Treatise VI - The Predestination of Mary

Mary gave Jesus of her very substance; for nine months He lived with her life; her blood flowed in His veins, and passed from her heart to His. None could love Our Lord as His Mother did; He loved none as He did His mother. Wonderful were the privileges of the Magi, the shepherds, the Apostles; vastly more so were those of Mary. She was greater and holier, and therefore more efficiently predestined than any other of the human race after her Child. Pay her the homage and love due to her singular and august position.  

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Love of Jesus Christ

When we are unable to devote ourselves to lengthened prayer, we may raise our minds to Our Lord by silent remembrance for a moment, and speak to Him in brief ejaculations of love. It is an aid to this if we keep pictures and images of Him where we can often see them. Inquire of yourself whether you take any means to keep alive the love of Jesus in your heart. Resolve to carry out some practices of devotion with this view.

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Ascension

The day had come for Our Lord to conclude the long series of His mysteries, to return whence He came, and to take His place upon the throne of David for ever, on the right hand of His Father. 

It was further necessary that He should cease to exist among us in His visible Humanity, in order that He might be present with us everywhere under the form of the Most Holy Eucharist. 

Our Lord's absence from your sight must not make you think that He has forgotten you; He bears you in His heart as if He were visibly present; He is engaged always on your interests before His Father; and also He is really present with you.

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Last Words of Christ

"He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart." It is remarkable how the frequently the Apostles, after their long training, their knowledge of Scripture prophecies, their sight of miracles, disbelieved the evidence of the Resurrection, and how continually Our lord had to reproach them on that account. 

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Manifestations of the Resurrection

"If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also is vain". There is no more important fact than the Resurrection. It was the greatest of Our Lord's miracles. 

The Apostles tell us too that all our hopes for this life and the next depend on the Resurrection; and that without it we should "be of all men the most miserable".

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Resurrection

The believers in Jesus had lost all heart; His name was to them no more than a memory of a disappointment, an illusion perhaps. There was only one who kept the faith in the silence of her heart, the Mother of Jesus.

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Descent into Hell

So will it be with you and all the elect of Christ. At the moment of death you will pass into a larger world, a fuller life of freedom, activity and glory. You can afford to wait patiently and suffer uncomplainingly, knowing what is in store for you.

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

 

The Cause of Christ's Death

Our Blessed Lord's sufferings and death were voluntary; "He was offered because it was His own will." "I lay down My life . . . . No man taketh it away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again."

 

It will be a most meritorious act of virtue, if you, when dying, conform your will perfectly to the will of God, and surrender your soul in voluntary sacrifice, in union with the death of Jesus Christ.

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Meditations on Christian Dogma, Volume 1 

The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1961

Contrarieties in The Passion

In the Passion of Our Lord there is a combination of sorrow and consolation. His sorrows were beyond all the united sorrows of the human race; for He carried all the burden of our sins, the sole source of all our miseries, with the full sense of the weight of them, which is deficient in us at present. "Surely He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows . . . the chastisement of our peace was upon Him" (ISA. 1iii, 4, 5). His afflictions were both of body and mind, they filled every sense and faculty of His Human nature, and there was none capable of consoling Him or helping Him. "The waters have come in, even to My soul. . . I am come into the depths of the sea, and the tempest hath overwhelmed Me" (Ps. 1xviii, 2, 3).

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Christ on The Cross

The Crucifixion infused into mankind the higher life, the supernatural breathing of God upon the face of man. Thereby it is in the power of all to become what God had intended that they should be. A new human society was formed, the universal Church, born on Calvary, and proceeding like Eve, from the wounded side of the second Adam. Though consisting of sinful erring men, it was yet "a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing" (Eph. v. 27). 

Glorify Jesus for this great work; be faithful to Him in order that you may participate in it.

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Christ's Death for All Men

We are saved almost in spite of ourselves. Nothing can outweigh Our Lord's propitiation except a man's own full and deliberate rejection of it. Only by persevering ill-will on our part can we fail of salvation. What immense confidence in Our Lord you ought to have for yourself and others!

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The Excess of The Passion

From one point of view it might seem unnecessary for Our Lord to go to the extreme of suffering so much and dying; for His smallest action was of infinite merit, so that it exceeded all the demerits of the world, and could have purchased life for all. Yet there is a beautiful appropriateness and fitness in the excesses of the Passion. The death of Christ is in accordance with that fundamental law, typified in all the ceremonies of the Old Testament, that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission".

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The Last Supper

In the Last Supper Jesus Christ exhibits His love, and proves Himself to be our best Friend. The account of it begins: "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end". This was the farewell banquet on the last evening of His earthly life; in it He delivered His Testament, His final word of love, and bequeathed us a keepsake and eternal memorial of Himself.

Venerate this mystery of mysteries. In it you really partake in that solemn supper and in the sacrifice that Jesus offered on Calvary.  

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The Transfiguration

The Apostles were overwhelmed, they lost all sense of the world below, they knew not what they said for ecstasy. Thenceforth they had a new awe and veneration for their Lord. 

You have the light of the revelation of faith. This is enough to show you the divine splendor hidden under the lowly forms which Our Lord now assumes. When you enter His presence, forget the world and self, and lose yourself in Him.

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The Raising of The Dead

The case of Lazarus:  He was somewhat advanced in years. He had already been placed in his cave-sepulcher; the body had been watched and visited during three days, decomposition had set in, his death had been decisively verified, and the tomb had been closed.

