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Office Of Readings | Week 33, Friday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Treatise Of Saint John Eudes On The Kingdom Of Jesus | The Mystery Of Christ In Us And In The Church
‘The mystery of Christ in us and in the Church.’
Saint John Eudes reminds us that Christ’s mysteries are not only past events but living realities meant to take shape within us. Everything that Jesus lived on earth—his birth, his hidden life, his suffering, his rising, his glory—he desires to live again in his members. The Christian life, then, is not merely imitation from a distance; it is Jesus Christ quietly forming his own life in us, day by day.
We often think of Christ’s work as complete—and in himself it is. Yet in us it is still unfolding. Jesus’ grace works patiently, slowly drawing our hearts into the pattern of his own. When we allow Jesus to shape us, his mysteries become the story of our lives: he is born in our hearts when faith awakens; he suffers in us whenever we offer our trials in union with him; he rises in us each time grace overcomes sin; he lives gloriously in us when charity triumphs.
Saint John Eudes also reminds us that this happens not only in individuals but in the whole Church. Across history, Jesus Christ is gathering his members into the fullness of his own life. Nothing Jesus lived is meant to remain outside our reach. Everything is gift; everything is meant to be shared.
So today we are invited to open ourselves once again to the work Christ desires to accomplish in us. Our part is simple: to welcome Jesus, to consent to grace, and to trust that Jesus will finish what he has begun. In this way, his mysteries continue to grow quietly in the world—through us, and in us—until all is complete in him.
A Reading From The Treatise Of Saint John Eudes On The Kingdom Of Jesus | The Mystery Of Christ In Us And In The Church
We must strive to follow and fulfil in ourselves the various stages of Christ’s plan as well as his mysteries, and frequently beg him to bring them to completion in us and in the whole Church. For the mysteries of Jesus are not yet completely perfected and fulfilled.
They are complete, indeed, in the person of Jesus, but not in us, who are his members, nor in the Church, which is his mystical body. The Son of God wills to give us a share in his mysteries and somehow to extend them to us. He wills to continue them in us and in his universal Church.
This is brought about first through the graces he has resolved to impart to us and then through the works he wishes to accomplish in us through these mysteries. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us.
For this reason Saint Paul says that Christ is being brought to fulfilment in his Church and that all of us contribute to this fulfilment, and thus he achieves the fullness of life, that is, the mystical stature that he has in his mystical body, which will reach completion only on judgement day. In another place Paul says: I complete in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
This is the plan by which the Son of God completes and fulfils in us all the various stages and mysteries. He desires us to perfect the mystery of his incarnation and birth by forming himself in us and being reborn in our souls through the blessed sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. He fulfils his interior life in us, hidden with him in God.
He intends to perfect the mysteries of his passion, death and resurrection, by causing us to suffer, die and rise again with him and in him. Finally, he wishes to fulfil in us the state of his glorious and immortal life, when he will cause us to live a glorious, eternal life with him and in him in heaven.
In the same way he would complete and fulfil in us and in his Church his other stages and mysteries. He wants to give us a share in them and to accomplish and continue them in us.
So it is that the mysteries of Christ will not be completed until the end of time, because he has arranged that the completion of his mysteries in us and in the Church will only be achieved at the end of time.
Christian Prayer With Jesus
Lord Jesus Christ,
You who desire to complete in us the mysteries of your life,
open our hearts to the work of your grace.
Be born anew within us,
strengthen us in trials,
raise us up from our sins,
and draw us toward the glory you have prepared for your saints.
Make our lives a dwelling place for your presence
and bring to perfection in your Church
all that you once lived for our salvation.
You live and reign forever and ever.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Mystical Body – A biblical term for the Church, whose members are united to Christ as the body is to its head.
Mystery (of Christ) – Not a puzzle to be solved, but a divine reality revealed in Christ’s life that continues to act in the Church and in believers.
Grace – God’s free and loving gift of his own life, enabling us to believe, hope, love, and live in communion with him.
Incarnation – The mystery of the Son of God taking our human nature, becoming truly man while remaining truly God.
Passion – Christ’s suffering and death for the salvation of the world.
Resurrection – Christ’s rising from the dead, the triumph of divine life over sin and death.
Glory – The splendour of God’s presence and life, shared with the saints in heaven and anticipated in the life of grace on earth.
