Love and Faith

Five Sermons of the Resurrectionist Spirituality

Piotr Semenenko, cr

Love and Faith

Five Sermons of the Resur-rectionist Spirituality

Presentation by

Fr. Stanislaw Urbanski, cr Director of the Institute of Spiritual Theology

University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski

Sermons taken from: Piotr Semenenko, cr, Kazania przygodne, t. 3 (Cracovie, 1923) and Kazania na niedziele i święta roku koscielnego. 1. Od Adwentu do końca czasu Wielkanocnego (Lvov, 1913). Translated from Polish by Sr. Pascale-Dominique Nau, op

ISBN: 978-1-291-91914-1 English translation: © 2014, Sr. Pascale-Dominique Nau, Rome. All rights reserved.

Table of contents

Table of contents ............................................... 5

PRESENTATION .................................................. 7

SERMONS ........................................................... 13

On Faith ............................................................ 15

Christ is in the Church .................................... 35

Man’s Love for God ....................................... 51

Man’s Triple Resurrection .............................. 69

Christ’s Peace and Peace of the World ........ 83

Presentation

Father Piotr Semenenko (1814-1886), a

Polish Resurrectionist, is the co-founder of a Polish school of spirituality. He presented this school’s conception of spiritual life pri-marily in his sermons, which have been pub-lished in four volumes. The first two volumes appeared in Lvov, in 1913, under the title: Kazania na niedziele i święta roku kościelnego (Sermons for Sundays and Feasts of the Church Year). The first volume of this set contains the sermons for Advent through to the end of Eastertide, and the second volume has those from Pentecost to the end of the liturgical year, as well as sermons for the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The sec-ond two-volume set was published in Cracow in 1923 under the title: Kazania przygodne (Cir-cumstantial Sermons); the first of these two volumes covers the years 1843 to 1857, and the second goes from 1858 to 1881. In addi-tion to the sermons, this collection also con-tains an outline of a homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It should be noted that in addi-

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tion to full texts of sermons, there are also 9 printed pages of detailed outlines for others. Father Semenenko did not give titles to his sermons, but in many cases they were added by the editors, who used expressions from their content. Father Semenenko addressed his sermons especially to Poles living in exile during the Partitions of their homeland by Moscow, Berlin and Vienna, and to priests and religious. He preached in Rome, Paris, Poznan, Cracow and Lvov, and also at the health spas in Ostend and for nuns in French, Italian and Belgian convents. He was 28 years old when he began his preaching activity.

Sister Pascale has translated five ser-mons; three are taken from the first volume of the circumstantial sermons and two from the first volume of sermons for Sundays and feast days. In order to understand the con-tent of the selected sermons well, it must be noted that Father Semenenko’s sermons rep-resent a valuable resource for the concrete application of the principles of spiritual life that he preached and professed. Indeed, the author transmitted a great wealth of spiritual thought, built on a thorough knowledge of theology and philosophy, and especially on

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the spiritual basis of his own mystical experi-ence. He, therefore, presents an original doc-trine of the spiritual life, recognizable in the collection of his sermons. Indeed, on the whole, Father Semenenko’s sermons are characterized by the fact that they are cen-tered on his spiritual thought, which express-es both his knowledge of the human heart and his own mystical experience.

These sermons reveal to us the following spiritual doctrine, which applies a very origi-nal three-part method. The three approaches to spiritual life are: the anthropology of self-knowledge, cooperation with God, and mys-tical union. In this framework, the author discusses the entire process of spiritual life, taking into account its significant compo-nents at various stages. The tripartite division is present in all his teaching, from theology of creation (God), through the history of salva-tion (Christ)—which is divided into three periods—, and finally the doctrine of his paschal spirituality (Resurrection), according to which the spiritual life is developed with humility on a threefold foundation: nothing-ness, poverty (sin) and the three theological virtues (faith, love and hope) that lead to the mystical union with God. Thus, the author

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gives spiritual life a dynamic character. In fact, man’s spiritual formation is brought about through the action of the infused vir-tues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In ac-cordance with this conception, Sister Pascale’s choice of Father Semenenko’s ser-mons is excellent.

Moreover, the selected sermons show the true dimension of Father Semenenko’s spirituality: man’s end is God and His love, which is the foundation of holiness and the driving force that should motivate the efforts that a Christian makes in his quest for the mystical union with Him. This goal is reached in Christ. Indeed, love was fully re-vealed in the Son of God and offered to man in His Paschal Mystery. The Christian trans-figured by Christ's love comes to eternal un-ion with God, who is the Source of love. In this way, the loving soul dies with Christ, in order to later be resurrected with Him to eternal life. The truth of the resurrection is already contained in death itself. Yet, if death is to bear fruit, all must be done in union with the Risen Christ. So, it is not surprising that Father Semenenko refers all things to Christ and resolves everything in Him. Now, Sister Pascale has perfectly extracted this

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element of spiritual life by selecting the ser-mons on the resurrection, because according to the author the concept of holiness is char-acterized by conformation to Christ, and so emphasizes life in Christ, the interaction with Him and the supernatural Paschal dimension of the spiritual life.

Father Semenenko’s conception of the spiritual life is also marked by optimism: This comes to the fore in the sermons in the pre-sent volume and is illustrated especially by those in which the author speaks about the peace of Christ and God’s love for man. This optimism is based on the Resurrection and flows from the faith in God’s love, which results in the presence of Christ in the Chris-tian and leads him to union with the Risen Christ.

We must acknowledge the merit of Sis-ter Pascale’s work, because in this small selec-tion of five sermons, she has succeeded in clearly presenting the main principles of the spiritual life taught by Father Semenenko. At the same time, the pertinence of Father Se-menenko’s conception for modern man ap-pears. Although these sermons were preached over 150 years ago, their content is still relevant in our time. Undeniably, Father

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Semenenko created an original school of Resurrectionist spirituality, which can serve for the formation of modern man in Europe today. Yet, in order for the sermons to bear real spiritual fruit in every Christian, the en-tire collection needs to be known. Hence, the sermons translated by Sister Pascale are a great incentive, both for her and for me, to make them into the essential element of a spiritual education based on the perfect gift of self to God and on Jesus’ Paschal Mystery.

Fr. Stanislaw Urbanski, PhD

Director of the Institute of Spiritual Theology

University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski

Warsaw, 7 June 2014

Sermons

On Faith

(Preached in Paris in January 1843)

“God so loved the world that He gave His only begot-ten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16)

Beloved brethren!

These words of our Lord and Master are the words of life that contain all our salva-tion. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This is the mystery of Christianity. Love and faith, faith and love, constitute the foundation; that is the entire content of this great mystery of faith, which—as Paul says—“was revealed to the angels announced to the people, believed in the world, and brought to glory” (1 Timo-thy 3:16). Indeed, not without a motive do we call it a mystery. For reason alone is not strong enough to grasp the motive of love’s wonderful interventions. Why did God create the world? and even more: Why did He re-deem it? This is an eternal mystery for the reason, a cross perpetual human wisdom. We try to understand this act; but it is mind-

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boggling! In order to grasp it, we need love, divine fire, and not the requisite of cold logic that boasts about its own accomplishments, without even imagining that it is destroying life and human nature, and that it has killed and crucified God. In fact, the reason will never understand love, and when the word “love” sounds in its ears, when love is praised, the reasoning spirit can only respond with a smile of contempt. Yet this Word cre-ated the world and man: “all things were cre-ated by him” (Colossians 1:16), this word —love— brought redemption after the fall: God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son. So, despite all, love is by nature an essential aspect of human life. Man lives by love; he loves himself or God, but he must always love. His love can take many forms: in con-tact with the world through his senses or his imagination, a man may try to satisfy his need for love, by pampering the desires of the flesh when it adheres to the senses and those of his eyes when he follows his imagination; he can also close himself off and enjoy his knowledge or education, and in that case the sin is the pride of reason, which is much more serious than the vanity of his heart: “For in the world are the desire of the flesh,

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the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life” (cf. 1 John 2:16). Still, though, this love, the source of all sins and our greatest misery, directs man; for it is the reverse of our na-ture’s nobility, the deepest dimension of our lives, of the love that is the real soul of our soul.

The one God is the true object of our love.

O man, God created you for Himself. He created you in His image and likeness; but you will be a likeness without the eternal model, a lifeless image, if you do not let yourself be completed by the Creator, if you are not united with Him through love.

O man, God has directed your soul with all its faculties to Himself, to union with Him; He holds all the strings of your heart; you can tear them out, but you will not be able to connect their small ends to anything. Separated from Him, you will be forever empty, because God is your truth; you will be eternally at war, for God is your good and your peace; you will be forever in death, be-cause God is your life.

