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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250424
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SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - Easter Thursday
DESCRIPTION:THE SECRET \nOF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE \nBy Fr Barnabas Ahern \n◊◊◊ \nSo often when St. Paul writes of the death of Christ\, two expressions keep \nrecurring: “He loved me\,” and “He gave Himself for me.” He loved me\, and \ntherefore He went down to death in order that love\, because it was love\, could \nbecome dynamically active when He would rise from the dead as the glorious \nmessianic Son of God. In this He has proven His love for us\, because when as \nyet we were sinners and unworthy of His love\, He laid down His life for us. He \ndied so that He could become the risen Savior and pour out upon the Church the \nfullness of the Spirit. It is the light of this mystery of our Lord’s death and \nresurrection\, of His suffering and of His life\, of the love which led Him to die and \nto suffer\, and the love which leads Him to give everything to us today as the risen \nSavior; it is in this that we ourselves begin to understand the mystery of our own \nChristian life. \nOur baptism incorporates us into Christ in such a way that we become \n“other Christs.” The Spirit who guided our Lord\, the Spirit who illumined Him\, \nthe Spirit who charged His soul with love\, is the same Spirit who reproduces \nthat same love in our own life through the mystery of our Christian \nincorporation. This is why for Paul the whole meaning of the Christian life is \nlove. For Paul… all law has been abrogated—not merely the ceremonial\, ritual \nlaw of Judaism\, but all law. Now the Christian knows only one principle of \naction\, and that principle of action is totally from within—the love\, the agape\, \nwhich the Spirit is infusing… \n“If we live by the spirit\, then we must walk by the spirit”… The liturgy \nspeaks of the weight of our poor humanness that is always twisting us\, as it were\, \nto selfishness and away from God. Now\, our Lord knew the same weight\, that \nsame pull of humanness. He was “tempted” to give people what they wanted\, to \nmeet their need for excitement and pleasure. This easy way of meeting needs \nwas opposed by the hard way which the Father required. And Jesus kept \nclinging to the Father\, which meant a constant cross in His life: the vertical pull \nto the will of the Father\, the horizontal pull to the desires of His people. \nWe are in a similar situation. We know the will of God\, the vertical pull in \nlife\, and at the same time we feel the horizontal pull of our mortality\, our “flesh\,” \nthe needs of our human nature. The agape is always trying to lift us up in \nfidelity\, but it is always being dragged down by the pull of our poor humanness. \nIn such lives the Cross is inevitable. The agape is not only responsible for \nintroducing the Cross\, it also gives it meaning \nThis is the secret of our Lord’s life\, as Paul saw it; and it is the secret of the \nChristian life as we must live it. Mortification and self-denial\, all those negative \nfactors of life are without meaning if they are not prompted by agape. Our Lord \ncould become all things to all men\, He could forget Himself completely because \nthere was this driving urge to love. And those who have followed Him have been \ngiven this same spirit.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-easter-thursday/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
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