118. Easter Sunday (III)
Meditations no. 164 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Christian life is a process of identification with Christ, and culminates in the Cross and Resurrection.
Todayâs solemnity reminds us that Christian life must be a constant process of imitation of Christ. This process starts with the first grace received in Baptism and transforms the soul gradually until it reaches total identification with our Lord in this life or the next. This is an obligation for all Christians, but it becomes even more pressing with our vocation to the Work, which encourages us to follow Christ so closely that we live with him as did the first twelve, so closely that we identify ourselves with him, we live his very life.
Following Christ is the essence of the Christian life and it culminates on this earth in the same way as Jesusâ own life did: in the Cross and Resurrection, mysteries which are inseparable in the life of Christ. Our meeting with the Cross and Resurrection usually takes place little by little, as on a steady upward slope, almost without our realizing it. Nevertheless, since we are thus united to the crucified and risen Christ, we are sanctified and become co-redeemers. The Holy Cross will make us enduring, always maintaining the spirit of the Gospel, which leads to apostolic activity as the wonderful fruit of prayer and sacrifice. Thus, through the Work of God and each of its members, the great divine secret which St Paul taught to the Philippians is lived once more - a sure path to immortality and glory: through humiliation, to the Cross; and from the Cross, with Christ, to the immortal glory of the Father.
This is what the Church wants to remind us of with todayâs feast. If you have been raised with Christ, exclaims St Paul, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
Living with Christ in God is an ideal which we are happy to spend our lives pursuing. This is the reason why Easter is a time of joy - a joy not confined to this period of the liturgical year, but to be found really and fully in the Christianâs heart. For Christ is alive. He is not someone who has gone, someone who existed for a time and then passed on, leaving us a wonderful example and a great memory.
No, Christ is alive. Jesus is the Emmanuel: God with us. His Resurrection shows us that God does not abandon his own. He promised he would not: Can a woman forget her baby that is still unweaned, pity no longer the son she bore in her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. And he has kept his promise. His delight is still to be with the sons of men.
Christ is alive in his Church. I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. That was what God planned: Jesus, dying on the Cross, gave us the Spirit of truth and life. Christ stays in his Church, its sacraments, its liturgy, its preaching - in all that it does.
Our transformation into Christ is the work of grace and our response to it.
In one of the readings of the Paschal Vigil, the Church invites us to meditate on some words of St Paul:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Our transformation in Christ started with Baptism where our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. Afterwards, through the other sacraments and with our personal response to grace, the life of Christ develops more and more in the soul.
In a special way Christ stays with us in the daily offering of the holy Eucharist. That is why the Mass is the centre and source of Christian life. The presence of the living Christ in the host is the guarantee, the source and the culmination of his presence in the world. Identification with Christ is produced in a special way in Holy Communion. This is because the Blessed Sacrament truly, really, and substantially contains Jesus Christ, as the liturgy reminds us at the offering of the bread and wine: Lord, accept the prayers and offerings of your people. With your help may this Easter mystery of our redemption bring to perfection the saving work you have begun in us.
Thanks to the sacraments, Christ is alive in Christians. Our faith teaches us that man, in the state of grace, is divinized - filled with God. We are flesh and blood, people with sentiments and passions, with sorrows and joys. And this divinization affects everything human; it is a sort of foretaste of the final resurrection âŚ
Christâs life is our life, just as he promised his Apostles at the Last Supper: if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. That is why a Christian should live as Christ lived, making the affections of Christ his own, so that he can exclaim with St Paul: It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me.
With the sacraments, the very special grace of our vocation gradually produces in us an ever more perfect resemblance to Jesus Christ, as long as we respond generously. My child, our Father often said, you are in the Work because he has called you; and he who has called you gives you now all the supernatural means to become ipse Christus, Christ himself. These means, which keep us from straying, and which we can see for ourselves, are our Norms and Customs. Fulfil them, and the time will come when you will be able to say it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and you will feel its truth in the inmost depth of your soul.
Identification with Christ leads us to contemplation and apostolate.
The life of Christ is repeated in some way in the life of each of us, both in its internal element of sanctification, and in external life. This transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit. By fulfilling the Norms with love we facilitate the sanctifying action of the Paraclete. For us, the Norms and Customs are the practical way of coming to have the same mind which was in Christ Jesus.
Each Norm is not only a way of imitating our Lord, but a further step in the inner transformation by which Christ gradually grows in our souls. There is a perfect continuity in the Norms. They are related to one another; they are perfectly arranged. But do you know what the thread that ties them together is? Our contemplative vocation. A person who tries to live this, and who reaches a point where for a long time they live it almost without effort (although in fact there is struggle, even if there doesnât seem to be any), is a person who lives the Life of God, and who can say what I like so much to repeat: vivo autem iam non ego: vivit vero in me Christus - it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Identification with Christ is an impossible goal to attain with our human strength alone. It is, however, within the scope of the grace God gives us if we do everything we can to respond. St John Chrysostom says: Christ has given you the power to be like him according to your own strength. Do not be surprised to hear this. What you should fear is not to be like him.
But as our Founder tells us, Christ gives us his risen life, he rises in us, if we become sharers in his Cross and his Death. We should love the Cross, self-sacrifice and mortification. Christian optimism is not something sugary, nor is it a human optimism that things will âwork out wellâ. No, its deep roots are awareness of freedom and faith in grace. It is an optimism which makes us be demanding with ourselves. It gets us to make a real effort to respond to Godâs call.
Not so much despite our wretchedness but in some way through it, through our life as men of flesh and blood and dust, Christ is shown forth: in our effort to be better, to have a love which wants to be pure, to overcome our selfishness, to give ourselves fully to others - to turn our existence into a continuous service.
One consequence of this identification with Christ is zeal for souls. Our Lord came to set the world aflame with his charity: I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! Each member of the Work should be like a burning ember which sets alight or at least raises the spiritual temperature of everything around. Our Father made a brief summary of this aspect of our identification with Christ: If we are other Christs, if we behave as children of God, wherever we may be we will set people on fire: Christ sets people ablaze.
Of all created beings, Mary is the one who most fully identified herself with Christ. She is full of grace. We appeal to her intercession to obtain for us from the Holy Spirit the grace of reproducing Jesus Christâs life in our own lives, more and more every day.