A Reflection from “How to Be His” by Fr. Ignatius Schweitzer and Fr. Jesse Maingot with Dan Burke

Becoming His

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. —Galatians 2:20

The passionate love of the Lord for us is so marvelous that the Lord does not only want to draw us to Himself, He wants to draw us into Himself. This is the deeper meaning of how we become His: a Christian is one who is caught and transformed in divine love.

So, how are we caught? How do we become His? It is through Baptism. Baptism plunges us into Jesus’ life. It unites us to Him by the power of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit communicates to the baptized the very life of Jesus. A life that Jesus received from His Father in all eternity, an eternal life. The Christian is no longer a child of God only on the level of creation; he or she becomes a child in the order of grace. This is why the Lord has commanded us: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).

Dom Paul Delatte, an abbot of the famous Solesmes monastery in France, said that all our Christian life can be summed up in these words: “how to inherit.” Those words have always stayed with me. They have made me see my faith from a different perspective.

We are inheritors of the very intimate life of the Holy Trinity which comes to us through Christ. It can only be Christ, because He is the eternal inheritor of everything that the Father is and gives. The Nicene Creed professes: Jesus is “born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.”

When we speak of Jesus’ very identity as Son of God, we mean precisely what the Nicene Creed professes: that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light.” Christianity is a supernatural and mystical participation in this eternal coming forth from the Father, which we call the sonship of Christ. It is a sharing in the very divine light and life that Christ receives from His Father. This sharing is made possible only through Baptism. Through Baptism, what is Jesus’ is now mine: His life is my own. It is not an exaggeration to say that we “become Jesus” in Baptism because such is the union between him and us. This is the gospel, the good news.

Bl. Columba Marmion, in his book Christ the Life of the Soul, opens up for us the deeper mystery of this inheritance. He emphasizes that Christianity is more than just an imitation of Christ; it is about Jesus reproducing His life in us. It is about Christ being the very life of our souls. This is why St. Paul could pray: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Do we really understand the dignity of being baptized into Jesus? We are not just imitators of Christ but true sons and daughters of the Father because we share in the life of the Eternal Son. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, a contemporary of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, came to know the depths of the mystical reality of Jesus living in us. The Carmelite nun prayed,

O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love,
Overshadow me so that the Word may be,
As it were incarnate again in my soul.
May I be for him a new humanity in which He can renew all his mystery.

Isn’t that amazing? Jesus wants to renew his whole life though you and me. How does Jesus renew and deepen His whole mysterious life in us? It is primarily by the Holy Mass and consuming and adoring the Eucharistic Jesus. The life of Jesus which begins in us in Baptism must be nurtured and deepened by partaking of the Eucharistic Jesus. Jesus instituted the Eucharist as a way of giving Himself as food for the journey to Heaven. When we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, He comes with power to transform us into Himself. This is a truth we will expound on more tomorrow.

It is also true that when we adore Jesus in the Eucharist outside of Mass (in the tabernacle or monstrance), we are drawn more deeply into the heart of Christ. Eucharistic Adoration is a spiritual communion with the Lord. It is the repeated experience of so many Catholics that, in Eucharistic Adoration, the Eucharistic Jesus helps uncover our truest and most noble desires. When we are before His sacred presence, He declutters our hearts from so many lies. All that is not true collapses under His light. The truth of who we are in Him surfaces. In His gentle presence, shame melts away and the conviction of His goodness is born anew in our hearts. He returns us to true selves. St Elizabeth of the Trinity says it like this: “We shall not be purified by looking at our miseries, but by gazing on Him who is all purity and holiness.” It is by gazing at Jesus that our hearts become pure and true. We become His.

Let Us Pray: Lord, help me become aware that Christ has no body on earth but mine, no hands, no feet on earth but mine. Jesus, use my eyes to look with compassion upon others. May my feet be your feet, bringing good news. Use my hands to bless the world. Lord, increase in me a desire to be docile to your voice. Transform me into you more and more. (Adapted from the prayer attributed to St. Teresa of Avila.)

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