Tuesday 23 June 2020
Tuesday of week 12 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Tuesday of week 12 in Ordinary Time
A treatise on Christian Perfection by St Gregory of Nyssa
Christ should be manifest in our whole life
The life of the Christian has three distinguishing aspects: deeds, words and thought. Thought comes first, then words, since our words express openly the interior conclusions of the mind. Finally, after thoughts and words, comes action, for our deeds carry out what the mind has conceived. So when one of these results in our acting or speaking or thinking, we must make sure that all our thoughts, words and deeds are controlled by the divine ideal, the revelation of Christ. For then our thoughts, words and deeds will not fall short of the nobility of their implications.
What then must we do, we who have been found worthy of the name of Christ? Each of us must examine his thoughts, words and deeds, to see whether they are directed towards Christ or are turned away from him. This examination is carried out in various ways. Our deeds or our thoughts or our words are not in harmony with Christ if they issue from passion. They then bear the mark of the enemy who smears the pearl of the heart with the slime of passion, dimming and even destroying the lustre of the precious stone.
On the other hand, if they are free from and untainted by every passionate inclination, they are directed towards Christ, the author and source of peace. He is like a pure, untainted stream. If you draw from him the thoughts in your mind and the inclinations of your heart, you will show a likeness to Christ, your source and origin, as the gleaming water in a jar resembles the flowing water from which it was obtained.
For the purity of Christ and the purity that is manifest in our hearts are identical. Christ’s purity, however, is the fountainhead; ours has its source in him and flows out of him. Our life is stamped with the beauty of his thought. The inner and the outer man are harmonised in a kind of music. The mind of Christ is the controlling influence that inspires us to moderation and goodness in our behaviour. As I see it, Christian perfection consists in this: sharing the titles which express the meaning of Christ’s name, we bring out this meaning in our minds, our prayers and our way of life.
________
In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Thomas Garnet, Martyr
From the eyewitness account given by Mr. Masten, the Protestant chaplain of Newgate prison
"I never saw him appear so full of life and cheerfulness"
Being necessarily urged out of the duty of humanity to show what courteous attendance I might to the last rest of Mr Garnet, I rose at six in the morning to wish his last light blessed to him. I found him at his prayers, but yet in no such extraordinary devotion but that it seemed his peace was confidently made with heaven long before. His eye was filled of extraordinary cheerfulness, which the night before I saw once wet only, for fear lest that he should not suffer the next day, but that some unwished mediation would hinder him from the sudden accomplishment of his reputed most glorious service to the Catholic Church. Certainly, for the little space I knew him, I never saw him appear so full of life, and almost miraculous cheerfulness. He distributed to the officers of the house liberally, and would have given more, but (said he) “I fear the hangman will be angry if he find no more money in my purse.” For my own part, protesting my inability to strengthen his soul, and my want of learning to dissuade him from any opinion, I desired him somewhat to comfort his body against the last encounter, whereupon he asked for a caudle, but remembering it was fasting day he recalled it, and only drank some burnt wine. For his outward appearance in the morning he suffered, I dare not, I protest, speak freely whom my imagination persuaded me he thoroughly resembled. At his departure, himself hastening the sheriff, and confessing his priesthood and his holy Order of Jesus’ Society, with an astonishing cheerfulness, he departed, and took his hurdle which he blessed, and then with an unabated resolution lay down and was drawn from our eyes.
Copyright © 1996-2020 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.