It is
Saturday. You are driving home after some shopping. It is
a nice day, and you just wish to arrive home, put your feet
on the table (so to speak), and relax. Your three older kids
in the back seat are tired too. Your promise of ice cream
has worn off and they have resumed fighting and yelling. Now
YOU yell they can forget about ice cream, “for now and
forever!” They stop for about… one long minute. Sixty
seconds of peace… But you knew already it was not going to
last. You continue driving, trying to tune them out. After
a while, you see other drivers acting strangely. What the
hey? Suddenly, you have to push hard on the brakes. The kids
fall silent. Now you can hear it! The siren, and the honk!
Wheee! Wheee! Wheee! Honk! Honk! Honk! It must be a fire truck.
Where is it coming from? Oh! Yes! From the right! Soon, like
a flame chased by the wind, the big red vehicle flashes past
the intersection, and you can resume going on your way. At
that point, you realize you forgot the cake for your mother-in-law’s
birthday. Oh! Shoot! You’re saying to yourself: “She’s
going to kill me!”, because the cake was the main reason
your wife sent you shopping. It’s the kids’ fault of
course; what with all their excitement in the Mall… You’re
angry… At the kids… At your wife who can’t even make a cake…
At yourself for not being firm enough… Your kids turn silent
again, because you just shouted: “I should have become
a monk!” They look at each other, puzzled. They chuckle.
Then they lose it, and start laughing their heads off. You
think: “I wish I would not have to endure all this anymore!”
…Five seconds later, your wish has come true… For as you are
going under an overpass, a huge segment of bridge falls and
flattens your car…
As you
were heading towards that overpass, you were far from knowing
that each turn of the wheels was bringing you closer to your
last moment on this earth. Under the bridge, you didn’t even
realize what was happening to you and your kids. You didn’t
know it that afternoon, but God had summoned you and your
kids for judgment. If there would have been no fire truck
obliging you to stop a few moments before, you would have
made it! You would have passed safely under the bridge before
it collapsed! But there was a fire truck… Because, you see?
God had scheduled a meeting with some people, including you
and your kids. Terrible? Not if you were prepared, in the
state of grace… Otherwise, my guess is you will miss your
country’s winters!
Oh! Father!
How can you joke about that? Didn’t you hear it happened for
real in Montreal on September 30th? I know! I know!
And I also know of similar tragedies happening everyday all
over the world! It gives us so many reasons to think… It could
happen to any one of us. In fact, we probably all know somebody
who died unexpectedly. It is a fact of life. Our Lord warned
us: “See to it that you watch and pray. Because you know
not when the time is.” (Mark, 13,33). This advice was
given us many times by Our Lord in the Gospel. But what should
we do in order to be pleasing to God at the time of our death?
This is the true question. The problem, at least for Traditional
Catholics, should not be to avoid Hell. It should be: How
can I really do the will of God? What is God’s plan for me?
The answer
to that most important of questions depends on a wonderful,
but often forgotten fact: God inhabits
our soul! We have received sanctifying grace at Baptism!
We have the sacraments to help us keep it, increase it, or
receive it back! Our Lord Himself revealed us: “If someone
loves Me, he will keep my teachings, and my Father will love
him, and we will come to him, and we will establish our home
in him.” (Jn 14, 23). We are indeed living members of
the Mystical Body of Christ. He is our Head. He is the Vine,
we are the branches, and without Him we can do nothing worthy
for Heaven. In his book ‘Christ the Ideal of the Priest’,
Dom Columba Marmion, OSB, explains this inhabitation of Christ
in us. He says Christ acts in us and through us. He quotes
St. Augustine who talks about the union of Christ to His Mystical
Body, the Church: “They are two in one flesh; why could
they not be two in one voice? …It is the Church that intercedes
in Christ, and Christ who intercedes in the Church; the Body
is one with the Head, and the Head is one with the Body.”
