Wanted: more everyday saints : discussion outline


THE

QUEEN'S

DISCUSSION

CLUB

SERIES

^ MORE
EVERYDAY

SAINTS
DISCUSSION OUTLINE

4
RICHARD L.ROONEY.S.J.

A QUEEN’S WORK
PUBUCATION



Imprimi potest:

Peter Brooks, S. J.

Praep. Prov. Missourianae

Nihil obstat:

M. J. Bresnahan

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:

+ Joannes J. Glennon

Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovicd

Sti. Ludovici, die H Augusti 19^2

Revised Edition

Any financial profit made by
the Central Office of the Sodality

will be used for the advancement

of the Sodality Movement and
the cause of Catholic Action.

Copyright 1942

THE QUEEN’S WORK



Discussion I

WHITHER AWAY?
Before a person can make a change in himself, he must

know that a change is needed. He must be convinced that
his new state will be better for him than his present one.
It is human for a person to want something before he will
lift a finger to gain it. You cannot want anything, be it a
cigaret or a penthouse, until you know that it exists, what
it is, and what it is worth to you. A need for knowledge
and desire holds for sanctification or sainthood as well as
for anything else.

Unfortunately there is a quirk in our American makeup
that causes us to shy away from the idea and the appella-
tion of saint. You can give a man any number of compli-
ments or heap upon him huge imprecations; you can call
an American boy or girl or woman or man almost any-
thing; but tell any one of them that he is a saint, and he
begins to squirm and to appear decidedly uncomfortable.
He seems to have the idea that to be a saint and to be a
freak or a mild monstrosity are one and the same thing.

Project

(It may be well for the group to pause here and have
the leader take a consensus of opinion of these two points

:

(1. Is the above statement about American ideas of
sainthood true ?

(2. If so, what reasons can be assigned for this atti-
tude?)

Such an attitude would be unimportant if it did not run
completely contrary to God's ideas and wishes. That God
does disagree with us can be seen from what He said
through St. Paul: “This is the will of God| your sanctifica-
tion.’’ And again: “You are called to be saints.’’ There
you have the clash. Good Americans feel a bit foolish
about the whole matter; yet God tells them that whether
or not they like it. He wants* them to be saints.
What to do about it ?
Undoubtedly the first thing for us to do is to find out

just what God means by sanctity, by being a saint. He
can’t be wrong. Therefore we must be. If we but learn in
what sainthood really consists, we shall find that our own
ideas about it have been awry. More than that : Once

3



those same ideas are clarified, we shall drop our disinclina-
tion to become saints. We shall find that such a becoming
is the very thing that in our heart of hearts we all want,
even though we do not realize it.

Discussion

The rest of this discussion period can be taken up prof-
itably in the following manner. Let each of the group give
his or her ideas and answers to the ensuing questions. The
intellectual humility engendered will be an excellent first
step toward sainthood. The answers can be used later, if
they are taken down by the secretary, as a sort of flash-
back ’vhen the full number of discussions has been com-
pleted. Then each can see where errors have been removed
and wrong notions put right.

1. What is sanctity? In what do you think it consists?

2. Do you think there are many saints in the world?

3. Do you believe that you personally are a saint?

4. Are you honestly and firmly convinced that you ought
to be a saint?

5. How would you know whether or not you are a saint?

6. Do you know people whom you consider saints? What
qualities do they have which makes you think them saints ?

7. Do you think that to become a saint you must be
extraordinary or do extraordinary things such as some of
the saints listed in the Church’s calendar did?

8. Discuss together this statement of St. Paul’s: “You
are called to be saints.’’

a) To whom was he writing?
b) Does his statement refer to you too? If not, why?

c) Is it true that we are missing out in our lifework,
our vocation, if we fail to become saints?

9. What need is there of saints today in the United
States? in your own home town? in your school? in your
place of business? in your parish? in your own home?

4



Discussion II
SANCTITY A HUMAN THING

Part I

1. Saints Are Human
Since our discussions will have to do with becoming

saints, it is well to realize at the very start that we are
talking about very human human beings. It is sometimes
forgotten that it is the whole person—nothing left out

—

that goes into and works at sanctity. Be it known right
here that sainthood is not a ghostly, wraithlike, disem-
bodied thing. It is the possession of a very much alive,
very flesh-and-blood person. It deals with things profane
as well as sacred. It uses for materials not only grace
and the sacraments but such earthly things as “dates” and
socks and cars. It is an alchemy that changes all things
in life into things divine.

Now despite the fact that we have been living with
human beings all our lives, and with those humans closest
to us—ourselves—we find that we have still much to learn
about human nature. Since the saint is also human, the
starting point of our discussions should be right here.
What does it mean to be a human being?

Project

(Have one of the group stand up. He represents each
person present, in fact every human being. The other
members look at him, study him. They are then to jot
down whatever they see about this person that is common
to all other people. The fact that the standee has, for
example, fiaming-red hair is not to be noted; the fact that
he has a head and hair is to be noted.)

Five minutes can be taken up in this study. Then going
the rounds of the members, draw up a list of facts, quali-
ties, characteristics—this to be done by the secretary. This
composite list should give a fairly good idea of what the
group thinks goes into the makeup of a human—as far as
they can gather just from appearances. These items should
then be compared with what follows in these discussions.

2. You Are
To make the whole matter more personal, more concrete,

more pertinent and interesting, from now on get away
from talking about people in general and discuss that most
interesting person in the world, you yourself.

5



We start off with the statement that you are, that you
exist. Fifty or a hundred years ago you just were not. At
that time you were only a possibility. You could have
existence, but you just did not have it actually. You were
but a hope in your mother’s heart, a dream of your
father’s, a thought in the mind of God.
Today you are, you exist. You have stepped ^nto the

stage of actually existing beings. You now have your part
to play in the world of trees and wind and starshine, the
world of country hamlets and sprawling ugly cities, of
buildings and motorcars and bakeries.

This idea is inserted here for one reason. The primacy
of being is stressed here because it gives introduction to
a most important truth about sanctity—a truth which
will be taken up more in detail later—that you must be
before you can act.

3. You Have a Material Body

One of the items that headed the list of nearly every-
body who examined the person who stood up as your rep-
resentative at the beginning of the discussion was the
human possession of what men call a body: a head, arms,
legs, and a torso.

One thing is immediately certain. No matter what any-
one may endearingly call you, you are not an angel.
are not a spirit. You have a body, and that body with all
of its parts and functions enters into the achievement of
the sanctity to which you are called. Yours is to be the
holiness, not of a specter, but of a human being, possessing
a material human body.

