A 9th Sunday after Pentecost Thought From Father Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

We turn to Father Larrigou-Lagrange on this 9th Sunday after Pentecost If you're not familiar with him, you'll get your first taste of his spiritual writing - one that may perhaps motivate you to seek more.

Today, Father will focus on elementary truths. At some level, any good Christian is familiar with these truths, such as, for example, are expounded in the Our Father. But knowing is not understanding; and not understanding means that wisdom we might gain from these elementary truths will simply remain dormant. So Father tells us to meditate, and to do so long and lovingly.

Now, meditation is not some obscure or exotic concept for a Christian. Too many of us leave meditation for monks and mystics. Or perhaps we pursue the techniques of meditation espoused by other religions or some non-Christian "spirituality." That's not at all what Father espouses here. And if we give him the time he deserves, we'll learn just how and why meditation should be a regular part of our spiritual life.

Sunday, the Lord's Day, can, no should, provide us with the time we need to develop a regular habit of meditation. No excuses today. If we keep the Lord's Day, we're not engaged in what is termed servile labor. For most of us, we're not engaged in any regular work. So we've got time to meditate, if only for 5 or 10 minutes. Indeed, daily meditation of some sort for 10 minutes or so is simply not beyond the reach of any serious Catholic.

And we'll see just how meditation opens the door to a deeper knowledge and love of God.

Let's turn this Sunday time with the Lord to Father now: 

“The most elementary truths of the Christian Faith, such as those expressed in the Our Father, are, we find, the most profound truths when we have meditated upon them long and lovingly; when, through the years, we have lived with them, while carrying our cross, and they have become the object of almost continuous contemplation. To be led to the heights of sanctity, it would be enough for a soul to live intensely but one of these truths of our Faith. One of the most important of these truths is that of the special presence of God in the souls of the just, according to the words of Our Lord: If any one love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make Our abode with him. (Jn. XIV:23) By these words and by the promise of His Holy Spirit, Christ taught us that the most fundamental vocation of every baptized soul is to live in fellowship with the very Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Hence, according to St. Thomas’ frequently repeated words, the Christian life even here on earth is, in a sense, eternal life begun…The grace of Baptism makes us truly partakers of the divine nature even as it subsists in the bosom of the Trinity. God has so loved us in His Son as to will to make us share in the very principle of His intimate life, the principle of the immediate vision He has of Himself, which He communicates to the Word and to the Holy Ghost. Thus the just enter into the family of God and into the life-cycle of the Trinity. Living faith, enlightened by the Gift of Wisdom, assimilates them to the light of the Word; infused charity assimilates them to the Holy Spirit. In them the Father begets His Word; in them the Father and the Son breathe the Personal Love that unites Them. In each of them the Trinity dwells, whole and entire, as in a living temple; here below It dwells as in a darkened temple, but in Heaven in a light that knows no shadow and in an unchanging love.

“The servant of God, (Sister) Elizabeth of the Trinity, was one of those enlightened and heroic souls able to cling to one of these great truths, which are both the simplest and the most important, and, beneath the appearance of an ordinary life, to find therein the secret of a very close union with God. This mystery of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the depths of her soul was the great reality of her interior life. As she herself said: ‘The Trinity! There is our dwelling, our ‘home’, the father’s house that we must never leave…It seems to me that I have found my heaven on earth, for heaven is God and God is in my soul. On the day I understood that, everything became clear to me.” (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.)

Happy 9th Sunday after Pentecost!