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| Bl. Columba Marmion OSB |
Night Office Saints, Bl.
Sixth
Day of the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord.
Year I
First Reading
Colossians 1:15 - 2:3
Responsory Col
1:18.17
Christ is the head, and the Church is
his body; he is the first bom from the dead, + so that in every way the primacy is his.
V. Before anything came into being, he existed: he holds all things in unity. + So that in ...
Second Reading
From
the writings of Blessed Calumba Marmion, O.S.B.
(Christ the Life of the Soul 16-19).
Christ as head of the redeemed
From the creation of the first man God inaugurated his plan for us: Adam was endowed with grace that made him a child of God, an endowment for both himself and his
posterity. By his own fault, however, he lost the divine gift on his own account and equally for his descendants. Since his rebellion we have all been born in a state of sin, stripped
of the grace that
would have made us children of God; indeed, we are the very opposite: children of wrath, enemies of God
and liable to his anger. Sin thwarted
God's design.
Yet in rehabilitating us God proved himself even more wonderful than in creating us, as the
Church suggests in a
Christmas prayer: "Lord God, we praise
you for creating our human nature, and still more for
restoring it in Christ." What divine marvel is this
for which the Church gives him praise? It is the mystery of the incarnation. Through the Word made flesh God intends to recreate all things. This plan is the mystery hidden in God's mind from the beginning of time, and now revealed to us through Saint Paul. Christ, the man-God, is to be our mediator; he it is who will reconcile us to
God and win us grace once more. Since this was foreordained by God from all
eternity, Saint Paul rightly speaks of it as an ever-present mystery. It is the
last majestic feature of the divine decree of predestination as the Apostle
sketches it for us. Let us listen to him with faith, for we are now at the very
heart of God's work.
God's purpose is to establish Christ as
head of all the redeemed, and of everything that claims any title in this world
or the next; so that through him, with him, and in him we may all reach union
with God, and thus effectively attain the holiness that he requires of us.
The fullness of divine life is in Jesus
Christ, and this fullness is to overflow to us and to the entire human race.
The divine sonship which belongs to Christ by nature, and makes him the unique
Son of God in the absolute sense, is to be shared with us through grace. Thus
Christ is by God's, decree the first born of a great family of brothers and
sisters, who are children of God by grace as he is by nature.
Here and here alone is the fountainhead of
our holiness. Just as the whole being of Christ Jesus is summed up in his
divine sonship, so the whole being of a Christian is summed up in our participation
in that sonship in and through Jesus Christ. Holiness for us has no other
meaning. The more abundantly we share in God's life through Christ's
communication to us of that grace which he possesses in fullness forever, the
higher will be our holiness. Christ is not simply holy in himself, he is our holiness. All the sanctity God has
predetermined for human beings is stored up in Christ's humanity and from that
wellspring we must draw.
Responsorv Phi! 2:6-7; jn 1:14
Though his nature was divine, + Christ did not cling to his equality with
God, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a servant.
V. And the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us. + Christ did
not.
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