Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Everyday of the Year

[Stone]

49. THE FIRST MIRACLE OF JESUS

[SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY]

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, I beg You to transform my soul as You once transformed the water for the bride and bridegroom at Cana.


MEDITATION

1. Now that the cycle of Jesus’ childhood has ended, the liturgy begins to speak of His public life. During the days following the Epiphany, it recalled Our Lord’s baptism in the Jordan, the event which marked the beginning of His apostolate. Today it tells us about His first miracle, destined, like the Epiphany and His baptism, to manifest to the world His glory as the Son of God.

“And the third day, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the Mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also was invited...to the marriage” (Gosp: Jn 2,1-11). For the first time, we see the Blessed Virgin in her maternal function as mediatrix of all graces. The Cana miracle, Jesus’ first, was worked precisely because of her intercession which was so powerful that it made Jesus anticipate His hour. “My hour is not yet come,” the Savior had answered His Mother, and Mary was neither dismayed by this apparent refusal nor did she insist on her request. Secure in the knowledge of her Son and full of loving confidence in Him, she says to the servants, “ Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye.” Her humility, consideration for others, faith, and trustful abandonment win Jesus, and to show us the greatness of her power over His divine heart, He grants her wish; the miracle takes place.

Mary’s faith is admirable; and also worthy of admiration is the faith and prompt obedience of the servants who, following Mary’s advice, immediately carry out the orders of Jesus; they fill the waterpots with water and then pour from them. Not a moment of doubt, not a protest—they simply obey. May we not learn from them how to believe, how to obey? Shall we not have recourse to Mary’s powerful intercession?


2. “The water was made wine.” A miracle much more wonderful than the one which Jesus performed at Cana is repeated daily on our altars; a little bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, and given to us as the Food of our souls. The Communion antiphon of today’s Mass repeats the passage in the Gospel which speaks of the water made wine. Yes, for us pre-eminently, Jesus has “kept the good wine until now.” It is the precious wine of the Holy Eucharist, inebriating our souls with His Body and Blood.

There is another wonderful transformation which Jesus accomplishes in our souls by means of grace; the water of our poor human nature becomes a sharer in God’s divine nature; it is transformed into the sacred wine of the life of Christ Himself. Man becomes a member of Christ, the adopted child of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Today our Lady tells us how we can and should foster this precious transformation; she says to us as she once did to the servants at the Cana feast, “ Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye.” In these words, Mary invites us to that complete transformation in Christ which is effected by the generous practice of all that He teaches and commands. Let us, then, with humble, docile hearts, with lively faith and perfect abandonment, entrust ourselves to Jesus through Mary’s hands.


COLLOQUY

How encouraging it is, O Lord, for me to find Your sweet Mother beside You today! Everything becomes simple and easy near Mary, beneath her maternal eye, under the protection of her powerful intercession. How good You were, O Jesus, to give us Your dear Mother to be the Mother of our spiritual life! I will follow Mary’s precious advice and do everything You tell me, everything You wish me to do.

I want to imitate the blind, prompt obedience of the servants at the wedding feast: to obey You as they did, always and in everything, Your instructions, counsels, and precepts—to obey You likewise in the person of my superiors, even when I do not see the reason for their orders and arrangements, even when they expect difficult things of me or something which seems to me absurd. Furthermore, I want to imitate Your Mother’s complete abandonment when, in her great thoughtfulness, she confided to You her wish to help the bride and bridegroom in their difficulty. Your apparent refusal did not trouble her; she did not persist in her request, but she was sure, absolutely sure, that Your infinitely good and tender heart would provide, and provide abundantly.

