Dom Marmion – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
WORDS OF LIFE ON THE MARGIN OF THE MISSAL
- Dom Columbia Marmion, Abbot of Maredsous -
July 16, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Christ’s tender compassion
Christ Jesus has in His Heart the truest affective love with which a human heart can beat.
For three days a multitude of people follow Him, drawn by the charm of His Divine words and the splendour of His miracles. But this multitude, having nothing to eat, begins to be overcome with faintness. Jesus knows this. “I have compassion on the multitude,” He says, “for behold they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat. And if I shall send them fasting to their home they will faint in the way; for some of them came from afar off “: Misereor super turbam.1 What a deep sense of compassion moves His human Heart! And you know how Jesus puts His pity into action: in His blessed Hands the loaves are multiplied to satisfy the hunger of the five thousand who had followed Him.
Christ Jesus does not change. He was yesterday, He is today: His Heart remains the most loving and most loveable that could be met with. In heaven, He remains the One Who was moved by compassion, Who suffered and redeemed men through love.
Christ in His Mysteries, p. 375.
1 Cf. Gospel of the Mass.
Saint Alexis, Confessor
Detachment from created things and Christian perfection
To find God perfectly, we must first of all be freed from every creature in so far as it keeps us back on the path of perfection. The young man of the Gospel who comes to Our Lord and asks what he must do to have life everlasting, is given this answer: “Keep the commandments.” “All these have I kept from my youth,” replies the young man. Then our Divine Saviour adds: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and… come follow Me.” At these words the young man goes away sorrowful. “For,” says the Gospel, “he had great possessions.” Riches held his heart captive and because of them he could not follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
However, God is so magnificent in His dealings with us, that in return for the things we leave for Him, He gives Himself to us even now and here with incommenrurable generosity. “Amen, I say to you… there is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for My sake… who shall not receive a hundred times as much, now in this time.”1
Christ the Ideal of the Monk, p. 191.
1 Cf. Gospel of the Mass.
Saint Camillus de Lellis, Confessor
Love of our neighbour.—How manifested
To love our neighbour supernaturally is, indeed, to love him in view of God, to the end that he may gain or preserve God’s grace which will bring him to eternal beatitude. To love is to “wish good” to another, says St. Thomas, but all individual good is subordinate to the supreme good. When, during prayer, we recommend to God the needs of souls, or when at Mass we sing the Kyrie eleison for all those who are awaiting the light of the Gospel or the strength of grace in temptation, when we pray on behalf of the labour of missionaries, we perform acts of true charity extremely acceptable to Our Lord. If Christ has promised to give a reward for a cup of cold water given in His Name, what will He not give for a life of prayer or of expiation consecrated to the advancement of His Reign?
There are yet other necessities. It may be a poor man who needs help; a sick person to be relieved, nursed, or visited; one who is in sorrow to be comforted by kind words… Charity, says St. Paul, makes itself “all things to all men”.
Christ the Life of the Soul, p. 364.
Saint Vincent de Paul, Confessor
Love of our neighbour extension of our love of God
We must love God totaliter and totum. To love God totaliter, totally, is to love God with all our soul, all our mind, all our heart, and all our strength: it is to love God in accepting, in its full extent, all that His holy Will ordains.
To love God totum is to love God and all that God associates with Himself. Now what is it that God associates with Himself? First of all, the Humanity of Christ in the Person of the Word, and that is why we cannot love God without loving Jesus Christ at the same time.
But the Word, in uniting Himself to human nature, has fundamentally united to Himself all humanity in a mystical manner. Christ is but the eldest-born of a multitude of brethren whom God makes the participants of His nature. They are by grace what Jesus is by nature: the beloved sons of God. We here touch upon the intimate reason of the precept which Jesus calls “His commandment”: since the Incarnation, and by the Incarnation, all men are, by right, if not in fact, united to Christ as the members are united to the head in the same body.
Christ the Life of the Soul, p. 356. 346
July 20. — Saint Jerome ^milian, Confessor
Love of our neighbour, its measure
“Give, and it shall be given to you” : Date, et dabitur vobis? He who gives to his neighbour receives in his turn from God. There are souls who do not advance in the love of God, because God acts sparingly towards them; and God shows Himself sparing because they are selfish and will not give themselves to Christ in His members.
Let us, then, give, as Christ has given, as He Himself tells us: Sicut dilexi vos. Our Divine Saviour has no need of us; and yet He has given Himself, Heart, Blood, Life; He still delivers Himself up daily in the Eucharist. Let us, too, give without reservation. Let us listen to Our Lord Who tells us: “I Who am God have loved this neighbour, I have given Myself for him, I call him to the same eternal beatitude as yourself; why do you not love him, if not in the same measure that I have loved him, at least as ardently as you can for My sake, and in Me? ” That is our ideal, and it is by ever striving to reach this ideal that, according to the precept of St. Benedict, we shall fully pay off the debt of fraternal charity: Caritatem fraternitatis impendant amore.
Christ the Ideal of the Monk, p. 409. 347
Saint Praxedes, Virgin
Fidelity and perfection
It is “with all our powers” that we must by fidelity safeguard our “adhesion to the Word”, the Spouse of the soul.
This fidelity must be universal; with regard to the Spouse, it must extend to all that relates to His person, His rights, His interests, and His glory; on the part of the soul it should touch all the faculties; ennoble every act for the whole of her life.
This continuous and constant fidelity, even in the smallest things is of the greatest importance; the perfection and fruitfulness of the union are dependent on it. This fidelity to the Spouse in the slightest details pleases the Word: He speaks of this in the Canticle: “Thou hast wounded My heart, My Spouse, with one hair of thy neck.”
Oh, what condition more blessed than that of the faithful soul! What state more enviable than that of the virgin always attentive for the least signs of the approach of her Spouse! Finding her with her light burning, the Spouse “will lead her into the hall of the marriage feast” and will bestow richly upon her those delights which neither speech nor pen can describe: Intravit cum Eo ad nuptias…
Sponsa Verbi, pp. 52, 61.
Saint Mary Magdalen, Penitent
The triumph of grace in Magdalen
We read in the Gospel that women followed Jesus in His apostolic journeys in order to minister to His needs and those of His disciples. Among all these women of unwearying devotedness, whom did He single out? Magdalen. He said of her: “Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached… that also which she hath done shall be told.” He willed that the sacred scribe should hide nothing of the fact of her sinful life; but He willed, too, that we should read how He accepted the presence of Magdalen at the foot of the Cross, by the side of His Mother, the Virgin of virgins; and how it was to her, before all others, that He first appeared after His Resurrection.
Why so much condescension? To exalt the triumphant glory of His grace in the sight of all. Such is indeed the greatness of divine forgiveness that it raised to the highest holiness a sinner who had fallen so low: Abyssus abyssum…
God wills that “no man may glory” in his own righteousness, but that all should magnify the power of His grace and the wideness of His mercy: Quoniam in aeternum misericordia ejus.
Christ in His Mysteries, p. 217.