Category: 21.v.22 Easter V

God, who loves us and desires to see us happy, cries out and makes known to all: If any man thirst, let him come to me. I will give him the Holy Ghost Who will make him blessed in this life and in the next. Riga quod est aridum! O my Jesus, I beseech Thee, give me the water of Thy love which will make me forget the earth, and live for Thee alone Who art the infinitely amiable One!

The tepidity, then, that does hinder perfection, is that tepidity which is avoidable when a person, commits deliberate venial faults; because all these faults committed with open eyes can effectually be avoided by Divine grace if we have the desire. Wherefore St. Teresa said: “May God deliver you from deliberate sin, however small it may be.

St. Bonaventure says that in each Mass God bestows on the world a benefit not inferior to that which He conferred by His Incarnation. This is conformable to the celebrated words of St. Augustine: “0 venerable dignity of the priests, in whose hands, as in the womb of the Virgin, the Son of God becomes incarnate!” Moreover, St. Thomas teaches that since· the Sacrifice of the altar is nothing else than the application and renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross, a single Mass brings to men the same benefits and salvation that were produced by the Sacrifice of the Cross.

O Lux beatissima! The Holy Ghost, who is called most blessed Light, is He Who not only inflames our hearts to love Him, but also dispels all darkness and reveals to us the vanity of earthly things. 0 Holy Spirit, visit me by Thy grace, and grant me the gift of understanding, that by the contemplation of Heavenly things I may detach my thoughts and affections from all the vanities of this miserable world.

St. Gregory, in his explanation of these words, “dealeth not perversely,” says that Charity, giving herself up more and more to the love of God, ignores whatever is not right and holy. The Apostle had already written to the same effect, when he called Charity a bond that unites the most perfect virtues together in the soul. Have charity, which is the bond of perfection-(Col. iii. 14).

May the immense goodness of our God be ever praised and blessed for having given us this so great, so tender, so loving a Mother and Advocate.

We know from our Faith that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son through their mutual love for each other, and therefore that the gift of love which the Lord infuses into our souls, and which is the greatest of all gifts, is particularly attributed to the Holy Ghost. The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us-(Rom. v. 5).

Let us consider what it is in Heaven that makes its holy citizens completely happy. The soul in Heaven sees God face to face, and knowing His infinite beauty and all the perfections that render Him worthy of infinite love, cannot but love Him with all its powers, and love Him far more than itself. Nay, as it were forgetting itself, the soul thinks of nothing but to see Him happy who is its Beloved and its God; and seeing that God, the only object of its affections, enjoys infinite happiness, this happiness of God constitutes all its Paradise. If a soul were capable of anything infinite, its own joy would also be infinite in seeing that its Beloved is infinitely happy, but as a creature is not capable of infinite joy, it is at least so satiated with joy that it desires nothing more. And this is that satisfaction that David sighed for when he said: l shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear-(Ps. xvi. 15).