Project

(At this point have the members of the group give their
ideas of the meaning of the words matter and material.
Check them against what follows.)

If you compare your body with other things that men
call material—a piano, a house, a mountain, an atom, an
airplane—you will find that that same body has character-
istics in common with these other things. Step on a scale,
for example, and you will find you have weight. Let some-
one measure you as well as the suits you are wearing, and
you will find both have a definite length and breadth.
Further examination will show that like rubber you pos-

6



sess elasticity; like a ship, displacement; like iron, inertia;
like a wall, impenetrability; like mercury, density.

Further if you will betake yourself to a laboratory and
let yourself be subjected to various chemical analyses, you
will find within yourself certain elements and compounds
—water, salt, phosphorous, sulphur.

Project

(At this point have the members of the group give their
ideas as to how the matter that is found in themselves
differs from similar matter found, for example, on a match-
head or in an iron pipe. How would you define life? Work
out together a definition that will satisfy all present.)

4. ... That Is Living

Materialists think that there is no difference between
you and the chair on which you are seated at the moment.
They say that you are not living, that you are merely
“matter that has organized itself.” Sometime, when you
feel like going quietly mad, just try to fathom that idea.
The fact is that you are living. Though life is one of the
hardest things on earth to define, it is one of the things
most obvious to experience. Though you may not be able
to put it in exact words, you know with certainty that
matter in a living thing and matter in a nonliving thing
are quite different—in fact, essentially different.

Various chemical compounds and elements have been
brought together in you in such a way that they make up
an organism, a living whole whose every part is so related
to every other part and to the whole that you have a com-
plete. vitalized unity. As a result you have the power of
self-movement.' This self-movement technically is called
immanent action, that is, the power of an agent to produce
an action that begins and terminates within itself, e.g., sap
circulating in trees, blood circulating within you, thinking,
loving. This immanent activity is absent in nonliving ob-
jects.

You have a part of you called a head and at your other
extremity two useful but rather unbeautiful things called
feet. Cut off either your head or your feet, and they are no
earthly use to the rest of your body—a thing which is not
true of the roof of a house or the bricks in its foundation,
for these can be used in the building of another house. Let
the head and the feet remain attached to the body however,

7



and these parts work together beautifully for their own
good and the good of the whole body. The feet carry the
body where the head directs, and the head directs the feet
to such places that will be most beneficial to the whole body.

Food, even when rich in vitamins, is really as dead as
can be until it is taken into yourself. Then it is changed.
It ceases to be dead. It becomes part of you. It lives by
you, and you live by it.

5. Bodily Manifestation of Life

Project

(Before undertaking this section of the discussion, see if
the members can point out for themselves various vital
functions as they appear to their senses and are possessed
in common by the lowly vegetable and the frisky puppy.)
You find yourself craving food and drink. You take some

into your mouth and chew, food and drink slide down into
your stomach and are digested. These buns and this coffee
become a part of you, not by being plastered on from with-
out, as mud might be, but by being taken into yourself, by
being worked on by your internal organs, and by being
assumed from those organs into your body. As a result of
this self-nourishment (nutrition) you find yourself increas-
ing in size, sometimes to alarming proportions. Old waste
matter is thrown off, new materials take its place. You
find yourself growing (growth). You find within yourself
also organs, functions, drives, and urges which manifest
that you share in God’s creative power—that under proper
conditions you can reproduce another human being made
to His image and likeness (reproduction).

Further investigation shows that you have yet other
organs and aptitudes and powers we call senses. When
these senses are stimulated, they produce a change in
themselves and hence in you. They effect a new state of
consciousness or feeling you did not have before these
senses went into action. You are skating, for example.
You have a feeling of well-being, of exhilaration. Then
your skate strikes a bit of branch frozen into the ice, and
down you go! For a moment you sprawl there, dazed.
Then you experience a sensation, in fact, a whole batch of
very violent sensations. You see stars; you hear a roar
in your ears; you taste salt tears that have begun to flow;
you feel wounded all over.

8



6. Digging in Deeper

If a person observes human beings long, he will find that
the commonest expressions used by them are “I wish . . .
I want ... I’d like . . .”

These phrases are a clue to the fact that men and women
have within themselves earnest wishes, cravings, longings
for a whole variety of things. If you examine yourself,
you will find that these longings are for definite things,
things near at hand and considered attainable. Though the
child may cry for the moon, the well-balanced adult does
not lose much time craving for things which are completely
beyond his reach.

Further observation and probing will show that these
definite and concrete desires of yours spring from posses-
sions yet deeper in you. They arise from what are called
urges, drives, or instincts buried deep in the human being
and working on the fringe of consciousness or below the
conscious level.

Project

(Since there are so many classifications of these in-
stincts and urges, there is no reason why the members of
the group should not work out their own catalog of them.
Go from actions or expressed desires such as hunger,
flight from harmful or unpleasant things, etc., to the
drive from which these expressed desires arise, namely in
this instance the drive to self-preservation.)

7. Action!

From all that has been said above, it will be seen that
all these manifestations of life are activities or actions.

Project

(At this point discuss the essential difference [which
means what?] between life and nonlife. Get from the
group a common definition of action. Now go on with the
discussion.)

Vital action may be described as a response on the part
of a living being to stimulation coming from within or from
outside himself. The response itself remains within the
living being. It is seen to be, then, a process of change, a
reaching out hungrily for greater perfection or the use of
some perfection already attained. We can define perfection

9



as “any respect in which a thing can be completed in its
being.”

Hunger for example is a reaching out for bodily cpm-
pletion in energy. It is a stimulating thing and sets in
motion those actions that take you to the icebox to devour
whatever you may find to your liking there. After you
have eaten, you are changed; you are now more complete
in being than you were before you had eaten and drunk.
Why, you may ask, all this bother about action? It is

simply to be tucked away for future reference, like the
notion of being. You will see later that it is not enough for
you to be holy. You must act holily as well. Vital action is
of the very essence of sanctity. If there is one thing that
sainthood does not imply, it is deadness, nonvitality, in-
action. Sanctity is rather something very much alive. In
fact, it is life, life eternal.

Discussion

1. What three main ideas have come out of this present
discussion which are to be inserted into the idea of sanctity
that we are building?

2. How do your own previous ideas and definitions of
existence, matter and the material, life, and action compare
with those given above? Which ideas do you think the
more clear?