O Lord, with a like confidence and trust, I lay my needs before You today. Do You see them? My soul is like the waterpots at the feast: full of water, the cold, insipid water of my frailty and weakness, which I never seem to overcome completely. I can say with the Psalmist: “The waters have come even unto my soul” (Ps 60,1), and they submerge me and I am as one drowned in incompetence and weakness. O Lord, I believe that, if You will, You can change all this water into the precious wine of Your love, Your grace, and Your life. You are so powerful, so merciful, that my wretchedness, great as it is, does not astonish You, because in comparison with You, who are infinite, it is always very small. Just as in the Mass the few drops of water which are poured into the chalice are changed with the wine into Your Blood, O Lord, take my wretchedness, plunge it into Your heart, make it disappear in You.

50. “I AM THE TRUTH”

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, Incarnate Word, splendor and brightness of the Father, instruct and illumine my soul.


MEDITATION

1. Jesus came to give us life and to show us the way which leads to it. He, the Teacher of life, is also its source.

At the beginning of Jesus’ apostolate, the heavenly Father presented Him to the world as its divine Teacher. The Holy Spirit, descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove immediately after His baptism, and the voice from heaven saying, “ This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (Mi 3,17) are, as it were, the divine credentials guaranteeing His teaching and giving the basic reasons for it. Who could refuse to believe His doctrine if He is the Son of God and the Holy Spirit is with Him? Two years later on Mt. Thabor, the same presentation is renewed: the same voice, the same words, “ This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” but this time an explicit mandate is given us: “ Hear ye Him!” (ibid. 17,5). By these words an even greater light is cast upon the teaching mission of Christ.
 
Jesus revealed Himself as Teacher, as the one and only Teacher : “ You call Me Master...and you say well, for so I am” (Jn 13,13). “Neither be ye called masters; for one is your Master, Christ” (Mt 23,10). Strengthening the validity of this claim, Jesus declared that He was the Life and the Truth. He even equates the latter with His origin and mission, as when He declared to Pilate: “For this was I born, and for this I came into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth” (Jn 18,37). Those who listen to His word, hear the truth: “If you continue in my word...you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (ibid. 8,31.32).


2. A man may or may not be a teacher; in either case, he remains a man. Jesus, on the other hand, is Teacher by nature, because He is the Incarnate Word. God is Truth; all the truth which is in the Father is communicated to the Word, and comes to us through Christ. Jesus is Teacher because He is the Word, the substantial Word of the Father, and as such, He possesses and manifests all truth, all wisdom, all knowledge; indeed, He Himself is the Truth, the Wisdom, the Splendor, the Light of the Father. It is because of this that Jesus could say that He was the one and only Master. Other teachers know only a part of the truth; Jesus not only knows all truth, but because He is the Word, He is the Truth. Other teachers set forth truths which are superior to them, truths which exist outside themselves, and of which they can have but an imperfect knowledge. Jesus, on the contrary, teaches the truth which He Himself is by nature. His teaching, therefore, is supreme, unique, and infallible. This is why He said, “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in Me may not remain in darkness” (ibid. 12,46), and even more explicitly, “I am the light of the world” (ibid. 8,12). Jesus alone could call Himself the light of the world, because the Word alone is the light.

The teaching of Jesus does not consist then in mere human words, however sublime and elevated they might be, but it is the revelation of God Himself. This is the Word to which He invites us to open our minds and hearts.


COLLOQUY

“O divine Father, You have opened the Book of Life, Jesus Christ, before us, Your children. In Him, the God-Man, we find all that we could wish to know. Reading in Him, we shall be filled with holy knowledge; we shall find all the doctrine we need for ourselves and for others. But, O my soul, if you want to be enlightened and instructed, you must not read this Book of Life hastily or superficially, but slowly and attentively; then you will be inflamed with divine love and you will know the truth.

“Above all, O my soul, try to have a true knowledge of God and yourself; you can obtain this only by reading, meditating, and studying the Book of Life, Christ, Our Lord ” (St. Angela of Foligno).

O my Jesus, true light, drive away the clouds of ignorance which come from my evil nature, and give me the grace to seek the truth with a sincere heart and to love it; for You, the Incarnate Word, are the Truth.

Be the only light on my path, the only Master to guide my steps. I need You, eternal Truth, to liberate me from the slavery of my frailty and wretchedness, and from the passions which often blind my conscience and hinder me from complete adherence to the good and the true which You teach me.