Jesus now gives to us a clear and ready way to salvation. We are to behold the Son of God, to believe in him, and then we shall be saved. These Bible verses for Easter continue to draw on the great miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when Jesus took a poor boy’s daily ration and fed the five thousand who had gathered to hear his word [ … ]
The disciples receive the universal apostolic mandate, commanded by Jesus to take the good news to the whole world, to preach to everyone. This apostolic mission applies to the Church to this day. It applies to the whole Church, laity included. All members of Christ’s body share the Christian vocation to lead others to faith in Christ, to be instruments or vehicles of salvation for others. We are to take the good news to everyone, through our words, through our works, by example [ … ]
Sometimes, when I read my Bible, I pause in the reading and say to myself: ‘This bit’s real.’ It would be fair to say, I have issues with Mary, because, contrary to what we are taught to say, Mary isn’t my mother. Rather: Mum is. One bit of the Bible-text says this: And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, “He is beside himself.” … And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Mark 3: 21; 31-35.) Here she comes. She is in considerable distress. I can imagine that. I can relate to that. To save her boy from whatever he’s got himself into this time. And you’re not telling me there isn’t something inside that. Her boy is beside himself. Radical. Radicalized. Radicalizing. A misunderstood word. /ˈradɪk(ə)l/ adjective & noun. 1 Forming the root, basis, or foundation; original, primary. 2a Inherent in the nature of a thing or person; fundamental. b Of action, change, an idea: going to the root or origin; far-reaching, thorough. c Advocating thorough or far-reaching change. d Characterized by departure from tradition; progressive; unorthodox. ‘He has a demon! And he is mad!’ – thus ‘the Jews’. (e.g. John 10: 20.) Come home! It’s all she wants. His family want him back now. But it is an exclusive cult: there is an inside and there is an outside; and on the outside, they are not meant to understand, lest they be converted. He has defined himself as different from anything she was. Only at the end does Jesus say to his Mum – and with savage, bitter irony: ‘Woman, behold your son.’ And then he dies. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. We ask that we might find Mary in our hearts as a Yes! place for Jesus. It is also recommended that we pray to Jesus that we may be further in oneness with Mary. It is self-emptying, such that we only exist insofar as we are responsive to God’s Word. * Last term, and put-out to pasture, the old Archbishop Emeritus came over to stay for a few days and did the odd class with us. He spoke of Yes! as the meaning of Mary’s virginity. And we were not very nice about him. One or two took umbrage. One or two got the hump. In a sense, his Grace, the Arch, basically wanted to move anyone he’d ever known from a high-place – a mountain – received theological ‘truth’ – to an imminent, human plane. Earthing the spiritual. Recalibrating metrics of life’s believability toward a spiritual sense of things. He might have asked the impermissible question: what happened? His Grace described it. God’s love as a cloud. This descended upon Mary – and subsumed her. Within the cloud, Mary capitulated utterly. She became only and purely a response to God’s love. As he spoke, the Arch cradled her. He carried her in his lap – in his hands. His Grace was a consecrated bishop. He was faith. He sat squat, a rounded man, hands cupped and ankles crossed, fingers interlocked, with parted thighs. Rumpled, washed, speckled. A lifetime’s skin… There could be no doubt His Grace spoke through long-term personal relationship with Mary. It was Julian went for him: ‘So are you saying Mary was a Virgin? Or are you not saying Mary was a Virgin?’ Nasty. No, it wasn’t pretty. Julian twisting his silver ring. For a moment, what Julian had said to the Arch simply failed to communicate. No, for a moment, that dumped on the air meant nothing. Then His Grace said: ‘There is a range of possible meanings we may understand in the question of Mary’s virginity. For example, there are understandings of the word virginity entailed in the action of giving birth.’ Julian said: ‘Duh! So had she had sex or hadn’t she?’ Trigger words. No, it wasn’t pretty. On that went for a little while. At length, Julian’s point seemed reluctantly conceded. Then the Arch told us a new story, an additionally human event, the more to baffle us. Controversially, he told us that Mary could not have been Joseph’s first wife, for this would not have been the way of things in the society of that time. His belief was that Joseph must have taken Mary into his household through pity. That would be normal, he said, for Joseph to bring a young, vulnerable girl, who is about to have a baby, within his protection, not meaning to enjoy with her marital relations, but through kindness. ‘And this story of the inn and stable,’ the Archbishop said, ‘it can’t have been like that really. Joseph has travelled with Mary to stay with his family, at home in Bethlehem, and they don’t want Mary in their house, for reasons which I am sure we can understand. It must have been there was considerable resistance to Mary. But Mary gives birth, and who can resist a baby? That’s what happened. It must have been. ‘I’m convinced that must have been how it happened really.’ Later that term, toward the beginning of Advent, we met boys who had been here before, in Valladolid, and now were in regular seminary. They had heard and recited verbatim all the Archbishop had said to them. Their spot-on impressions of each of the fathers were scathing. […]