My dear brothers! Who can refuse true life? Who can say that God’s love is not the deepest need of our being? At least not you,

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whose souls for so long already are shaped by God’s hand, reviving the authentic sap of divine love, which alone can restore your health and make you bear everlasting fruit. God has tried to mortify your self-centered pride in its various forms, precisely in order to pour His love into you and so make you His child. He has sent suffering and hardship to remove the desires of your flesh, to sepa-rate you and keep you away from everything that might be pleasant to the eyes or that you might consider as your possession, thus de-priving you of the eyes’ desires; He gave you needs and sorrows as a practical measure to gauge the values of human wisdom, to free you from the pride of reason; and the sins of your country,1 its misery before God, your own sin and your misery can be used as a cure for arrogance. God, who sees the heart and the mind, knows best how much heat and rain to send to you and that the soil of your soul can absorb; but it is certain that all

1 This is a reference to Poland and the misery in which the country finds itself after the revolt of 1830. On the history of Polish emigration in Paris in those years and on Bogdan Janski and “House of Janski,” see J. Klechta, 175 ans au service de la Polonia (Mission Catholique Polonaise en France, Paris, 2011).

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this is His work of love because you are the object of His mercy, you are the child of His womb; He leads you —as you know— along difficult paths to the goal that His love has indicated to you. So, there is no need to prove His love, because if you have not yet given Him your heart once and for all, it’s because you think that your heart is strong today; yet, it is not well without Him. It seeks, sometimes not knowing what, but it seeks Him. Oh, you will find Him, my broth-ers! You’ve lost your dearest possession on earth, but you will find God Himself, and in Him you will find everything: He will be your great reward: “Your reward shall be very great” (Genesis 15:1). Indeed, the words spoken by Christ cannot pass: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the rest shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Still, in this quest, this longing for God is the path He Himself has shown and that no one should ignore because it is the only one. Presenting this path will be the intent of our teachings. To show His path God has chosen us, we who are weak and shunned: God chose what is low and despised in the world (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:28). Oh, how this pleases Him! But you should not despise God’s truth

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because of the low value of the tool that brings it to you. In fact, this truth concerns God himself, your life or your death, and not merely an idea; this is really a matter of your life or death. Therefore, so that the grace of God may accompany us in these teachings, let us turn to our Queen and Mother to ask her to intercede for us. Hail Mary.

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Love binds together a large number of

people; it gathers and unites many in one. Thus, the Son of God says about Himself and His Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Here, however, love already has its object, whereas we who are still on earth, we are not yet in possession of God. “We are wandering far from the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6), says the Apostle. During our journey, we see many different roads, so many things entice our imagination and are beyond our understanding; on the other hand, so many kinds of poison, unhealthy food, affect our heart that we absolutely need a guide to lead us away from these dangers. But who will be our guide? Here, if love —truly indestructible love— is really what makes us move toward

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our goal, then faith is the only road that will lead us to that goal. Faith is the substance of things hoped for.2 Faith is the foundation on which we must rely in order to reach what we hope for. And it cannot be otherwise. Our pilgrimage is indeed the place where God sees the manifestation of our love. “God loved us first,” says the Apostle John, “God first gave us all the evidence of his love; so now let us love Him and give Him now proof of our love” (cf. 1 John 4:19). This is what the law of love requires. And because the Lord has put many dangers on our road to Him, He also gave us the guide: faith, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). The guide that God has put into our nature to give this impulse is the love that leads us to Him, be-cause the essence of love is to put his trust in his beloved, to blindly accept his leadership; and indeed! the more joyfully it spreads in-side, the more blindly a person surrenders to the pleasure of his beloved.

Therefore, my dear brethren, God has given us, from the outside, the revelation —whose object is faith— to be our guide. This

2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae q. 4, a. 1.

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revelation is the consequence of God’s love; it somehow necessarily comes from it, that is from the need to experience our love. With-out the revelation, there would be no faith, and without faith, there would be no way for us to experience this.

However, my brothers, you must accept the entire revelation, as the Lord God gives it. The obedience of the intellect and of the heart must be complete, as the Lord God requires. The mind cannot reject what it thinks is wrong, and the feeling should not rearrange what seems unpleasant. In fact, by rejecting even the smallest thing, one refuses everything. This is so because not a given thing is at stake but rather God Himself, who gives it and whose dignity extends even to the smallest things of His revelation. Moreo-ver, we must receive the revelation not be-cause it seems consistent with our reasoning and acceptable to our feeling; in that case, we would be judging the dignity of the revela-tion, while God is the One who gives us this revelation, which is the only Truth and the only Good. Finally, we must receive the reve-lation in the same way that God has given it, by the same means He has appointed to keep and transmit it, in a word: from the Church,

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without looking for or taking other means to reach this revelation.

Beloved brothers! People who love not God but iniquity —that is to say the world or its particular interests— have “turned away from listening to the truth and wandered into myths,” as the Apostle says (2 Timothy 4:4). Their example shows us the truth of what we have just said. Abandoning the faith, they took reason as their guide and “their senseless minds were darkened” (Romans 1:21). Listen to these masters of wisdom: what one says, ten others refute it— and disagreement over the primary articles of faith and the founda-tion of morality is the most serious of all. Everyone praises his own system, laying his idol on the altar, and fiercely wages war against others. Generalized war, the confu-sion of opinions and languages: this is truly a Tower of Babel! And who will decide what the truth is? Without the revelation, there is no way to get out of this situation. — Feeling, on the other hand, leads to no other end. When a man has broken away from faith, he follows his own path.

My brothers! Man’s spirit is created in the image and likeness of God, and despite this separation, he can still do great things

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and use the treasures that the Creator has put into his hands for his own creations, in the image and likeness of God. Man can arouse admiration; he can be both sublime and deep; he can make great signs and work wonders, get enthused and be moved to tears… and nevertheless be mistaken. What’s more, a man can give up everything: wealth, im-portance, glory, take up the cross and carry it, apparently doing what Christ said: “If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24); yet, in spite of all, he certainly fails to meet the condition that Christ has set: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, etc.” (Mark 8:34). This is always mere self-infatuation, even when sim-ulating the love of God.

Lord! If these people were really denying themselves and if they had Your love in them, they would seek the truth elsewhere, that is exclusively where You have placed it so that we may find it there: in the Church. They would then have no other masters than those sent by the Church and established by You once and for all, when you said: “Who-ever listens to you listens to me” (Luke 10:16). They would seek Christ only in the

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place where he himself said he would remain until the end of the world (cf. Matthew 28:20).

Today, however, people invent their own truth, present their masters and a Christ composed as they wish him; and when you ask them: “How do I know that these cham-pions are not impostors, and that your Christ is the true one?” they answer that your feel-ing gives you the proof that should convince you. Yet, their answer is precisely what con-demns them: “I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave” (Luke 19:22). God says that in His Revelation —and the Church is its interpreter— and faith in this Revela-tion, together with the Tradition, constitutes the only path and the only guide to salvation. Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me (Luke 10, 16); and you tell me that my feelings show me the way and guide me!? In God’s view, despite what these people think when stating their differing opinions and presenting masters who contra-dict one another, when they talk about these things with each other, there are not united by His Spirit, and what they say does not correspond to the truth. So, can we find here the love of God, or self-renunciation for the

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sake of the love, without which one cannot Christ’s disciple and God’s child? Man’s blindness is great, my brothers, when he con-siders his feelings infallible. For us, God and His Church are infallible, and for those peo-ple their feelings are. They think that the truth is a feeling with which God has filled them; but that is precisely the source of their error and the arrogance of thinking that, for them alone, God has changed the order of what He established for all humanity and for all time: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,… And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19.20).

We should talk about this with great sadness, because we love God with all our soul, all our mind and all our heart. In fact, in the situation we are describing, the mind begins wandering here and there, and the heart expresses its rebellion in so many subtle ways. The harm is immense, because the faith that God requires is destroyed, and conse-quently the whole relationship of the soul’s love for God is damaged.

Do you want to know what happens next and where the road ends? What follows is inner turmoil? The soul may slumber for a moment, but inner uncertainty always inevi-

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tably comes to wake it up. God’s greatest punishment, which often strikes false teach-ers, is precisely when He stops stirring the conscience. The end of the road is either despair, that is to say, the death of all other feelings, or the assumption that all beliefs and revelations are equivalent, and that leads to the obliteration of the difference between good and evil and, consequently, the destruc-tion of feeling’s object, of what one senses as good. Indeed, God gave, on the one hand, the truth to reason and, on the other, goodness as the object of sentiment; if a man does not want to accept them, it means that he rejects the Giver Himself, or His way of giving, and he inevitably loses bit by bit all the forces of both mind and heart and finally comes to the death of both. “Their end is destruction” (Philippians 3:19).

In fact there is only one path that leads to life, the one God, in His love, sent us with His only begotten Son, the path of faith: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

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II Without faith it is impossible to please God. If

faith, seen from the outside, is the only guide on the path of salvation, on the inside it is also necessary in our relationship with God. Faith gives our thinking the characteristic of truth, our feeling the inclination toward holi-ness, and our actions real value. Our deeds are fruits that make it possible to see whether the tree of our soul is good or bad; they go with us from this world to the next: Their deeds follow them (Revelation 14:13), and God will reward each person according to his ac-tions: He will repay every man for what he has done (Matthew 16:27). However, our deeds are not good simply because we think or feel they are, or because they are in harmony with what people think; they have to be good be-fore God. Indeed, if what we do is good only because people approve it, then there seems to be really no reason to worry about it. Yet, what is more unjust or changing than human judgment? And besides, what would be the rule of the judgment or of the approval? I can heartily laugh at human judgment, and who could convince me that my derision is bad? or in the name of what? on behalf of

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some human authority? I am a man with the same rights. Or is it that my works are good because I say they are. Am I God, that I make my own nature the rule of good and evil? Are my mind and feelings the highest truth and the greatest good to the point that what they approve is necessarily infallible? No, not at all; faith is this infallible rule, and only works coming from faith are good, be-cause faith is given by God, and only God can say of His own nature: This is good, and, similarly, this is opposed to evil. Therefore, only actions coming from faith have value; more-over, they are the only ones that count in man’s relationship of love with God, a rela-tionship of which faith is a prerequisite here on earth; and so these actions alone are pleas-ing to God. Without faith it is impossible to please God.