Your truth teaches me that You are He who is, and that I am one who is not; that You alone have worth, and that I have no value; that You are All, and I am nothing, and if there is any good in me, it is a wholly gratuitous gift from You.

O Jesus, grant that I may seek Your truth and love it, even when it is painful, or when, like a two-edged sword, it lays bare my miseries, my faults, my sins. Let Your truth penetrate my whole being and all my acts; make me courageously reject every light which does not emanate from You!

O my only Master, make me comprehend the vanity of all knowledge and thought which does not reflect Your truth. O Lord, submerge my soul in Your light, penetrate my mind and heart with Your truth. Unite me to You, O eternal Truth! O Jesus, Incarnate Word, Incarnate utterance of my God, instruct my soul. I wish to learn everything from You, to “ spend my life in listening to You” (E.T. IT).

51. THE DOCTRINE OF JESUS

PRESENCE OF GOD - Behold me at Your feet, O Lord, that I may hear Your doctrine, the doctrine of eternal life.


MEDITATION

1. The truths Jesus taught are so important and essential that, to know them or not, to believe them or not, is a matter of life or of death. His doctrine is not optional; rather, it is so essential that we cannot attain eternal life without it. “Whosoever believeth in Him...may have life everlasting. ...but he that doth not believe is already judged: because he believeth not in the Name of the only-begotten Son of God” (Jn 3,16.18). Compared to the truths taught by Jesus, all others are insufficient.

Because the doctrine of Jesus is absolutely indispensable, He proved its truth by miracles in order to help our weak faith to adhere to it. To the blindly obstinate Jews who refused to believe in Him, He said, “ The works which the Father hath given Me to perfect; the works themselves which I do, give testimony of Me” (ibid. 5,36). When the disciples of John the Baptist asked Him if He were the Messiah in whom they were to believe, He answered simply, “Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again” (Mt 11,4.5). The Gospel almost always concludes a recital of the wonders performed by Jesus with such words as: “and His disciples believed in Him” (Jn 2,11); “All wondered and glorified God” (Mk 2,12). Jesus is the only Teacher who can guarantee with miracles the truth of His doctrine.


2. Jesus wants everyone, even the simple and the ignorant, to understand His doctrine; He often said that He came especially to evangelize the poor. Jesus is not a teacher seeking glory and praise; He seeks only the good of His disciples. He uses simple language which can be understood by all, and He illustrates the most sublime truths by very ordinary things. Thus, for example, He uses the water in the well to represent the living water of grace, and the vine to explain the mystery of our union with Him, the true Vine. Further, Jesus does not wait for us to seek Him; He is the Master who goes Himself in search of His disciples, and He seeks them everywhere—in the tax-collectors’ office, in the homes and haunts of the publicans, in the streets and squares, in the country. He teaches in the synagogues and from the porch of the Temple as well as in Peter’s boat or on the grassy slopes of the hillsides. He welcomes Nicodemus at night and stops at the well of Sichem to wait for the Samaritan woman.

Jesus explains His doctrine in a manner which is adapted, not only to the mentality and needs of the people of Palestine, but also to that of all future generations. His words are always living and timely, suited to the needs of every age and every people.

His hearers were divided into two groups: the proud, obstinate hearts who refused to believe, even when they saw the most astounding miracles, and of whom Jesus said, “If I had not come, and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin” (Jn 15,22); and the upright hearts, sincerely eager for the truth, who accepted His words with faith and love. Jesus rejoiced because of them, saying, “I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones ” (Mt 11,25).


COLLOQUY

“O Lord, my God, Thou hast indeed the words of life, wherein, if we will seek it, we mortals shall all find what we desire. But what wonder is it, my God, that we should forget Thy words, when our evil deeds have made us so infirm and foolish?... What is this, Lord?... How blind of us to seek repose where it cannot possibly be found!... Reflect that we do not understand ourselves, or know what we desire, nor are we able to ask as we should. Give us light, Lord. Behold, we need it more than the man who was blind from his birth, for he wished to see the light and could not, whereas nowadays, Lord, no one wishes to see it.”

