church sets before us, the grace that He merited for us when He lived these mysteries is produced within us. In this contemplation we see how Jesus, our Exemplar, practised virtue ; we share the particular dispositions of His Divine Heart in each of these states ; but above all we find in Him the special graces that He then merited for us.

The mysteries of Jesus are states of His Sacred Humanity ; all His graces came from His Divinity in order to be communicated to His Humanity, and, through His Humanity, to each member of His mystical body : Secundum mensuram donationis Christi?. In taking a human nature from our race, the Word, so to speak, espoused all humanity to Himself, and every soul shares—in a measure known to God, and proportioned, in what regards ourselves, to the degree of our faith—in the grace that inundates Christ’s blessed soul.

Each of Christ’s mysteries, representing a state of the Sacred Humanity, thus brings to us a special participation in His Divinity. For example, at Christmas we celebrate the Birth of Christ upon earth ; we sing that “ wonderful exchange ” *, which was made in Him between the Divinity and Humanity. He takes a human nature from us so as to make us partakers of His Divine nature, and each Christmas, worthily celebrated, is for the soul, by a more abundant communication of grace, like a new birth to divine life. Upon Calvary, we die to sin with Christ ; Jesus gives us the grace to detest more deeply all that offends Him, During Paschal time, we participate in that liberty of soul, in that more intense life for God, of which He is the model in His Resurrection. On the day of His Ascension, we ascend with Him to Heaven to be like Him, by faith and desire, with the Heavenly Father, in sinu Patris+, in the intimacy of the divine sanctuary.³

Following Christ Jesus in this manner in all His mysteries, uniting ourselves to Him, we share, little by little, but surely, and each time more fully and deeply, in His divinity and in His divine life*. According to the beautiful words of St. Augustine, that which was formerly brought to pass in a divine reality, is spiritually received in fervent souls by the repeated celebration of these mysteries : Quod semel factum in rebus veritas indicat, hoc saepius celebrandum in cordibus pus solemmtas renovat °.

It is then true to say that when we contemplate Christ’s different mysteries, in their successive order, we do so not only in order to evoke the remembrance of events wrought

_for our salvation, and to glorify God for them by our praise and thanksgiving ; it is not only to see how Jesus lived and strive to imitate Him, but furthermore that our souls may participate in each special state of the Sacred Humanity and draw forth from it the proper grace that the Divine Master attached to it, in meriting this grace as Head of the Church for His mystical body.

This is why the Sovereign Pontiff Pius X, of glorious memory, was able to write that “ the active participation of the faithful in the sacred mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church is the first and indispensable source of the Christian spirit” 4,

On this subject there is in fact a truth of great importance too often forgotten or even sometimes unknown. Man can imitate Christ, our Model, in two ways. He can strive to imitate Him by purely natural efforts, as when one aims at reproducing a human ideal presented by some hero or other personage whom one loves or admires. There are people who think it is in this manner that we

I. Joan. 1, 18. 2. We dwelt on these ideas more at length in the conference Vox Sponsae in our preceding volume Christ the Life of the Soul. — 3. Sermo CCXX, in vigil. Paschae 11. — 4. This is what the Vicar of Christ says: ‘‘ Our keenest desire being that the true Christian spirit shouid flourish again in every way and be maintained in all the faithful, it is necessary, before all things, to see to the holiness and dignity of the place where the faithful assemble precisely in order to find therein this spirit at its first and indispensable source, namely : the active participation in the sacred mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church.” Pius x, Motu proprio of Nov. 23'¢ 1903. must imitate our Lord and reproduce in ourselves the traits of His adorable Person.

This is to lose sight of the truth that Christ is a divine model. His human beauty and virtues have their roots in His Divinity and thence derive all their splendour. We can, and assuredly must, with the help of grace, make every effort to comprehend Christ and to model all our virtues _ and actions upon His, but the Holy Spirit alone—Dizgitus | paternae dexterae — is capable of reproducing within us the true image of the Son, because our imitation must be of a supernatural order.

Now this work of the Divine Artist is wrought above all in prayer based upon faith and enkindled by love. While, with the eyes of faith and the love that yearns to give itself, we contemplate Christ’s mysteries, the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Christ, acts within our inmost soul and fashions it, by His sovereignly efficacious touches, in such a way as to reproduce within it, as by a sacramental virtue, the traits of the Divine Model.

This is why the contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus is so fruitful in itself ; this is why the essentially supernatural contact with the states of her Spouse, into which the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, places us in the liturgy is so vital for us. There is no surer way nor more infallible means for making us one with Christ ?.

III

This contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus will only produce such great fruit in us if we bring thereto certain dispositions which can be summed up into three : faith, reverence and love.

Faith is the primordial disposition for placing us in vital contact with Christ.

