The bitter becomes sweet ...

After they had crossed the sea, a three days' march ensued, during which they made camp at a place where they found water so bitter that they could not at first drink it. But wood placed in the water made the drink agreeable to those who were thirsty.

The history agrees with what now happens: for to the one who has left behind the Egyptian pleasures which he served before crossing the sea, life removed from these pleasures seems at first difficult and disagreeable. But if the wood be thrown into the water, that is, if one receives the mystery of the resurrection which had its beginning with the wood (you of course understand the “cross” when you hear “wood”), then the virtuous life, being sweetened by the hope of things to come, becomes sweeter and more pleasant than all the sweetness that tickles the senses with pleasure.

…

It is not difficult to harmonize the sequence of the history with spiritual contemplation. He who left the Egyptian behind dead in the water, was sweetened by the wood, was delighted in the apostolic springs, and was refreshed by the shade of the palm trees, is already capable of receiving God. For the rock, as the Apostle says, is Christ, who is moistureless and resistant to unbelievers, but if one should employ the rod of faith he becomes drink to those who are thirsty and flows into those who receive him, for he says, I and my Father shall come to him and make our home with him.

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From The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa (pages 85 to 87)
Class: Foundations of Spirituality

By sheer grace, God became man

Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.

You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.

Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.

He has become our justice, our sanctification, our redemption, so that, as it is written: Let him who glories glory in the Lord.

Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of a virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, man is justified not by himself but by God.

Truth has arisen from the earth: because the Word was made flesh. And justice looked down from heaven: because every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.

Truth has arisen from the earth: flesh from Mary. And justice looked down from heaven: for man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.

Justified by faith, let us be at peace with God: for justice and peace have embraced one another. Through our Lord Jesus Christ: for Truth has arisen from the earth. Through whom we have access to that grace in which we stand, and our boast is in our hope of God's glory. He does not say: "of our glory," but of God's glory: for justice has not proceeded from us but has looked down from heaven. Therefore he who glories, let him glory, not in himself, but in the Lord.

For this reason, when our Lord was born of the Virgin, the message of the angelic voices was: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.

For how could there be peace on earth unless Truth has arisen from the earth, that is, unless Christ were born of our flesh? And he is our peace who made the two into one: that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity.

Let us then rejoice for this grace, so that our glorying may bear witness to our good conscience by which we glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord. That is why Scripture says: He is my glory, the one who lifts up my head. For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?

Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.

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From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop

Liturgy of the Hours: Office of Readings: December 24

The loss of ultimate realities

In the past, especially in the peasant cultures, man was immediately dependent on nature and his life was intimately bound up up with the natural cycle of the seasons, of seed time and harvest, and this dependence on powers which lay outside his own control made him familiar with the conceptions of mystery and divine providence. Today mystery has been banished from man’s daily life. If things go wrong, he looks for help in the government or to science rather than to God and religion. No doubt this has freed mankind from the burden of superstition and irrational fear, but it has also left man at the mercy of his own inventions and has substituted the omnipotence of that man-made monster, the bureaucratic, technocratic state—the New Leviathan—for the mystery of nature and the power of God. When these new powers are developed to their full extent by the social organization of the mass media of communication and by scientific methods of psychological control, the secular state becomes almost automatically totalitarian, so that no room is left for man’s spiritual freedom.

Nevertheless the essential nature of the human situation has not been changed by the advent of science and technology. Modern man my deify these things and set up a religion of “Scientific Humanism” which offers the utopian prospect of unlimited progress. But all such constructions are inevitably fragile, since they are dependent on human will and passion as well as intelligence, and we have seen in our own generation how the irrational element in human nature may prove stronger than scientific intelligence, so that it perverts all the resources of technological civilization to lower and destructive ends.

