Vigils Reading

THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST

By Thomas Merton4

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The “new life“, the life of the Spirit, life “in Christ“, is communicated to

the human spirit by the invisible Mission of the Holy Spirit – a direct

consequence of the Resurrection of Jesus. Therefore the “new creation“

instituted by the second Adam is in fact a prolongation of his Resurrection. The

new world which is called the Kingdom of God, the world in which God reigns in

us by his divine Spirit, the world of the Second Adam is, in fact, the Eon of the

resurrection – the new age that begins to dawn with the rising of Christ from the

dead, which reaches out to touch, with the pure spiritual light of that dawning,

each soul newly incorporated into the Risen Christ, until all the elect are

gathered together in him…

“If,” says St Paul, “by reason of the one man’s offense death reigned

through the one man, much more will they who receive the abundance of

grace…reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” That is exactly the Pauline

concept of the Kingdom of God – a Kingdom of superabundant spiritual life, in

which the saints “reign in life through the one Christ.”

To reign in life…is to have and enjoy the sublime liberty of the children of

God, the freedom of the Spirit by which Christ has come to make us free. The

early Church was entirely penetrated with this doctrine of liberation, plenitude

and life. Wherever the authentic Christian spirit has prevailed, it has always

been marked by this same perfect liberty and vitality in the Spirit. For always

and everywhere the Spirit of Christ teaches this message to those who are his

own: “For whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God.“

In this view of Christ’s role as second Adam, establishing the final victory

of life over death, we are still confronted with the ideas of death and life

together. The liberation from sin and death is effected by the death of Christ.

The communication of life to our souls is effected by the resurrection of Christ.

“Jesus…was delivered up for our sins, and rose again for our justification.” We

shall see that in order to enter fully into communion with the life brought to us

by Christ we must in some sense – sacramentally, ascetically, mystically – die

with Christ and rise with him from the dead. The whole life of the Kingdom of

God consists then in the gradual extension of the spiritual effects of the death

and resurrection of Jesus to one soul after another until Christ lives perfectly in

all whom he has called to himself.

4 THE NEW MAN, Thomas Merton (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, NY 1961) pp. 152-154.9