319. Seventeenth Thursday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 295 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Reciting and meditating on the Adoro te devote helps us to appreciate more deeply the meaning of our priestly soul.

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, / Quae sub his figuris vere latitas - O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore thee, / Who truly art within the forms before me.

Once again, as on every Thursday, we recite and meditate on this Eucharistic hymn. There is no sense of monotony in our prayer because the Adoro te devote is a marvellous profession of the truths of faith. I make use of its words, our Father said in 1970, to increase my union with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and as an external expression of faith in his Real Presence, now that this great Mystery of Love is under attack. We feel the need to draw close to Jesus because all of us in the Work have a priestly soul: altare Dei est cor nostrum: our heart is God’s altar, to use a phrase of St Gregory the Great. And this priestly soul leads us to love Jesus, who is present in the tabernacle and who immolates himself for us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

In the Holy Mass we have the firm foundation on which to set about gracefully and joyfully raising the edifice of our holiness, closely united to our Lord and following in his footsteps. By remaining close to him we learn so very many things: the small mortification of every moment, how to offer up our work, how we need to be transformed into Christ, how to go unnoticed in everyday life, and how to spend ourselves generously in the apostolate. Where better than in the hidden sacrifice of the God-Man, for us to learn to lose our life in an unspectacular and joyful way?

In Cruce latebat sola Deitas, / At hic latet simul et humanitas - God only on the Cross lay hid from view, / But here lies hid at once the manhood too.

When we recite this hymn we confess both the Divinity and the Humanity of our Lord. As our Founder explained when this Custom of ours first started, this profession of faith was, and continues to be, a necessity, my children. Today there is a furious attack being waged against all the Church’s dogmas: against the holiness of marriage - as I have often told you -against the holiness of the priesthood, against the Holy Eucharist, against the Pope, against everything… And it is only right and proper for us to express our love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Doesn’t it make you very happy to be able to say to him: peto quod petivit latro poenitens?… (I make the same prayer as the repentant thief). After acknowledging that he is there out of love for me, I ask him to forgive me as he forgave the repentant thief who hung on the Cross beside him… You are not at all obliged to recite this hymn, and if you don’t do so, it is not even a small fault. But my advice to you is not to omit it, because it will set you on fire with love for the Blessed Sacrament. We surrender everything to Jesus because we know that as long as we stay with him we are safe. Our heart is at rest when it reposes in his, and when we have no other wish than to love him.

In the Holy Mass we contemplate the perfect Model of what our self-giving ought to be. There we are given Christ sacrificed, Christ laden with gifts, the loving Christ, the humble Christ. There he awaits the soul with divine longing, that it might melt into his loving embrace and not set any limits to his love - all the more so, now that so many have stopped loving him. In former times there used to be very holy souls who spent the whole day before our Lord exposed in the Monstrance, praying, petitioning and atoning.

Nowadays this happens a lot less. Let us fill with affection all the little visits we make to the oratory, even though they may be very short, to say to our Lord: we love you, and it really hurts us that you have been so forgotten about. Adoro te devote, latens Deitas: My God, hidden for love in the sacramental species, I adore you.

Our day should revolve around the Mass.

Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor; / Deum tamen meum te confiteor - Thy wounds, as Thomas saw, I do not see; / Yet thee confess my Lord and God to be.

In our Lord’s company we learn the reason for cheerful mortification, led by the hand of Christ, whose life on earth was a continuous journey towards the Cross. From the day that God called us to his Work our life has only been able to follow one course: either we seek the Cross, or we go astray. Our Lord teaches us to advance speedily and cheerfully, and to accept gratefully the small sacrifice of every moment, or the big sacrifice he might occasionally ask us for. This is what our Lord Jesus wants, for we need it if we are to follow him closely. There is no other way. This is the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul - in yours. Be docile and present no obstacles to God, until he makes your poor flesh like that of Jesus on the Cross.