“You alone, O Lord, teach us truth and show us the way of salvation. O unhappy are we, for well do we know and believe these truths, yet our inveterate habit of not reflecting upon them makes them so strange to our souls that we neither know them nor seek to know them. Grant, then, Lord, that Your words may never be absent from my thoughts ” (T.J. Exc, 8-13).

O Jesus, do not permit me to allow myself to be attracted by maxims and doctrines which do not come from You.

What will it profit me to possess every kind of knowledge, if I do not know You, O Lord, and the truths which You came to teach us? Do not permit me, O Jesus, to be content with superficial knowledge, but give me the light and the intelligence I need to penetrate the profound meaning of Your teachings. Your words will not be made clear by reasoning and eager studying, but by humility, love, and an ardent desire to possess You. Create in me, O Lord, a heart that is upright, humble, sincere, and able to love and understand the meaning of Your divine words.

O my dear Master, I lay open my soul before You, as I would expose a piece of linen to the rays of the sun. I kneel before the tabernacle, knowing that I shall learn much more from You in prayer and recollection than in perusing learned books. But, O Lord, I shall never leave Your book, the Gospel : “I find in it all that my poor soul needs, and I am always discovering there new lights and hidden, mysterious meanings ” (T.C.J. St, 8).

O Lord, grant that I may understand the words of Your Gospel, and I shall be sufficiently wise.

52. JESUS SHOWS US THE FATHER

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, You are the Word who reveals the Father. You alone can teach me who God is. Speak, Lord, for Your servant heareth!


MEDITATION

1. “Now this is eternal life : that they may know Thee, the only true God” (Jn 17,3), Jesus tells us; and St. John the Evangelist says, “ No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (ibid. 1,18). Only Jesus, the Son of God, can give us knowledge of the Father: He alone, as God’s Word, is by nature the Revealer of God.

Our words express our thoughts; likewise, the Word, the substantial utterance of the Father, expresses the Father and reveals the nature of God. When the Word was made flesh, He continued to be what He was, the Word, the Splendor of God, the Revealer of God. Becoming incarnate, He made Himself known to men, and accessible to our human capacity, but that implied no lessening of His divine nature.

Even when Jesus does not speak, His very Person and actions reveal God to us. He often remarked sadly, in the face of  misunderstanding, “ If you knew Me, you would know My Father also” (cf. ibid. 8,19; 14,7). To Philip who, at the Last Supper, asked Him to show them the Father, He replied in a tone of gentle reproach, “ Have I been so long a time with you, and have you not known Me? Philip, he that seeth Me seeth the Father also.... Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?” (ibid. 14,9.10).

Jesus is “ the image of the invisible God” (Col 1,15): it is sufficient to look upon Him with faith and love in order to know God. From no other master, through no other way can we acquire such knowledge, indispensable for eternal life. “Neither doth anyone know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him” (Mt 11,27).


2. When by reason we trace creatures back to their first cause, we are able to know that God exists, that He is the Creator and Ruler of the universe. The knowledge obtained thus, however, is always mediate, indirect, and far from perfect. It is arrived at only with great difficulty and often after many errors.

There are other divine truths which cannot be reached by the human intellect alone, for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the universal Fatherhood of God, our incorporation in Christ and our elevation to the supernatural state. We would never be able to arrive at these profound truths, which disclose so many things about God and His intimate life, and which at the same time are concerned with our supreme destiny, if Jesus had not come to reveal them to us. He does this with the highest possible authority: “We speak what We know, and We testify what We have seen...” (Jn 3,11); “ I speak that which I have seen with My Father” (ibid. 8,38). “ You do not know Him; but I know Him, because I am from Him” (ibid. 7,28.29).