My brothers! People who have aban-doned the faith and follow their own reason or feeling do not want their actions to be impeded. They consider the virtue of faith too demanding and not solid enough; and, moreover, it is based on humility. Some peo-ple have introduced, humming, the words of tolerance, charity, love of the common good and sacrifice; others use those of God, Lord

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and Spirit; and there are even more words. With regard to them, the Apostle says that they hold to the outward form of godliness but deny its reality (2 Tim 3:5). The appearance is the sheepskin that covers the outside; the tomb is bleached, but there is a decaying corpse in-side, and a stench emerges from human na-ture when the relation between faith and love of God is broken. Once again: Man lives by love and faith; by love, as his element — by faith, as a link that connects the element to its subject, its life, with God; when that bond is broken, and this element becomes detached from its life, man shall inevitably suffer cor-ruption and death, and then, whatever he does in this agony, he is in any case doomed to die, all his deeds are unhealthy, they con-tain the germ of death and die with him.

My brothers, my dear brothers! You have done much in your life, and you have tried to achieve great things. You proclaim your work before the world and astonish people. You alone, you alone, laying your hand on your conscience, tranquilly state that you have fully done your duty and you will totally fulfill it. You have consecrated every-thing to this; the greatest sacrifices cost you nothing, and both physically and spiritually

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you could continue like this for many years; and if you bravely shed your blood for your country on the battlefield, with incomparably greater valor, you will pour out your soul’s blood in bitter and long suffering and in in-ner battles.

Men of Antiquity sang the glory of hu-man models of virtue and of the greatest of them: the soul’s courage, in the assemblies of the people — am d, now, you have given your witness not just as individuals but as a crowd. Yet, are these deeds, virtues and sacri-fices born of faith, my brothers, my dear brothers, or were they done for God, or do they have a value on the balance of the Judge of time and of the generations? I do not have the courage to deny it; but I’ll say it again and I will always say what I have to say, because I cannot lie: only actions born of faith have value before the Judge, they alone may tilt the balance of eternal judgment one way or the other; and if you want your cry of pain not only to reach God —because it resonates and accuses your enemies— but also to touch His heart and make Him turn to you, my brethren, it takes faith, faith, faith. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith! (1 John 5:4)

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The just shall live by faith (Hebrews 2:4).

Oh, if only this need to believe entered once for all into your heart! This great, important, essential need! Oh, if you could understand clearly that without faith all the treasures of your virtues and suffering, all the pearls of your tears will be considered worthless and remain buried in oblivion — when they should be shining on the head of the Son of God among the thorns of his crown.

The enemy of your soul knows better than you the great price of faith. He knows that if you return to the faith, repenting and humbly asking the Father that His justice, His Kingdom and His Will come on earth as in heaven, you would not only asking for this immediately but you would also become His dearly beloved son, defenders of faith, valiant men of His glory. That is why, when faith begins to awaken in you, a heavy temptation will hit you. God, in turn, permits it because temptation is necessary; it will purify your faith of all earthly and human additions. This is necessary, because your faith has to be stronger than your suffering, nobler than your sacrifice, and absolutely pure. Your soul’s enemy has already laid before your

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mind the different feelings and religious fan-tasies of the world in order to tear you away from the faith which alone leads to life, and he has spurred you onto the path of reason and pride, to the pride of the heart that leads to death. He tried especially to make you leave the Church, the Mother of our faith, because he knows that “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother;”3 your enemy knows very well that, once away from the Church, you cannot have faith. Now, your love for the Church must correspond to the purity God requires of you in your faith. If, despite all temptations, faith is always burning in your heart, it will be truly eloquent before God! How strong justice —the foundation of faith— will be in His eyes! Each of you will come to eternal salvation, and everything else that you want here on earth, you will want it henceforth in God. Only remember that you can no longer give any excuses, claiming in-advertence. Given these dangers and tempta-tions, God’s voice has resounded with His warnings in your conscience, and you know what to do. You have before you the truth

3 Cyprian of Carthage, The Unity of the Catholic Church 4.

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and falsehood, good and evil, life and death. The choice is yours!

Amen.

Christ is in the Church

(Preached in Paris on March 19th, 1843)

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith

on earth? (Luke 18:8)

My brethren! Faith teaches us that the world shall end,

that the history of the human race will come to a close and culminate in a universal judg-ment. According to the Apostles’ Creed, the Son of God himself, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, rose again, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Almighty Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, will come to judge the living and the dead. As he ascended to heaven, he blessed his five hundred disciples gathered around him. And when they were watching him lifted towards heaven, a cloud came and hid him from their sight. Then, while they were still looking at-tentively toward the sky, two men dressed in white appeared to them and said: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken away from you into heaven, will come in the same

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way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). He will come to judge the living and the dead. When speaking about this coming of the Lord Jesus, the question arises: When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? What does this mean? Shall there no longer be faith on earth? Can the sacred fire that descended from heaven really go out on the entire earth and no longer be found in hearts that were beating for Christ? Will there still be noble souls in large numbers so that it can be said: there is still faith on earth? Because it is really with a doubt that the question is asked: “What do you think, does one find faith on earth?” as if adding: I tell you, it shall no longer exist. But here’s the answer: The name of Christ will not cease to resound on earth, because there will always be souls turned towards him. The saving name will always be invoked, but wrongly. There will be some-thing like faith, but it will not be true faith. People will not accept Christ where he is, that is to say in the Church; on the contrary, man will praise his own intellect with songs of worship, saying: that it is Christ; and he will fall at the feet of different people, claim-ing that they are Christ. He personally warned us about this when he was on earth:

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“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ — do not believe it” (Matthew 24:23). For false christs and false prophets will arise; they will make great signs and work wonders in order to deceive people and, if possible, mislead even the chosen. See, I have warned you. My brothers, it is necessary to say, and remember this well, it has been said often enough: Here is Christ, or there; but do not believe it, and be certain that this Christ is a fake. Christ himself asks us to be careful, for he is not found in the desert of human reasoning or in secret con-structions of the human sentiment. Christ is truly continuously before the eyes of all, as the light that illuminates the world; Christ is in the Church, in the one visible and univer-sal Church.

Look, my brothers, at today’s world! Is it not true that there is something that resem-bles faith, but very little true faith? We are not saying that the end of the world is about to come, because nobody knows the time or the hour except the Father; but it is certain that we now have an idea of what the end of the world will be like. Today, there are many false prophets, who deceive themselves and make the chosen sway! Now, it really is not

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surprising that almost all abuse the Name of Jesus Christ, thus fulfilling His prediction: “Many will come in my name.” And did he say anything to let us think that at least one of these men could be the true Christ? Not at all! He repeated over and over: Do not believe, do not believe it! Indeed, my brethren, it is an error to believe, when we must not, in a Christ who is not the Christ —and we are saying that today’s world is full of these im-posters. What is more contrary to Christ’s teaching than the system of human wisdom which prevails today … So, in our days, when false prophets are deceiving people everywhere, the object of true faith disap-pears; Christ, living in the Church, is aban-doned, when the heart’s inclination turns away from God, as is the case today, and puts its trust in the errors of the false teachers who are leading the hearts away from the true masters who, like us, come not on their own initiative and do not seek their own ad-vantage. As for us, we simply come shouting like the One who sent us: Don’t believe, do not believe it! Jesus Christ, who is truth, freedom and life, who is your salvation, without whom you cannot live, the true Christ is neither here nor there, neither in the desert nor in

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secret constructions; Christ is in the Church! Do you want to live? Believe in Jesus Christ. Do you want to believe in Jesus Christ? Come to church. Only here will you find not some-thing like faith but the faith itself, the true faith that will save you.

Therefore, beloved brethren assembled today, with the help of God and the full doc-trine of the Church —which I have tried to expose for you more broadly—, and in order to progress logically in what will I say next, we must first talk about what a man is in the Church and then what the same man is out-side the Church. We ask God to illuminate our hearts and incline them to His truth, so that we can really benefit from these teach-ings, and we entrust this to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St. Joseph, whose feast the Church is celebrating today.

I

Man was created for God and, when He

created him, God put in his heart the law of love, of which He Himself is the object; and the motor, although it belongs to a finite source (as is the human being), man’s poor little heart is nevertheless as infinite as the

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object of love — that little heart’s desire is as limitless as God Himself. Now, man lived in accordance with this law until the fall. God had given him a full measure, and he lived with God without obstacles, and following Him he would have possessed it forever.