We celebrate mysteries, that is to say human and visible signs of a divine and hidden reality. To comprehend, to touch this reality, faith is needed. Christ appears as both man and God in each of these mysteries ; often even, as in the Nativity, and in the Passion, the divinity is more than ordinarily hidden ; in order to grasp it, to pierce the veil and reach to it, to see God in the Child lying in the manger, or in the One Who was “ made a curse for us”? hanging on the gibbet of Calvary, or again under the Eucharistic appearances, faith is needed : Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui ?.⁴

Without faith we shall never penetrate into the depths of the mysteries of Jesus ; but with it, we have no need to envy Christ’s contemporaries. We do not see Our Lord as those who lived with Him, but it is given to us by faith to contemplate Him, to dwell with Him, and be united to Him in a no less efficacious way than it was for those who were His contemporaries. We sometimes say : Oh, if I had lived in His time, if I might have followed Him with the multitude, with the disciples ; if I might have served Him like Martha, or knelt listening to His words like Magdalen ! But He has said : BEATI qui non viderunt

_ et crediderunt*, “ Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed”. If we have faith, we can remain as united to Jesus as could those who saw Him with their eyes or touched Him with their hands.

I will even add this: it is the measure of this faith that, for our part, determines the degree of our participation in the grace of Jesus contained in His mysteries. See what took place during His terrestrial life : those who lived with Him, who were in material contact with Him, like the Shepherds and Wise Men at the manger, the Apostles and all who sought Him during the years of His public life, St. John and St. Mary Magdalen at the foot of the Cross, the disciples who saw Him risen and ascending to Heaven, all received grace according to the degree of their faith. It is always to faith that He grants the miracles asked of Him ; every page of the Gospel shows us that He made faith an indispensable condition for receiving His grace.

We cannot now see Jesus with our bodily sight. Christ has ascended to Heaven. But faith takes the place of sight ; and the degree of this faith, as was the case with Christ’s contemporaries, is, with love, the degree of our union with Him. Let us never forget this important truth: Christ Jesus, without Whom we can do nothing, and of⁵

Whose fulness we must all receive, will only give us a share in His grace according to the measure of our faith. St. Augustine says it is not in walking that we approach Christ, but it is in believing : Non enim ad Christum ambulando currimus, sed credendo*. i

Thus the stronger and deeper is our faith in Jesus, the Incarnate Word, the Son of God, the nearer we approach Christ.

Moreover faith gives birth within us to two other sentiments which must enter into the attitude of the soul in the presence of Christ. These are reverence and love.

We must approach Christ with inexpressible reverence. For Christ Jesus is God, that is to say the Almighty ; the Infinite Being Who possesses all wisdom, all justice, all perfections ; the Sovereign Master of all things ; the Creator of all that is and the Last End of all that exists ; the source of all beatitude. Wherever He may be, Jesus is always God. Even when He gives Himself with the most benignity and liberality, He ever remains the One before Whom the highest angels veil their faces : Adorant Dominationes, tremunt Potestates. In the manger, He allows Himself to be touched ; the Gospel tells us that the multitude thronged Him on every side? ; during His Passion, He lets Himself be struck in the face, smitten and insulted ; but He is ever God. Even when He is scourged, and spat upon, when He dies upon the Cross it is ever He Who created heaven and earth by His power and governs them by His wisdom ; and therefore, whatever be the page of the Gospel that we read, or the mystery of Jesus that we celebrate, we must adore Him.

-When we have a living faith, this reverence is so deep that it makes us fall at the feet of this Man-God to adore Him. Tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi? : “ Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living God” ; et procidens adoravit eum *.

Adoration is the first impulse of the soul drawn to Christ by faith : Love is the second. Love underlies all Christ’s mysteries. The humility of the manger, the obscurity of the hidden life, the fatigues of the public life, the torments of the Passion, the glory of the Resurrection, all is due to love : Cum dilexisset suos, in finem dilexit eos*. It is love, above all, that is revealed and shines out in the mysteries of Jesus. . And it is above all by love that we understand them : Et nos credidimus caritatt.⁶

If we want our contemplation of Christ’s mysteries to be fruitful,-we must contemplate them with faith, with reverence, but above all with love—the love that seeks to give itself, to yield itself up to the divine good pleasure in order to accomplish it. ;

It is then that the contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus bears fruit. Qui autem diligit me... manifestabo et meipsum 2. “T£ any one love Me”, says our Lord, “I will manifest Myself to him”. What’does that mean? If any one loves Me in faith, contemplates Me in My Humanity, in the different states of My Incarnation, to him I will discover the secrets of My Divinity.