Jesus made use of the parables of the prodigal son and the lost sheep to describe in touching words the goodness of His heavenly Father, who “maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad” (Mt 5,45), and who “ feedeth the birds of the air and giveth raiment to the lilies of the field ” (cf. ibid. 6,26.28), thus revealing God’s infinite mercy toward us, and His fatherly Providence, which receives us and provides for us as His children. The revelation of these great truths is further clarified by the works of Jesus: His concern for material and spiritual misery, His love which keeps Him continually seeking souls to be saved, even to giving His life for them. The good tidings that Jesus brought to the world consist above all in this revelation of God as infinite charity, of God as our loving Father; the New Testament and the whole Christian life are based entirely on this revelation.


COLLOQUY


O Jesus Christ, Son of God, Word and Wisdom of the Father, You are the Book of Life; You came into the world to teach us, by Your life, Your death, and Your doctrine.... O uncreated God, make me worthy to understand You, as Your Son revealed You, His Father, to us” (St. Angela of Foligno).

O Jesus, I, too, ask with Philip: “Show me the Father,” but I quickly add : Show Him to me in You, for the Father is in You, and You in Him, so that looking at You, I see and find Your Father. Your humanity is a veil which hides and conceals the divinity of the Father, divinity which is also Yours because You are God, like the Father and the Holy Spirit. You are the Word, O Jesus, but the Incarnate Word; and the utterance of the Father is, so to speak, written in Your flesh, so that I can read it in You, the one, true Book of Life. You reveal God to me by Your whole Being, Your Person, Your actions, and Your words. Always and in every way You repeat one great truth to me: God is Love. Eternal life consists in knowing You, O Jesus, and through You knowing God. No one but You can give me this knowledge; I can learn it only from You. How necessary it is, then, and how much I want You to teach me! “O my Lord and true God! He who knows You not, loves You not. Oh, what a great truth is this! But alas, alas, Lord, for those who seek not to know You!” (T.J. Exc, 14). O Jesus, it is surely deplorable that the world is not interested in knowing You and Your Father; but the offense would be beyond imagination if a soul who is consecrated to You should act in this way, or should be satisfied to know You only superficially!

O Lord, reveal Yourself to my soul, because I want to know You, to know You in order to love You, to serve You and to regulate my life according to Your wishes. “O God, when a woman in the world is about to marry, she knows beforehand whom she is to marry, what sort of a person he is and what property he possesses. Shall not we, then, who are already betrothed, think about our Spouse...who is His Father, what is the country to which He will take us, what are the riches with which He promises to endow us, what is His character, how we can best make Him happy, what we can do to give Him pleasure, and how we can conform our character to His? O my Spouse, must we, then, make less account of You than is made of men?” (T.J. Way, 22).

53. JESUS THE TEACHER OF SANCTITY

PRESENCE OF GOD - I need You always, my divine Master, because You alone are holy and can show me the true way of holiness.


MEDITATION

1. The knowledge of God in which eternal life consists, as Jesus has said, is not the kind of knowledge which stops at the enlightenment of our intellects, but knowledge which stirs up our wills to love the God whom we know, and which regulates our whole life so that it will be pleasing to Him. Consequently, when Jesus has brought us to the knowledge of the Father, He then teaches us what we must do to please Him: “Be you therefore perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5,48). In this brief formula, the
divine Teacher reveals two great truths : God is the model of sanctity, because He alone is the fullness of perfection, free from every shadow of fault or failing; secondly, God’s will in our regard is that we also be perfect, which we shall be according to the degree in which we try to imitate God’s perfection.

Yet how can a mere creature imitate divine perfection? Jesus, our Life and our Teacher, makes it possible for us. The grace which Jesus merited for us and which He is continually giving us, together with the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, raises us from the human level to the supernatural, divine level; we are made sharers in the divine nature, the divine life. Faith also makes us sharers in God’s truth and in the knowledge which He has of Himself and of all things. Charity gives us a participation in the infinite love with which God loves Himself and His creatures.