3. Work out together in just what holiness would consist
if there were no more to a person than what you have
already seen. Show how holiness would be a matter of : (a)
living according to the rules of good physical health, proper
exercise, rest, food, recreation; (b) a proper harmonizing
of your instincts and drives to fit in with life with your
fellows. Do you think that these things will be found to
enter into the full notion of sainthood?

4. From actual experience show how something awry in
the realm of nutrition can affect you in the realm of sen-
sation or longing, e.g., malnutrition affecting your sight.
What does this teach you about an organism?

5. All other things being equal, would you say that a
person who is well-adjusted on the plane of vegetative life
(nutritional, growth, reproductive) and on the plane of ani-
mal life (sensation and instinct) is better able to become
a saint than one maladjusted on these planes? What rea-
sons have you for your answer?

10



Discussion III

SANCTITY A HUMAN THING
Part II

Project

(Recall the highlights of what has been discovered al-
ready. You have given yourself a surface examination,
have decided what you are to all appearances. You have
found out certain things about human life and living. The
question that arises now is: “Is there anything more to
you than what you have seen already?” [In the answer
to this question any knowledge derived from revelations
is ruled out for the present.] When the answers have
been boiled down to a common residue, compare them with
what follows.)

1. Somehow Double
There are men and women in the world who say that

man is but one thing throughout. These people, the mon-
ists or only-one-ists, declare that he is as much of a piece
as is a stretch of cloth woven from one skein, a bottle
blown from one dipping, an angleworm, a ghost or a spirit.

If these people refuse to admit that there is anything
more in man than electrons, atoms, molecules, then they
are called materialists. If on the other hand they hold
that matter is but an illusion, that spirit is the only really
existent being, they are called idealists.

The sane dualist, however, simply by using his head in
a normal fashion, arrives at the conclusion that man is
somehow double, that he is not a simple unity made up of
either matter or spirit alone.

2. Arriving at This Fact

Since all of you are sane, you can arrive at the follow-
ing conclusion—and more—by this process. Keeping within
the realm of ordinary everyday experience, you find the
following facts true about yourselves.

1) From what you have already unearthed, you realize
that you have such qualities within yourself as mass,
inertia, height, shape, color, etc. Now all this points to
the fact that you are material, at least partially. By such
findings your idealistic monists are of course thrown out
of court, although your materialistic friends are still there,
saying, “I told you so.”

11



2) You have also found that there is a whole set of
' activities such as seeing traffic lights, touching velvet,

tasting sweet pies or bitter medicines, hearing the whis-
pered words of love, smelling the Friday fish afrying. And
again our materialists turn up their noses and say, “Sure
you’re alive; but all of those facts you have just mentioned
can be explained by living matter alone.”

3) Further experience will show you, however, that
there is a struggle of some sort going on within you. It
is a cold morning. You are comfy in bed. You are sleepy
and tired after last night’s dance. The alarm rings, and
you know it is time to get up if you are to go to Mass.
Then the debate begins. One part of you says, “Come,
come, now ! Out of bed and off to church !” Another voice
pipes up and replies, “Wait a minute; wait a minute. Not
so fast. You just lie there and take it easy.” How ex-
plain this conflict if you are one piece of matter through-
out?

4) Finally if you will examine your experience yet more
deeply, you will find that you can . . .

a) Make a judgment: War is hell!
b) React to nonmaterial motives: A pure-spirit God

wants me to go to church.
c) Look to a goal over the horizon of the moment: I

will become a religious in two years.
d) Determine ends—aims, goals—and the means

to achieve them: A vacation trip, by water.
e) Choose between right and wrong: I won’t steal

that ring.
f) Check body-drives: I refuse to slay my enemy.
g) Perceive suprasensible relationships: This boy is

that woman’s son.
h) Reflect perfectly on yourself, knowing it is you

who think these thoughts even as you are thinking them.
i) Know that there is a whole world of reality that

neither the bench under you nor the dog under the bench
can know, a world wherein beauty and justice and love
exist.

And turning to your friends, you say, “And now, Mr.
Materialist, it is time for you to exit too. You’re brazen,
God knows, but certainly not so brassy as to say that such
activities as these just mentioned can be performed by
matter or by merely material beings.”

12



3. A Spiritual Soul Our Only Conclusion
You have come then to this realization that you are

double
;
that though you are one you, you are made up of

two parts, not as a two-ply board is double, but rather as
an electric wire and the electricity that enlivens it are
double. You are two in one—or better, one in two, which
make up one you.
One part of you is material. And the other part? Why

first of all it is a soul. For you are living, and everything
living, be it potato or prince, must have a soul or life-giv-
ing principle. Second, it is a spiritual soul. It must be
a spiritual soul. There is no middle way outside of man
himself wherein matter and spirit are intertangled ; no
other middle course between matter and spirit, between
the material and the spiritual. It is only by admitting
that you have a spiritual soul within you that you can
explain all the spiritual activities which were discovered
above in section 4, for the spiritual can no more come
from the material than bread can come from stones.
Your soul is spiritual

;
and because it is so, you find that

you hungrily pursue tri^th. You think; you have a mind,
an intellect. You can and do know not merely material
things, as a robin may be said to know its nest, but also
such intangibles as loyalty and goodness and beauty. Be-
cause you have a soul, you have a will, which unceasingly
thirsts for things that you think good for you. You not
only desire a good meal

;
you can will to be good yourself.

You can long, not merely for loving, but for love.
Project

(Right here the members of the group might be asked
to give their ideas as to what all this new discovery has
to do with the main subject we are pursuing, namely
sanctity and holiness.)

4. All This and Sanctity?
At last we have arrived at a complete picture of you as

a human being. You are neither an angel nor an animal
but a strange intermingling of both. And sanctity is some-
thing woven from the stuffs that have gone into you. It
is a human thing, a matter of human action, that takes
place in both body and soul. But since it is on the plane
of thought-life and will-life that a man is peculiarly hu-
man, since it is here that he pushes up over the rim of the

13



vegetative and the animal realms, then it is upon this
human plane especially that his sanctity will have its
scope. It is in soul action, in thinking and loving and in
the effect of these over the rest of him, that a man be-
comes a saint.
Even as just a human thing sanctity is pretty wonder-

ful. But hang on; you just haven’t seen anything yet!

Discussion

1. Let each one in the group give five examples from his
own experience which indicate that he is somehow double.

2.
.
Give personal examples from common everyday ex-

perience—or better, expressions used in everyday conversa-
tions which show that others feel themselves double.