Now, after the fall, faith is the only link that binds man to God, the bond which flows from love as the source and leads to love as the goal. But all of faith has its foun-dation in Christ and without him it would not exist. This is so because Christ implored God, and he alone could earn His favor after man’s first sin. Christ reconciled humanity to the Father, and if we can bring forth from our chests the invocation: Father!, we owe this to Christ. The ancients did not know this title, but somehow remembered or prophe-sied it, recalling the past or foretelling the future. Yet, man is free; he can receive the faith in Christ, which raises him from the fall, or reject it. In fact, all of history owes its ex-istence to Christ, because without him —that is to say without the reparation after the fall—, it would have ended with the first man; consequently, history as a whole bears the two-fold mark of conflict and war. Those who do not receive this faith, in their revolt,

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accomplish the deeds of perdition and bear all the consequences of sin: they are heading to certain death and destruction. For those who have received the faith of Christ, they are engaged in the great and powerful work of reparation; they edify God’s Church, which advances securely towards its end: life and salvation and God himself.

That, my brothers, is the introduction to the doctrine of the Church; it is not our in-vention or a construction of our minds; we have received it from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ himself, whose parables and explanations are always the basis of our teaching. Now, Christ said: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), and also: “The gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13–14). Consequently, man’s relationship with God, repaired by His love, rests on faith in his only Son; that is the straight and narrow path that leads to life, and next to it there is another one … Christ says there are two paths, and each one leads to a different end: one to destruction, the

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other to life. This second path is God’s Church.

Christ the Lord is therefore the only mediator between God and men. There is one God, as St. Paul says, and there is also one mediator between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, who is God, blessed forever (cf. 1 Timo-thy 2:5; Romans 1:25). He is the Mediator between God and men precisely because he is both God and man, as we want to explain in greater detail, when God will allow us to expose other mysteries of our faith to you.

Now, Christ in his office of mediator not only asks God to forgive our sins, but this forgiveness has also given us all the treasures of his merits, which each of us can and must appropriate. To this end, he brought us the truth, that is to say he told us about our beginning, our state and our end; he showed us the way, that is what we must do in our state to reach this end; he gave us life, which is God Himself —we had lost Him, but Christ reconciled us to Him, with whom he is one: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). In a word: Christ has become for us the truth, the way and the life. “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). By be-

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coming all of this, he corresponded in an extraordinary way to our nature, he who knows all its glory and its weakness: the glory because he created it, and the weakness be-cause he adopted it, by taking our nature, which is as it is because it creates nothing from itself but receives everything from out-side, and especially in its weakness. It was therefore necessary that Christ bring us the truth, show us the way, reconcile us to God, indicate the purpose of our lives, and give us life.

The Church has taken Christ’s place with the aim of accomplishing the same mis-sion with the same power. This is why the Church, like Christ himself —or rather Christ through the Church— firstly unites us to God, then gives us the truth, shows us the way and gives us life.

Thus, it is through Christ that God gives Himself to man, and Christ is only found in the Church. Consequently, everything: our relationship with God, the supernatural bond, the bond of faith, is established through its center, through the Church.

What does a man receive in the Church and what does he become there? What does God do for man through the Church? First

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of all, He cleanses him from sin. Holy Bap-tism, the door of the Church, removes origi-nal sin and all the other sins that followed it. Indeed, nothing impure can enter into the Holy of Holies of the Temple, into God’s Church. Through Baptism, man becomes a member of Christ, for the Church is His Body; through the Son he becomes a son of God, because Christ, the true Son of God, lives within each of its members. Yet, when man has become God’s son, this new son of God must necessarily live the new life. So, this man lives by the truth and for goodness. He will therefore find in the Church both in their fullness —but most of all the truth. In the Church he hears God’s word, written in the book without a title, since “Bible” means book or, as we call it, “Scripture.” This is a unique book, or Scripture, of humanity, where its fate is recorded, and God, the world and man are described; there history, with all its mystery, is explained. This is the only scripture in the world that has a begin-ning and an end, that says where we come from and where we are going. However, Scripture is incomprehensible to a man who is not in the Church, just as was the book that John saw in the Apocalypse, the book

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sealed with seven seals; nobody could open it and look inside. Only the Lion of the tribe of Judah, David’s descendant, can open the book and break its seven seals (cf. Revelation 5). Only the Church — where the living Christ dwells — gives the right understand-ing of the Scriptures, for it is Christ himself who does this through it. The Church is the science of Christ, and the voice of the Church is His voice; she is just as holy as he is because she shares his personal power; she is just as real, just as infallible. Infallibility is necessarily a property of the Church, without which Christ would not be Christ, and God Himself would not be God, as we have tried to announce Him. Man, then, not only has the truth in the Church, but the infallible truth approved by God Himself and as sure as God. This certainty is the life of the mind; it is a man’s absolute conviction, his full faith. This man may boldly confess the truth eve-rywhere, lovingly devoting his life to it; and, without being fanatical because this faith is not his own invention or an illusion of his mind but the truth received from outside, from God through the Church, he freely gives his life … The one who gives it for the love of God’s truth received from the

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Church is the wise man, the sage, the true and holy martyr about whom Christ spoke, when he said: “Everyone therefore who acknowl-edges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32).

So, my brethren, a man has the whole

truth in the Church alone, not a truth that comes from himself, but the absolutely cer-tain and infallible divinely revealed truth; and there is nowhere else in this world where he could find it.

However, just as the truth, introduced and put into practice in life, becomes an as-set, and as the truth is whole and complete, likewise goodness in the Church is also whole and complete. Here, man has the true aim of life; he does not wander right and left, but he knows where he is going and that what he does leads to the end, which inevitably awaits him. Oh, how happy are the effects of the certainty of truth and goodness! If you want to know the consequences, do not look at those who are in the Church only with their bodies, but without their souls; look at those whom the Church recognizes before the world as her true children, those she places on the altar to be honored by all believers:

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look at the Saints. For, you know, my breth-ren, that the Church has a body and a soul; this body is composed of all the unjust and the sinners, and the soul of the righteous. The soul is in fact the essential part of the Church, the part that vivifies her; and this soul is everything in God’s eyes. Christ said to her: “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” (Song of Solo-mon 4:7). The body of the Church is often sick and some parts are rotting, but her soul is always beautiful and healthy … Look, my brothers, at the soul of the Church; I assure you that all your ideal social organizations, all your dreams of happiness for mankind, have never seen anything like it. How can your glory be told, O Daughter of the King, our Mother, Supreme Beloved? You are worthy of all reverence, because you are Queen, you replace Christ who is in the place of God! We have access to Him only thanks to you. You purify us by baptism and penance. You give us the whole and infallible truth; you show us the straight road and guide us towards the goal of this life, which is God, and you give us all good. Through you is accomplished the great work of love for which man is made. The fundamental law of God is love, and the

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law of the human, given through the crea-tion, is also love. This bond was demolished, but in you it is restored, and the great need of the human being finds its full satisfaction in you, in you alone. O Mother! I will add more words to praise you, yet something is always missing. I cannot find words beautiful enough to describe your purity and immortal beauty; I cannot see terms strong enough to express the power and strength of your truth; I do not know from where to take the words that are lively enough to portray the great importance, the very necessity, all the life that are in you, entirely in you, and in you alone.

O You, at least, light of God, sacred fire,

descend into the hearts of my brethren, re-veal Yourself to them, and convince them all! May they confess again with all their heart that apart from You, Lord, there is nothing; that you are the One who exists, and that You sent Jesus Christ and established only one Holy Church; that in the Trinity is the wisdom of life, and that man finds everything in these three: God, Christ and the Church.

This short encounter, which we have so

far devoted to speaking about the Church, is

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also the completion of our teachings about her. Let us finish all of this by recalling again and repeating the Lord’s words: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).

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Man’s Love for God

(Preached in Paris 1843)

“We now love God because He first loved us” (1 John 4: 19)

Beloved brothers in Christ the Lord!

We recently spoke of God’s love for mankind.4 We saw how God created man with the need to love in his soul, and that He gave to this being His Law of love and Him-self as that love’s object. All this was the done by divine love, the love which is the essence of God’s being. Man betrayed that love and, breaking the relationship, created a separation. We saw how, when man suddenly turned away and fled his God, in order to seek his satisfaction and happiness elsewhere, he encountered nothing but emptiness and the death of the soul. Yet, we also saw how God, in His love, sought man and pursued him with His commandments, and in the end reached him by His presence, when God came down to earth and was born among us

4 The homily that Father Semenenko refers to here has unfortunately not been preserved.

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as our Savior. And when did God in His love pursue us? When? When the world was plunged into the deepest oblivion of God, when the first sin had produced millions of others and finally reached its ultimate conse-quences, the ugliest ones, when man’s ingrati-tude knew no limits and, having killed God not only in his heart but also in his con-science, had placed on the tomb of God’s love the altars of arrogance and its abomina-tions. So, God loved us first, when we had broken the relationship of love, when we had stopped loving God, when we had despised and forgotten Him. God loved us first. Therein resides the greatness of His love. And He did not limit it to a certain time but extends it for ever and ever through His presence in the Blessed Sacrament, giving us His love fully. “God’s love for us was re-vealed in this way,” says John, “not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son.” “And so,” St. John continues, “let us love God, since He loved us first” (cf. 1 John 4:9–10).

