The entire will of Christ resides in His purpose of fully adhering to the will of His Father. He glories in this union: "My will is to do that of He Who has sent Me; and for this the Father loves Me ". In His agony, He abandons Himself to the army rabble: "Father, not My will but Yours be done".
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
The entire will of Christ resides in His purpose of fully adhering to the will of His Father. He glories in this union: "My will is to do that of He Who has sent Me; and for this the Father loves Me ". In His agony, He abandons Himself to the army rabble: "Father, not My will but Yours be done".
When the Savior turns towards us, we see this total submission to the eternal designs of the Father. In His love for us, He will not rest until we also start following the narrow path that leads to Life. This is why He was incarnated and delivered for us to the ignominy of the Cross. He has made Himself into sin for us, in order to become our Model and to be the only gate by which we enter into the house of the Lord.
He has not only lowered Himself beyond all beauty and nobility by making Himself a bridge for us. He is also the narrow path that leads to Life, and His will for us is to conform ourselves to Him, so that we form — as St. Thomas Aquinas said — "one mystical being with Him ".
Further, He instituted the sacraments which carry out this remarkable assimilation, by which we, sinners, are not only redeemed beings, but also participate - oh, incomprehensible madness of the Incarnated Love! — in Christ and in His redemptive work. Baptism is the first step, and we attain the summit with the consumption of the Host when "it is no more I, but Christ who lives in me ".
The liturgy, indeed, and especially our attendance at Holy Mass, enables us to participate in the redemptive action by letting me Savior form our being in such merciful manner that it becomes associated with Himself.
We must realize that this formation is not something to be done in a few minutes, but throughout our entire lifetime, imposing on us a new direction, "embracing the same sentiments as Jesus Christ". In other words: it forms us to embrace the supreme requisite of renunciation. Conversion is not an invitation blindly offered on the street — it is addressed to each one of the baptized, who must respond to it.
The virtue of renunciation is not optional, and must not be a kind of "ornament" added unto our lives: it corresponds to our baptismal vocation. The Christian who tries to avoid it cannot be called a Disciple of Christ and he mocks this, his greatest title of nobility. Renunciation is essential for a Christian life. In our state of life, it is the concrete manner of participating in the work of the Cross. It nourishes our incorporation into divine charity.
As parents, we find this renunciation in a constant solicitude that keeps us attentive by the cradles of our children and until they take their first steps as men. But will they be able to take those first steps if we do not take the trouble to teach them the hard law of detachment? Our counsels will be useless if we do not preach by our example.
As spouses, we live this renunciation in the demands of marriage, in which each one must have the delicacy to forget himself in order to maintain the mutual love born from the grace of a sacrament that is marked by the saving Cross. Marriage is a school of renunciation. How many know it? And among those, how many live it?
As children, our renunciation is daily practiced in our prompt and cheerful obedience to the orders of our parents and teachers. Happy are the children who are taught by a firm and flexible discipline; they thus learn how to faithfully carry the burden of their vocation as men and saints.
All the faithful, finally, must renounce themselves to live out of divine charity. We will rise to divine charity by keeping fraternal charity among us, whose first form is the silence that we must keep regarding others.
In the bosom of the Church, when the shadow of Judas extends itself over Rome, Christ wants to perpetuate His passion in His faithful members, making them carry His Cross. Will we refuse to accept such honor?
In Christo sacerdote et Maria
Fr. Yves le Roux