April 30, 2026
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We will meditate to-morrow: 1st, upon the excellence of the interior life; and, in order that we may understand it, we will compare it with the exterior life, which is the life of the world; 2d, we shall see that it raises the Christian to the height of the divine life in Jesus Christ. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to avoid all that dissipates us, or to which we have an attachment, such as certain kinds of society and certain conversations; 2d, to enter into the spirit of Christ by often asking ourselves: Is it thus that Jesus Christ would speak or act? Is this the spirit or the intention which would direct His words or His acts? Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. John: “God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we may live by Him” (I. John iv. 9).
Meditation for the Morning
Let us prostrate ourselves in spirit before Jesus Christ; let us adore Him as the Author, the Founder, and the Model of the interior life, of that life which begins here below by grace and which is consummated in heaven by glory. Let us make a sacrifice at His feet of our want of recollection, that great enemy of the life of Jesus Christ in us; let us beg of Him to correct us of it, so that henceforth we may live only by His life.
FIRST POINT
The Comparison between the Interior Life with the wholly Exterior Life of the World
What is the exterior life? It is the life which St. Paul calls the old man, the man of sin, the animal man, the old Adam, entirely filled with the spirit and the inclinations of his miserable father. A slave, like him, to his senses, the exterior man thinks only of the things of this world, and not of those of heaven. Sensible things attract him, distract him, and dissipate him to such a degree that he finds it difficult to enter into himself, that he may understand what has respect to God and to his salvation; he is wholly occupied with the lower things of earth, and scarcely ever with the greater things of heaven; he is entirely taken up with the present and with what passes away, scarcely ever with eternity and with what endures forever. It is quite otherwise with the man who leads an interior life. By means of this most blessed life, the Christian becomes a man of heaven, because his thoughts, his desires, and his affections, instead of grovelling upon the earth, rise to heaven. By it he becomes the spiritual man, because, leaving beneath him, as things that are unworthy of him, the inclinations of corrupt nature, he treads his passions under foot, and if they rebel he crushes them; he attaches himself to God alone, he desires God only, and he places all his happiness in thinking of God. What a difference between these two lives! The first is wholly terrestrial and animal: it is nothing but self-love, pride, vanity, impatience, idleness, love of pleasure, enjoyments of the flesh, and, after that, death (Rom. viii. 13). The second is celestial and angelic; it withdraws us from sensible objects, recalls us within ourselves to occupy us with God, fills our minds with the illuminations of faith, our hearts with the fervor of devotion. It is the life of the predestinate and of the children of God; it has been the life of all the saints since the birth of the Church, and it is still the life of the elect souls which are the honor of religion. Let us aspire to so beautiful a life, and let us labor to form it in ourselves.
SECOND POINT
The Interior Life Raises the Christian to the Height of the Divine Life in Jesus Christ
St. Paul describes to us admirably the divine life which the practice of the interior life realizes in us. It is no longer I who live, he says, it is Jesus Christ who liveth in me (Gal. ii. 20). It is no longer I, that is to say, it is no longer the child of Adam, the old man whose life is wholly exterior, with low and terrestrial inclinations, but it is Jesus Christ who lives in me; His thoughts are my thoughts, His heart is my heart, in the sense that I love what He loves, I only will what He wills. Jesus Christ is my life (Philipp. i. 21), and He ought to be yours (Coloss. iii. 4), He says to the faithful; that is to say, that as the soul is the life of the body, all of whose senses it puts into motion,—the eyes to see, the tongue to speak, the hands to act, the feet to walk—so Jesus Christ, our life, ought to do in us all that pleases Him without finding any resistance on our part; He ought to regulate the movements of our bodies by keeping them within the bounds of modesty and of decorum, to govern our tongue that it may say nothing which is evil, our hands, that they may be occupied in good works, our mind that it may be filled with nothing but good thoughts, our heart that it may have no other sentiments but His (Philipp. ii. 5). We are grafted upon Jesus Christ, says the same apostle (Rom. vi. 5). Now the graft becomes one and the same thing as the tree upon which it is grafted; it lives the same life; the same sap nourishes it. It is thus that we ought to live one same life with Jesus Christ, to have with Him only one common principle regulating our acts and our wills, the same objects, the same intentions, the same sentiments in all and for all. Lastly, continues St. Paul, Jesus Christ is our head, and we are His members (Eph. v. 23, 30). Now the head and the members ought to live the same life, and as it is from the head that life flows down upon all the inferior members, so the divine life ought to flow down from Jesus upon us. As we form with Him one sole body, we ought to form with Him one sole spirit, and one and the same heart; one sole body and two different spirits would be a monstrosity. We ought then to think in all things like Jesus Christ, love what He loved, nothing more and nothing less; inspire ourselves with the whole of His sentiments, animate all our acts with the same intentions, and keep our interior as He kept His, always recollected in God. Such is the grand Christian life, which, according to St. John, was the object of the Incarnation of the Word (I. John iv. 9), and whoever does not live this life is not Christian (Rom. viii. 9). How beautiful it is, this divine life, and how worthy it is of our ambition, of our efforts, and of our prayers!
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.