3. Work out together examples of peculiarly human
activities which have been manifested in connection with
this meeting right here, e.g., coming to the meeting freely.
Assign these activities correctly to the intellect or to the
will.

4. Why cannot judging, reacting to spiritual motives,
choosing between right and wrong, perceiving suprasen-
sible relationships, and perfect self-reflection be activities
of mere material beings?

5. Work out together good practical definitions of: (a)
material and (b) spiritual.

6. How would you prove to someone who doesn’t believe
it that he has ...

a) a soul?

b) a spiritual soul?

7. From a polling of the group draw up a list of those
characteristics which would be possessed by a human—and
an only-human—saint.

8. From reason alone determine what further elements
would go into or could go into such sanctity.

9. Judging from what we have discussed so far, do you
think that sanctity is a merely human thing? Or do you
think that it must go further to be real sanctity? Why?

10. Together make out a list of questions that will
answer the query “What makes a man a good human
being?” Apply these to yourselves. You have a checklist
that will give you an idea of how good a human being
you are.

14



Discussion IV
Project

(Have one of the group members express aloud the first
five thoughts that come to his mind. Then with questions
work out together how he acquired those thoughts. You
will find that his thoughts came either from direct experi-
ence with a certain old man, for example, or from listening
to a radio or a conversation, or from having put two al-
ready acquired ideas together and made a third. Hence you
will.find that the darkness of a man’s mind is enlightened
from two main sources: from direct personal experience
[a man gets his feet wet] and from accepting the word of
another [a newspaper account, for example] . Applying this
fact to our own subject, we get the information in the fol-
lowing discussion.)

'
1. Retrospect

All the knowledge of yourselves that you have gained
from the preceding discussions has come to you from the use
of your eyes, your ears, or your other senses and from the
use of your intellect and your reason to elaborate the data
that has come to you over the avenues of sense, or from
what others have told you about yourself.
There is one person however who hasn’t spoken yet.

There is one light which has not yet beep cast upon you.
You have used your own unaided human knowledge-getting
powers. You have also heard human testimony. It is time
now that you give God a chance to speak, that you let
Him shine some of His divine light into your minds.

2. We Catholics and Faith
We Catholics are often made the butt of much sarcasm

and sneering. With much ridicule we are accused of “ac-
cepting everything on faith.’’ We are looked upon as
traitors disloyal to the supremacy of the unaided intellect
and reason of man.
Our “crime’’ is not so much that we accept things on mere

faith as that we accept them on divine faith. That we
should give credence to men is perfectly all right. Experi-
ence teaches us that a vast amount of the knowledge that
packs these heads of ours is gained from the testimony of
others, from the statement of facts by people who have
seen and known the things they are talking about and
hence are competent to tell us of them.

15



Project

(Let the group pause here for a moment and give from
their own lives examples of that very day wherein human
faith or belief in human beings has played a part, e.g., a
person’s own legitimacy, faith in the sign on a streetcar,
the purchase of a box of cereal without fear that it will
be sawdust-filled.)

No; we are not scorned because we accept things on
human testimony and live our lives very much according
to it. We are “fools” for believing, not what a man tells us,
but what God tells us. And we ask right here: Why is
that so foolish?

3. On His Word

Project

(Let one of the group. A, tell another, B, a certain truth.
Then let B make an act of faith in the thing told him.
Finally by discussion work out the elements that have gone
into B’s acceptance of what A has told him. What two
qualities were necessary in A before B would give this
assent?)

From the project you have just worked out you should
have found that with human faith a new shaft of the light
of knowledge shines in the mind. It should also have
become clear to you that faith is nothing more or less than
the mind’s acceptance of a new truth on the authority

—

that is, the knowing and the veracious word—of another.
If Jack, who certainly knows, tells you that he comes from
Chicago, and if you can see no earthly reason why he
should lie about the matter, then you know without fear
of error that 'he does come from the Windy City. You
believe this fact on his word. You have added to your
sum of human knowledge by making an act of human
faith.

How sensible it is then for anyone to accept some truth
on God’s word. After all, He is all-knowing and hence
knows everything that there is to be known in every way
that it is possible to know. He cannot possibly be fooled or
mistaken. He is all-holy and hence cannot lie or deceive
anyone or allow anyone to be deceived by what He says.
His authority is infinitely above any that the best of

16



humans can have. You would be a complete fool then not
to believe Him if and when He speaks.
By reason of your acceptance of God’s revealing word a

new and brilliant light is cast into the dim twilight that
mere human reason gives. You see now by a light divine.
You think not merely human thoughts but thoughts that
are godlike, divine, that are God’s own.

Discussion

1. Before leaving the present discussion, be sure that
everyone understands clearly what faith is in general, how
it is motivated, how it differs from direct experience, what
the meaning of authority is as used here, how human and
divine faith coincide and differ.

2. What is meant by divine revelation? Why is it
needed by men? (Cf. step No. 3 in Sixteen Steps to the
Church, by H. O’H. Walker, S. J., and E. J. Fortman, S. J.
Published by The Queen’s Work.)

3. Where is this body of divine revelation to be found
at the present time? N.B. Be sure that it is clear to
everyone that sacred Scripture is but a part of total reve-
lation.

Possible Project

(At this point in the discussions the group leader can
assign the New Testament in such a way that the members
will cover all of it. Each group within the group is to read
the assigned portion. Each group is to seek and discover
in the assigned part what God has said of His idea of
sanctity. Each of the remaining discussions can start with
one of these smaller groups’ report on the findings in the
matter.)

Discussion V
A NEW CREATURE

Project

(Report from one of the subgroups on its New Testa-
ment findings.

(When these are finished, effect a minor blackout by
turning out the lights in the room where the meeting is
taking place. Those present should try to discern one an-
other as best they can in the darkness. After a few
minutes turn the lights on again.)

17



1. With a New Being
To step from the realm of reason into that lighted with

God’s revelation is like stepping from the dim darkness
just experienced here at the meeting into the light that the
snap of an electric-light button brought about. In reason’s
dimness you saw man as man. Now you will see him as
God wants him to be.

God Our Father might have permitted you to be merely
a human being, with your natural powers of body and
soul, powers of nerve and muscle and sinew, of drive and
urge and desire, of imagination and emotion, of mind and
will. He might have left you to work out your life with
this equipment here on earth in a way appropriate to that
human nature of yours and thus to arrive at perfect nat-
ural happiness obtained through a veiled possession of Him.
He might have left you to grope your way through life to
that goal and never have broken the silence of His inacces-
sible Godhead.

