REFLECTIONS

Opening Our Minds to Jesus 

By baptism we are grafted onto Christ so as to form with him one single body - his Mystical Body. We are given life by his very Spirit. His divine sentiments enter into us in ever-increasing measure, in proportion as we strip ourselves of our own. That is how we receive the adoption of the sons of God, by means of the pouring into our souls of the Holy Spirit, who by his gift of piety moves us to address Almighty God by the sweet name of Father, and to serve him, love him, and honor him, praying in the manner we ought.

    Thus he dwells in us, not only sealing us with the living image of Christ, whose features he imprints upon us, but also anointing us and illuminating us with the gentleness, sweetness, and splendor of his grace .... We receive him as the fount of living water that, by divine impulse or instinct, makes us rush forward toward eternal life .... All our good consists, then, in cleaving to God until we have become one spirit with him, in being truly docile and attentive to him, interiorly recollected that we may catch every sound of his voice, and desiring faithfully to accomplish that which the Lord our God deigns to speak within us, for he speaks words of peace to his saints and to all those who are converted to the heart ....

    In order, then, to understand the stages that this divine life offers from the time it is received in baptism until it is fully unfolded in glory, it is essential to keep well before the mind all the mysteries - joyful, sorrowful, and glorious - of the life of our Lord. To that end, it is good that we should meditate on them deeply at the side of Mary, Mother of Divine Grace, in the holy rosary; for all of them - from the Incarnation itself and the birth of Christ to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection and the sending of the same divine Spirit, in which the marvels of the Christian life are consummated - have to be reproduced, each in its own way, as in so many other Christs, in all perfect Christians.

SERVANT OF GOD JUAN G. ARINTERO
Father Arintero (┼1928) was a Spanish Dominican priest, theologian, author, and highly regarded spiritual director.