However, we cannot see God’s perfection and holiness, because He “inhabiteth light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen, nor can see” (1 Tm 6,16). But Jesus reveals God to us: He manifests Him to us in Himself, His works, and His words.

Hence, Jesus is the perfect Teacher of holiness. He teaches us that God wants us to be holy, shows us God as the supreme, infinite ideal of holiness, and enables us to start out toward this sublime ideal.


2. When Jesus says to us : “ Be you perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect, ” He gives us a model of perfection that we can never exhaust. The perfection of the very greatest saints when compared with God’s perfection is nothing. Jesus teaches us, then, not to rest complacent in the degree of perfection we have attained, nor to be satisfied with our progress or even our efforts. Compared with the lofty ideal He sets before us, we are nothing. This is why He tells us never to stop, never to say, “This is enough.” No matter how much progress we make, we never advance far enough. Who, indeed, can become as just, as merciful as God? As long as we are on earth, our holiness will always consist in a continual tending toward divine perfection. “Strive for it untiringly and uninterruptedly,” says St. Augustine.

Among the perfections of God which Jesus has revealed, charity has first place. It is so important that, when He asks us to imitate God, His first requirement is an intense practice of charity toward God and our neighbor. The precept of charity, like that of striving for perfection, has no limits : however much we love God we shall never succeed in loving Him as much as He is capable of being loved, that is, as much as He deserves; and however much we love our neighbor we shall never love him as God loves him.

Jesus thus invites us to rise to perfection, to a holiness which has no limits and which requires of us a continual advancement, progress and ascension. Although we always do little, a mere nothing compared with so lofty an ideal, Our Lord is satisfied with this little, provided we put all our good will into it.


COLLOQUY

O my divine Master, what a sublime ideal of perfection You set before my soul! With Your help, I shall go on in this way with the one desire of following Your teaching, of doing the will of God, and of pleasing our heavenly Father. If in comparing myself to the saints, I see so many defects, how shall I ever put my misery before the infinite perfection of God? But, O Jesus, there is no question about it, for Your words resound clearly in my mind: “ Be you perfect, as Your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I can do nothing better, then, than to imitate St. Thérése’s charming, audacious method. Instead of becoming discouraged, I shall say to You as she did, “ O Lord, You would not inspire me with a desire which could not be realized; therefore, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to become great, so I must bear with myself and my many imperfections; but I will seek out a means of reaching heaven by a little way—very short, very straight, and entirely new. We live in an age of inventions : there are now lifts which save us the trouble of climbing stairs. I will try to find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too small to climb the steep stairway of perfection.... O Jesus, Your arms, then, are the lift which must raise me even to heaven. To reach heaven I need not become great; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become even smaller than I am” (T.C.J. St, 9).

These are Your two arms, O Jesus: the Holy Spirit whom You have sent to me, and the grace which You have given me: sanctifying grace and actual grace, by which You continually sustain the steps of those who trust in You. I must admit that if I am often discouraged, finding the path of perfection too difficult and wearisome; if I give up at last, because I think that a certain effort or act of generosity is too much for me, it is simply because I forget to have recourse to You, to cast myself into Your arms and implore You to help me. O my loving Master, You who never abandon us, but are always ready to help us if we have recourse to You, teach me to fly to You for refuge continually, with full confidence, asking Your help in every
difficulty.

54. WHAT JESUS' TEACHING EXACTS

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, I beg You to make me understand all Your instructions and then give me strength to put them into practice.


MEDITATION

1. In calling us to imitate the holiness of His heavenly Father, Jesus summons us to an unrelenting war against sin, which is in direct opposition to God’s infinite perfection and is the greatest offense against Him. In all His teachings He tries to inculcate in us a deep hatred of sin, especially of pride, hypocrisy, and obstinate willful malice, all of which constitutes a state of complete opposition to God.

