O my adorable Master, there are three sentiments which hold sway in Your Sacred Heart: complete dependence upon Your Father, and therefore perfect humility; then secondly a burning and universal love for men; and finally the spirit of sacrifice.
Perfect Humility
When You came into the world, You said, “Father, behold, I come to do Thy will.”
Ingrediens mundum dicit: Hostiam et oblationem noluisti . . . Tunc dixi: Ecce venio . . . ut faciam, Deus, voluntatem tuam (Heb. 10:5–7).
You often remind us that Your whole inner life may be summed up as a continual desire to do always the things that please Your Father.
Ego quae placita sunt ei, facio semper (Joan. 8:29). Meus cibus est ut faciam voluntatem ejus qui misit me (Joan. 4:34). Descendi de coelo non ut faciam voluntatem meam, sed voluntatem ejus qui misit me (Joan. 6:38).
O Jesus, You are obedience itself, “obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross.”
Factus obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis (Philipp. 2:8).
Even now, You obey Your priests. At the sound of their voice, You come back to the earth: “The Lord obeying the voice of a man.”
Obediente Domino voci hominis (Jos. 10:14).
What a school the Liturgy is, in which to learn to imitate Your subjection, if my heart will only become supple and responsive to the smallest rites with a desire of forming a spirit of dependence upon God, and of unflinchingly taming this “ego” of mine, so thirsty for liberty, and of bending my judgment and my will, so quick to refuse allegiance, Lord, to the fundamental spirit which You came to teach by Your example: the Worship of the Will of God!
Every time I thrust my own personality into the background in order that I may obey the Church as I would obey You Yourself, and act in her name, and unite myself with her, hence unite myself to You, I am receiving a priceless training that shapes my soul. This fidelity to the smallest prescriptions and rubrics will bear fruit in an immensely increased self-mastery when it comes to putting down my pride on more difficult occasions!
Qui fidelis est in minimo in majori fidelis est (Luc. 16:10). He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in that which is greater.
What is more, since the Liturgy constantly reminds me of the infallible truth that You are living within me, and of the necessity of Your grace if I am to draw fruit from even the simplest thought, it is at war with all presumption and with that self-satisfaction which, between them, would be enough to ravage every vestige of interior life. The Per Dominum Nostrum that comes at the end of almost every prayer in the Liturgy, would be enough to recall to my mind, were I able to forget it, that by myself I can do nothing, absolutely nothing, except sin or perform acts that have no merit. Everything convinces me of the necessity to run to You for help at all times. Everything keeps telling me that You demand this suppliant dependence, that my life may not wander off the track in pursuit of a lying mirage.
Through her Liturgy, the Church insists with great solicitude on this question of supplication, in order to convince her children of its necessity. She makes this Liturgy a true school of prayer, and therefore of humility. By her formulas, by the Sacraments and Sacramentals, she teaches me that everything comes to me through Your Precious Blood, and that the great means of reaping Its fruit is to unite myself, by humble prayer, to Your desire to apply them to us.
Let me profit, then, O Jesus, by these continual lessons, in order to increase the vivid awareness of my own littleness and to convince myself that I am nothing but a tiny particle in the Host which is Your Mystical Body, and that in the immense chorus of praise conducted by You, I am nothing but a thin and feeble voice.
Let me, thanks to the Liturgy, see more and more clearly that humility can make that voice more and more pure and clear, and that particle whiter and ever whiter.
Your Heart, Lord Jesus, embraced all men in Its mission of Redemption.
At Your death, You cried out upon the world, “I thirst,” and You do still, upon our altars and in the Tabernacle and in the very depths of Your glory. In all our souls, yes, even that of the plain Christian, that cry must be answered by a similar thirst: the strong desire to spend ourselves for our brothers; the burning thirst for the salvation of all men, and for the diffusion of the Gospel; a mighty zeal for the encouragement of priestly and religious vocations; and finally, tireless prayers that the faithful may come to comprehend the extent of their duties, and that souls consecrated to God may realize how necessary, for them, is the interior life.
How much more powerful an effect these desires should have, then, upon Your priests, constantly reminded, by their rites, that You have given them a special place in Your Mystical Body in order that they may incorporate as many souls as possible into You, and that they are co-redeemers, mediators, whose function it is to weep, “inter vestibulum et altare.”
Joel 2:17.
for the sins of the world, and sanctify themselves, not only for their own sake, but in order to be able to sanctify others, to form, and instruct and guide souls and make Your life course through their veins. “And for them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
Ego sanctifico meipsum ut sint et ipsi sanctificati (Joan. 17:19).
Holy Church of the Redeemer, Mother of all my brethren, your children, how can I live your Liturgy without sharing the strong desire in the Heart of your Divine Spouse for the salvation of His creatures and for the deliverance of the souls that groan in Purgatory?
Of course, I share in the fruits of my Mass, my Office. But it is your intent that the first share should go, before all else, to the whole group of souls which are in your care: in primus quae tibi offerimus pro Ecclesia sancta tua Catholica.
Which we offer Thee first of all for Thy Holy Catholic Church (Canon of the Mass).
You take a thousand means to insure that my heart will expand with love and my interior life will grow like to that of Jesus.