I come to you today with these words, dear brothers: Let us love God! Ah, may the depths of your soul open to recognize in this word a source of joy, happiness and peace —

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and having understood this word, may you welcome this word and respond to it, by the grace of divine love and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary! Hail Mary.

I Let us love God! — But do we know,

brethren, what love is? what love is based on? Ah, man by himself does not know the se-crets to which he is nevertheless destined! For him the love of God is born into the world. Let us travel throughout this old world that lives without God, and seek love there — we will not find it. And now, my brethren, the further this world moves away from God, the less it knows what love is, even human love. In its heart is the ice of pride, which chills everything, darkens and extinguishes everything. And, if there are some exceptions, if in the heart of some people the imagination kindles the fire of human love, this love is sick, feverish, and at least never completely devoid of self-centeredness; always, ultimately, it draws eve-rything to itself. In order to know what love is, and to be able to respond with a single voice: Let us love God, we do not need to

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search for models; we just have to look at how God has loved us. There, and only there, will we find a true model of love. We have seen this authentic model, but now I want to summarize in one word all that I have already said to you. Look, my brothers, God has given Himself to us, He has given Himself entirely to us, He has given all that He has and all that He is. And He has given Himself to us in such a way that He remains continually present, alive, and so close that we just need to take a few steps in order to have everything. God loved us that much. So, let us also love this God, that is to say: we must give ourselves to God, we must give Him ourselves entirely; we must give Him everything we have and everything we are. That, my brothers, is the meaning of these words: Let us also love God.

Now, before all else, we should give Him our spirit. God gave us His truth; we, for our part, must give our faith. Faith, my brethren, is the strong consent of our intelli-gence to the truth revealed by God; it is the complete submission of our minds to God’s truth. He who doubts does not believe; he who does not believe does not love God and does not respond to that voice —indeed, his

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whole soul turns away in order to avoid an-swering the call of this voice that says: Let us also love God! Here, the whole sea of accusa-tions comes to my mind. I know, I know them well —but today we have not chosen to answer; moreover, the history of response to human folly, and wanting to be understood, is strange and long. Now, we can only say that anyone who does not submit his mind does not love. On the other hand, someone who loves joyfully submits his intellect to divine truth; he does so without reserve, and does so as God asked. He submits his mind completely, because he does not exclude any bit of the truth nor the smallest part of dog-ma; on the contrary, he receives all and be-lieves in everything; his mind completely assents, because it receives both what it un-derstands and what it does not grasp, be it in the light or in darkness. Ah, my brethren, God’s wisdom resides in this: there are things He has taught us that are not clear to our mind; in the truth that He has given us to believe, He mixed light with darkness. Oth-erwise, if everything were clear for our intel-lect, there would be no faith - in fact, when things are clear, I know, I know them well, but I do not have faith; I only have faith in what

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is not clear, what I do not see and do not know, but with the assurance given by some-one I consider trustworthy, I believe because of this person. Therefore, I am indebted to him, and, if I love him and he loves me, my gratitude is for him the proof of my love. This is how it is in regard to God. If every-thing were clear for the reason, there would be no faith, nor would there be any debt; and, consequently, with nothing to repay, there would be no proof of our love. But God, who organizes everything appropriately, thus gave us His truth as a field where our love can experience it and express our grati-tude; to the clarity of His revelation God added enough obscurity so there is sufficient light for those who love and believe and suf-ficient darkness for those who do not. It’s a question of love, my brothers, and whoever loves willingly submits his entire intelligence and is happy to believe; truly, his joy grows as he more blindly believes in the One he loves.

However, he does not just submit his entire mind, but he does in the way God wants him to. God, on the one hand for greater security of the truth and, on the oth-er, for the greatest experience of our love, placed the truth in man’s hand. He estab-

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lished His Church, and made her the guardi-an and interpreter of His truth, saying: “Go to the ends of the earth and teach; behold, I am with you always, until the end of the world; whoever will listen to you, listens to me” (Matthew 28:19–20; Luke 10:16). Thus, human reason must receive the doctrine of God’s truth; if you want to listen to His voice, His truth, you shall only hear it there, you will not find it in any other place and you will not have it elsewhere. The mind of man, who is so proud and thinks that he can measure the heavens and penetrate the earth, in matters of faith must absolutely humble himself before the Church’s authority. Any-one who has love quickly crosses the thresh-old; but he does not, stumbles or withdraws. That, my brothers, is the secret of all here-sies, of all errors, in matters of faith. The Lord God, for the sake of the experience of human love, became man in order to preach us the truth and then put man in His place to transmit the truth from one generation to the next until the end of the world. And, just as He was not received by those who did not love Him, now the people who replace Him are not welcomed by those who do not love Him. This is the mystery of love itself. They

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did not love God but rather themselves; and when they were struck by the idea of accept-ing God’s truth, they saw people without recognizing God behind them, because they had forgotten Him and did not love Him; looking instead towards people from whom they should receive His truth, they said: Why not us? Self-love is that black god who by his power, whose only strength is to kill, has created the world of lies, errors and heresy, and established the miserable kingdom of darkness and obscurity, where man exhausts himself in the midst of errors; and all this came to be because people did not have the love of God in them and could not resist the test of faith, precisely because they lacked love. Oh no, it was not love that inspired these men, because if it had, they would have subjected their minds to God’s truth, they would have submitted them entirely, in ac-cordance with God’s will. They would not have turned back at the sight of others. They feared humiliation, and they are humiliated; they thought of themselves, because they had no love in them! For love there is indeed no humiliation. With love, the most miserable, the poorest man serves and whole-heartedly offers a noble sacrifice, purely to please the

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One he loves. If people had really loved God, they would have done what His love was asking them; they would have submitted their intelligence to the authority of those estab-lished by Him. But they did not have the love of God in their hearts. O my brethren, let us examine our own conscience; let us see if we have submitted our reason to God’s truth and believe what He has revealed to us. Or perhaps we believe because this pleases us, because it seems good to us and is in agree-ment with our own ideas? In that case, it’s not faith, but rather reason is infatuated with itself and very far from submitting to God’s truth. Let us see if we gave our whole intel-lect, that is to say, if we believe in every-thing -because if there’s one thing that we do not believe, we do not believe at all. In fact, when we reject something, we do so by the power of reason, through its judgment; and, consequently, what we accept, we receive it with reason’s judgment and assent; hence, the mind is not subjected to God’s truth, because if it were then it would assent completely and be submitted to everything. Here, however, the mind dominates and its self-love prevails over God’s truth, accepting it in part while partially rejecting it, on the basis of its own

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authority and power. Let us see, finally, if we submit our reason as God wants, if we really take His truth from where He has established it and from whence He wants us to take it. If this is so, then, brethren, we have subjected our mind to the Lord, we have really offered it to Him: consequently, our faith is also complete, our gratitude whole and the expe-rience of our love complete. So, our con-science being filled with the internal testimo-ny of love, we can safely and happily respond to the voice that says: Let us also love God! Yes! I gave him what I have, I really love my God!

II

Just as God gives Himself to the mind as

truth, He gives Himself to our heart as good-ness. Therefore, in the same way we should submit our minds to God’s truth, we must also submit our hearts to the divine good-ness. Now the truth comes to the intellect in the form of dogmas and divine goodness is present in the heart in the form of com-mandments. We should submit to God’s commandments with all our heart and de-termination, and submit as God wills.

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Above all, we should accept the com-mandments and subject ourselves to them for God, since Christ himself said: “Whoever has my commandments and accepts them, he is the one who loves me” (John 16:21). In fact, there are people in the world who do a lot of things that Christ commanded; yes, they are the ones who keep all the com-mandments. The world today has a good sense of smell, so to speak; it recognizes beauty; it senses goodness; however, the world accomplishes the commandments pre-cisely because this pleases it and in order to be able to boast and display its righteousness. The world does not act out of love, or be-cause God gave the commandment, as Christ clearly requires: “Whoever has my com-mandment” and he repeated once, twice and even three times: “If someone loves me, he will keep my word” (v. 23), “If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love” (John 15:10). Love seeks the will of his be-loved, simply wanting to accomplish it. The world, therefore, in search of his good pleas-ure and doing only what pleases it, shows us what we have already known about it for a long time: it loves only itself. On the other hand, someone who loves God in doing

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good does not seek anything but the will of God alone, with the desire to act according to His commandment; and in his love he rejoices simply to accomplish the will of his God; and, as to God, He is happy with and accepts only a testimony of love for Him.