Jesus, who shows such great mercy toward sinners, has scathing words for the Pharisees: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites : because you are like to whited sepulchres.... You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?” (Mt 23,27.33). Again, He describes the ugliness of sin and its disastrous effect on man, lowering him to a state of complete moral degradation, such as that of the prodigal son who, because he had left his father’s house, was reduced to “ feeding swine ” (Lk 15,15).

“Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin” (Jn 8,34); a slave of sin cannot be a servant of God; hence, the words of the Master: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other : or he will sustain the one, and despise the other ” (Mt 6,24). Jesus, our Savior, came to destroy sin by His death; it is precisely by His death that He shows us most clearly the terrible malice of sin. Sin is such a great enemy of God and has such a destructive power that it brought about the death of the divine Master.


2. Only mortal sin is completely opposed to God; this opposition is so great that it separates the soul from God. However, every sin, even venial sin, and every fault and imperfection, is in opposition to God’s infinite holiness. Our nature, wounded as a consequence of original sin, bears within itself the seed of sin, in the form of evil tendencies or habits. If we desire to follow Jesus, who offers us the perfection of His heavenly Father as a norm for our life, we must engage in an intense struggle against sin in order to destroy its deepest roots and even its slightest traces in us. This is just what Jesus teaches us with the brief words : “ Deny thyself.” We must deny “self” with all its imperfect habits and inclinations; and we must do so continually. Such a task is fatiguing and painful, but it is indispensable if we wish to attain sanctity. Jesus says: “ How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it!” (Mt 7,14). We approach the infinite perfection of God only in the measure in which we take upon ourselves the work of complete self-denial. Hence, all the masters of the spiritual life insist so strongly on detachment and self-renunciation as the indispensable foundation of the spiritual life. St. John of the Cross offers a soul who is desirous of attaining union with God the harsh way of the “nothing.”

But, first and foremost, Jesus, the divine Teacher, has pointed out to us the absolute necessity of passing through this way: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself” (ibid. 16,24).


COLLOQUY

O Jesus, I beseech You to fill my soul with a sincere and profound hatred of sin, of every kind of sin, so that I shall always be ready to prefer any suffering, even death, to offending God. Make me see, O divine Master, that the only real evil which can befall me and from which I must always pray to be delivered, is sin; for sin is such an enemy of Yours that it caused You to be scourged, crowned with thorns, and nailed to the Cross, Sin made You shed all Your Blood and die in terrible torment. O Jesus, You taught us to ask our heavenly Father to “ deliver us from evil”; make use of Your power of intercession; show Your Father, who is ours, too, the still-bleeding wounds of Your Passion, and obtain for me and for all faithful souls, the grace to be freed from the terrible evil of sin. O Jesus, must one make a distinction between serious sin and venial sin, between sin and imperfection?

“From any sin, however slight, committed with full knowledge, may God deliver us, especially since we are sinning against so great a Sovereign and realizing that He is watching us! That seems to me a sin committed of malice aforethought : it is as though one were to say: ‘Lord, although this displeases You, I shall do it. I know that You see it and I know that You would not have me do it; but, though I understand this, I would rather follow my own whim and desire than Your will’” (T.J. Way, 41).

With Your help, O Jesus, I want to fight more strongly against sin and try to overcome all my evil tendencies, inclinations, and habits. This exacts constant self-denial, but with Your help, I am ready to begin. Of course, I shall have to give up my own desires, but I shall do so in order to please God; I shall have to say “ No” to my evil nature, and prefer our heavenly Father’s will, His inspirations and wishes. It will mean dying to myself in order to live by You, O Jesus! If I really love You, shall I find this total self-denial hard? Oh! grant that I too may say with St. Paul, “I count all things to be but loss...and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may live in Him” (cf. Phil 3,7.9).

55. THE POWER OF THE DIVINE TEACHER

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, I beg You, not only to instruct me, but to move my soul to accept Your teaching and to put it into practice.


