St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for the Sixth Week after Easter

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Saturday After Ascension

Morning Meditation

DIVINE LOVE IS A LIGHT THAT ENLIGHTENS THE SOUL

“0 Lux Beatissima”

O Lux beatissima! The Holy Ghost, who is called most blessed Light, is He Who not only inflames our hearts to love Him, but also dispels all darkness and reveals to us the vanity of earthly things. O Holy Spirit, visit me by Thy grace, and grant me the gift of understanding, that by the contemplation of Heavenly things I may detach my thoughts and affections from all the vanities of this miserable world.

I.

One of the worst effects of Adam’s sin in us, was its blinding our reason by means of the passions which darkened the mind. Oh, how miserable is the soul that allows itself to be ruled by any of the passions! Passion is a vapour, a veil, which will not suffer us to see the truth. How can he fly from evil who knows not what is evil? This obscurity increases in proportion as our sins increase. But the Holy Ghost, Who is called Light most blessed, with His Divine rays, not only inflames our hearts to love Him, but also dispels our darkness, and reveals to us the vanity of all worldly things, the worth of eternal goods, the importance of salvation, the value of grace, the goodness of God, the infinite love He deserves from us, and the immense love He has shown to us.

O Holy Spirit, Divine Consoler, I adore Thee as my true God, as I adore God the Father and God the Son. I beseech Thee to visit me by Thy grace and Thy love, and to grant me the gift of understanding in order that I may be able to understand the Divine Mysteries, and, by the contemplation of Heavenly things, may detach my thoughts and affections from all the vanities of this miserable world.


II.

The sensual man perceiveth not those things that are of the spirit of God-(l Cor. ii. 14}. Man, absorbed in the pleasures of the earth, knows but little of these truths, and hence he unhappily loves that which he should hate, and hates that which he should love. St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi exclaimed: “O love not known, O love not loved!” And hence St. Teresa said, that God is not loved because He is not known. Wherefore the Saints ever sought light from God: Send forth thy light; illumine my darkness; open thou my eyes. Yes, because without light, precipices cannot be avoided, nor God be found.

O Holy and Divine Spirit, I believe that Thou art truly God, and one God with the Father and with the Son. I adore and acknowledge Thee as the Giver of those lights by which Thou hast discovered to me the evil I have done by offending Thee, and the obligation I am under of loving Thee. I thank Thee for them, and am exceedingly sorry for having offended Thee. I have deserved to be abandoned by Thee in my darkness, but I am sensible Thou hast not yet abandoned me. Continue, O Eternal Spirit, to enlighten me, and make me know still more and more Thy infinite goodness, and give me strength to love Thee for the future with my whole heart. Add grace upon grace, that so I may be sweetly overcome, and constrained to love no other but Thee. I thank Thee through the merits of Jesus Christ. I love Thee, my sovereign Good; I love Thee more than myself. I desire to be all Thine; accept of me, and suffer me not to depart from Thee any more. O Mary, my Mother, assist me always by thy holy intercession.

Spiritual Reading

THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

St. Bonaventure says that in each Mass God bestows on the world a benefit not inferior to that which He conferred by His Incarnation. This is conformable to the celebrated words of St. Augustine: “O venerable dignity of the priests, in whose hands, as in the womb of the Virgin, the Son of God becomes incarnate!” Moreover, St. Thomas teaches that since the Sacrifice of the altar is nothing else than the application and renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross, a single Mass brings to men the same benefits and salvation that were produced by the Sacrifice of the Cross. St. John Chrysostom says: “The celebration of a Mass has the same value as the death of Christ on the Cross.” And of this we are still more assured by the holy Church in the Collect for the Sunday after Pentecost: “As many times as this commemorative Sacrifice is celebrated, so often is the work of our Redemption performed.” The same Redeemer Who once offered Himself on the Cross is immolated on the altar by the ministry of His priests. “For the Victim is one and the same,” says the Council of Trent: “the same now offering by the ministry of priests, Who then offered Himself on the Cross, the manner alone of offering being different. ”