Therefore, brethren, we should subject our whole heart to God’s commandment, in all its totality. We should accept everything and do everything, and not maintain our own will in the slightest thing. Just as when giving the truth to the mind God mixed darkness with clarity, giving us goodness for our will He mixed sweetness and bitterness. But, once again, He did this in His loving wisdom, in order to put our love to the test, so that we may give Him some evidence and testimony. These commandments are so sweet, “Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mat-thew 11:30), but at the same time they are bitter: “As the road is narrow and the door small” (Matthew 7:14). There’s enough sweetness to attract all those who love and enough bitterness to repel those who do not. And these unhappy people, who do not have the love of God in them, are immediately repelled by the bitterness of the difficulty; they see everything in black, all the com-

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mandments seem bitter and unbearable to them, and they reduce everything to a narrow road and the small door. They are so afraid of true love and fear so much for themselves. As to those who have completely given their heart to God, as their love grows, they see the bitterness gradually reduced, then trans-formed into unspeakable sweetness, and fi-nally they no longer feel it; so, in the end, they say: That yoke is easy and the burden is light! Love does this; moreover, it is characteristic of love, because true love is nourished by difficulties, sacrifice and suffering; it is happy where it can offer the greatest sacrifice, and it finds the supreme sweetness in the greatest bitterness, and through suffering it can show the fullness of its devotion.

Finally, brethren, we must attach our will to God’s goodness and submit it to His commandments as God wants for the sancti-fication of our souls. To adapt our hearts to His law and give us strength as we walk along the path of His commandments, He institut-ed the Sacraments, placing them also in the hands of men. What I am saying applies es-pecially to the Sacrament of Penance. That is, my brothers, the school, where God’s general commandments are inscribed in each soul.

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Here, everyone looks at how he has sinned against God, repents and in so doing receives forgiveness in His name; thereafter each per-son reinforces his commitment promising to sin no more, and receives the necessary grace; there we choose the means to keep vigilance over ourselves in the future and we get advice on how best to do this. In a word: there God, through a man, is for everyone the Judge who forgives, the Doctor who heals, and the Master who advises. And that means, my brethren, that it is necessary; it is the only means that can give us the strength and power necessary to advance on the path of God’s commandments. Only then, by God’s decision, are we cleansed from our past sins, cured of our diseases, freed from our inveterate weakness, and become strong again and solid enough to walk this difficult path. There, the man who loves God, will kneel down and thank Him for having creat-ed such a treasure for his weakness. This man is not afraid to humble himself. There is too much self-pride in the world; and that’s what we should fear. The love of God, however, knows no such fears; moreover, we should think of the gift to which the door of repent-ance gives free access, we have in mind the

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other sacrament —that we cannot receive without the first one— where we receive God Himself.

Oh, now, my brethren, having come to this point, we will discover the entire founda-tion of the mystery of love. Love, in fact, as we have seen, is based entirely on giving, the gift of self, and full offering. Now the specif-ic aim of this gift is the mutual self-giving, which unites the two beings in one, making them into one thing. This is love’s goal. God’s infinite devotion to us had no other objective. Christ came into the world, as he said in his last prayer to the Father, “that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them” (John 17:26). Therefore, he assumed human flesh and became what we are by nature, in order to be able, through it, to settle in and become one with each of us. “I am —he says— the vine, and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, I will remain in him!” (John 15:5). He did not insti-tute the Most Blessed Sacrament for anything else; this memorial that contains him is the living memorial of His total self-giving love for us, as he again said: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him” (John 6:56). It is His gift to the end,

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and our donation must have the same objec-tive. But because we are created and He is God, this union can only be achieved if we become what He is, that is to say, if He trans-forms us into Him. Now, everything that we told you about man’s submission to God leads precisely to that end. We give Him our minds so that His truth may transform them, and so that Christ may think in us; we give Him our heart, our will, our desire, so that He may transform them and so that Christ may feel in us, that Christ may desire in us, and that Christ may act through us. We give Him our whole being so that Christ may live in us, and in order to come to this blessed state of which St. Paul said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Yet, at the same time, my brothers, you see that we can reach this state only by re-nouncing ourselves; we can receive the life of Christ in us only through mortification and death to ourselves; man must go out and Christ must enter. That happened through the death on the cross of the One who came back to life, and who had said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple, (or simply) who wants to belong to me, let him deny himself and take up his cross” (Matthew 9:34). That,

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my brothers, is the goal of our love, and at the same time the highest degree of our God’s self-giving to us. The life of God in us is the goal of love and we reach it through death to ourselves, which is the last stage of love. When my ego shall have been killed, when it is dead, then I will be able to say: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

How far our little heart is from that to-day! The source of St. Paul’s happiness, the delight of so many saints, and of those who cherished God, is for us today almost in-comprehensible. To submit not only our mind, not only our heart, but even the depths of our being, to renounce our ego and anni-hilate it in order to make room for God, so that He may truly dwell and live in us, so that He may be everything for us and we may be nothing … who can understand this? and who does it? Happy, blessed, is the one who at least begins to do so and truly commits himself to it. Brethren, do you understand the disgust that the Saints felt for themselves? They recognized that their ego is the main stumbling block to their love, in their rela-tionship with God, to unity and transfor-mation. This is why they worked so hard to mortify themselves. Otherwise, they couldn’t

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receive God’s life within them. May God help us to engage effectively in this work! Oh, if we had a little love, we would already have started on this path of total self-giving to God, giving ourselves more and more, mortifying ourselves more; if we don’t daw-dle but begin to despise ourselves according to what Christ tells us (Luke 14:26), how easily we will lose our soul, as he also tells us (Matthew 10:39); oh, if we wanted to reject it quickly in order to possess God Himself and have a foretaste of the happiness that is the goal of this love, that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, which is not entered into the heart of man and that God gives us! …

Amen.

Man’s Triple Resurrection

(1860) Hallelujah! sings the Church. What does Hallelujah mean? - Praise the

Lord, give thanks, bless the Lord! The whole Church sings hallelujah to

Christ, and in the Church and through the Church everything sings.

Hallelujah - the whole earth. Hallelujah - Heaven and the Angels. Hallelujah - the entire past: the Ances-

tors and Patriarchs. Hallelujah - the present, at the moment

of the Resurrection, the souls of the believ-ers, the living.

New generations arrive, and all sing: Hallelujah!

Every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:10), and eve-ryone sings: Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

Let us also add our voices and sing: Hal-lelujah!

Why? Our heart knows this, and trem-bles, and rejoices. But let the intelligence say it!

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Because we were dead. In order to know this joy, we must also know the abyss of death.

What a picture I have to show! The death of man, of the human race, after sin. The tomb in which he was for such a long time! Where can I find enough time and words and colors bright enough to describe this?

But we have a very short way. We will look at Christ’s tomb! and not without rea-son, because every detail has been planned and prepared eternally.

Go there, look, and learn the mystery of the Hallelujah. Then, with a freer chest and a fuller voice, we too will sing our Hallelujah! Hail Mary.

I Go to the tomb first with Mary and then

with Peter and John. 1) Look the stone has been removed. - But this was not the case a while ago. This Stone with all its weight rested on the tomb. 2) Look there is the angel of light. - Heaven and light. But a moment ago there was only darkness and the power of hell.

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3) Look at the soldiers who are like dead at their guard. But shortly before they were not so: like lords, they were making noise and dominating.

The seal of human power, of the world, was on the tomb, and the soldiers, all-powerful instruments, a living seal, on guard, were watching to make sure that the corpse would not escape them and return to life.

This is the picture of reality before the Resurrection and of what followed it.

This was also the case of man and of mankind before Christ’s Resurrection, and this is what happens in the soul before Christ’s resurrection in it.

1) Before the Resurrection: the stone.

The flesh and its passions. A heavy, appalling stone! How can I describe it? You know the pressure of the yoke of the passions.

Lust, awakened by the first sin, became sovereign, the flesh dominated and the soul became its slave. What a horrible death! For the soul must live, and it does not: it continu-ally dies. See, this soul is living but its life is confined within the walls of a tomb. It con-tinuously awakes and unceasingly dies. It wants to remove the stone and cannot. How

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dreadful! This is the death of the soul en-slaved by the flesh here on earth.

Have you ever seen a man seized by pas-sion? What am I saying: have you seen? How could you not see? There are so many! You are perhaps, dear brother, one of them? But I ask: Have you seen what happens to such a man? Unfortunately, there is no more pitiful sight! A man under the influence of passion is unable to move. He has an itch; but this Lazarus, Christ alone can raise him from the dead. He is not only under a rock but also held from head to foot by straps and ties — he can’t move. Above him, the word of God that performs miracles has resonated: “Take away the stone!” And then: “Lazarus, come out!” He’s already getting up, but he can’t walk until after the third word: “Untie him!” (John 11:44) To fully revive and heal this man, God must do a miracle, a triple miracle, and people must help to accomplish it. - A holy confession is necessary. But first God’s voice must resonate in this man’s conscious-ness: “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43)

The Apostle cried out: “Who will rescue me from this mortal body?” (Romans 7:24) How much more does a man lying in death cry out: Who will save me? Who will save me?

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And here is the answer: “The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 7:25), that is to say, his Resurrection.

Man finds himself in this state before Christ. His soul is in this state and so is the world today. Matter must be deified. Matter is this stone. But when Christ has raised a man from the dead, he lives and sings: Halle-lujah!