Happy, thrice happy, is the soul in whom so magnificent a promise is fulfilled ! Christ Jesus will reveal “the gift of God” ®* to her ; by His Spirit ‘“ Who searcheth... the deep things of God” *, He will make this soul penetrate into the sanctuary of this sacramentum absconditum® which His mysteries are ; He will open to her those “ storerooms ” of the King® of which the Canticle of Canticles speaks, where she will be inebriated with truth and joy. Doubtless, this intimate manifestation of Jesus to the soul, while she is here below, will not reach to the Beatific Vision, which remains the privilege of the blessed in heaven ; but it will fill her with divine enlightenment, fortifying her in her ascension towards God: Scire supereminentem scientiae caritatem Christi UT IMPLEAMINI IN OMNEM PLENITUDINEM DEI.

This is truly the fountain of living water springing up for us unto life everlasting : Fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam ; for is not everlasting life to know God and His Divine Son, to confess with our lips and our lives that Jesus is the beloved Son in Whom the Father has placed all His delight, and in Whom He wills that we should find all things ?⁷

NOTE IL.

Extract from “Catechism of Christian Doctrme published by order of His Holiness Pius X”. (1913).

“The feasts (of the Church) were instituted in order that we . may render in common to God the supreme worship of adoration, praise, thanksgiving and reparation. All has been so well arranged and adapted to circumstances — the ceremonies, words, music, the outward observance in every detail — as to cause the mysteries, truths, or facts which we celebrate to penetrate deeply into our minds and lead us to corresponding sentiments and acts. If the faithful were well instructed in this matter and celebrated the feasts in the spirit that the Church willed in instituting them, a notable renewal and increase of faith, piety, religious instruction would be obtained, and, consequently, the inward life of Christians would thereby be reanimated and made better”.

“Let every good Christian, by the help of sermons or of some appropriate book, strive to understand and to make the spirit of each feast his own, considering its object and special end, meditating upon the truth, virtue, miracle, or benefit therein especially commemorated, seeking in every way to derive personal improvement from it. He will thus better know God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, and will love them more fervently ; he will love the sacred Liturgy, the preaching of the Word of God, and Holy Church, and will even seek to promote this love in others. Every feast should hence be for him a Lord’s Day, a true feast which will rejoice, restore, and fortify his soul and fill him with fresh vigour for bearing the sufferings and daily struggles of the week”.

NODES

“..The great secret for leading this free, pure and already almost superhuman Christian life, [of which the life of Jesus upon earth at His coming forth from the tomb is the very real type and to the imitation of which Baptism obliges us], is not so much to consider the vanity of the world, the fragility and baseness of this present life, our own personal misery and passions, all those evils into which, without the help of grace, we should so easily fall, and our faults and sins, which we ought, however, to hate and deplore : (all that is useful, all that is indispensable ; everyone who is wise will remember and think of it at certain hours ; but

OUR CONTACT WITH THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS col

‘it is not always the hour for thinking of it, and it is not, at ali events, what is the most efficacious for us). What is most efficacious, here as everywhere, the most decisive, the most triumphant, is, as far as one can, and habitually, to look upwards ; it is to consider God and Jesus ; the perfections of God, His rights, His attiibutes, His appeals, His provocations, His patient waiting, His designs, His promises ; the mysteries of Jesus and the divine graces flowing from what He said, did, ordained and suffered. It is ever to remember that He is personally the point of depariure and the Chef of the Christian life ; that the great virtue of baptism is to incorporate us in Him,to give us His life, to make us of His race, and to pour forth His Spirit within us, that is to say a light and a strength whereby we are enabled, and so remain, not only to avoid sin, as St. John expressly says, but moreover to judge all things, to discern our way and to follow it, and ascending from light to light, from liberty to liberty, to reach the inward state of him who said: “I live, now not I ; but Christ liveth in me”.

Footnotes

1. 1. Joan, XIv, 9. — 2, Matth: xxv, 138) — 3) Joan xx" 2r— 4. Luc. x, 16.
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2. 1. S. Greg. Nazian. Ovat. I in sanct. Pascha Iv.
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3. 1. Tuc, Vi, 19.— 2. Eph. Iv, 7 — 3. Antiphon for the office of the Circumcision.
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4. 1. See, at the end of this conference, a quotation, too long to be given here, from one of the masters of the spiritual life.
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5. 1. Gal. II, 13.— 2. Hymn Pange lingua. — 3. Joan. XX, 29.
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6. 1. Tract. in Joan, XXVI, 3. — 2. Marc. v, 31. — 3. Matth. xvi, 16. — 4. Joan, rx, 38.
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7. 1. Joan, xm, 1.— 2. Ibid. x1v, 21. — 3. Ibid. 1v 10. — 4.1 Cor. 11, to. — 5. Ephes. m1, 9.— 6. Cant. I, 3.
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