DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS FOR APRIL 2010
+In Baptism we die with Christ, and may hope to share His Resurrection+
Our Lord suffered death at the time of the great Jewish feast; evidently he meant us to understand that He was being sacrificed for us as our Paschal Victim, meant us to understand that the escape of Israel from Egypt by way of the Red Sea was a type of Christian baptism, cutting us off, as if by a wall of water, from our dead past. The hymn Exsultet, which we sing on Holy Saturday, a hymn that in its whole inspiration takes you right back to the very beginnings of Christendom, is full of that imagery. “This night, long ago, Thou didst rescue the sons of Israel, our fathers, out of Egypt…” So we bless the [Easter] candle that is the type of our Lord Himself, that will be dipped into the new Font, and make it pregnant with the power of spiritual re-birth….Christian baptism, intimately connected with our Lord’s Resurrection and with the feast of our Lord’s Resurrection, is the fulfillment of a type; it puts a distance between us and our sins, isolates us in the close unity of Christian fellowship; we too are like men who have escaped from bondage. To be baptized is to undergo a mystical death, in union with our Lord’s death on the Cross, a mystical burial in union with His burial, a mystical resurrection in union with His Resurrection. “So… just as Christ was raised up by His Father’s power from the dead, we too might live and move in a new kind of existence.” [Romans 6:6] The doctrine of the New Birth is not an all-clear signal to tell us that the struggle with sin is over. It is a call to arms, bidding us enter on the struggle, because at last we have a chance of victory.
(Monsignor Ronald Knox from his book ‘St. Paul’s Gospel’ 1953)
Bishop Anthony writes: We are baptized into the death and Resurrection of Christ, yet, as Father Knox tells us, this doesn’t mean that the struggle is over. We cannot presume that our state of Grace will last. We have to “work” with that Grace all the time – every one of us knows how often we sin and so fall from that first Grace of Baptism. The Israelites escaped but they continued their sinful ways! Christ’s Death and Resurrection have given us the opportunity to inherit eternal life with Him; our baptism blots out our former nature and fits us for Heaven, but it does not prevent us stepping back into our old ways! If we try to be in a state of Grace, the Spirit of the Living God which came to us at our baptism, will always “work with us”, if I can put it that way. And, surely, the more we strive to co-operate with the Grace which the Holy Spirit gives us, the more we are doing God’s Will, not because we are obliged to, but because we want to!. Above all else, the Spirit that enters us at our baptism, is, as Saint Paul tells us, the spirit of Adoption – the adoption of Christ and His Resurrection into our lives.
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Let us pray:O God, Who dost enlighten this most Sacred Eastertide with the glory of the Resurrection of the Lord: preserve in the new offspring of Thy family the spirit of Adoption, which Thou hast given; that they, being regenerate in body and mind, may render Thee pure service. Through the same Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end+
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And a Passing Thought
When you are at Mass, be there as if you were on Calvary. For it is the same Sacrifice and the same Jesus Christ Who is doing for you what He did on the Cross for all human beings.
(Saint John Baptist de la Salle)
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LAMB OF GOD WHO TAKEST AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD, HAVE MERCY UPON US!
BY THY CROSS AND RESURRECTION, O LORD, THOU HAST REDEEMED THE WORLD!
SACRED AND EUCHARISTIC HEART OF JESUS, WE GIVE THEE OUR HEARTS AND SOULS!
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“You seek Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified. He is risen again, He is not here. Here is the place where they laid Him. Tell Peter and His disciples that he goes before you into Galilee. There shall you see Him, as He promised you” (Saint Mark, Chapter 16)
