Now I can bear it no longer,
Where, O Lord, shall I lay it?
GOD
Your heart’s desire shall you lay nowhere
But in my own Sacred Heart
And on my human breast.
There alone will you find comfort
And be embraced by my Spirit.
Tuesday after Epiphany 4
A Reading from Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
‘Jesus Christ,’ says the Apostle, ‘is the same yesterday, today and for ever.’ From the origins of the world he was, as God, the principle of the life of the righteous; from the first instant of his incarnation his humanity participated in this prerogative of his divinity. He works in us all through our life; the time which will elapse before the end of the world is but a day, and this day is filled with him. Jesus Christ has lived in the past and still lives in the present; he began in himself and continues in his saints a life that will never finish.
If the world is so incapable of understanding all that could be written of the individual life of Jesus, of his words and actions when he was on earth, if the gospel gives us only the rough sketch of a few little details of it, if that first hour of his life is so unknown and so fertile, how many gospels would have to be written to recount the history of all the moments of this mystical life of Jesus Christ which multiplies wonder infinitely and eternally, since all the aeons of time are, properly speaking, but the history of the divine action?
The Holy Spirit has set out for us in infallible and incontestable characters certain moments of this vast space of time. He has collected in the Scriptures certain drops, as it were, of this ocean. We see there the secret and unknown ways by which he caused Jesus Christ to appear in the world. We can follow the channels and veins of communication which in the midst of our confusion distinguishes the origin, the race, the genealogy of this first-born child. Of all this ocean of divine action he reveals to us but a tiny stream of water which, having reached Jesus, loses itself in the apostles and disappears in the Apocalypse, so that the history of the divine operations, in which consists the life of Jesus in holy souls until the consummation of the ages, can only be divined by our faith.
To the manifestation of the truth of God by word has succeeded the manifestation of his charity by action. The Holy Spirit carries on the work of the Saviour. While he assists the Church in the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, he writes his own gospel, and he writes it in the hearts of the faithful. All the actions, all the moments of the saints make up the gospel of the Holy Spirit. Their holy souls are the paper, their sufferings and their actions are the ink. The Holy Spirit, with his own action for pen, writes a living gospel, but it will not be readable until the day of glory when it will be taken out of the printing press of this life and published.
Wednesday after Epiphany 4
A Reading from The Mirror of Charity by Aelred of Rievaulx
It was pride that distorted the image of God in us and led us away from God, not by means of our feet but by the desires of our hearts. Thus we return to God by following the same path, but in the opposite direction, by the exercise of these same desires; and humility renews us in the same image in which God created us. This is why St Paul calls on us to be mentally and spiritually remade, and to be clothed in the new self made in God’s image. This renewal can only come about by fulfilling the new commandment of charity given us by our Saviour, and if the mind clothes itself in charity, our distorted memory and knowledge will be given new life and new form.
How simple it is to state the new commandment, but how much it implies – the stopping of our old habits, the renewal of our inner life, the reshaping of the divine image within us. Our power to love was poisoned by the selfishness of our desires, and stifled by lust, so that it has tended always to seek the very depths of deviousness. But when charity floods the soul and warms away the numbness, love strives towards higher and more worthy objects. It puts aside the old ways and takes up a new life, and on flashing wings it dies to the highest and purest Goodness which is the source of its being.
This is what St Paul was trying to show the Athenians when he established from the books of their philosophers the existence of one God, in whom we live and move and have our being. Paul then quoted one of their own poets who said that we are God’s offspring, and in the next sentence went on to enlarge on this saying. The Apostle was not using this quotation to prove that we are of the same nature or substance as God, and therefore unchangeable, incorruptible and eternally blessed like God the Son who was born of the Father from all eternity and is equal to the Father in all things. No, St Paul uses this passage from the poet Aratus to assert that we are the offspring of God because the human soul, created in the image of God, can share in his wisdom and blessedness. It is charity which raises our soul towards its destiny, but it is self-centred desire which drags it down to the things towards which, without God’s help, it would not certainly be drawn.
Thursday after Epiphany 4
A reading from The Power and Meaning of Love by Thomas Merton
Those of us today who seek to be Christians, and who have not yet risen to the level of full maturity in Christ, tend unfortunately to take one or other of the debased forms of love for the action of the Spirit of God and the love of Christ. It is this failure to attain to full maturity in love which keeps divisions alive in the world.
There is a ‘romantic’ tendency in some Christians – a tendency which seeks Christ not in love of those flesh-and-blood brothers and sisters with whom we live and work, but in some as yet unrealised ideal of ‘brotherhood’. It is always a romantic evasion to turn from the love of people to the love of love itself: to love people in general more than individual persons, to love ‘brotherhood’ and ‘unity’ more than one’s brothers, sisters, neighbours, and associates.
This corruption of love can be romantic also in its love of God. It is no longer Christ himself that is loved and sought, but perhaps an objectivised ‘experience’ of Christ, a degree of prayer, a mystical state. What is loved then ceases to be Christ, but the subjective reactions which are aroused in me by the supposed presence of Christ in thought or love or prayer.
The romantic tendency leads to a substitution of aestheticism, or false mysticism, or quietism, for genuine faith and love, and what it seeks in the Church is not so much reality as a protection against responsibility. Failing to establish a true dialogue with our brother or sister in Christ, this fallacy thwarts all efforts at real unity and cooperation among Christians.
Friday after Epiphany 4
A Reading from a homily of Gregory the Great
Let us attend to what our Lord requires of his preachers in the gospel, when he sends them out: ‘Go and preach,’ he says, ‘and say that the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Even if the gospel were silent, the world itself would proclaim it. Its chaotic state has become a statement. On all sides we are seeing the disintegration of our society: glory has come to an end. The state of the world is revealing to us the proximity of another kingdom, another kingdom which will overtake it; and the very people who once loved the world are now revolted by it.
The world’s chaos proclaims that we should not love it. If someone’s house became unstable and threatened to collapse, would they not flee? Surely, those who cherished it when it stood would be the first to run away if it began to collapse. If the world is collapsing, and yet we persist in loving it, then we are effectively preferring to be overwhelmed by it than to live in it. When love blinds us to our bondage, the ruin of the world will become inseparable from our own self-destruction.
It is easier for us to distance ourselves from the world around us when we see everything in such chaos. But in our Lord’s day, the situation was very different. The disciples were sent to preach the reality of an unseen kingdom at a time when everybody could see the kingdoms of this world flourishing. It was