The Benedictine Abbot continues by saying that, while Christ’s
satisfaction was and will always remain superabundant to expiate
all sins, nevertheless, it is His will that His Mystical Body
should share in this expiation, as St. Paul declared: “I
rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things
that are wanting in the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh,
for His Body, which is the Church.” (Col. 1,24). Dom Marmion
adds: “What is true for the expiation, is true also for
our obligation to adore, praise, and thank God. We have to
prolong and to ‘fill up the praises Christ was rendering the
Father’”. This is the will of God: That we become good
instruments of Christ, so that He can continue to suffer,
expiate, adore, thank, ask, by us and through us.
There is such a union between the soul in the state of grace
and Christ that, whenever that soul prays and merits, she
does it through Our Lord: “Per Christum Dominum Nostrum”.
St. Paul tells us it is the Holy Ghost in her that moves
her to prayer, to good works, and to a greater union with
God: “And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit
of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father!” (Eph.
3, 14). To realize that we are so intimately united to God
by Grace makes us kneel down and adore His Love and Mercy!
This
is not a new doctrine. Already, in the 17th century,
the holy Cardinal de Bérulle, was teaching that Christ’s presence
in us enables us to fulfill our duties towards God. He is
the one perfect Worshipper and Mediator, and it is only by
and through Him that our prayer, adoration, love, thanksgiving,
and petitions are pleasing to the Divinity. We understand,
now, that the inhabitation of God in our soul implies a two-fold
reality: 1-Our Lord Jesus Christ, Perfect Mediator and Worshipper
in Heaven and in the Blessed Sacrament, is also such through
us, in us, and by us. 2-It is only by Him, with Him, and in
Him, that we can render our duties towards God (“Per Ipsum,
et cum Ipso, et in Ipso…”). Therefore we must eliminate
from our life, heart, and mind, every obstacle to the action
of Christ in and through us. We have to cling to Him, to know
and imitate His virtues, to make Him pray and work through
us. What a great source of motivation and consolation! When
we offer Mass with the priest, when we pray, when we meditate,
when we visit the lonely, when we give alms, when we suffer,
when we forgive, etc, Christ is doing these things by us,
through us, and with us! Everything takes on a new signification!
We are never alone, provided we are in the state of grace!
Now we understand why we must really pay attention to what
we do: We must do our best to let Christ shine through us!
We must say, with St. John the Baptist: “He must increase,
but I must decrease” (Jn 3,30). We must strive to make
Christ reign in our whole person… In other words, we must
“seek first the Kingdom of God and his Justice” (Mt.
6,25). This is the will of God: That His kingdom may come,
in our hearts.
But this
inhabitation and action of Christ in us is not the only thing!
Indeed, God’s greatest wish is to grant us the grace of union
with Him! St. John of the Cross explains how this can be achieved:
If we are entirely detached, at least in our hearts, from
anything that is not God, then He will unite Himself to our
soul, so as to almost become one with it. This will be very
close to the Beatific Vision. This is what we call a ‘mystical
marriage’. Unfortunately, this most loving God finds only
a few who consent to leave the creatures behind, and to give
themselves up to Him without restraint. In his ‘Ardent Flame’,
the great Carmelite Doctor teaches, about God abiding in the
souls: “…in some souls he is alone, and in others he is
not; in a few he remains willingly, and in others unwillingly;
in a few He stays like in his own house, governing and ordering
everything, et in others he is like a stranger into someone
else’s house, where he has no authority to command or do anything.
The soul where fewer appetites and less self-love remain is
the one where God stays more alone, and more willingly, like
in His own house, governing and directing it.” Let us
therefore tidy up our souls, and practice detachment, so as
to offer God a house of His own, where He will stay more willingly.
Let us beg Him to take full command of our lives!
Woe to
us if we refuse, or even neglect to accept, this marriage
proposal from our most loving God! Woe to us if we hinder
the great work of Our Lord in us and through us! Woe to us
if, because of our laziness and attachment to creatures, we
do not let Christ adore, thank, ask, suffer, help, through
us! Woe to us, if we do not learn to recognize this work of
God in and through others! The greatest suffering in Purgatory
must be to realize we have not fulfilled that wonderful destiny
of being fully united to God… My dear friends, let us ask
Our Lady to obtain for us the special grace of keeping these
truths in mind, and of acting accordingly. May we live in
such a way as to be able to say with the great Apostle Paul:
“And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me.” (Gal.
2,20).
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