COMMENT:
 |
Fr. G. Mulligan
CSsR, Kinnoull |
In this week, the community has the Annual Retreat.
See the pictures of the Retreatant Conductor
and flowers for the Retreat.
Our Night Office today was about 'meditating on Christ' (Newman).
The conferences by Fr. Gerry are already deep into reflection in the themes.
14th
Week Ord Time Yr. II
Monday 7 July 2014
Parochial
and Plain Sermons, Volume 6
John Henry Newman
http://www.newmanreader.org/Works/parochial/volume6/sermon4.html
What is meditating on Christ?
This,
alas! cannot be denied. Yet,
If it be so, that the Son of God came
down from heaven, put aside His glory, and submitted to be despised, cruelly
treated, and put to death by His own creatures,—by those whom He had made, and
whom He had preserved up to that day, and was then upholding in life and
being,—is it reasonable that so great an event should not move us?
Does it not
stand to reason that we must be in a very irreligious state of mind, unless we
have some little gratitude, some little sympathy, some little love, some little
awe, some little self-reproach, some little self-abasement, some little
repentance, some little desire of amendment, in consequence of what He has done
and suffered for us?
Or, rather, may not so great a Benefactor demand of us some
overflowing gratitude, keen sympathy, fervent love, profound awe, bitter
self-reproach, earnest repentance, eager desire and longing after a new heart?
Who can deny all this? Why then, O my brethren is it not so? why are things
with us {41} as they are? Alas! I sorrowfully foretell that time will go on,
and Passion-tide, Good Friday, and Easter-Day will pass by, and the weeks after
it, and many of you will be just what you were—not at all nearer heaven, not at
all nearer Christ in your hearts and lives, not impressed lastingly or savingly
with the thought of His mercies and your own sins and demerits.
But why is this? why do you so little
understand the Gospel of your salvation? why are your eyes so dim, and your
ears so hard of hearing? why have you so little faith? so little of heaven in
your hearts? For this one reason, my brethren, if I must express my meaning in
one word, because you so little meditate.
You do not meditate, and therefore you are not impressed.
What is meditating on Christ? it is
simply this, thinking habitually and constantly of Him and of His deeds and
sufferings. It is to have Him before our minds as One whom we may contemplate,
worship, and address when we rise up, when we lie down, when we eat and drink,
when we are at home and abroad, when we are working, or walking, or at rest,
when we are alone, and again when we are in company; this is meditating. And by
this, and nothing short of this, will our hearts come to feel as they ought. We
have stony hearts, hearts as hard as the highways; the history of Christ makes
no impression on them. And yet, if we would be saved, we must have tender,
sensitive, living hearts; our hearts must be broken, must be broken up like
ground, and dug, and watered, and tended, and cultivated, till they become as
gardens, gardens of Eden, acceptable to our God, gardens in which the Lord God
{42} may walk and dwell; filled, not with briars and thorns, but with all
sweet-smelling and useful plants, with heavenly trees and flowers. The dry and
barren waste must burst forth into springs of living water. This change must
take place in our hearts if we would be saved; in a word, we must have what we
have not by nature, faith and love; and how is this to be effected, under God's
grace, but by godly and practical meditation through the day?
St. Peter describes what I mean, when he
says, speaking of Christ, "Whom having not seen ye love: in whom, though
now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of
glory." [1 Pet. i. 8]
Christ is gone away; He is not seen; we
never saw Him, we only read and hear of Him. It is an old saying, "Out of
sight, out of mind." Be sure, so it will be, so it must be with us, as regards our blessed
Saviour, unless we make continual efforts all through the day to think of Him,
His love, His precepts, His gifts, and His promises. We must recall to mind
what we read in the Gospels and in holy books about Him; we must bring before
us what we have heard in Church; we must pray God to enable us to do so, to
bless the doing so, and to make us do so in a simple-minded, sincere, and
reverential spirit. In a word, we must meditate, for all this is meditation;
and this even the most unlearned person can do, and will do, if he has a will to
do it.
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