Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine)

These words mean : you are to be awake and vigilant because you do not know the hour when the Lord will come from the wedding… Because as soon as some feeling of pride, self-satisfaction or self-will enters a man, the Enemy is there cutting the precious bag of all his good works from him. Oh, children! How many of people like these will you see who have done great works… and thus gained great renown…, but presumption has stripped them of all… They will be placed after the poor and simple fellows whom no one values because of their outward appearance and work. Because they humbly take a lowly place these latter will be set above the others… So keep watch with vigilant soul and you will see the pure truth with open eyes… « Let your loins be girded and your lamps alight. » Here there are three points to notice. First: the loins are to be girded like someone firmly bound with a rope so as to be led against his will… Second: you are to carry lighted lamps in your hands, which is to say, works of love. Your hands should never stop doing the true, ardent work of charity… Third: you should wait for the Lord when he returns from the wedding… : “The Lord will set them over all his goods; he will gird himself and will serve them.” This wedding from which the Lord comes takes place in the most interior part of the soul, in its depths where the noble image is found. O what intimate contact the soul has with God and God with it in this depth, and what a marvellous work God does there! What rejoicing and joy he finds there! It surpasses all feeling and thought and yet man knows nothing and feels nothing of it.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

Some people are very like Zacchaeus. They desire to see Jesus as he is. All power of reason and all natural light are too short and small for this, so they run ahead of all crowds and all the multiplicity of creatures. Through faith and love they climb up to the highest part of their mind, where their spirit lives in its freedom, devoid of images and obstacles. It is there that Jesus is seen, known, and loved in his divinity, for there he is always present to the free and exalted spirit which has risen above itself in love of him. Jesus there flows forth with a fullness of grace and favors. But he says to all: “Come down quickly, for the exalted freedom of the spirit cannot be maintained except through lowly obedience of mind. You must know and love me as both God and a human being, higher than all and lower than all. You will savor me when I raise you up above all things and above yourself to myself, and when you lower yourself beneath all things and beneath yourself to me and for my sake. Then I will have to come to your house and remain living with you and in you, and you with me and in me.” When these persons know, taste, and feel this, they come down quickly in great disdain of themselves, and with a humble heart and true displeasure over their life and all their works they say: “Lord, I am not worthy-but am truly unworthy-that I should receive your glorious body in the blessed Sacrament into the sinful house of my body and soul. But be gracious to me, Lord, and have mercy on my poor life and all my transgressions.”

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

As soon as Christ has entered us with his own flesh, we shall be wholly brought to life. It is inconceivable – or, rather, impossible – that life should not give life to those into whom it enters. Just as people put a cover over a burning brand taken from a heap of straw so as to keep the spark of fire going, so our Lord Jesus Christ conceals the life within us with his own flesh and sets, as it were, a seed of immortality there that casts out all the corruption we bear within us. So it is not just by his word that he brings about the resurrection of the dead. To show that his body gives life, as we said, he touches corpses and gives life with his own body to bodies already in process of decomposition. If the touch of his sacred flesh alone restores life to these dead people, what benefit shall we not find in his life-giving eucharist when we receive it!… It would not be enough if only our souls were to be regenerated into new life by the Spirit. Our solid, earthly body also has to be made holy by its participation in a body that is as solid as our own and of the same origin, and it, too, must thus be called to incorruptibility.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team

“The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth” (Jn 5:28) (…) We have read in the Gospel of three dead persons who were raised to life by the Lord, and, let us hope, to some good purpose. For surely the Lord’s deeds are not merely deeds, but signs (…) We were listening with wonder (…) in the reading of the Gospel, how Lazarus was restored to life (Jn 11). If we turn our thoughts to the still more wonderful works of Christ, every one that believes rises again: if we all consider, and understand that more horrifying kind of death, everyone who sins dies. But every man is afraid of the death of the flesh; few, of the death of the soul (…) Man, destined to die, labors to avert his dying; and yet man, destined to live for ever, labors not to cease from sinning (…) ! Oh that we could arouse men, and be ourselves aroused along with them, to be as great lovers of the life that abides, as men are of that which passes away (…) ! Who has had it said to him: “Be off to sea if you would escape with your life”, and has delayed to do so? Who has had it said to him: “Set to work if you would preserve your life”, and has continued a sluggard? It is but little that God requires of us, that we may live for ever: and we neglect to obey Him. (…) If, then, the Lord in the greatness of His grace and mercy raises our souls to life, that we may not die for ever, we may well understand that those three dead persons whom He raised in the body, have some figurative significance of that resurrection of the soul which is effected by faith.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team