Such an act however could never have satisfied so gen-
erous a God. He is an all-loving and hence an all-outpouring
God. He would give you all that He possibly could of Him-
self and still have you a human being. With His infinite
wisdom and His infinite power He set to work and formed
and fashioned you anew. Putting creating, sanctifying, or
saint-making grace in your soul. He swept you up onto
an entirely new plane of being. This new grace-soul gave
you a created share in His own divine life. His own divine
nature. Through this sharing, God adopted you into the
divine family. Through this grace-soul He gave you new

- being, new powers, and new capabilities by which, here
darkly and later face to face with Him, you might perform
actions which are possible only to God or to those with
whom He shares His powers. To the natural powers,
capabilities, exigencies, dues, needs, and body-soul equip-
ment God has added supernatural powers, that is, qualities
which are over and above and beyond those which we have
as mere human beings. In the light of His luminous
revelation you see yourself equipped with a new and mar-
velously beautiful nature and being. You find yourself to
be what you were not before. You are no longer a mere
creature, no longer a servant or a slave. Now you are a
“new creature,’’ a “child of adoption,’’ a son. You have
been “supernaturalized divine.’’

18



2. With New Activity
You found from your former discussions that life con-

sists in action. Further you learned that your actions take
color and quality from the principle or source or cause from
which those actions flow, that they are like to the nature
or being which produces them. The ant doesn’t sing; the
bird doesn’t build sand-hill homes. A man doesn’t grow
wings and soar aloft. It follows then that as we have a
new supernature, so we must also have new actions, a new*
kind of activity. Our actions too must be supernatural.
They come now, not merely from a source which is human,
but from a human who has been made a sharer in a created
way in the divine nature. A mere man eats, smiles, talks,
works. His actions are those of a human, and they are
nothing more. A man in the new state to which God has
raised him performs the same humble ordinary actions;
but now these actions have a tremendous new value, for
they come from a man made like unto God, His adopted
child.

3. Putting the Thing Graphically

It may help considerably if we see in the following way
what God’s plan for man is.
We see from reason that
. . . man to be man, must have

a body, a soul, a mind, a will,
and all the other equipment that
makes up what we call human
nature. The mind has the power
to know its object, truth; the
will has the power to choose and
to love its object, good. (Cf.
Diagram No. 1.)
We learn from revelations

that

... man must be changed

—

or better, made anew. To be
what God wants him to be, he
must have the superbeing that
comes from the possession of a
supersoul or sanctifying grace;

. . . that soul brings with it
a supermind we call faith, and

19

SUPER -SOUL - S. GRACE

MORAL VIRTUES

F
A
1

T
H

H
0
P
E

c
H
A
R
1

T
Y

SO

MIND
(tz-otA)

UL

WILL
(6oc/if)



... a superwill that we call on the one hand hope (the
superstrength to face the difficulties of life when we are
sure of God’s help unto the end) and on the other charity
or love (a created share in God’s love of Himself and of
others), and

. . . new moral qualities that we call virtues. (Cf. Dia-
gram No. 2.)

It is out of this new being and this new set of powers
and capabilities that a whole new host of activities arises.
It is in this new being and in this new action that the
sanctity or holiness God expects of us is begun and worked
out. Every good action of ours performed with grace
(e.g., receiving a disappointment resignedly, helping a per-
son to cross the street) means an increase, a growth in
grace-life. We have as much sanctity or holiness as we
have sanctifying grace. Here and now we are living eternal
life because this state and these actions have an eternal
value and are close-linked with our new destiny.

4. . . . and With a New Destiny
God wished to do all that He could for man and still let

him remain a creature. It was impossible for Him to give
man a higher destiny than a possession of God. That pos-
session would in one way or another be man’s final goal
and state. A veiled, indirect, but real coming and clinging
to God was man’s right and due from the very nature with
which God gifted him. God however could go further than
that. He could grant to man a possession of Himself of a
kind that was higher and more perfect than his unelevated
nature required and demanded. It was this grant that He
actually made to him.
God destined man—^through the new being with which

He had graced him and the new activities flowing from
that new supernature—^to as full a possession of Himself
as He could possibly give him. To man’s new supersoul
and his new superactions is now added a superdestiny. He
is no longer to know and love God finally only in a veiled
and indirect way—the only way by which a creature left to
itself could know Him. He is now to know and love Him,
insofar as a created being can know and love God, as God
knows and loves Himself, that is, directly, immediately,
face to face.

Our destiny then is complete happiness in this superpos-
session of God. It is this possession that makes heaven

20



to be heaven. Thanks to our God, heaven is not to be what
it might have been had God left men merely men ; it is not
to be a sort of joyous limbo in which God would have been
enjoyed imperfectly and incompletely. • Heaven is the
ecstatically joyous and full heaven of the Father’s house
and home, wherein we deal familiarly with Him face to
face in knowing and loving contact.

5. Sanctity Now?
Your notion of sanctity is bright now with added light.

Now you can view your main vocation in life. Now you
can see the will of God in your regard. Sanctity does not
consist essentially in long prayers, nightly vigils, wasting
fasts, severe penances, the giving of abundant alms, the
conversion of sinners, the ranging abroad in missionary
journeys. All of these may be helps to sanctity or fruits
of sanctity. But they do not make up the real essence of
sanctity. If they did, then not all men could fulfill God’s
will, their sanctification. Not all could live up to the call
to be saints.

The real job of sainthood consists in becoming and re-
maining like unto God by the graces which He wants to
bestow upon you and by which you share His nature. The
greater the holiness, the greater is this likeness, the closer
is the family resemblance. To be a saint, to be what God
wants you to be, comes down at this point in your discus-
sions to just this: to live; to live the kind of life God has
revealed as your real life, the superlife of grace. Essen-
tially sainthood is a matter of getting yourself into the
state of grace, or of getting grace to reign within you; of
living and acting within that grace or with that grace
within you as perfectly as your Father would wish it. Its
full term is reached when you arrive at Him through the
preservation and growth of this shared life of His.
Mark clearly that all this supernature which God has

given you is not a thing apart from or only parallel to our
nature as you have seen that nature in previous discus-
sions. Everything that is good in the human within us is
not destroyed but simply quickened by grace. Everything
that we are as men is still there and is to take its part in
the pursuit of sanctity. Now, however, everything human
in you is permeated with and lifted by grace so that you
are become persons whose lives are not merely human but,
as it were, divinely human.

