9781644135945

The Light of the World
not Christ to have suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?” (Lk 24:26.) “We are
buried together with Him by baptism unto death.” Having been immersed in His death, we
became partakers of His sacrifice and death.
“As Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness
of life” (Epistle). Through His resurrection our Lord began a new life. Having only one guiding
principle, “I do always the things that please Him” ( Jn 8:29), Christ lived during His mortal
life only for the Father. But whereas His passion and death were necessary, since during His
earthly life the sins of humanity lay upon Him, after His resurrection He can neither die nor
suffer any longer. Humanity’s indebtedness to God has been discharged and atoned for. Now
He has the fullness of life, stability, and security. “Death shall no more have dominion over
Him. . . . In that He liveth, He liveth unto God” (Epistle). In His risen body everything combines
to show forth the fullness of life. This glorious life has the fullness of liberty and spirituality, of
impassibility and incorruptibility; it is occupied by incessant thanksgiving and praise of the
Father, and will be crowned after forty days by His Ascension into heaven, where Christ shall
sit at the right hand of the Father. “So we also may walk in newness of life.” For just as Christ,
rising from the dead, left in the sepulcher the linen cloth, the symbol of His ability to suffer
and die, and proceeded from death to a new life; so, too, our souls, having been purified by the
waters of baptism, were freed from sin and embellished with the life of grace and the splendor
of divine life. We walk “in newness of life,” in the power and glory of the life of grace. Having
been planted like a mustard seed in our souls, grace must grow and must be kept alive in the
fight against evil concupiscence within us and in the world around us, gaining strength by our
striving daily more effectively after all virtue and sanctity.
Death and life! The more complete our death, the fuller our life will be. No man can serve two
masters, God and mammon. Neither can any one serve God and sin, the new man and the old
man within himself. Christianity demands character, steadfastness of principles, clear thinking,
and manliness.
Celebrating the Holy Sacrifice with our Lord, we die unto ourselves, sacrificing ourselves
with the bread to obtain the newness of life. By this union in sacrifice with our self-sacrificing
Lord, we re-enact daily within ourselves the mystery of death and life. Thus we have died to sin
and live for God in Christ Jesus, in the power of the Holy Sacrifice and of Holy Communion.
Thus we struggle day after day to die completely to ourselves in order to gain a perfect life.
This life will be ours for all eternity when the Lord will address us: “Well done, good and faithful
servant; . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Mt 25:21).
Prayer
O God of power, from whom are all good things, implant in our hearts the love of Thy name,
increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and by Thy mercy keep us in the same.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Wednesday
The divine life, which we first received through baptism, has been implanted in us as a seed. We
must develop it by continuously cooperating with the grace of the Holy Spirit.
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