Thursday, September 30 : Saint Bernard

Do you believe in Christ ? Do the works of Christ so that your faith may live; love will animate your faith, deed will reveal it… If you say you abide in Christ you ought to walk as he walked. But if you seek your own glory, envy the successful, slander the absent, take revenge on those who injure you, this Christ did not do. You profess to know God, yet reject him by your deeds… “Such a one honors me with his lips, but his heart is far from me” (Is 29,13; Mt 15,8)… You see then that right faith will not make a man righteous unless it is enlivened by love. Someone who has no love has no means of loving the Bride, Christ’s Church. But on the other hand, deeds, however righteous, cannot make the heart righteous without faith. Who would call a person righteous who does not please God? But “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11,6). And God cannot please the one who is not pleasing to him; for if God is pleasing to someone, that person cannot displease God. Furthermore, if God is not pleasing to that person, neither is his Bride, the Church. How then can he be righteous who loves neither God nor God’s Church, to whom is said: “The righteous love you”? (Sg 1,3 Vg.). If therefore neither faith without good works nor good works without faith suffice for a man’s righteousness, we, my brothers, who believe in Christ, should strive to ensure that our behavior and desires are righteous. Let us raise up both our hearts and hands to God, that our whole being may be righteous, our righteous faith being revealed in our righteous actions. So we shall be lovers of the Bride, the Church, and loved by the Bridegroom Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God, blessed for ever.

maronite readings – rosary,team