21



There is one person who was really divinely human and
humanly divine, one who lived this human-divine life per-
fectly. For the full knowledge of what God expects of you
then, you must look on Him. For the full living of this life
that God has given you, you must be made over, made one
with Christ Our Lord.

.
How this transformation is to be

effected will be the subject matter of your future dis-
cussions.

Discussion

1. Discuss how legal adoption is (a) like to and (b) dif-
ferent from divine adoption.

2. Discuss how your sonship differs from Our Lord’s.
3. Discuss the following in the light of the first section

above: Why would you say that many Catholics may be
but beating the air by their multiple so-called Catholic
Action activities? Recall what was said in an earlier dis-
cussion about being before doing.

4. How does the principle of noblesse oblige (nobility
brings with it special obligations) find application to you
in a special way as a new creature?

5. Discuss the phrase “supernaturalized divine.” Com-
pare it with the notion of naturalization as applied to a
foreigner seeking citizenship in a new country. What
points of likeness and of difference do you find between
this idea and that of supernaturalization?

6. In view of what has been said in this discussion, how
can you say that serious or grievous sin is literally mortal,
i.e., death-dealing?

7. Pick out ten common actions that people perform
daily. What new value do these actions have if these
people are in grace?

8. Can you see how the realization of God’s revelation
about man can revolutionize your entire life? Explain.

9. What is a virtue? What are the theological virtues
and why are they so called? What are the moral virtues
and why are they so named? Would you say that a man
without grace who performs a virtuous act is better or
worse than a man in grace who performs a less virtuous
act? Would you say that a man who is naturally virtuous
is a better subject for supernatural moral virtues than a
man who hasn’t these natural virtues? Why?

22



10. By putting on a bit of a skit in which one person
talks to another through a door or a screen, or receives a
letter from a friend, or telephones a friend, illustrate how
heaven is going to be more heavenly because of your new
destiny.

11. Picking up the notions from former discussions, show
how sanctity is neither merely being nor merely acting but
a combination of both. Since sanctity is a life, would you
say that there should be in that life such elements as nutri-
tion, growth, and reproduction? Or is sanctity a static,
sterile thing?

12.

' In the light of all that has been said so far, how
would you word a definition of the whole, complete, entire
man as God would define him?

13. List the ideas of the group as to how the knowledge
thus far gained has given the members encouragement and
inspiration to become saints.

Discussion VI

BEING CHRIST AGAIN—OUR IDEAL
1. Subgroup Findings Reported On

Project

(The leader will briefiy recall the results of the last dis-
cussion. One question among others that he should cer-
tainly ask is: “Has the new knowledge gained during our
last meeting affected your life at all so far ?” Discussion
which gives new ideas that fail to fiov/ down into the heart
and out into daily life is but a sterile thing and of little
worth.)

2. A Concreted Ideal
Remember St. Paul’s words quoted in the first discussion

:

You are “called to be saints.” These words echo again in
the present chapter, but here they should mean much more
than they did earlier. Now they mean: Yo*u are called to
be God-like. You are called to live in the world of every-
day, with its subways and meals and laughter and tears
and bills and taxes and more taxes—a life as nearly like
God’s own as a human being aided by His grace can live
it. Paul is but saying in a different way what Our Lord
once said on a mountain side: “Be you therefore perfect,
as also your heavenly Father is perfect.”

23 .



Project

(Stop here and discuss together these stupendous words
of Christ. Look out and up at God and into yourselves.
Try to conjure up ways by which this poor weak human
you can become perfect like the divine Him. List these
ways for comparison with ideas which will arise later.)

God Our Father knew how staggering would seem this
assignment to achieve divine perfection. He knew that you
might become confused and discouraged about it all. He
knew that you might say : “But the whole thing is
absurd; it is impossible. How can I even though aided
by His grace, ever hope to scale the height of those infinite
perfections possessed by an omniscient, omnipresent, omni-
potent God ?” He feared that you would shrug your
shoulders and say, “No can do!” and then go on without
even trying. Having made your mind, God also realized
that in this life that mind more readily grasps and retains
things that fall under your senses or human experiences

—

more readily than it does those greater and more lasting
spiritual realities by which you are really to live. A
flaming building, the final gasp of a dying man, a driving
blizzard—these seize us more powerfully (even though they
pass almost at once) than do the equally real and more
lasting abstract notions of sanctions, disembodied loyalty,
a supernatural grace-life. God knew too that He is a spirit,
that He is invisible to poor blind body eyes which see His
world but cannot see Him revealed therein. He suspected
that you would ask, “Well, even if it is not God’s other
attributes but only His holiness that I am to imitate and
relive, how am I ever going to make myself over into the
likeness of an unseen, a purely spiritual God?”

With all this in His divine mind God decided to give you
what you needed. He decided to speak to men again, this
time not in the mere Human words of His prophets, but by
the Word. God Himself in the person of the Son would be
this final revelation of God to men. He would be the
concrete ideal, human and divine, who would express, in
terms that men could understand, two divine ideas. He
would be a translation into our own human-life language
of the idea of God. He would also show forth in Himself,
in terms that we could understand, God’s concept of the

24



perfect man. “He that seeth me> seeth Him that sent me.”
“This is my beloved Son; hear Him.”

Project

(Pause here and get from the group a composite picture
of:

(1. God—His nature, attributes, etc.
(2. A perfect man—his looks, qualities, virtues, activi-

3.

Christ’s Twofold Aim
Project

(There are probably no gamblers in the group; but if
there were, one of them could almost certainly pick up a
bit of loose change at this point if he laid down a wager
that all the members could not tell him correctly the full
purpose of Christ’s coming into the world. Leaving the
betting angle out of the matter, let that challenge be given.
We are almost sure that the majority will give but one
half of the correct answer.)

Christ Our Lord, God and man, came among men for a
twofold purpose. He intended not only to restore to men the
divine life which man had lost through Adam; He wanted
also to show men how to live this divine life in the midst
of the noise and rush of a city’s traffic, on the quiet hillside,
in the security of a home or amid the terrors of a persecu-
tion, in the drowsy hours of the morning, under the star-
sprinkled heavens, on a boat at sea, with sinners at a
dinner table. It was with both of these ideas in mind that
He talked of a more abundant life. It was with this two-
fold aim that He cried to all men for the imitation of
Himself: “. . . come, follow me.”

