9781644135945

The Light of the World
men, and the heroic action of Peter, James, and John: “And having brought their ships to land,
leaving all things they followed Him” (Gospel).
We wait “for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body” (Epistle). What is
a Christian? He is a man who waits for the glory to come, that shall be revealed to us. We have
good reason to count on this revelation of glory: “For the expectation of the creature waiteth for
the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but
by reason of him that made it subject in hope; because the creature also itself shall be delivered
from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know
that every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now; and not only it, but ourselves
also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting
for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body” (Epistle). This redemption
of the body we expect in the resurrection from the dead, in the assumption of our bodies into
heaven, and in the eternal possession and enjoyment of God.
The important part of our vocation as Christians lies in the other world. We are confident
we shall attain the happiness of heaven, and today we celebrate a feast in our anticipation of
attaining it. In the hope of that eternal Easter lies the fountainhead of our happiness, our continual
joy, our Christian optimism. Our good fortune arises from the fact that the Son of God
became man for our sake. God loves the man Christ as His Son. We have been incorporated in
Him, we are one with Him, the Son of God, and with Him we become sons of God. For this
reason the Father extends also to us the love which He lavishes on His Son. The love with which
He loves us is the same love which He has for His Son, and it gives our hope its certainty and
its blessedness. The Father does not separate us from His Son. Where the Son is, there we shall
be also, since with Him and in Him we, too, are sons of God. Just as the day of glory and of
eternal life is certain for the Son, so too will the day of glory for our bodies and souls be certain.
We await, then, what is to come; that is, the unspeakable glory that is to be revealed to us, the
sons of God. We lift up our hearts and minds and “reckon that the sufferings of this time are
not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us,” when, after this
life, we attain our eternal reward (Epistle). In this hope we pass by earthly pleasures and joys,
and press forward toward those that are eternal, the true and perfect happiness. Our destiny is
to see God, to possess Him, and to enjoy Him.
“In Christ Jesus our Lord.” On Christ is the certainty and the beatitude of our hope
founded; it has its source in Him. The more closely we are bound to Him in a living union of
faith, trust, and love, and the more intimately we unite ourselves to His spirit and life, the more
certain we are of the revelation of the glory of the Son of God in us. But Christ is to be found
only in the bark of Peter, in the Church that is founded on Peter, to whom Christ said, “Launch
out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught. . . . Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt
catch men” (Gospel). The vocation of Peter and of his successors and their representatives is to
catch men by the order of Christ and with the power of Christ. They are to catch men so that
they may be led to Christ and thus share in the adoption of the sonship of God. “And if sons,
heirs also; heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17). We acknowledge the
authority of St. Peter and his successors in the Catholic Church and its holy priesthood. We
see in Peter and in his successors and helpers, not the “sinful man” mentioned in the Gospel
nor the merely natural men who “have labored all the night and have taken nothing,” but the
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