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The Light of the World
“The Lord is nigh” to him who prays to the Lord with a clean heart, with humility and perseverance,
and with trust in God. “Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you”
(Mt 7:7). The Lord is nigh in the celebration of the Mass. There He appears in our midst, the
high priest and mediator, in order that we may put all our petitions into His priestly hands. He
will present them to His heavenly Father and intercede for us. Let us cast all our solicitude on
the Lord, who has offered Himself for us in the Mass. He is continually pleading in our behalf,
and now He beseeches the Father in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. All the merit of His
life and the satisfaction made to His Father on the cross are now again offered to God to obtain
the graces we need.
Why, then, are you yet solicitous? If you resign yourself completely into His hands, and
bury your fears and hopes in His heart, all will be well. “The Lord is nigh; be nothing solicitous.”
Prayer
Incline Thy ear to our prayers, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and enlighten the darkness of our
minds by the grace of Thy visitation. Amen.
Tuesday
“Let your modesty be known to all men. The Lord is nigh” (Epistle). This is the urgent warning
of the Introit and the Epistle of the Mass for the third Sunday of Advent.
“Let your modesty be known to all men.” The Epistle admonishes us to express our joy outwardly
by kindness toward all our fellow men. “Let your modesty be known to all men.” By being kind
to others we are only sharing with others the love Christ expressed for us by becoming man.
The more we exert ourselves to attain union with God, the more difficult this fraternal charity
becomes; for an intensive striving for God makes us more critical of others. We acquire new
standards, to which we expect others to conform. We see, as it were, with sharpened vision,
and we are, therefore, liable to form hasty and unkind opinions of others. We fail to understand
the importance of winning the love of our fellow men by means of forbearance and love. Men
immediately observe in us a definite coldness, an aloofness from our surroundings, a lack of
interest, a certain amount of affectation, and a tendency to faultfinding — an unwarranted
eagerness to teach and criticize others.
“Let your modesty be known to all men. Instead of criticizing others, we should let all men
see and experience our goodness; we should be charitable in our thoughts and words. We must
control our tongue, and when we are called upon to speak of others, we should call attention
only to the good things they may have said and done. Let us, then, be charitable when we speak;
let us always try to praise the virtues of others and excuse their faults, rather than indulge in
petty criticism. Our own conduct, too, should be characterized by kindness. The third Sunday
of Advent invites us to undertake this program of kindness.
“The Lord is nigh.” He is near us by reason of His conception in the womb of the Virgin
Mary. He is near us in the Mass and in Holy Communion, but we too easily forget that He is
also present in our fellow man, even in the man whom we meet in the street. “There hath stood
one in the midst of you whom you know not, . . . who is preferred before me [from all eternity],
the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose” (Gospel). I may find Him in the people I
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