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The Time After Pentecost
our resurrection and our glorification in heaven have already begun in the person of Christ
our head. “In God shall we glory all the day long; and in Thy name we will give praise forever”
(Gradual). We trust in God’s assurance: “I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. . . . I will
bring back your captivity from all places” (Introit).
“Our conversation is in heaven.” A future of happiness and blessing awaits us. Of what importance,
then, are the trials of this present life? What wonder, then, that in those ages of the Church
when men lived in continual expectation of the coming of Christ, a generation of martyrs arose,
which with true heroism despised the goods and honors of this world and trampled them under
foot, and gave their life and their blood in order to gain Christ and eternal life! What wonder
that such an age could produce a generation of virgins, strong, mortified, and pure, such as
Cecilia, Agnes, and Agatha! They understood well what it meant to go forth to meet Christ.
Do we understand as well?
“And if I shall go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to Myself;
that where I am, you also may be. . . . These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be
in you, and your joy may be filled” ( Jn 14:3; 15:11). We who are incorporated in Christ will
experience the fulfillment of these promises in the time that is to come.
The day of Christ’s coming, the day of our death, may be sooner than we expect. Are
we prepared for it? Are we prepared to meet the bridegroom with burning lamps? Or have
our lamps gone out for want of oil? We must always be prepared for the coming of the
bridegroom, for we “know not the day nor the hour” when He will come to call us to the
bridal feast of heaven.
Prayer
Remit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the sins of Thy people, that by Thy kindness we may be delivered
from the trammels of our sins, in which through our frailty we have become entangled.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Wednesday
The liturgy takes great pains during the last weeks of the Church year to keep alive in the hearts
of all Christians the thought of the day when the bridegroom will return, and it inspires them
with great hope in that day. It strengthens men in the hope that He “also will confirm you unto
the end without crime, in the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”; 26 it would have us
always prepared, that we “may be sincere and without offense unto the day of Christ.” 27 We are
invited to celebrate the joyful feast of All Saints for eight days, and we are also allowed to share
that ardent longing for heaven which possesses the souls of those in purgatory. The Church
then prays for us that “we may be delivered from the trammels of our sins” (Collect) and not
be “overcome by human dangers” (Postcommunion). She admonishes us always to stand fast
in the Lord” (Epistle). She knows well how easy it is to desert Christ and to fix our attention
on the things of this world.
26
Epistle for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
27
Epistle for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost.
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