Human nature always retains its spiritual character—its bond with the transcendent and the divine. If it were to lose this, it must lose itself and become the servant of lower powers, so that secular civilization, as Nietzsche saw, inevitably leads to nihilism and to self-destruction. If we look at the world today in isolation from the past and the future, the forces of secularism may seem triumphant. This, however, is but a moment in the life of humanity, and it does not possess the promise of stability and permanence. …

But we know not only from our faith as Christians, but from the dispassionate study of the history of human culture, that this is a transitory and exceptional state of things. Soon or later the tide is bound to turn and man will recover his sense of spiritual values and his interest in ultimate realities.

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From “The Formation of Christendom” by Christopher Dawson (37-38)

Let us make haste to the saints

Why should our praise and glorification, or even the celebration of this feastday mean anything to the saints? What do they care about earthly honors when their heavenly Father honors them by fulfilling the faithful promise of the Son? What does our commendation mean to them? The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning.

Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints. But our dispositions change. The Church of all the first followers of Christ awaits us, but we do nothing about it. The saints want us to be with them, and we are indifferent. The souls of the just await us, and we ignore them.

Come, brothers, let us at length spur ourselves on. We must rise again with Christ, we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. We should not only want to be with the saints, we should also hope to possess their happiness. While we desire to be in their company, we must also earnestly seek to share in their glory. Do not imagine that there is anything harmful in such an ambition as this; there is no danger in setting our hearts on such glory.

When we commemorate the saints we are inflamed with another yearning: that Christ our life may also appear to us as he appeared to them and that we may one day share in his glory. Until then we see him, not as he is, but as he became for our sake. He is our head, crowned, not with glory, but with the thorns of our sins. As members of that head, crowned with thorns, we should be ashamed to live in luxury; his purple robes are a mockery rather than an honor. When Christ comes again, his death shall no longer be proclaimed, and we shall know that we also have died, and that our life is hidden with him. The glorious head of the Church will appear and his glorified members will shine in splendor with him, when he forms this lowly body anew into such glory as belongs to himself, its head.

Therefore, we should aim at attaining this glory with a wholehearted and prudent desire. That we may rightly hope and strive for such blessedness, we must above all seek the prayers of the saints. Thus, what is beyond our own powers to obtain will be granted through their intercession.

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From a sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot

From the Office of Readings, November 1

What is the interior life? Part II

THIRD TRUTH: I would be depriving myself of one of the most effective means of acquiring this interior life if I failed to strive after a precise and certain faith in the active presence of Jesus within me, and if I did not try to make this presence within me, not merely a living, but an extremely vital reality, and not one which penetrated more and more into all the life of my faculties. When Jesus, in this manner, becomes my light, my ideal, my counsel, my support, my refuge, my strength, my healer, my consolation, my joy, my love, in a word, my life, I shall acquire all the virtues. Then alone will I be able to utter, with sincerity, the wonderful prayer of St. Bonaventure which the Church gives me for my thanksgiving after Mass: Transfige dulcissime Domine Jesu.

FOURTH TRUTH: In proportion to the intensity of my love for God, my supernatural life may increase at every moment by a new infusion of the grace of the active presence of Jesus in me; an infusion produced:

1. By each meritorious act (virtue, work, suffering under all its varying forms, such as privation of creatures, physical or moral pain, humiliation, self-denial; prayer, Mass, acts of devotion to Our Lady, etc.).

2. By the Sacraments especially the Eucharist.

It is certain, then (and here is a consequence that overwhelms me with its sublimity and its depth, but above all, fills me with courage and with joy), it is certain that, by every event, person or thing, Thou, Jesus, Thou Thyself, dost present Thyself, objectively, to me, at every instant of the day. Thou dost hide Thy wisdom and Thy love beneath these appearances and dost request my co-operation to increase Thy life in myself.

O my soul, at every instant Jesus presents Himself to you by the GRACE OF THE PRESENT MOMENT—every time there is a prayer to say, a Mass to celebrate or to hear, reading to be done, or acts of patience, of zeal, of renunciation, of struggle, confidence, or love to be produced. Would you dare look the other way, or try to avoid His gaze?

FIFTH TRUTH. The triple concupiscence caused by original sin and increased by every one of my actual sins establishes elements of death that militate against the life of Jesus in me. Now in exact proportion as these elements develop in me, they diminish the exercise of that life. Alas! They may even go so far as to destroy it outright.