4.

Our Full Ideal of Sanctity at Last
Here at last we have the full, complete, entire notion of

sanctity as God, and not as we Americans, understands it.
Sanctity for the Christian is now summed up in one simple,
all-embracing word: CHRISTLIKENESS. Sainthood con-
sists in taking the hard, resisting, stubborn stuff of a
selfish, egotistical, fallen human nature and making it over
into Christ.

5.

Another Christ
To be a saint then is to be nothing less than another

Christ. It is to that you have been called. It is to be a
prolongation, a continuation, a projection, a quasi rein-

25



carnation of Him out of Galilee and Judea into Boston,
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the United States of
America in the twentieth century. It is a matter of
“doubling” for Him. It is to have within ourselves “the
mind which was in Christ Jesus,” to learn Him and His
ideas, hopes, fears, loves, hates, and principles. It is to
make ourselves over along the lines of His divine person-
ality, to transform ourselves into as great a likeness of
Him as is possible. We do not need to do the things that
He did such as carpentering, working miracles, being
nailed to a cross on Calvary—although the agony of a
garden and the bearing of a cross and the enduring of a
crucifixion must be part of the process. No one has part with
Christ in true sanctity who does not drink with Him the
chalice of His Passion and Death. Rather it is the saint’s job
—your job—to do all things with His spirit. You do in any
set of circumstances—on the subway, at a desk or a counter
or a switchboard, in your home, on the street, in a chapel,
at a party—what Christ Himself would do were He in your
place. He is your ideal. He is the perfect man and the
true saint. It is your job as branches to relive Him, the
vine.

Henceforth yours is to be a life of imitation in the
fullest sense, a re-presenting of Him to the world, a life
lived “Per Ipsum et cum Ipso et in Ipso” (Through Him
and with Him and in Him) unto the end, which is really
the beginning of a fuller and eternal continuance of this
Christ-life lived here and now within time’s confines.
There can never be any resting on the oars in your

pursuit of this Christian ideal. You can never be satisfied
with yourself. You can never say. “I’m good enough.
I’ll go no further.” You can never feel that at last the
“Heavenly Hatters, Inc.,” have already fashioned a halo
to fit your spiritual head. Christ’s call is always, “Onward !”

You cannot best in your pursuit of Christlike sanctity, not
until you can say with St. Paul, “I live, now not I ; but
Christ liveth in me.”

For your consolation it may be well to know that for
most men sanctity is a slow business. It is the gradual
growth into the full stature of Christ and not an instan-
taneous leap into that likeness full-panoplied. It is a slow,
total transformation rather than a fast, overnight surface
quick change.

26



In the first discussion it was pointed out that the will
of God was not only your salvation but your sanctification
also. And your sanctification? Now you know that it
consists in one thing: in the lifework and the gracework by
which you are made “conformable tq the image of His
Son.” You labor and sweat and weep and strive and strain,
wrestling with yourself until little by little Christ becomes
dll in you. Only then shall you have “put on Christ” ; only
then can you look up into the face of God, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, the sanctifier, and say: “With the grace-
life you have given me I have walked worthy of the
vocation to sainthood, to Christlikeness, in which you have
called me.”

Discussion

1. From his own personal experience let each of the
group illustrate how he has been moved:

a) more by objects or experiences that have fallen
under his senses than by supersensible ones: e.g., A was
much more affected by a snowstorm than by a dry but
thoughtful sermon ; B gets much more from a tabloid
magazine than from a good textbook.

b) more by some person who has been his ideal than
by abstract precepts.

2. Why, would you say, was the Incarnation almost a
necessity for man, even if Adam hadn’t sinned?

3. Why is it that so many Catholics will give but half
of the right answer to the question “Why did God become
man ?”

4. How is a realization of Christ’s secondary aim (i.e.,
to be a model) necessary if His primary aim (i.e., redemp-
tion) is to be effected in you personally?

5. Draw up a list of ten objects or activities in ordinary
life. Now let the question be put: “What does God think
of these?” To what do you turn for the answer? What is
the answer?

6. How many Catholics do each of you think hold Christ
as their ideal in home, business, and social life? Why are
there not more such Catholics?

7. Do you believe that everyone can achieve Christlike-
ness, at least to some degree? Do you think that the
majority are satisfied with a minimum of Christlikeness?
What are the chief obstacles to this achievement?

27



Discussion VII

BEING CHRIST OVER AGAIN—“COME,
FOLLOW ME”

Project

(By group discussion discover and define clearly the dif-
ference between copying and imitating. It may help in this
to analyze the points of dissimilarity between: a snapshot
and a painted portrait ; a child’s imitation of his parents
and a monkey’s mimicking people; a novel by a surrealist
and a play by Shakespeare. A HINT: A copy has surface
resemblances to the original; an imitation brings out the
idea or the spirit embodied in the original. Keep these
differences in mind for reference later in the discussion.)

1. Always Children

One of the most popular games of childhood is Follow
My Leader. In this one characteristic, at least, men and
women are always children. At the age of ninety as well
as of nine they continue to play the game of Follow My
Leader. The advancing years however take from that game
the element of play. It becomes a grim business, a thing
which is too, too real and earnest. Often this adult imita-
tion is quite an unconscious thing, but it is there never-
theless. “Man is the most imitative of animals.”

Project

(Have each one in the group give from his own experience
or observation three instances of the working out of this
imitative instinct in hair-dos and haircuts, in the matters
of clothing, slang, language, reading, activities, movie
heroes and heroines, etc.)

2. As I, So You

Christ Our Lord as God, along with the Father and the
Holy Spirit, made man. As God, He knew man through
and through. He knew that this instinct, this urge and
drive to imitate others, this need of a leader to go before
him, was in man’s heart.
Again as the wisest of men He recognized it quickly too

from His dealings with human beings in His life here on
earth. He knew that you too, since you are human beings,
must imitate someone, that you must follow a leader. He
knew that the quality of your life would take its color

28



from the leader you chose, the person you would imitate.
Hating mediocrity as He did, He would have you satisfied
with only the best. He would have you bring out the
highest and the best within you. It was for this reason
that He put Himself before you as the model of models.
As the leader of leaders He goes before you, saying,
“Come, follow me," and “I have given you an example,
that as I have done to you, so you do also.”

