9781644135945

The Light of the World
hundredfold. Baptism is the door that leads to the Holy Eucharist. Christ still has “compassion
on the multitude,” on those liable to succumb in the desert of their earthly pilgrimage. When
Christ, moved by loving compassion, deals out the bread of life to His people, we gratefully
answer the message of the Gospel announcing the Eucharist with our Credo, and implore Him
again: “Perfect Thou my goings in Thy paths, . . . show forth Thy wonderful mercies” (Offertory),
as Thou didst show forth Thy mercies toward the hungry people in the Gospel.
Repeating the miracle of His mercy and love for us during the Sacrifice of the Mass, Christ
revives the wonderful scene we witnessed in the Epistle and Gospel. We are again mysteriously
“buried together with Him . . . unto death” in the renewal of the sacrifice of the cross on our
altar. There “our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, and that
we may serve sin no longer” (Epistle). For we are baptized and came to celebrate Mass that we,
being sacrificed with our crucified Lord, might be one with Him in death and resurrection. “If
we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness of
His resurrection” (Epistle). Being sacrificed with Christ, we have, as it were, stepped out of the
realm of earthly things, escaped the allurements and pleasures of the world, and established
ourselves in the kingdom of God, thinking His thoughts, seeking His interests, searching for His
goodness and beatitude. Here we wish to live through Christ, with Him, and in Him, rendering
in eternity all honor to God, who alone is worthy of all praise.
We must now live for God alone, obeying His holy commandments, seeking His holy
will, and performing the duties He assigns to us in everyday life. We are like the people
of the Gospel, retiring with Him from the world to go into the desert, where He plans to
enrich us with a wonderful food, the sacrificial meal of Holy Communion. Through the
power of this food we are enabled to keep aloof from the world in the desert where we
have been led by baptism and where we are to be “alive to God, in Christ Jesus our Lord”
(Epistle). Verily, “the Lord is the strength of His people, and the protector of the salvation
of His anointed” (Introit).
Meditation
We have been baptized (Epistle), and we are partakers of the Holy Eucharist (Gospel). Both
baptism and the Holy Eucharist, having been planted as seeds in our souls, are to grow and
ripen into a Christian life under the warmth of the Spirit of Pentecost.
“All we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in His death. For we are buried together
with Him by baptism unto death. . . . Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him,
that the body of sin may be destroyed, and that we may serve sin no longer. . . . Now if we
be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ, knowing that
Christ, rising again from the dead, dieth now no more. . . . For in that He died to sin, He died
once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God” (Epistle). St. Paul gives us a description of
the Christian as God and His Church want him to be, a man dead to sin. Sin is no longer
to have dominion over him. Because he died to sin with Christ, he now lives with Christ,
having become a living branch of the vine which is Christ. He lives as another Christ, devoted
to God and loved by Him. If we could only realize the importance of baptism as the
Christians of the first centuries did; if we would live, as they did, only for the things given
470