The Tribe of Ruben

The virtue of faith means to possess “the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that He has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because He is truth itself” (CCC 1814). The Faith is supernatural knowledge because it does not come from the natural world or from human intelligence, but comes from God’s supernatural grace. The faith is certain, because it is revealed by God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. When St Peter expressed his faith that Jesus was the Son of God, “Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 16:17).     

When we meditate on God’s revealed truth, we should consider that this truth is not a “something”, but rather is a “someone”, Jesus himself. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me” (John 14:6). It is through God the Son, that God the Father is revealed and it is through God the Holy Spirit, that God the Son is revealed. It is the same Holy Spirit by whom Jesus was made incarnate in the womb of Mary, the Arc of the New Covenant. It is the same Holy Spirit who on Pentecost descended upon the twelve apostles and who is the soul of the Church. It is this same Holy Spirit without whom no one can “call Jesus Lord” who has revealed Him and his revelation to us who possess the virtue of faith.  

Faith is an infused virtue given to us at our baptism. It is a gift given to us so we can give assent to God’s revelation with our intellect and consent to it with our will. With faith our intellect can assent to what we cannot fully understand. With faith our will can consent to what it cannot accomplish without faith. God created us without our willing it, but He will not save us without our willing it. By practicing our faith we are willing ourselves to be saved by cooperating with God’s will in answering His call to a life of grace here on earth and to a life of eternal happiness in heaven. Pope St John Paul II said “The faith is a response not an initiative”. God calls and we respond. Let us pray that we will always respond to God’s call to grow in faith and never lose it, and that those who have lost it, or have never had it, will accept the gift of faith in order to obtain the eternal happiness of heaven.

“The greatest untapped reservoir of spiritual power in the Church today is in the Laity” (Fulton Sheen). The Christian laity is the point of contact between the secular and the sacred, between the “this worldly” of everyday life, and the “otherworldly” of God’s grace. The Christian is a channel of grace. Just as the soul gives life to the body, and grace gives life to the soul, the Christian, living out their life of supernatural Faith, Hope and Charity, gives witness to the world of the presence of God and His Son’s salvation. As members of the Church, which is the “Universal Sacrament of Salvation” (CCC 776), the role of the laity is to be the “Anima Mundi”, the Soul of the World.

In order to fulfill our calling as witnesses of Christ in the world, we must live our faith. To live our faith, we must understand our faith by learning our faith. In learning our faith we must practice it, fortifying it with the practice of virtue, the sacraments and prayer. Prayer is the principle means of obtaining God’s grace and it is grace that gives us the light of intellect to understand our faith and the strength of will to live it faithfully. Otherwise, “we cannot give what we do not have”. We are “clay pots”, “earthenware” and can only pour out into the world what has been given to us by God.  

The Church exists to evangelize. The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ, which is to draw all souls to Him. Jesus thirsts for humanity. Humanity hungers for Christ. The world longs to see goodness and to see holiness. For the Christian, it is not so much a question of where shall the world find that goodness and holiness. For Christians, that should not be a question, but rather an imperative, which God has commanded for us to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). The world longs to see manifestations of Christ’s goodness and holiness, and it is through the living witness of every Christian life, that we ought always to strive toward never depriving the world of seeing it.

An interviewer once asked St Teresa of Calcutta, “Why did God permit pain”? Mother Teresa answered “To give us the opportunity to share in the Passion of Christ… as Jesus went through all His Passion, for love of us… and to repair for what we have done [through sin]”. Mother Teresa was describing the mystery of redemptive suffering. Redemptive suffering is when we unite our sufferings with the meritorious sufferings of Christ in His Passion. St. Paul expressed this in his letter to the Colossians, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his [Mystical] Body, that is, the Church…” (Colossians 1:24). The Passion that Jesus underwent as head of the Mystical Body, is now continued in time, even up to this day, but now in the members of His Mystical Body, the Church.

When we share in Christ’s redemptive suffering, in a manner of speaking, God looks down and sees not so much our image, but rather, sees the image of His Son in His Passion. The merits Jesus won for us on Calvary are applied to us as we enter into union with the Passion of Christ and His saving power. It is a medicine given to us that our Lord Himself willed to take from His own chalice of suffering. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities…and with His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Through the merits of Christ’s sorrowful Passion, we can expiate for our sins and make reparation for the sins of others.