In a word, the Mass is, according to the prediction ot the Prophet, ” the good and the beautiful thing” of the Church: For what is the good thing of him, and what is his beautiful thing, but the corn of the elect and wine springing forth virgins-(Zach. ix. 17). In the Mass, Jesus Christ gives Himself to us by means of the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar, which is the end and object of all the other Sacraments, says the angelic Doctor. Justly, then, has St. Bonaventure called a Mass a compendium of all God’s love and of all His benefits to men. Hence the devil has always sought to deprive the world of the Mass by means of the heretics, constituting them precursors of Antichrist, whose first efforts will be to abolish the holy Sacrifice of the altar, and, according to the Prophet Daniel, in punishment of the sins of men, his efforts shall be successful: And strength was given him against the continual sacrifice on account of sins-(Dan. viii. 12).

Most justly, then, does the holy Council of Trent require of priests to be most careful to celebrate Mass with the greatest possible devotion and purity of conscience: “It is sufficiently clear that all industry and diligence is to be applied to this end, that it (the Mystery) be performed with the greatest possible inward cleanness and purity of heart.” And in the same place the Council justly remarks, that on, priests who celebrate this great Sacrifice negligently, and without devotion, shall fall the malediction, threatened by the Prophet Jeremias: Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord negligently-(Jer. xlviii. 10). A servant of God used to say that the life of a priest should be nothing else than preparation, and thanksgiving for Mass.

Evening Meditation

THE PRACTICE OF THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST

II.-HE THAT LOVES JESUS CHRIST AVOIDS LUKEWARMNESS AND SEEKS PERFECTION

I.

The tepidity, then, that does hinder perfection, is that tepidity which is avoidable when a person, commits deliberate venial faults; because all these faults committed with open eyes can effectually be avoided by Divine grace if we have the desire. Wherefore St. Teresa said: “May God deliver you from deliberate sin, however small it may be.” Such, for example, are wilful untruths, little detractions, imprecations, expressions of anger, derisions of one’s neighbour, cutting words, words of self-esteem, animosities nourished in the heart, inordinate attachments to persons of a different sex. “These are a sort of worm,” wrote the same Saint, “which is not detected before it has eaten into the virtues.” Hence, in another place, she gave this admonition: “By means of small things the devil goes about making holes for great things to enter.” We should, therefore, tremble at such deliberate faults; since they cause God to close His hands from bestowing upon us His clearer lights and stronger helps, and deprive us of spiritual sweetnesses; and the result of such is to make the soul perform all spiritual exercises with great weariness and pain; and so, in the course of time, she begins to leave off Prayer, Communions, Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and Novenas; and, in the end, she will probably leave off all piety, as has not infrequently been the case with many unhappy souls.


II.

This is the meaning of that threat which our Lord makes to the tepid: Thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot; but because thou art lukewarm . .. I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth-(Apoc. iii. 15, 16). How wonderful! He says, I would thou wert cold! What! And is it better to be cold, that is, deprived of grace, than to be tepid? Yes, in a certain sense it is better to be cold; because a person who is cold may more easily change his life, being stung by the reproaches of conscience; whereas a tepid person contracts the habit of slumbering on in his faults, without bestowing a thought, or taking any trouble to correct himself; and thus he makes his cure, as it were, desperate: St. Gregory says, “Tepidity, which has cooled down from fervour, is a hopeless state.” The Venerable Father Lewis da Ponte said that he had committed many defects in the course of his life; but that he had never made a truce with his faults. Some there are who make friends with their faults, and from that springs their ruin; especially when the fault is accompanied with some passionate attachment, of self-esteem, of ambition, of liking to be seen, of heaping up money, of resentment against a neighbour, or of inordinate affection for a person of a different sex. In such cases there is great danger of those threads, as it were, becoming chains, as St. Francis of Assisi said, which will drag down the soul to hell. At all events, such a soul will never become a saint, and will forfeit that beautiful crown, which God had prepared for her, had she faithfully corresponded to grace. The bird no sooner feels herself loosed from the snare, than she immediately flies; the soul, as soon as she is loosed from earthly attachments, immediately flies to God; but while she is bound, though it be but by the slightest thread, it is enough to prevent her flying to God. Oh, how many spiritual persons there are who do not become saints, because they will not do themselves the violence to break away from certain little attachments.