9781644135945

The Light of the World
“Stand fast in the Lord.” We are incorporated in Christ through baptism. From that moment
on Christ relives His life in us. His thoughts and desires are not centered on earthly
things, on lust and uncleanness, on honors, pleasures, and luxurious living. All that is sinful
or displeasing to His father is entirely foreign to Him; Christ has the will of His Father
always before His eyes. Christ lives in us here on earth the life that we shall live in eternity,
a life of continual union with God. Thus His conversation is in heaven. This “conversation”
consists in the contemplation of the Father, a continual devotion to what the Father loves
and to the unbroken adoration and praise of the Father. It is in effect an eternal “I go to the
Father” ( Jn 14:28).
Christ has joined us to Himself through baptism in order that He may be able to live His life
again in us, and live it to the end. By means of Holy Communion, He daily deepens this union in
order that we may be filled with His spirit and His strength, that we who are the members of the
mystical body may share more perfectly in the life of the head. The more perfectly we become
united to Him, the more perfectly is our conversation in heaven. Thus we also become more
perfectly detached from worldly goods through a joyful self-abnegation and a renunciation of
inordinate occupations, possessions, desires, honors, and worldly esteem. In Christ the things
of this world lose their value for us. We become like the Apostle who, once he had caught a
glimpse of the glory of heaven (2 Cor 12:1 ff.), considered as dung all that he had heretofore
valued and trusted in. He is now “in Christ”; he is possessed by Christ, and he forgets all that
lies behind him, all that is earthly. He longs only for the things that await him, and attends only
to the mission to which God has called him through Christ Jesus (Phil 3:5 ff.). Today the liturgy
directs our attention to him: “Brethren, be followers of me” (Epistle).
“Many walk that are enemies of the cross of Christ” (Epistle). They have renounced Satan
and his works, and have received the impression of the sign of the cross on their breasts and
foreheads to show that they belong to Christ crucified. Through their baptism they were engrafted
as branches on the vine which is Christ, in order that they might live by Him. “The flesh
that is reborn through baptism is the flesh of the Crucified” (St. Leo the Great). “With Christ I
am nailed to the cross” (Gal 2:19). “But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). But
today some Christians walk as “enemies of the cross of Christ,” for they “mind earthly things”
(Epistle). The Apostle wept bitterly over these wayward Christians, and today the Church does
the same. “Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord; Lord hear my prayer” (Offertory).
But she also prays for them: “Remit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the sins of Thy people, that by
Thy kindness we may be delivered from the trammels of our sins” (Collect), from the trammels
of earthly goods and possessions.
In the person of the ruler of the synagogue the Church approaches the Lord, “My daughter
is even now dead; but come, lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live” (Gospel). And He
assures her: “I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction” (Introit). “Amen I say to you,
whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive, and it shall be done to you”
(Communion).
“Stand fast in the Lord.” We must stand fast in the Lord through our continual consciousness
of our living union with Him who is our head. We have been elevated above all that is merely
natural or temporal, for “our conversation is in heaven” (Epistle).
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