O my beloved liturgical life, increase in me the filial love for Holy Church and for the common Father of all the faithful. Make me more devoted, more submissive to my superiors in the hierarchy, and more united to them in all their cares and desires. Help me never to forget that Jesus lives in every person with whom I come in daily contact, and that He carries them all in His heart. Make me radiate, among them, a spirit of indulgence, of support, of patience, and of service, that I may thus reflect the meekness of the sweet Savior.
Keep me firmly rooted in the conviction that the only way I can get to Heaven is by the Cross, and that my praises, adoration, sacrifices, and all my other acts have no value, for heaven, except through the Blood of Christ, and it is in union with all the other Christians that I must gain Heaven, since it is with all the elect that I am to enjoy it, and to continue, with them, through Christ, for all eternity, the chorus of praises in which I have part here on earth.
Lord Jesus, You knew that mankind could only be saved by sacrifice, and You made Your whole life on earth a perpetual immolation.
Identified with You, acting as Priest with You, when I celebrate Mass, O my Crucified God, I desire to be a victim with You. Everything in You revolves around Your Cross. Everything in me has to revolve around my Mass. It will be the center, the sun of my days, just as Your Sacrifice is the central act of the Liturgy.
And the Liturgy will become, to me, a school of the spirit of sacrifice, because the altar and the Tabernacle will ever be taking me back to Calvary. By making me share in the thoughts and aspirations of Your Church, the Liturgy will communicate Your own sentiments to me, O Jesus, and thus will the words of St. Paul be fulfilled in me: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,”
Hoc sentite in vobis quod et in Christo Jesu (Philipp. 2:5).
along with those other words that were spoken to me at my ordination: Imitamini quod tractatis.
Imitate what you perform (Roman Pontifical.).
The Missal, Ritual, and Breviary constantly recall to me in many different ways, were it only by the countless Signs of the Cross, that sacrifice has become, since the fall, the law of the human race, and that it has no value except insofar as it is united with Your Sacrifice. Hence, I shall render unto You victim for victim, O my divine Redeemer. I will offer up to You a total immolation of my whole self, an immolation that shall MERGE with the Sacrifice once consummated by You on Golgotha and renewed many times, every second by the Masses which are said in unending succession all around the world.
The Liturgy will render this obligation of myself much easier and will enable me to make a greater contribution towards filling up those things that are wanting of Your sufferings for Your Body, which is the Church.
Adimpleo quae desunt passionum Christi pro corpore ejus, quod est Ecclesia (Coloss. 1:24).
I will thus bring my share and join it to that great Host made up of the sacrifices of all Christians.
Tota ipsa redempta Civitas, hoc est congregatio societasque sanctorum, universale Sacrificium offertur Deo per Sacerdotem magnum, qui etiam obtulit in Passione pro nobis, ut tanti capitis corpus essemus . . . Cum itaque nos hortatus esset Apostolus ut exhibeamus corpora nostra hostiam viventem . . . Hoc es Sacrificium Christianorum: multi unum corpus in Christo. Quod etiam Sacramento altaris, fidelibus noto, frequentat Ecclesia, ubi et demonstretur quod in ea re, quam offert, ipsa offeratur (St. Augustine, City of God, Bk. ix, c. vi).
“All the whole redeemed city, that is the congregation and society of the saints is offered to God as a universal Sacrifice by that High Priest, Who even offered it in His Passion, for us, that we might become the body of so noble a Head . . . Now therefore the Apostle, having exhorted us to give up our bodies as a living sacrifice. . . . This is the Christian Sacrifice: we are one Body with Christ, as the Church celebrates in the Sacrament of the Altar, so well known to the faithful, wherein it is shown to the Church that she herself is offered in the Victim which she offers.”
And this Host will rise up to Heaven to expiate the sins of the world and bring down upon the Church militant and suffering the fruits of Your Redemption.
In this way, I will lead a true liturgical life. For when I “put You on,” O my crucified Jesus, and unite myself in a practical way with Your Sacrifice by carrying out Your counsel to deny myself, thus making of myself a holocaust; is not that, O my Savior, the end to which Your Church would lead me in filling me with Your thoughts by her prayers and holy ceremonies, and bringing into my heart that which in You dominated everything: the Spirit of Sacrifice?
Tunc demum sacerdoti hostia proderit si, seipsum hostiam faciens, velit humiliter et efficaciter imitari quod agit (Petr. Blesens. Epist. cxxiii).
Then alone will the Mass be of profit to the priest if, making of himself a host, he is willing to imitate in a most humble and practical manner the Sacrifice he performs.
Qui Passionis Dominicae mysteria celebramus, debemus imitari quod agimus. Tunc ergo vere pro nobis Hostia erit Deo, cum nosmetipsos hostiam fecerimus (St. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, iv, c. 59).
We who celebrate the mysteries of the Lord’s Passion ought to imitate what we perform. And then will it truly be an offering to God that will make us pleasing to Him, if we make of ourselves victims also.
Thus will I become one of those carefully chosen living stones, polished by tribulations, “by the blows of the life-giving chisel, by ceaseless, relentless work of the mason’s hammer.”
Scalpri salubris ictibus
Et tunsione plurima
Fabri polita malleo.
(Roman Brev. Hymn at Vespers, from the Common of the Dedication of a Church).
and destined to enter into the construction of the heavenly Jerusalem.
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