2) Then, the darkness and the powers of

hell are all around. Look at Christ’s tomb. The human soul was in this state. How can I describe it to you? After the first sin, God abandoned the human soul and Satan be-came its lord. Then the darkness grew even thicker. It made man lose the sense of truth. The soul must live, and it lives thanks to light. Oh, how terrible its agony is in this darkness! Yet, it cannot die. Imagine this tomb and its terrible darkness. When some-one is in the middle of the night, in an un-known place, he sees horror on every side! Then monstrous forms appear to him, fright-ening monsters! For Satan is not just dark-ness, he also teaches his doctrines, errors, contradictions —horrible specters— and the closer man looks at them, the more he is

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convinced, as they consume and devour him. The soul always seeks the light, but it contin-ually encounters darkness and, in this dark-ness, threats. It finally reaches the point of desperation! What a horrible death!

Now, consider a second image. Just as a man needs air to breathe, his soul needs this air that is God. But there is none in this tomb, just as there is no light. The soul is suffocating here, and the suffocation is con-stant. This is appalling! But this image has a third section and comparison that you need to look at. A man needs food and his soul does too. This food is grace and the Sacra-ment. But they are not to be found in this tomb. The human soul is starving. Oh, what a tomb and what death! The human soul was in this state before Christ: and it would still be there if he had not risen.

This was man’s situation on earth and in time. Who will save him? Who can save them?

Christ is Risen! “If the Son sets you free, you shall be

free indeed” (John 8:36). 3) The soldiers. Omnipotence, slavery,

tyranny. Love is expelled, and here are hatred

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and slavery. This is the third death in man’s life. The death in the life of society. This one is the most difficult to describe. It affects most those who should be its support, spring and pole, as I will say. This death comes from the fact that a man falls under the slavery of another. Love is excluded and replaced by slavery and hatred. This is the third lord, the third tomb, the third death. (The world). In this context, on one side there is the strong man and, on the other, the weak person who is suffocating. This cannot happen in the name of God, and therefore man is acting in his own name. This can be understood from the meaning of the words of the King of Egypt: “I am Pharaoh, and without my ap-proval no one shall move hand or foot in all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:44). Protect me, O God, against this kind of legitimate authority, and let me be the first to attack it. Oh, of course, with the Lord Jesus Christ I respect civil authority, but I am talking about the power that Christ called “the world” when he said: “You do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” (John 17:16), this power that, beginning with the father and the most miserable little guy, climbs ever higher, taking everything for its

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own benefit, and finally puts itself in the place of God. Now, let there be no ambigui-ty: this power personified in the Roman Em-pire and throughout antiquity - when the nation was a god and religion, errors and anarchy a very sacred order - put every man of the people into the chains of slavery. That system, that slavery, from which no one in the ancient world could break free, was noth-ing! Take another example: Socrates. The poor man! He knew the truth, and how much better it would have been not to say it! — Of course, it can be whispered in secret to a few trusted men, while publicly worshiping a god without believing in him, living like a hypo-crite, but without escaping and breaking the yoke of slavery and of human power for lack of courage, because one doesn’t have the boldness to put up opposition and shout: “Woe to you!” — This Socrates was doubly unfortunate, precisely because, being a cow-ard, he did not trample the world, and so the world crushed this coward. But we shouldn’t be surprised: he was like every other man and groaned in slavery! Someone else had to come to shout against all the Pharisees, the Herods and the Pilates: “Woe to you!” That’s what the slavery of one man to another was!

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Now, what can be said about other forms of enslavement of prisoners, women, children, animals? You often have this image before your eyes: the whole world in slavery, and a small number reigning at the top, precisely to enslave everyone else. Oh, how heavy is man’s slavery under the yoke of another, under the world’s lord and his power! It real-ly is another tomb and another death!

But why am I talking about the ancient world, an old tomb and death in the past? It’s like that now too, isn’t it? Yet, it is true: to-day, alongside death there is life, and that was not the case at that time. Moreover, this is not the same tomb as in the past; on the con-trary, there is the Mother’s womb full of life; there is the Church, the assembly of believers and saints, God’s house and paradise. And all this exists thanks to God! and flourishes within; in the soul this divine holy land blos-soms, and it grows ever more fertile and more beautiful. Now, in contrast, this tomb, this world, the kingdom of death, are they not constantly more frightening, dangerous and terrible? And those who walk in their chains, are they not always more unhappy? Understand that you must have pity for the unfortunate, for those born in this sad world,

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in this tomb and in this death! May God de-liver us from this sorrow! But no, He doesn’t take it away. We will be safe enough if He gives us a nearby haven, His house built on the rock, his city on the height, the city of heaven, the abode of safety, clarity, life and happiness. We have all of that. Oh, my brothers, we have the Church! There alone life is found; only there is resurrection from this continual death that surrounds us every-where.

Oh, resurrection is only there, because that is the only place where we meet the Ris-en Christ!

II And now look how things are after the

Resurrection! See! - The stone is removed. - The flesh

is no longer weighty. - Whoever has risen with Christ treads on the passions, crushes this stone, and breaks his chains - he is free, truly free, for he is risen. Hallelujah!

Look, here the angel dressed in white is seated on the tomb! You can touch heaven. Go to Galilee, go to the Church - Christ is there - there is the clarity of teaching, the fresh air of divine grace, the bread of life, the

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power of the Sacraments; there you can find the unction of the Holy Spirit and your soul is illuminated, bright, clear and strong, be-cause it is resurrected with Christ. Hallelujah!

Look, here the soldiers are seized by fear and like dead. The slavery of the world has already been destroyed. Whoever has Christ does not fear, and he says with Peter: “We must serve God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). (This is vast - also from a human point of view.)

Thus the human will, the soul, gets out of this slavery and is already strong because it is resurrected.

What a change! Just like nature, that was dying in the

darkness, awakes to life when the rays of the sun strike it…

Like prisoners, after having been en-chained for many years, are suddenly freed…

Just like when the dying, engaged in the final battle and already close to falling into the torpor of death, are touched by the finger of the One who works miracles… so man, so the human soul and the world, are led out to the light of freedom, to life; full of joy they bathe in the divine light, breathe deeply open air, gladly welcome this new, full

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and reinvigorated life; man, who was lost is now saved and happy; the one who was dead now lives, and the one who was put to death is now risen!

He lifts up his heart, his mind and his soul to the Savior who brought him the res-urrection; he rises and sings joyfully with strength the holy Hallelujah!

Through Baptism, Christ was born in us;

but at the same time, he began to relive. Since we are born with sin, we purify

ourselves so that Christ may live in us more and more; dead through sin, everyone comes to life through penance and purification. And this continues until we reach the fullness of life.

This life of Christ in us is doubly immor-tal: indestructible here on earth and inviolable in heaven.

They tortured Christ in vain, and they buried him uselessly. Likewise, in us, they torture for nothing the one who has come back to life, and in vain they put him into a tomb.

In vain the intellect tries to demolish di-vine truth and put into the tomb of athe-

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ism - Christ lives in the minds of the faithful and constantly resurrects there.

Human pride seeks vainly to destroy God’s Law, divine justice, in the world and to put it into the tomb of slavery – the faithful souls still bow down before Him. He lives in the Church and constantly revives it.

Thus, all ages and all peoples sing to Him: Hallelujah.

Oh, let us also sing to Him: Hallelujah! If all rejoice, He also rejoices. Let us cel-

ebrate, my brothers, today - and Christ will rejoice! Only then our joy will be authentic and just.

His joy is to resurrect in us, to live in us through faith, love and justice.

Then we will begin singing jah. - But with us, that is to say with Christ who is in us, heaven and earth and the world will sing, and the angels, all peoples and liv-ing things will sing: Hallelujah!

And they will sing for us forever, that is to say, for Christ living in us: jah - forever!

Amen.

Christ’s Peace

and Peace of the World

First Sunday after Easter

Gospel of John 20:19-31

Christ the Lord said: “Peace be with

you!”- This is not an earthly voice. It suffices to show that Christ is not of the earth but of heaven.

“Peace be with you!” Is that a voice of the earth? Where on earth is there peace? Nowhere; war is continuous, and there is no peace.

Yet, man wants peace. He seeks and pursues it; and he does so with such ardor that if there were peace on earth, he would certainly find it. But what does he encounter? War. And why? Because he does not seek his peace in Christ.

Christ alone gives peace. “I give you my peace” (John 14:27).

Indeed, who else could give it to us? ourselves? or some people? or the world? Ah, no, no! Christ alone. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give it to you as the world gives it. Do not let your hearts

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be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

Oh, man, you who want peace and can-not live without it, listen to this voice and understand it! Understand what this peace is, and you will truly find it.

This understanding of Christ’s peace is what I want to teach you. Hail Mary.

How true it is that man seeks peace on

earth and finds only war. Yes, here he is searching for peace! You, man, where are you running so fast

on the path of this life? why you are so busily toiling to move up? by what work do you try to overcome your problems? why all this effort, work, fighting? - I want to rest, he says, I want to reach my goal and rest. I need peace, peace!