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The Miracles of Christ

Isaias had foretold the many miracles of the Messias (Isa xxxv. 4 - 6); and Our Lord recalled this when the disciples of St. John came to ask who He was (Luke vii. 22). This was the crucial and necessary proof of His divine mission. The words of Our Lord were effectual on believers or those who were ready to believe; the miracles were chiefly "a sign not to believers but to unbelievers" (1 Cor. xiv. 22).

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The Preaching of Christ

Truth, and especially religious truth is one of God's greatest gifts to men. It is the nourishment of the intelligence, our highest faculty. The enlightenment of our minds was one of the chief functions of the Messias. "To preach the gospel to the poor He hath sent me" (Luke iv. 18). "For this I came into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth" (John xviii. 37).

Take care to value the intellectual benefit of natural and supernatural truth preached to you by Our Lord. You have in Him an infallible Teacher who will not suffer you to go astray in any matter of real importance. 

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Pious Customs of Christ

Consider the thoughts of Our Lord. One of the uses of the material world, as we learn from Wisd. xiii. and Rom. I., is to instruct us about God and raise our thoughts to Him. Our Lord shows us how to read spiritual lessons in every natural event, and to use every object as an occasion for glorifying God. The seed-time and the harvest, the sparrows and the lilies, the weeds amongst the corn, a debtor imprisoned, the grafting of vines, the catching of fish, the tending of sheep - all these things He shows in a spiritual aspect.  

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Companions of Christ's Life

Being rich He became poor for your sakes, that through His poverty you might be rich (2 Cor. viii. 9). The first companion of Our Lord's life, and aid in His mission was Poverty. In this there were three degrees of privation. 

1. Our Lord gave up all the wealth and possessions of this world. He was born in a stable of the spouse of a poor artisan. He lived first by daily labour, and lastly by the offerings of the charitable. He died despoiled even of His garments, and was laid in another's sepulchre. 

2. He had no friendship or even acquaintance with great men, with the rich and noble, with chief-priests. His companions were poor ignorant fishermen. During His ministry He deprived Himself of the companionship of His Mother, the only being who understood Him and was in full sympathy with Him.

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Jesus in The Desert

Immediately after His baptism "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert" (Matt. iv. I). Our Lord was subject to all the conditions of human life; and it was in accordance with law that He should prepare Himself by retirement and mortification for a great supernatural career, and for the temptation that is associated with it.

Learn hence that no one is exempt from being tempted, that sin has always a plausible appearance of according with reason and nature, and that when we sacrifice nature for the supernatural, God's angels will minister to us, even as to our natural requirements. 

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The Baptism of Christ

 All men were looking for the great Messias, and He stood in the midst of them, and they knew Him not. Then He approaches humbly to be baptized, as if in penance for former sins. Thus again on commencing His active mission, as in the Circumcision and the Presentation, Our Lord ranks Himself openly among sinners and shares their punishment. 

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Characteristics of Christ's Life

In The natural order we have in Our Lord the model of the perfect citizen, we have the commencement of order, progress, liberty, and our present civilization, and the only system which will secure the rights and happiness of all. 

Hold fast to Him from whom alone you receive all good things.

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The Occupations of Christ

 "Early in the morning He came again into the temple" After prayer came labour; and this was entirely for the alleviation of human miseries. There was no seeking for recreation, pleasure, or gain; He proclaimed the glory of God, the truths of religion, a perfect morality and spirituality; He comforted the miserable and relieved them by miracles from their bodily infirmities. He was continually in conflict with the hatred, and opposition, and misrepresentations of the Scribes and Pharisees.  

If He yielded to the necessities of His human nature and slept at times, still His soul was active, glorifying His Father as much as by actual prayer. Like the spouse in the Canticles He could say: "I sleep and my heart watcheth. You, in like manner, can serve God at times of repose and recreation. Do these things as necessities imposed on you by God and not as personal gratifications; regard them as duties, and as the means giving you strength for further work for God and men.

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The Childhood of Christ

 The Infant was carried into exile, as if too weak to meet the storm, and the efforts of Satain were effectually frustrated. So always; the Church of Jesus is waylaid by the dragon; its destruction seems imminent; it has no material strength for resistance; but God is with it, and it can never fail. Let nothing induce you to lose confidence in the arm of the Almighty and the success of His Church.

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The Epiphany

 The coming of Christ was lowly, secret and sudden; it was not in the form that men expected or desired; it was both a surprise and a disappointment.

The manifestation of Christ comes to us in some peculiar form adapted to our circumstances. It is a distant glimmering light at first, easily extinguished, often hard to detect. We need to be watchful, sincere, and prompt, if we wish to arrive at its fulness.

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The Circumcision

 He would claim no privileges beyond the rest of those whom He had made His brethren. 

He bound Himself to take all the consequences of sin on His own shoulders, and all that was burdensome in the yoke of the law; and He undertook to do whatever was required for our salvation. See how badly you have fulfilled your part in the contract with Him, and resolve to observe it most scrupulously in the future. 

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The Nativity

And He was her own Child, He was her beloved one, and she was His. He was to be toe possession of the whole world, but in that hour she possessed Him to herself.

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The Offices of Christ - Part 2

For every one of us He beseeches, as He did on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". 

This office Our Lord continues in heaven, where His blood, shed on Calvary, is always making intercession for us, and never ceases until either His love or our obstinacy finally triumphs. Confess your unworthiness; make no excuses for yourself; do not allege your own merits; but rely exclusively on the powerful advocacy of Our Blessed Lord.

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The Offices of Christ - Part 1

None other could have delivered us: hence He is our sole Redeemer.

Be careful that you do not "neglect so great salvation"; like many who love their chains, who will not submit to the conditions which the higher state requires, and who trample on the blood of their Redemption.

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