9781644135945

The Light of the World
an instrument. “God in His holy place; . . . He shall give power and strength to His people”
(Introit). He is “wont to give beyond the deserts and desires of those who humbly pray.” It is
God “who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will” (Phil
2:13). Paul is what he is by the grace of God, who determined his future work on the road to
Damascus without his prayers and merits; Paul merely cooperated with God’s grace. Thus Paul
has become a shining example of what God is willing and able to do with a man who gives
himself up entirely into His hands.
In Saul and in Paul we recognize ourselves. By ourselves we are but another Saul; but God’s
mercy is able to make of us another Paul. “My flesh hath flourished” when touched by the
almighty hand of the Lord, who makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak. “I will extol Thee, O
Lord, for Thou hast upheld me” (Offertory). If only we also could say with St. Paul: “His grace
in me hath not been void.”
Prayer
O almighty and eternal God, who in the abundance of Thy loving kindness art wont to give
beyond the deserts and desires of those who humbly pray; pour down upon us Thy mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and granting us those blessings
which we dare not presume to ask. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saturday
“I make known unto you the gospel which I preached to you: . . . how that Christ died for our
sins, . . . and that He rose again the third day” (Epistle). The Church never tires of announcing
in all the rites of her liturgy this message of life for all those who die with Christ in baptism and
in the celebration of Mass.
“My flesh hath flourished again; and with my will I will give praise to Him” (Gradual). This
victorious Easter chant, filled with feelings of gratitude, should be sung by Christians every
Sunday. Every Sunday, through the liturgy of the Mass, we should become more vividly aware
of the fact that we possess life, because, having died with Christ, we arose with Him to a new
life. The celebration of Mass is for us a renewal and continuation of our baptism, when we were
“buried together with Him . . . into death” (Rom 6:4). The Apostle instructs us that through
baptism we were buried with Him that we might arise to a new life with Him. Our old man was
also crucified that the body of sin might be destroyed and serve sin no longer. We believe that
we, the members of Christ’s mystical body, the branches of the vine, share the life of the risen
Christ because we also died with Him.
“My flesh hath flourished again.” It has been deeply humiliated under the curse and servitude
of sin and the concupiscence of the flesh; but now in baptism it has become, through the
power of the Lord, a vessel of divine life. Being a branch of Christ, the true Christian, fortified
by the power of the risen Christ, is able to resist the assaults of the tempter and the allurements
of the flesh and the world. Lifting up his mind and heart to God, he tries continually to fill his
soul with divine life, thus becoming ever more perfectly the spiritual, risen man, who out of the
fullness of his union with God and Christ is enabled to diffuse light and strength over others
536