Baldwin Cistercian COMMENT from William

Canterbury_Cathedral_Cloisters,_Kent,_UK

   

FOURTH WEEK OF EASTER

THURSDAY  Year I

30 April 2015

Second Reading

From a treatise by Baldwin of Canterbury (Tract.4: PL 204, 429-431.441-442)

The two resurrections

Our Lord's glorious resurrection teaches us that the fruits of obedience are resurrection and life. These were the fruit of the obedience practiced by Christ who is the resurrection and the life personified.

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: William J .....
To: Donald ...... 
Sent: Thursday, 30 April 2015, 17:05
Subject: Re: Baldwin Cistercian 

Dear Father Donald,

Your comment:

Two Resurrections... needs some enlightenment of Baldwin's explanation.

Please may I respond, for the extract fascinates me...

The burden of a twofold mortality [one, by virtue of being a descendant of Adam, the second, of our having fallen of ourselves]

... a single resurrection is not enough to bring us to the blessed life of heaven. We need two.

It is by our faith in and our sacramental imitation of the resurrection of Christ [our earthly ‘conversio’], the resurrection of our soul, through which we are now dead to sin and live for holiness, walking in newness of life... glorying in nothing other than in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ...

As we wait for that redemption of our bodies, at last fully realizing our adoption as God's children, that will take place at the second resurrection [heavenly resurrection], when Christ will refashion these wretched bodies of ours and make them like his own glorious body... that endures for all eternity, a glory that knows no end...

Might that be summed up: [1] if our desire for God is faithfully lived and by heart ‘raised up’, [2] it will lead by God’s grace to the heavenly fulfilment of our desire to see His Face and to be embraced in His Love...

In these thoughts my mind has been enraptured by the passage from Luisa Piccarreta’s ‘The Holy Mass and Bodily Resurrection’ – that text has quite absorbed me.

THANK YOU Father. May all be well with you.

With my love in Our Risen Lord,

William