Pie pellicane, Iesu Domine, / Me immundum munda tuo sanguine - O loving Pelican! O Jesu Lord! / Unclean I am, but cleanse me in thy Blood.

Close to Jesus, at Holy Mass, we die daily to sin and rise with him to the life of joy and service that God and the Work expect of us. We have to live our vocation simply and naturally, without doing anything spectacular, convinced that Christ our Lord is the only victim. If we unite our little troubles - the small ones and the big ones, which are all the same really - to the boundless sufferings of our Lord the Victim, their value is increased, they become a treasure, and then we can carry Christ’s Cross readily and gracefully.

Our priestly soul enables us to turn our whole life into a continuous act of praise to God amid your ordinary activities: constant prayer and reparation, petition and sacrifice for all souls. And you should do all this in close, purposeful union with Christ Jesus in the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar. Our whole day, with all its joys and longings, acquires, in union with Christ’s Sacrifice, the co-redeeming value of the Holy Mass. With a fully lay mentality, our Father wrote, you exercise this priestly spirit when you offer to God your work, your rest, the joys and setbacks of the day, the holocaust of your bodies spent in the effort of constant service. All of this is a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

This is how we truly fulfil our Founder’s desire to serve God, not only at the Altar, but in the whole world - which is an altar for us. All the works of men are done as if on an altar, and each of you, in that union of contemplative souls which is your day, say in some way “your Mass”, which lasts for twenty-four hours, in expectation of the Mass to follow, which will last another twenty-four hours, and so on until the end of our life.

How well do we attend Holy Mass?

O memoriale mortis Domini, / Panis vivus, vitam praestans homini; / Praesta meae menti de te vivere, / Et te illi semper dulce sapere - O thou, memorial of the Lord’s own dying! / O living bread, to mortals life supplying! / Make thou my soul henceforth on thee to live; / Ever a taste of heavenly sweetness give.

Christ’s sacrifice is perfect and most pleasing in the eyes of God: it is the only offering truly suited to the divinity. Therefore we should examine how well we prepare ourselves at night to receive our Lord the next morning. That way the fruit we obtain will be greater every day. And if we are closely united to Jesus in the Eucharist, we will try to be continually in God’s presence in the middle of the ordinary things that occupy each of us. As we journey on this earth, we will be seeking God at all times, in everything. Having in our souls the same sentiments as Christ on the Cross, we will make our entire life into one ceaseless act of atonement; it will be a constant petition and a permanent sacrifice on behalf of all mankind. Our Lord will make it instinctive for you - supernaturally instinctive - to purify all your actions, raise them up to the order of grace, and turn them into instruments of apostolate. Only thus can we become contemplative souls in the middle of the world, as our vocation requires, and be truly priestly souls, so that everything in us becomes a continuous act of praise of God.

We have to love the Holy Mass and make it the centre of our day, uniting to it all our resolutions, our concerns and our joys. My son, my daughter, our Father writes, think about the Holy Mass: how we should celebrate or attend it. Consider how the Angels are there. Consider that what you are doing or taking part in is something divine. Think how, on the altar, Christ is offering himself once more for you and for me. And you will earnestly desire to imitate him in his humility, in the way he empties himself completely in the Host; and you will be filled with thanksgiving and adoration, desires of reparation, and petitions. You will offer yourself up, your arms outstretched, as another Christ, ipse Christus (Christ himself), ready to be nailed to the sweet wood of the Cross for love of souls.

Iesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, / Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio: / Ut te revelata cernens facie, / Visu sim beatus tuae gloriae - Jesus, whom for the present veiled I see, / What I so thirst for, oh, vouchsafe to me; / That I may see thy countenance unfolding, / And may be blest thy glory in beholding.

In union with our Blessed Lady we learn to enter more deeply into the mystery of the Altar so that our whole life may be a continuation of our last Mass and a preparation for the next one, until one day it merges into the praise and thanksgiving of the blessed in heaven.