There is a pious tradition that when the angel appeared to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the angel brought with him a vision of all the souls, who through the ages, would follow in the footsteps of Christ in His Passion. “And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke 22:43). We may or may not hold to pious traditions, but it is Sacred Tradition that Jesus was consoled and that in as much as our past, present and future sins were the cause of His sufferings on Calvary, it is also by accepting our sufferings in union with Christ that we not only share in Jesus’ work of redemption, but also have brought consolation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in His Passion.

When we sin against God, we incur an infinite debt. It is infinite because our offense is committed against an infinite being, God. Man, who is finite, cannot pay an infinite debt, yet it is man who owes that debt and who in strict justice must pay it. In Christ, God, in His mercy and justice became man, so that as man, He could pay the debt man owes, and as God, He could pay the debt man cannot pay and God did not owe. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Christ died for our sins so that we could be saved from the loss of Heaven and the pains of hell. Through His passion and death He redeemed us to save us from sin.

Jesus’ redemptive suffering and death restored us to union with God and the share in God’s life that had been lost in the Original Sin through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. This share in God’s life is the life of sanctifying grace. It is to the soul, what the soul is to the body. Just as the soul is the animating principle that gives life to the body, so it is that sanctifying grace is the animating principle that gives life to the soul. It is the “soul of the soul”. Through the Mass and sacraments, we obtain this grace. It is through the passion and death of our Lord that the Mass and Sacraments have their power and efficacy. 

The Mystery of Christ’s Redemption is inextricable from the mystery of God’s merciful love for us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The central act in all of history is Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It is the greatest and most perfect act of love that has ever existed or that will ever exist. Jesus Himself told Saint Faustina to write in her diary, “Proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God. All the works of My hands are crowned with mercy”. We see this in Holy Scripture: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are above all his works” (Psalm 145:9).

In creation, there is a law of transformation, in which what exists in a lower order, dies to itself so that it may be raised to a higher order of life. We see this in nature. Within the earth’s soil, the chemical order of minerals passes from a lifeless state into that of the living state of plant life. It “dies” to the lower order and is taken up into the living organism of the plant life. That which was in a lower order has now become a participant in the life of a higher order. It has been raised to a new life.

In a like manner, plant life exists in a lower order of life than that of animal life. So too, for the plant to rise to a higher life, it must die and be consumed. It now becomes incorporated into the organism of the higher animal life. In turn, for the animal life to be incorporated into a higher order of life, it too must undergo death. Having died and having been consumed, what was once animal life, now becomes incorporated into a higher order of life within the organism of human life.

We now apply this principle of transformation to our own Christian lives. To enter into the higher life of God, we must die to our lower sinful nature. Jesus said to his disciples, “If any man has a mind to come my way, let him renounce self, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt 16:24). This is the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. By living out our baptismal life in daily conversion, renouncing sin through the mortification of our lower fallen nature, we live a life of prayerful virtue in a state of grace that comes from the life-giving springs which are the sacraments. This is the mystery of our salvation, to die with Christ, so that we may rise with Him and be incorporated into the divine life of His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church

Prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. Prayer is a dialogue. It is a meeting of personalities. The practice of prayer is a virtue and is the principle means by which we obtain God’s grace. Grace gives light to our intellect to know God’s will and it gives strength to our will to do it. It is grace that makes the humanly impossible possible. “…in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me”. (Philippians 4:12-13)

To what end do we pray? There are four ends to prayer. These are Adoration, Thanksgiving, Reparation and Supplication. We express our love and Adoration to God, because He is all good and loving. We give Thanks to God, because He gives us everything we have and cannot be outdone in generosity. We ask His mercy and forgiveness and offer Reparation for our sins, because we are sinners in need of His mercy. We ask Him for what we need and what we want, provided it is compatible with God’s will and for the good of our Immortal Soul.

Servant of God, Fr. John Hardon wrote “It is as if The Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, from all eternity, had been in conversation with each other. Now, God has invited us into this conversation”. In scripture we read “what is man that you [God] are mindful of him” (Psalms 8:4). It is not a small thing, God’s mind is always on us. In His infinite love, he desires the highest good for us, union with Him. God owes us nothing, yet He offers us everything. He offers us the eternal life and happiness His salvation brings, for which His Son endured death on the cross. Our principal response to God is in prayer. Prayer is the key that opens the portal to God’s grace into our earthly life, and it is God’s grace, that opens the portal to the eternal life of Heaven.

