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By Root 2100 0

power, shine forth most luminously in the Blessed Virgin, the Queen of the angels and all saints. In humility there is mirrored the central mystery of the process of our transformation—the mystery that Our Lord has put into these words: “Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). The path that leads man to his ultimate union with Christ is not the unfolding of his natural powers and of the wealth of his gifts but his radical renunciation of self-assertion, the relinquishment and mortification of the self: “He who loses his soul shall win it.”

Thus, yearning to be transformed in Christ, we must pray: Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine.

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Confidence in God

THE knowledge of our need of redemption, as we have seen in the beginning, is the prime condition of our transformation in Christ, for it provides the only possible basis for our readiness to change.

We must have confidence in the whole message of love in the Gospels

However, that knowledge is condemned to sterility unless it is completed by another fundamental act on our part: our confidence in God. The knowledge that we are in need of redemption would merely cast us into despair unless we also knew that it is God’s will to redeem us. Even under the Old Covenant, man’s awareness of the necessity of redemption was qualified by his expectation of the promised Messiah.

To us, however, more is given: the faith that Christ has redeemed us, that the merciful love of God bends down to us; the faith that God wills to purify and to sanctify us and to fill us with His holy life; the faith that Baptism infuses a new supernatural life into us; and the faith that we are called by God, and that—though it be an incomprehensible mystery, since He, who rests in absolute beatitude, in no wise needs us—God seeks us in love and wills to be loved by us. In a word, we have been given Faith embracing the entire message of the holy Gospels. Confidence in God implies this living faith in the whole message of the Gospel; a faith that is no mere theoretical belief in an objective truth but a vital creed, by whose agency a superior Reality is continually at work informing our lives.

We must trust in the omnipotence of God

This creed must refer, first to the omnipotence of God. It is not enough for us to entertain a theoretical and general belief that God has the power to do everything. In every concrete situation we are faced with, the omnipotence of God must be so palpably present to us as to lessen the reality of all other facts, immutable as they may seem. Even in the face of outward dangers, which make our situation appear desperate—of a person whose state of mind robs us of all hope as to his conversion; of our own wretchedness when we see ourselves relapsing again and again; of the crushing weight of our sins committed in the past—we must always remain vitally aware of the paramount truth that the archangel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin: “No word shall be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).

Not for a moment must we forget that “God can raise up children to Abraham out of stones.” We lack true faith so long as we are not constantly aware of what the Psalmist has thus put in words: “Whatsoever the Lord pleased he hath done, in heaven and on earth” (Ps. 134:6).

We must believe that God truly loves us

In the first place, we must believe in God’s omnipotence as regards our own concerns. In view of our misery and debility, of the sins whose weight we vainly struggle to shake off our shoulders, we must say with David, “Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed.” Yet, to be thus conscious of God’s omnipotence is only the first step; we must next believe in His love for us, His inscrutable mercy that has bent down to us in Christ, and aims at redeeming us.

“God (who is rich in mercy) for His exceeding charity wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ” (Eph. 2:4-5). We must firmly believe