MEDITATION

1. Jesus not only imparts truth to us, He also helps us to accept it. This is the task of any teacher, but he can work only from the exterior, trying to clear his pupil’s mind of the errors which obscure it and to present the truth in a clear and convincing manner. Jesus, however, does much more than this; His activity is far more intimate and profound. He is the only Teacher capable of acting directly on the souls, the minds and the wills of His pupils. Jesus moves our souls interiorly to accept His teachings and to put them into practice.

The truths Jesus teaches are divine mysteries; therefore, we cannot master them by the art of human reasoning. To accept them, our minds must be equipped with a new supernatural light and power, the light and power of faith. Faith comes to us through Jesus; not only did He merit it for us, together with grace, the other infused virtues, and the gifts, but He is continually obtaining it for us and producing it in us. “ He is always the author of faith... He infuses the light of faith into the faithful” (Mystici Corporis). Therefore, while Jesus is revealing eternal truths to us, He is also filling our souls with the light of faith, until He produces in us, by means of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a profound, mysterious knowledge giving us an intuition, a sense of divine things. He acts on our wills in the same way by the virtue of charity, drawing us to love Him and our heavenly Father, impelling us to put His teachings into practice. While Jesus is teaching us, He is kindling in us the fire of divine love just as He did in the two disciples from Emmaus. After they had heard His explanation of the events that had taken place in Jerusalem, they said to each other : “ Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way?” (Lk 24,32).


2. “Our Master,” writes St. Thérése of the Child Jesus, “has no need of book or teacher to instruct a soul. The Teacher of teachers instructs without sound of words, and though I have never heard Him speak, yet I know He is within me, always guiding and inspiring me; and just when I need them, lights, hitherto unseen, break in upon me” (St, 8). Jesus interiorly teaches souls who are willing to listen to Him, and He teaches them above all by His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, thus carrying out His promise to the Apostles: “The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you” (Jn 14,26). Jesus and the Father are always sending the Holy Spirit from heaven into our souls; this Divine Spirit makes us understand the profound meaning of Our Lord’s teaching and suggests practical applications for our daily life. Jesus teaches us through the authority of the Church, to which He has entrusted the task of preserving His doctrine and transmitting it unchanged to all the faithful.

When we accept Jesus as our Teacher, we must also accept all His teachings: the written words of the Gospel, the living word of the Church, and the mysterious, secret word by which He teaches our souls individually, making us perceive intuitively the way He wishes us to live. If His word is to be truly a treasure, it is not enough for us merely to hear it; we must sound its depths. This demands silence and interior recollection. We must imitate Mary, who “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2,19), meditating on everything her divine Son said and did.


COLLOQUY

O Lord Jesus, I need You to exercise all Your power as divine Master over me! I dearly love Your words of instruction, but only too often these divine words fail to bring forth in me the fruit I desire. Why is this, O Lord? Could it be because, after I have listened to You in prayer and made a resolution to put into practice what You have deigned to make me understand, I forget it all at the opportune moment and allow myself to be overcome by my habitual frailty? Perhaps, O Lord, it is because I do not know how to retain and deeply penetrate Your words in interior recollection, but allow them to be stifled by distractions and useless preoccupations, just as the careless farmer allows the good grain to be choked by weeds. Oh! in times of difficulty, when I should be carrying out Your instructions, if I only knew enough to turn to You, my divine Teacher, always present and operating in me by Your grace! Oh! if I would place myself, were it only for an instant, at Your feet and implore Your help, how I should profit! I know You are always ready to receive me and to increase my spirit of faith, so that I may see everything in Your light and regard all circumstances and things according to their value for eternity. You are always eager to kindle in my heart a more ardent flame of charity and to draw me gently to the practice of what You have taught me.

People weary themselves seeking learned teachers; they spend a great deal of money; they take long journeys and make many sacrifices to consult them even for a few brief moments. And I, who have always at hand the divine Master, do I not know enough to take advantage of His teaching? O Jesus, infinite wisdom and knowledge, You do not hesitate to come down to me to be my Guide and Master; do not permit me to be so foolish as to forget You! May I always listen to Your word and continually seek Your light and strength!