Nevertheless, inclinations and feelings contrary to that life, and temptations, even violent and prolonged can do no harm whatever as long as my will resists them. And then (what a consoling truth!) like any other elements in the spiritual combat, they serve only to augment that life, in proportion to my own zeal.

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From The Soul of the Apostolate by Jean-Baptiste Chautard

Why 'pro-spirituality, anti-religion' fails

Faith itself cannot arise except under a ‘religious’ form, therefore institutional, therefore doctrinal, moral, ritual, and so on. Furthermore, the ‘word of God’ does not fall directly from the clouds. It too comes to us mediated in a body of scriptures (the Bible). Now, because it was produced in a culture very different from our own, the Bible resists every immediate appropriation and needs to be regulated by an ecclesial tradition lest it reveals to everyone only what she or he wants to find in it, as is proved by the multitude of sects that have flourished since the beginning of the church. … To oppose ‘prophethood’ to ‘priesthood,’ ‘word’ to ‘rite,’ ‘life’ to the ‘sacristy,’ and so on is merely an ideological delusion. One becomes Christian only by entering an institution, and the modes of Christian behavior which may appear the most ‘personal’ (meditative prayer, for example) or the most ‘authentic’ (concern for others) are always the expression of an apprenticeship interiorized for a long time and of habits inculcated by institutional and highly ritualized processes. By wanting to free oneself from these institutional mediations, one falls victim to an imaginary dream of immediacy whose harmful results are easily seen.

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From The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body by Louis-Marie Chauvet (p. 112)

Class: Introduction to the Sacraments and Worship

What is the interior life? Part I

FIRST TRUTH. Supernatural life is the life of Jesus Christ Himself in my soul, by Faith, Hope, and Charity; for Jesus is the meritorious, exemplary, and final cause of sanctifying grace, and, as Word, with the Father and Holy Ghost, He is its efficient cause in our souls.

The presence of Our Lord by this supernatural life is not the real presence proper to Holy Communion, but a presence of vital action like that of the action of the head or heart upon the members of the body. This action lies deep within us, and God ordinarily hides it from the soul in order to increase the merit of our faith. And so, as a rule, my natural faculties have no feeling of this action going on within me, which, however, I am formally obliged to believe by faith. This action is divine, yet it does not interfere with my free will, and makes use of all secondary causes, events, persons, and things, to teach me the will of God and to offer me an opportunity of acquiring or increasing my share in the divine life.

This life, begun in Baptism by the state of grace, perfected at Confirmation, recovered by Penance and enriched by the Holy Eucharist, is my Christian life.

SECOND TRUTH. By this life, Jesus Christ imparts to me His Spirit. In this way, He becomes the principle of a superior activity which raises me up, provided I do not obstruct it, to think, judge, love, will, suffer, labor with Him, by Him, in Him, and like Him. My outward acts become the manifestations of this life of Jesus in me. And thus I tend to realize the ideal of the INTERIOR LIFE that was formulated by St. Paul when he said: “I love, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

Christian life, piety, interior life, sanctity: in all these we find no essential difference. They are only different degrees of one and the same love. They are the half-light, the dawning, the rising, and the zenith of the same sun. …

Thus I can define [interior life] as the state of activity of a soul which strives against its natural inclinations in order to REGULATE them, and endeavors to acquire the HABIT of judging and directing its movements IN ALL THINGS according to the light of the Gospel and the example of Our Lord.

Hence: a twofold movement. By the first, the soul withdraws from all that is opposed to the supernatural life in created things, and seeks at all times to be recollected: aversio a creaturis. By the second, the soul tends upwards to God, and unites itself with Him: conversio ad Deum.

The soul wishes in this way to be faithful to the grace which Our Lord offers to it at every moment. In a word, it lives, united to Jesus, and carries out in actuality the principle: “He that liveth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit” (John 15:5).

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From The Soul of the Apostolate by Jean-Baptiste Chautard