How hard it is for me, O my God, to base the ordinary run of my actions upon a supernatural motive! Satan and creatures conspire with my self-love to lure my soul and faculties away from their dependence upon Jesus living within me.
How many times, in the course of the day, this purity of intention which so greatly affects the merit of my actions and the efficacy of my apostolate is ruined through lack of vigilance or of fidelity! Only continual effort will obtain for me, with God’s help the power to ensure that most of my actions may have grace as their vivifying principle, and be directed by grace, towards God, as their end.
I cannot make these efforts without mental prayer. Yet what a difference it makes, when this striving for purity of intention has, for its background, the liturgical life! Mental prayer and the liturgical life are two sisters who help each other. Mental prayer, before my Mass and Office, puts me in a supernatural atmosphere. The liturgical life makes it possible to transmit the fruits of my mental prayer to all the actions of the day.
“I make a good meditation in order to be able to say Mass well and I say Mass and my Office with devotion in order that I may make a good meditation the following morning” (Fr. Olivaint).
O Holy Church, when you are teaching me, how easy it is for me to acquire the habit of giving to my Creator and Father at all times the worship that is His due! You are the Spouse of Him Who is Adoration, Thanksgiving, Reparation, and Meditation in the highest degree, and, by your Liturgy, you give me that thirst, which Jesus had, to glorify His Father; and this is the first end you had in view when you established the Liturgy.
Is it not obvious that if I live the liturgical life I will become steeped in the virtue of religion, since the whole Liturgy is nothing but the continuous and public exercise of that virtue, which is the most excellent of all virtues after Faith, Hope, and Charity?
If I make use of the light of faith, it is quite true hat I can manifest the dependence of all my faculties upon God, as well as piety, vigilance, and valor in the spiritual combat. But what great need there is for this human being of mine, composed of body and soul, to receive the assistance of its every faculty in order to fix the mind upon eternal values, and fill the heart with an eager enthusiasm to profit by them, and excite the will to ask for them repeatedly and to strive, without respite, to possess them!
The Liturgy grips my entire being. The whole complex of ceremonies, genuflections, bows, symbols, chants, texts, appealing to the eye, the ear, the feelings, the imagination, the intellect, and the heart—by means of all these, the Church reminds me that everything that is in me: os, lingua, mens, sensus, vigor,
The mouth, the tongue, the mind, the senses, and all our strength (from the Hymn sung daily at Terce).
all must be directed to God.
All the means used by the Church to show me what are God’s rights and His claims to the worship of my filial homage and to the total ownership of my being develop in me the virtue of religion, and, by that very fact, the supernatural spirit.
Everything in the Liturgy speaks to me of God, of His perfections, His mercies. Everything takes me back to God. Everything tells me how His Providence is ever holding out to my soul means of sanctification in every trial, every assistance from on high, every warning, encouragement, promise, light, yes, even in His threats.
Also, the Liturgy keeps me ceaselessly talking to God and expressing my religion under the most varied forms.
If, with an earnest desire to profit by it, I submit to this liturgical formation, how is it possible that the virtue of religion should not strike deeper and deeper roots into my being, after all the manifold exercises that follow, each day, from my functions as a minister of the Church? I am bound to form a habit, a mental state, and that means a genuine inner life.
The Liturgy is a school of the presence of God; and teaches us to stay in the presence of our God as He was manifested to us in the Incarnation! Call it rather a school of the presence of Jesus, and of love!
Love is fed by the knowledge of the attractions of the One loved, by the proofs He has given us of His love, but above all, says St. Thomas, by His presence.
Now the Liturgy reproduces, explains, and applies these various manifestations of the life of Jesus among us. It keeps us permanently in a supernatural and divine atmosphere, by prolonging, so to speak, the life of Our Lord, and by displaying to us, in all His mysteries, how kind and lovable is His Heart.
Dear Lord, it is You Yourself Who continue to teach us, through the Liturgy, Your great lesson, and to show us the great revelation of Your love. I see you clearer and clearer: not through the eyes of a historian, that is, behind the veil of centuries, nor in the way You are so often known by the theologian, as the object of laborious speculations. You are right close to me. You are ever Emmanuel, God with us, with Your Church, and so, with me. You are someone that every member of Your Church lives with, and Whom the Liturgy shows me at all times in the forefront of my life, as the model and object of my love.
By the cycle of Your Feasts, by the lessons chosen from Your Gospel and from the writings of Your Apostles, and by the splendor with which she causes Your Sacraments to shine forth especially the Blessed Eucharist, the Church makes You live among us, and lets us hear the beating of Your Heart.
To believe that Jesus lives in me; that He wants to work in me if only I do not stand in His way! When prayer has filled me with the conviction of this truth, what a mighty source of strength I possess, in my supernatural life! But when frequently throughout the course of the day, using all the varied and sensible means offered by the Liturgy, I nourish my mind and heart with the dogma of grace, of Christ praying and acting with every one of the members whose life He is supplying for their deficiencies, and, hence, for mine; then I am really maintaining myself under the permanent influence of the supernatural, I am getting to live in union with Jesus, and to find an established place in His love.
Love of complacency, of benevolence, of preference, of hope—all these forms of love shine forth in the wonderful collects, in the psalms, the ceremonies, the prayers. And they penetrate my soul.
How strong and generous the interior life becomes, with this method of contemplating Jesus as living and ever present! And when some act of detachment or of abnegation may be required to keep my life supernatural when some difficult task is to be performed, some pain or insult to be endured, how quickly the spiritual battle, the virtue, the trial will lose their painful and repugnant aspect of instead of looking at the bare Cross, I look at You nailed there, O my Savior; and if I hear You ask me, as You show me Your wounds, for this sacrifice as a proof of love.
Then, too, the Liturgy gives me strong support in another way by repeatedly reminding me that my love is not acting in isolation. I am not alone in the fight against these natural impulses that are ever threatening to engulf me. The Church is alive to the fact of my incorporation in Christ and follows me like a mother, giving me a share in all the merits of the millions of souls with whom I am in communion, and who speak the same official language of love as I do; and she renews my powers of endurance by assuring me that Heaven and Purgatory are here with me, for my encouragement and assistance.
Nothing is so effective as the mindfulness of eternity in keeping the soul directed to God in all its acts.
Now everything in the Liturgy reminds me of my last end. The expressions vita aeterna, coelum, infernum, mors, saeculum saeculi, and others like them are of frequent recurrence.
Prayers and offices for the dead, funerals bring before my mind death, judgment, rewards and unending punishments, the value of time and the purifications that have to be gone through, willynilly, either here below or in Purgatory, if I am going to get in to Heaven.
The feasts of the saints speak to me of the glory of those who were before me here on earth, and show me the crown which is in store for me if I follow in their footsteps and conform to their example.
By these lessons the Church is ceaselessly crying out to me: “Beloved soul, consider the eternal years, and you will remain faithful to your motto, ‘God in all things, all the time, everywhere!’”
O divine Liturgy: if I want to acknowledge all the benefits you bring us, I must enumerate all the virtues! Thanks to the chosen Scripture texts which you place before me at all times, thanks to the rites and symbols which express the divine Mysteries to me, my soul is constantly raised above this earth and directed now towards the theological virtues, now towards the fear of God, the horror for sin and for the spirit of this world, with detachment, compunction, confidence, or spiritual joy.
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