Each time we enter a church, we bless ourselves with holy water. Holy water is a sacramental. It is one of the many we use in the practice of our Catholic faith. Sacramentals are visible signs used to give invisible grace. Sacramentals, like the (seven) sacraments, effect what they signify. They signify God’s grace or blessing and impart that grace or blessing. Unlike the (seven) sacraments, which were instituted by Jesus Himself, the sacramentals are instituted by the Church. The power, or efficacy, of a sacramental is dependent upon the prayers of the Church and upon the faith of the recipient of the sacramental. 

A sacramental can be a blessed object, such as a crucifix, statue, bible, scapular, candles, rosary beads, a blessed medal, holy water, or blessed salt, etc. Bells and Incense are also sacramentals. These sacred objects must be blessed by a priest before they are considered a sacramental. A sacramental can also be an action, such as making the sign of the cross, kissing a crucifix, or simply genuflecting on one knee when passing in front of the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament. Also, a sacramental can be in the form of words, such as “Jesus I trust in You” or “Precious Blood of Jesus, wash over me”, or any such pious aspirations.  

The use of Sacramentals can also help us obtain remission of temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven in confession. When we sin, we incur temporal punishment. The use of sacramentals can help lessen that punishment so as to reduce or hopefully even eliminate punishment that we might otherwise have to suffer in purgatory. Also, many people may not know, but blessing yourself with holy water with devoutness can actually remove venial sins. Of course, for mortal sins the ordinary means of obtaining forgiveness is the sacrament of confession, which includes performing our assigned penance. Through the sacraments and sacramentals the Church offers us an infinite treasury of graces. The fountains of these graces are principally the sacraments, but also available to us is a wealth of Sacramentals.  

In 1976 I went on a field trip to Ft. Worth with my 8th grade class from St. Cecelia Catholic School. I was 14 years old. We visited the Botanical Gardens, the zoo and other sights that day. The day was to end with the opportunity of a lifetime, to see and hear Mother Teresa of Calcutta speak before an audience at the Ft. Worth Convention Center.

Mother Teresa was tiny in size and soft spoken. I remember she spoke of the nature of her work. She described the lives and suffering of the poor in Calcutta. She described the tender care with which the dying and alone were treated in their last moments of life. I got the impression that perhaps the comfort given to these poor souls in their dying moments might have been the only comfort they may have ever known in their lives. Mother described how she and the sisters would bathe the men and women who were too sick or weak to bathe themselves. This was work that most people would never think of humbling themselves to do. Mother said that the sisters would care for the poor and dying as though they were caring for our Lord Jesus himself and that when we do the same for others, we do the same for our Lord.

Not every moment did Mother Teresa speak in somber tones. She described the joy that she and the sisters felt in fulfilling their service. She would often display a wonderful smile when she described her work and even shared a very funny anecdote which involved a very drunk woman that came into their mission one day. I can’t remember the details of the story, but I remember she got a big kick out of telling the audience about it.

I recall from that night our drive back to Dallas. We were in a VW mini bus. Soon after we began our drive, we realized that we were following behind a car that had three sisters in the back seat that were wearing the same type of habits that Mother Teresa wore. It occurred to us that one of them must be Mother Teresa. Our teacher honked the horn and the sisters turned around and that’s when we saw her smiling face. She had the most wonderful smile. Mother Teresa was seated in the left rear passenger seat. Like a bunch of groupies chasing after a rock star, we followed her car through many turns, honking occasionally and waiving at Mother as she and the other sisters turned around to wave and smile at us. Finally we came to a red light. I had in my possession the entire day, a very large apple that I felt was just too big to eat alone. It was as big as a large grapefruit, so I held on to it the whole day. The thought entered my mind that I wanted to give the apple to Mother Teresa. I asked my teacher if I could do this and she said yes. There were some other students that wanted to come along with me, but the teacher only allowed me. How blessed I was! I got out of the mini bus and approached the car the sisters were in. The driver looked at me with a look on his face like “oh no, not another one” and rolled down his window. I told him that I had a gift for Mother Teresa. The rear window then rolled down and there I was face to face with a living saint. I told Mother “I have a gift” and gave her the apple, which she in turn gave to the sister next to her. She then took my hands in her hands and looked at me and warmly told me “God Bless you”. To be in her presence at that moment was to be in the presence of total peace and love. For that moment in time it seemed like everything ceased to exist except for the palpable presence of peace and love. The next moment, the traffic light turned from red to green and we both had to set on our separate ways.

