Tuesday 30 December 2014

Life of the Soul, Bl. Columba Marmion. 30 DECEMBER - CHRISTMAS SEASON

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Bl. Columba Marmion OSB



Night Office Saints, Bl.



Sixth Day of the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord.


Year I
First Reading
Colossians 1:15 - 2:3
Responsory Col 1:18.17
Christ is the head, and the Church is his body; he is the first bom from the dead, + so that in every way the primacy is his.
V. Before anything came into being, he existed: he holds all things in unity. +  So that in ...


Second Reading
From the writings of Blessed Calumba Marmion, O.S.B. (Christ the Life of the Soul 16-19).

Christ as head of the redeeme
From the creation of the first man God inaugurated his plan for us: Adam was endowed with grace that made him a child of God, an endowment for both himself and his posterity. By his own fault, however, he lost the divine gift on his own account and equally for his descendants. Since his rebellion we have all been born in a state of sin, stripped of the grace that would have made us children of God; indeed, we are the very opposite: children of wrath, enemies of God and liable to his anger. Sin thwarted God's design.
Yet in rehabilitating us God proved himself even more won­derful than in creating us, as the Church suggests in a Christmas prayer: "Lord God, we praise you for creating our human nature, and still more for restoring it in Christ." What divine marvel is this for which the Church gives him praise? It is the mystery of the incarnation. Through the Word made flesh God intends to recreate all things. This plan is the mystery hidden in God's mind from the beginning of time, and now revealed to us through Saint Paul. Christ, the man-God, is to be our mediator; he it is who will reconcile us to God and win us grace once more. Since this was foreordained by God from all eternity, Saint Paul rightly speaks of it as an ever-present mystery. It is the last majestic feature of the divine decree of predestination as the Apostle sketches it for us. Let us listen to him with faith, for we are now at the very heart of God's work.
God's purpose is to establish Christ as head of all the redeemed, and of everything that claims any title in this world or the next; so that through him, with him, and in him we may all reach union with God, and thus effectively attain the holiness that he re­quires of us.
The fullness of divine life is in Jesus Christ, and this fullness is to overflow to us and to the entire human race. The divine sonship which belongs to Christ by nature, and makes him the unique Son of God in the absolute sense, is to be shared with us through grace. Thus Christ is by God's, decree the first born of a great family of brothers and sisters, who are children of God by grace as he is by nature.

Here and here alone is the fountainhead of our holiness. Just as the whole being of Christ Jesus is summed up in his divine sonship, so the whole being of a Christian is summed up in our participation in that sonship in and through Jesus Christ. Holiness for us has no other meaning. The more abundantly we share in God's life through Christ's communication to us of that grace which he possesses in fullness forever, the higher will be our holiness. Christ is not simply holy in himself, he is our holiness. All the sanctity God has predetermined for human beings is stored up in Christ's humanity and from that wellspring we must draw.

          Responsorv   Phi! 2:6-7; jn 1:14
Though his nature was divine, + Christ did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a servant.
V. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. + Christ did not.




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