Monday, April 17 : Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus

The spiritual childlikeness born of poverty jealously sought was offered to Nicodemus, this man of considerable importance among the Jewish people. He could have made it his without losing any of his status or role. He should have accepted, for without poverty you can not be reborn of the Spirit, confident and dependent on God in all things. Rather, to be reborn is nothing other than progressively becoming childlike. While birth in the natural order is through the womb of the mother, moving toward a progressive seperation until the child can live an autonomous life; spiritual birth moves in the opposite sense, as a gradual absorption in unity. Seperated from God through sin, we are enlightened, bound ever tighter in His love, until becoming perfect children we are lost in Him, not our life but His through the Spirit. “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” (Rm 8:14); which means that through their spiritual poverty and loss of their own will they enter in to the womb of God, where their life and their movements depend entirely on the Spirit that moves them. This is the meaning of spiritual childlikeness, which fully realised is already holiness.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team