I got back to the bus and there was an atmosphere of electricity. Everyone was touching me because Mother Teresa had touched me. We were all overjoyed on our way back to the school. We told our priest what happened and he was happy and excited. I was amazed that I would be so immensely blessed with such a profound experience as meeting Mother Teresa.

The crown of Marian devotion is Consecration to Mary. It is a devotion promoted by St. Louis de Montfort and adopted and recommended by several popes, including St. John Paul II, whose apostolic motto was the Marian “Totus Tuus” (completely yours). He wrote, “Thanks to Saint Louis of Montfort, I came to understand that true devotion to the Mother of God is actually Christocentric, indeed, it is very profoundly rooted in the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity, and the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption”. (Crossing the Threshold of Truth, JP II)

What is consecration to Mary? It is to make a gift of ourselves, entirely to Jesus through Mary. Just as we offer our prayers to Jesus through Mary (Hail Mary, Rosary, etc.), we can, through Marian consecration give all our actions and merits to Jesus through Mary. Did not Jesus give Himself entirely to us through Mary? Did he not take from Mary, His own flesh, which he now gives us in the Eucharist? So why can we not give ourselves entirely to Jesus through Mary? The answer is that we can, though consecration to Mary.

Total consecration to Mary a complete setting aside of one’s total self for the purpose of becoming an image of her in her virtues by and with her union with her son Jesus with the Father and the Holy Spirit. We are to allow ourselves to become docile instruments in the hands of Our Lady in order to allow her to form us more perfectly into the image of her Son, Jesus.

Our consecration to Our Lady is to mirror, as best as we can with the help of God’s grace, the total giving of our being to Our Lady, as Jesus himself did when he took human form having allowed himself to become fully dependent upon the Blessed Virgin Mary in her womb that he may be formed into our human likeness. It is in this way in the order of grace that we in our consecration spiritually become dependent upon Our Lady so that she may form us spiritually into the image of her son, Jesus.

To become holy is to become like Jesus. It is through Mary that we are given the most expedient means of becoming images of Jesus. The path or channels of grace that Christ chose in his incarnation are not to be seen as a one-way street. Our Lord Jesus came to us through Mary and so we are given to take the same path to Him.

As images of Jesus through Mary we are to walk His path from “crib, to Calvary, to crown”. That is to say, that we are called to live out our lives carrying out our particular vocation as Jesus carried out his mission. In our baptism and through Mary we are to offer our works, joys and sufferings in union with Christ’s meritorious sacrifice in his passion and death, so that we may too, by carry our crosses, die with him daily and so be raised with him into the order of his divine grace and finally at the end of our life upon earth enter into his kingdom having aided as many other souls as possible to do the same.

To learn more about Marian consecration, you may choose to read the classic work “True Devotion to Mary”, by St Louis de Montfort. In it St Louis wrote, “Consecration to Mary is a sure, short, certain and perfect way to arrive at union with God”. Other resources include a more recent book (available for free) called 33 Days to Morning Glory by Michael Gaitley, MIC. Additional resources, rich in Marian doctrine, can be found online at the Franciscans of The Immaculate website apostolates, airmaria.com and academyoftheimmaculate.com.

In the natural order of our humanity, Mary is the mother of Jesus. In the supernatural order of His divinity, Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is a divine person with two natures, a divine nature as Son of God, and a human nature as Son of Mary. He remains yet forever, fully human and fully divine, two natures in one person, fully Son of God and Son of Mary.   

The grace that sanctifies and saves us was won on Calvary through the redemptive suffering and death of Jesus, in cooperation and in union with Mary’s spiritual suffering and martyrdom united with the same sacrifice of her Son. In cooperation and in union with her Son’s redemptive suffering, Mary became our mother in the order of supernatural grace. Mary’s motherhood to Jesus by nature, has now extended to us by grace. “[Jesus] said to his mother, Woman, this is thy son. Then he said to the disciple, this is thy mother”. (Jn 19:26)  

As the mother of Jesus, Mary is the mother of the Church. She is mother to the head of the Mystical Body, Jesus, and is mother to the members of the Mystical Body, the Church, the Church born out of the pierced side of Christ on Calvary. She is the mother to the vine, and so she is the mother to its branches. She is the Mother of the Redeemer, and so she is the mother of the redeemed. She is our mother, Mary.