277. Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

Meditations no. 263 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Dying with Christ in order to live in him.

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.

In his Letter to the Romans St Paul summarizes the task of our sanctification as one of progressive identification with our Lord. Identify yourself with Christ, who is Life, our Father told us insistently, because if we are faithful to him, Jesus’ own life will somehow be repeated in the life of each one of us, both in its internal development (the process of sanctification) and in our outward behaviour.

The process of our identification with Jesus began at baptism, and is destined to last throughout our life on this earth. St Cyril of Alexandria says that it is the Holy Spirit who conforms us to Christ by means of his sanctifying power; and the Sacraments, our life of prayer, and our mortification are the sources of God’s life in our souls. Our Founder reminded us of this. My child, 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.

Only if we have died with Christ, will we also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

How to practise the spirit of mortification.

We want to be identified with Christ, so as to live in glory with Him. And this aim cannot be achieved without mortification. God our Lord has called us to his Work in order that we become saints; and we won’t become saints if we aren’t united to Christ on the Cross; sanctity can’t exist without the Cross, without mortification.

Quotidie morior, I die every day, said St Paul. We too should die every second, so that Jesus’ life can grow in our souls. We must die little by little, through constant mortification in a thousand details; and it’s nothing to be frightened of, because it will come to feel as natural as our heartbeat.

With God’s help we should find opportunities for this sort of mortification in our daily work. I have always taught you, our Father wrote, that if our mortification impedes or slows down our work, or hinders our professional or social duties, then it’s not true mortification because it’s not being done with due order.

The sort of mortifications that our Lord wants of us are to be found in orderliness, punctuality, and attention to detail in our work; in the faithful fulfilment of the smallest of our normal duties, even when that entails sacrifice; and in fulfilling our obligations and overcoming our inclination to softness.

We do not despise corporal mortification. We practise it in a spirit of fidelity to the Church’s longstanding tradition of Christian living. We have certain practices which are traditional in Christian asceticism, which lead us to acquire the spirit of penance.

But at the same time I will tell you that the most beautiful penance, the most effective mortification, consists of accepting cheerfully whatever your job or daily work brings with it, in all the different fields of human labour carried out in the middle of the world and in your own walk of life, in your relations with your families and friends. Mortificate ergo membra vestra, quae sunt super terram; put to death therefore what is earthly in you. This is the mortification our Father recommended most strongly to his children: Constancy, by which they carry on working day after day in what seems a monotonous way, but is not. For those who love God nothing is monotonous. Everything is something that can be offered to God, and is an opportunity for a conversation with our Lord which always produces new light.

As well as our work, another important opportunity for mortification is our friendly contact with the people around us every day. Bring out your spirit of mortification in those nice touches of charity, eager to make the way of sanctity in the midst of the world attractive for everyone. Sometimes a smile can be the best proof of a spirit of penance, as our Father wrote.

In order to live with Christ, to be ipse Christus, Christ himself, we have to unite our poor little sacrifice to his sacrifice, and feel the sweet weight of the Cross at every moment. We will find plenty of opportunities, because our work and our contact with other people take up most of our day. We can and should concentrate more on these two fields, in order to practise mortification according to the spirit of the Work. The best spirit of sacrifice, our Founder often said, is to maintain one’s enthusiasm for a task one has started on. And also: Look for mortifications that don’t mortify others.

Fruits of mortification.

The faithful of Opus Dei cultivate a spirit of mortification and penance, with a smiling asceticism, as a means of uniting themselves to the redemptive Cross. In this way, mortification and penance are means of purification and of true and solid spiritual progress; they are a practical demonstration of love for Jesus Christ, qui dilexit me et tradidit semetipsum pro me, who loved us and gave himself up on the Cross for each one of us; and finally, they are a preparation for all apostolate, and a means for the perfect carrying out of any apostolate.

In the first place, personal purification. We have defiled our lives with so many sins! Although our Lord has forgiven us in the Sacrament of Penance, our soul has lost its original beauty, and our passions are less subject to our control. Hence our need for mortification, so that, as St Paul says, you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature; and there is also the need to atone for other people’s sins, to offer atonement for those who still stubbornly seek to make the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross sterile.

Mortification as a means to progress in holiness. My dearest children, said our Father, don’t forget that the Holy Spirit is the fruit of the Cross. It is he who sanctifies souls, and brings about the identification with Jesus Christ which is the goal of our whole life. How could he come to us if we did not love mortification?

Besides, in practising mortification we are imitating Jesus Christ, who, throughout the whole of his life on earth, taught us to love suffering and to be equally happy in the midst of abundance or scarcity, cold or heat, renown or dishonour. What does suffering matter if we suffer to console, to please God our Lord, in a spirit of reparation, united to him on his Cross - in a word, if we suffer for Love?…

Mortification, finally, to ensure that our apostolate is effective. When you make up your mind to be mortified your interior life will improve and you will be much more fruitful.

Our resolution today is to make St Paul’s words come true in our own lives: always carrying in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. And we will know that we are truly mortified souls, intimately united with Jesus Christ in his sufferings, if the fruits of mortification are apparent in our daily lives: understanding and tolerance for the defects of others; intolerance for one’s own.

Our Lady, who stood at the foot of the Cross, in mystical identification with Christ’s Passion and Death, now lives in the glory of heaven, sharing fully, body and soul, in her Son’s immortal life. We beg her that we may learn to die to ourselves a little more, so that we may one day sing of the steadfast love of the Lord for ever.