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The Christmas Cycle
subjecting our wills to His ordinances and commands, to His sacraments, and to His Church.
“He that hath My commandments and keepeth them; he it is that loveth Me” ( Jn 14:21). “He
that heareth you [the Church], heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me” (Lk
10:16). We pay homage to Him by subjecting ourselves to His operation in us. We honor Him
by our resignation and subjection in afflictions and humiliations, by our inner purification and
mortifications, and by the duties and obligations of our everyday life. We glorify Him by not
attributing to ourselves, to our own good will, to our own efforts or strength, the good works
which we perform. With the Apostle we humbly acknowledge, “For it is God who worketh in
you both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will” (Phil 2:13). With grateful hearts
we cry out, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to Thy name give glory” (Ps 113:9). We honor
Him by applying to our own lives the admonition of the Epistle of today’s Mass: by making
our bodies and souls a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God. We glorify Him if we transform
ourselves by His spirit and shape our lives according to the pattern He has given us, doing only
that which is in accord with the will of God and is perfect and pleasing to Him, living in union
with Holy Mother the Church.
Christ is King. That is the theme of the feast of Epiphany. “And we saw His glory, the glory as it
were of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” ( Jn 1:14). This glory Christ has
won through His victory on the cross. For this reason neither the Church nor the members of
the mystical body can achieve glory without a sacrifice and a cross. “Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?” (Lk 24:26.)
Therefore we bring our bodies and all that we possess and present them as an offering on
the altar. With Stephen we share the passion of Christ, and thus we go to attain our glory in the
Offertory, in the Consecration, and in Holy Communion.
We are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, on the altar. This
we are to do not only at the time of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but at every hour of the day
and in the ordinary affairs of our everyday life. We must not be conformed to the manner of
this world, but we must reform ourselves through the renewal of our spirit. We are thus to prove
what is the good and the acceptable, the perfect will of God. We are to live in the consciousness
that all of us together form one living organism, the body of Christ (in the community of the
Church), and that we are members of one another and of Christ our Lord (Epistle). We live
the life of the whole, the life of the community, the life of the mystical body of Christ. That is
the Lord’s command. “This is My commandment: that you love one another as I have loved
you” ( Jn 15:12).
May Christ be King of my whole being, of my thoughts, my will, my affections, and of
my desires. May His will be done in all things. That is my ambition when I celebrate the Holy
Sacrifice with Him today. I consecrate myself to Him, and through Him and in Him I consecrate
myself to the Father.
Prayer
In Thy loving kindness, O Lord, graciously hear the prayer of Thy suppliant people; and grant
that they may perceive what they ought to do, and may have the strength to do it. Through
Christ our Lord. Amen.
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