You who are so proud in your reason-ing, why do you wear yourself out like this? I’m looking for knowledge, clarity, so I may rejoice and rest. - You, the sensual man, what are you running after? I am looking for comfort, pleasure, to delight in it, fill me, and rest. – You, the insa-tiable merchant, why do you count, work, cheat, and count again? I want to have enough to take advantage of and get some rest. - And you, the

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fearless and pitiless soldier, why do you con-tinuously torture both yourself and others? I want to win, in order to dominate tranquilly. Peace! Peace!

The world cries: Peace! … What do you want? Man was created for

peace. Ascend to heights of your mind, go down in to the very depth of your heart - what are you looking for? Clarity, sat-isfaction, fulfillment, everything in order to get rest, ah, peace! peace!

There are two who come proposing it to us: the world and Christ.

We must choose. The world’s peace is only apparent; it is

false peace. The peace of Christ is authentic. The peace of the world is outside while

war is inside; in Christ, there is war outside and peace within. The first ends in confusion, a tempest and the fall; the second … in victo-rious, strength and eternal peace.

In a word: the peace of Christ is the true peace, while the world’s peace is turmoil and war.

1. Since before the ages, Christ is the

Prince of Peace.

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He was born when the universe was at peace. For centuries it had been waiting for this moment.

The angels sang: “Peace to men of good will.” (Luke 2:14) These words are also addressed to us. In them we have the explanation and the contents of Christ’s peace.

“of good will.” - What does that mean? What is good according to God. Good will is the will according to God. Hence, peace to men who want what God wants.

Understand this well. Peace is within us, when we fully achieve

the order of our being. Our entire being is a creation of God. Its order is set by the divine will. Consequently, we find peace by doing the will of God. Peace to men of good will.

When God created us, He put into the depth of our being His order, His thus. It continuously summons - in our mind: believe thus! in our heart: love thus! in our soul: act thus! Our conscience is the voice of God: I wanted thus and I want thus. Blessed is he who likewise says: and I as well want thus. Then there is agreement, happiness and harmony. Oh, what peace there is then, true peace! Peace to men of good will!

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On the contrary, one who does not say this -you can already see- then has no peace. It is in vain that he goes looking elsewhere for a moment to breathe. God’s thus con-stantly resounds; hence the contradiction, discord and fighting. By often saying “no” man silences God’s thus and comes to some peace. But it is only apparent! The more God’s voice is suppressed, the more it force-fully shouts. Watch how this man exhausts himself in vain, coercively and cruelly, trying to stifle God’s voice within himself. And what a pity -yes a true misfortune- if here on earth we manage to smother it completely, because it will rise with greater force on the Last Day. And how do you think people shall not suppress God’s thus forever? Yet, that shall not happen! And if here on earth (when God is invisible) His voice is often so strong, how great do you think the power of His voice will be when He appears? With what omnipotence God’s word shall then destroy his adversary and his false peace! Ah, the false, fraudulent peace of the man opposed to God!

Consequently, war and destruction to the people of ill will! For people of good will, and for them alone, peace!

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2. But the world’s peace is not only false;

it is also external and superficial, while Christ’s peace is internal and deep.

“Come to me, all you who labor ... you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).

For your souls! Really, this peace reaches to the depths of man’s being.

For consider what Christ is for the re-vealed truth, goodness and divine holiness:

Peace of the mind in truth. Peace in the heart in goodness. Peace of the soul in God himself. Thus, the whole man’s peace is found in

Christ. And therefore: “Come to me, all you who labor ... you will find rest for your souls!”

Christ comes into us, and there He is the source of overall peace, of inner peace, that nothing can take away.

Human peace, on the other hand is: that of the mind, of the ego, claimed or

rather denied by Satan. that of the heart, in matter, in the carnal

desires, in the goods of this world, and often of the street.

that of the soul, in the vagaries of the world and its standards.

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As long as the mind is at peace, it does not stop voicing its opinions, that is to say, its errors (negation).

As long as the heart is at peace, it can find satisfaction in an object, that it sucks like a bee gathering nectar from a flower.

As long as the soul is at peace, nothing else matters, and the world does not change a whim.

But this is exterior, and everything that is exterior can be removed. So, this is always feared, and there is never peace. In the very notion of peace, there is anxiety. And the greater it is, the more the soul seeks peace in external things. The more it clings to them; the more it fills itself with them and then suffers when they are lost; and the greater the frustration from the failure to possess.

O poor soul, if you do not attach your-self to these things, if you do not cling to them and repose in them with all your pas-sion, you will have no consolation, no joy, no peace! And when you do this, you’re still a hundred times more miserable! So, your con-solation flies by, this peace shall straightaway be mercilessly ripped away from you, and it becomes for you a much more painful bitter-ness, a more harassing disorder, and you

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curse what you were looking for, preferring to have never experienced the thing in which you reveled because of your desire.

Oh, this is a heavy yoke and a weighty burden - and all of you who do not go to Christ must bear it! Look in your heart - you will not find rest in your soul. Oh, do not go to the world! Its yoke is a heavy, deadly bur-den.

3. In its consequences, worldly, human

peace leads lastly to confusion, falling and destruction; on the contrary, the peace of Christ lead to order, victory, triumph and eternal peace.

In today’s Gospel, after the Resurrec-tion, Christ says: “Peace be with you! As the Fa-ther sent me, I send you” (John 20:21).

With this peace, the Apostles went on their mission. And to every nation, they said, “Peace be with you!” to every city: “Peace to you!” to every home and every person: “Peace, peace to you!” To the whole human race, they an-nounced: “Peace, peace!” And miracle of mira-cles, it came down from heaven: peace came to earth. Glory in heaven – Peace on Earth.

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And what are the consequences of hu-man peace? Oh, they are as different as they are opposed!

When I look at man and the world, I see an angry sea; and, on the other side, I see Christianity and peace; and I am seized by amazement. All of history is a continual mir-acle.

Look at these raging waves of various

studies, delusions, and systems! How they rise, fall, run, splash, and then disperse as a fine mist - and the Christian idea, the Chris-tian faith, shining like the sun above them, serene, clear and peaceful, tends to its secure repose, toward God, toward eternity.

Look again at this horrible abyss of pas-

sions! – It boils, and how! … Each passion seeks another satisfaction, is concerned about another depth — in the depth of the human being the passions are unleashed and prevail. Where is peace?! — But Christ dominates over the waves: A single word is followed by great tranquility — and the coast appears: heaven, and without difficulty we reach it.

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Look at this terrible spectacle, the most frightening of all; look at the world! What chaos, real chaos, chaos without order or purpose, or law! The rich strip the poor. The powerful oppress the weak. Deception and fraud torture the innocent and virtuous man. Injustice and violence are in the government, while those who defend people’s rights and virtue are imprisoned. War, war, war! Chaos! — And, on the other side, the little flock of Christ’s disciples. Look carefully, because it can’t be seen from on high; you have to enter into it. His true Holy Church, composed of saints. Here, there is a law and a right: Love. Here, there is true order and purity: the unique heart and soul. Such a Church en-dures forever. There have always been saints, and there always will be. Here love is found. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples” (John 13:35). Peace, peace, peace!

And this has existed continuously since Christ the Lord came. Oh, this is really a constant miracle!

Now I understand why the angels sang,

“Peace on earth to men!”

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Now I admit that these words are true: “Come to me, all you who labor ... you will find rest for your souls.”

Now I look and I see how powerful those words were: “I give you my peace ... as my Father has sent me, even so I send you.”

I see the miracle and I contemplate Di-vine Power!

You Christian, it depends on you to ex-perience this personally! This is not only a miracle, it is also happiness. Listen to these few words.

Christian soul, perhaps you lack peace?

maybe you are suffering? You strongly desire peace and you sigh

after it? Listen! The angels have already taught you.

Keep the good will! Good, that is to say, ac-cording to God, but also the will! You have to want with determination. It’s not enough not to oppose God, to have no ill will – this is not yet the good will; you have to have the determination. Oh, how many people do not have the will! And this is the principle, the main source of trouble, sorrows and regrets.

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Learn, first of all, that the primary foun-dation of peace is the sincere and strong de-sire to want what God wants.

Listen again! Here, after the Angels, Christ teaches you: “Come to me ... my yoke is easy - my burden is light.” Good will shall meet the cross, and it may lose peace; this precisely is why Christ teaches us yet another mystery. This teaching is at the beginning and then all along the road. – “Take up the cross, take the yoke, willingly and with joy” - otherwise you will not have peace. This is the second source of anxiety, sadness and of collapse along the road.

Learn that, just as the primary founda-tion is the willingness to accept what God wants, the second is to take up willingly the cross of Christ.

And when you reach the complete sub-mission of yourself through penance, then at the spiritual resurrection, Christ will say to you as he did to the apostles: “Peace to you! complete, constant, abundant, peace, over-flowing on other people. As the Father has sent me, I also send you.” Then you shall bear the vast peace of Christ in the world; being happy yourself, you will sow happiness around you, and Christ’s blessing will follow

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you: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God!”

You, who not only enjoy peace but also do the work of peace, you, Christ’s associate and son of God, we reiterate what Christ said: You’re truly happy, truly blessed, truly the child of God! Peace to you from God himself, here and forever!

O my brothers! May God make us into such children of peace, such children of God! Amen.