9781644135945

The Light of the World
With St. Paul we do not want “to know anything, . . . but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor
2:2). Our life of renunciation, mortification, and suffering is a vital and joyful life with Christ, a
partaking of His death in order that we may live with Him. We love His cross and poverty, the
mortifications and trials He sends us. Imparting to us His own strength in suffering, He leads
us, by means of our union with Him in His passion, upward to Himself, to the heights of His
victory, to His resurrection and glory.
Whomsoever God wills to raise up to sanctity, He first nails to the cross. For this reason those
who have been entirely crucified with Christ, are also those to whom God gives the greatest
graces. As sufferings were for Christ the head, so they are for us His members, the gate through
which we must enter into the bliss of His transfiguration. From Christ’s point of view, the lack of
suffering is a great evil. If we are immersed in Christ’s death and suffer with Christian endurance,
we are pleasing to Him. If we suffer patiently when we are sick and abandoned by others, when
we are unable to devote ourselves to spiritual exercises as we wish, we please Him more than
we would by great works. The highest of all human achievements is to know how to suffer with
Christ. “We . . . are baptized in His death.”
The liturgy introduces us daily into the school of the cross during the Sacrifice of the
Mass. Here we enter more and more deeply into union with Christ’s sacrifice and passion
in order that in Holy Communion we may be united with Him in a new and more perfect
union of life.
Prayer
Perfect Thou my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps be not moved. Incline Thy ear, and
hear my words; show forth Thy wonderful mercies, Thou who savest them that trust in Thee,
O Lord. (Offertory.)
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
The Mass
How to increase and perfect the supernatural life we received in baptism (Easter) through the
descent of the Holy Ghost (Pentecost) is the theme of today’s Mass. Today, as we enter the house
of God to attend Mass, the liturgy directs our gaze to the risen Christ reigning with heavenly
majesty and glory as God and King: “The Lord is most high, He is terrible; He is a great King
over all the earth.” He has extended His dominion over me, too, and over anything that belongs
to me, since in baptism He wrested me from the power of sin and hell. Gratefully and with the
voice of joy I acknowledge His benign providence and His dominion over me.
By baptism we are called to a great work: “As you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness
and iniquity unto iniquity, so now yield your members to serve justice unto sanctification”
(Epistle). Great is the fruitfulness arising from a life which is in accordance with the grace of
baptism: “Sanctification and . . . life eternal. For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God
is life everlasting; in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Epistle). Thus St. Paul portrays the unbaptized
and the baptized, the unredeemed and the one redeemed through grace, the slave of sin and
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