Monday, March 24 : Saint Ambrose

Naaman was a Syrian who had leprosy and could not be cured by anyone. Then a young slave girl said there was a prophet in Israel who could cleans him of his leprous affliction… Now learn who was that young girl among his slaves: she was the youthful gathering from among all the Gentiles, namely the Church of the Lord, who had formerly been crushed by the slavery of sin when as yet she did not possess the freedom of grace. It was on her advice that this empty-headed gentile people paid attention to the prophets’ words, which they had long held in doubt. No sooner had he believed he must obey than he was washed free of every infection from his misdeeds. Naaman had doubted before his cure; but you have been cured already and therefore ought not to doubt. This is the reason why you have already been told not just to believe what you see as you draw near to the baptistery, lest you say: “Is this the great mystery that ‘eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the human heart’? (1Cor 2:9). I see water as I see it every day; can these waters, into which I have frequently gone down without ever being cleansed, make me clean?” Learn from this that water does not cleanse without the Spirit. This is why you have read that: the “three witnesses at baptism are one: the water, the blood and the Spirit” (1Jn 5:7-8). For if you take one of these away it is no longer the sacrament of baptism. Indeed, what use is the water without the cross of Christ? It’s just plain matter without any kind of sacramental effect. Similarly, without water there is no mystery of regeneration. “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:5). The catechumen believes in the cross of the Lord Jesus with which he is signed, but if he has not been baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit he cannot receive the remission of his sins nor draw from the gift of spiritual grace. So this Syrian immersed himself seven times in the Law, but you have been baptised in the name of the Trinity. You have confessed the Father…., you have confessed the Son, you have confessed the Holy Spirit… You have died to the world and risen again for God and, after a certain fashion, been buried in this worldly element at the same time. Dead to sin, you have been raised for eternal life (Rm 6:4).

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team