Project

(Before going further, recall here for practical application
the difference you have found to exist between copying and
imitating. Now go on to discuss how you think a man or
a woman in this century in the United States can possibly
imitate a God-man who lived in faraway Palestine twenty
centuries ago. Draw up a list of the possibilities and
impossibilities of such an imitation: the things that you
could do to follow Him at the dinner table, on a bus, in
conversation, at the store or in the office; the things that
you cannot do, e.g., change water into wine on the instant,
miraculously heal the sick, raise the dead, walk on water.)

3. Being Christ Again Through Imitation

One day long ago God sent an archangel to a little
Jewish maiden to ask her to become the Mother of the
Word made flesh. He asked her to give the Son of God a
body, with hands and feet and head and heart and nerves
and muscle and tissue. That same maid joyously assented
to the request even though that motherhood was to mean
martyrdom.

Since then Christ the Son of God has come to others,
you among them. He has stood humbly before you and
asked, “Will you, as best you can, do for me what my
Mother once did for me? Will you give me your head and
your heart and your hands and feet, your whole body and
soul, so that I may live again in you, so that I may con-
tinue to 'do the work that I came into the world to do ? Will
you he me again?” You answer, “Why yes. Lord. But
how shall this be done?” His own reply is a simple one:
“By imitating me.”

Project

(What two steps are necessary before you can imitate
a person? Discuss this question with a definite person in
mind, e.g., some nun or priest or relative or public figure.

29



Can you say that mimicking a person is the same as
imitating or following him?)
There then is the answer. You become Christ again by

imitation. The process? You need but come to know Christ
to love and to admire Him. Loving Him, you must imitate
Him

;
for one grows in likeness only to the person one loves.

Yet you cannot love Him unless you know Him. Notice that
we say know Him, knowing about Him being hardly
enough. The knowledge here spoken of implies a deep,
intimate, hearty thing. It means a knowledge of His ideas
and ideals and plans and hopes and fears and hates, of His
principles and loves and ambitions, of His interests and
occupations and preoccupations.

Only the known person can be loved. Only the loved and
admired will be imitated. You cannot know some unknown
Hindu. You cannot admire some hero of whom you have
never even heard. You will not and cannot imitate someone
under whose spell you have never fallen, whose existence is
nonexistent or at best shadowy to you.

4. Contacting Christ

You come to know and love and admire and imitate a
person only when you come in contact with him. You have
really to live with a person to arrive at that indispensable
trinity of knowledge, love, and imitation. Only when you
have seen a person, only when you have lived with him and
have heard his words, seen his actions, watched him face
good fortune and foul and understood why he reacts as he
does to both—only then can you say, “Y’es; I know him,
and he is such and such a man.”

Project

(Let someone in the group tell of the different ways by
which he knows others, e.g., by sight, as a bus or train
acquaintance

;
casually, as a' fellow student, a fellow worker,

a neighbor, a friend, a relative; finally as one known
thoroughly and intimately. Then each might ask himself
in his heart into which of these categories Christ fits in
his own life. Ask further: “How can I come to know
Christ? Where can He be found?”)
There are three main ways by which you can come in

contact with Christ in this our twentieth century. Two of
them are given here; the other is reserved for a later
discussion.

30



5. In the New Testament
There, in the biography God has written of His Son, you

find Jesus Christ as He was when He walked the earth in
human flesh. There you can meet Him living in the world
of men which, save for nonessentials and externals, has
not changed since His days on earth. There He still lives.
There you see Him, hear His voice, listen to His words,
view Him in action, come under the enchantment of His
person even as did the Apostles and the others of His own
day.

Prayerfully reading and lovingly meditating, mentally
seeing Him and the persons with whom He associated, hear-
ing His words, watching His actions as you find Him in the
pages of the New Testament will give you that knowledge
of Christ which will set you on the road to follow and
imitate Him in all things ; little things such as sleeping
and chatting and great things such as suffering and
crucifixion.

Project

(Take just two high points in His life: What do the birth
and the death of Our Lord tell you about Him? How can
you imitate in your own life the characteristics surround-
ing these events?)

When Christ was with us here on earth, a touch of His
hand or even contact with the fringe of His garment

—

contact inspired by faith—was enough to heal body ills.
Certainly then contact with Him as you find Him in the
inspired page will give new life to your soul. Your mind
and heart and will become formed on His. He will spring
from the dead page and print and live again before you.
Better, He will live again in you. Your outlook will become
His outlook. Your ways will become His ways. Your mind
and will, by reason of their grace-life contact with Him,
will be made over insensibly until you find yourself think-
ing, not your own thoughts, but His thoughts. You will
make, not your will-choices, but His will-choices. This will
go on until you are made Him all over again.

Project

(Let each member of the group procure a New Testa-
ment. Let the group decide by vote whether or not each
will pledge himself to read from the New Testament
meditatively each day for at least a quarter of an hour.

31



The meeting’s henceforth can begin with the repetition of
one of th«se daily meditations.

(If there is anyone who balks at this idea, he has missed
the whole import of the outline up to the present.)

6. Through His Presence With Us
More will be said later about Christ’s influence on us in

the Holy Eucharist as a sacrament. Here you will restrict
yourselves to what He manifests of Himself to you simply
by His presence in that same sacrament on our altars and
in our tabernacles.

The same Christ whom you meet in the New Testament
—on a city street in Judea or by the Galilean lake shore

—

is in our midst today. You can And him in a country
church beside some lake or just off to the side of the
bustling trafflc of a noisy American city.
A study of the characteristics of Christ’s tabernacled

life among us teaches us much about Him. Such a study
will increase your knowledge and love and point out yet
further lines for your fuller imitation of Him.

Project

(Here and now discuss those characteristics that visits
with Him in the Blessed Sacrament have taught you.)
The poverty of the bread that clothes Him, the humility

that hides the splendor of His glory. His easy accessibility.
His patience. His yearning for visitors. His readiness and
power to aid all who come to Him, His chiding and consol-
ing and encouraging—all these are found in Him near us.

Truly Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
He is ever the same in Himself. He wants to be the same
Christ also in you.

Discussion

For the remaining time of this meeting (and for other
supplementary meetings) gather suggestions from your
present knowledge of Christ—knowledge gained from the
New Testament and from your meditations before the
Blessed Sacrament—for the imitation of Him in your
prayer lives, your lives at home, at school, in business, in
ordinary everyday things.

Note. Between now and the next meeting the leader
should obtain from a priest friend a Roman ritual for use
at the next discussion.

32



Discussion VIII

CONTACTING CHRIST THROUGH THE LITURGY
1.

Mental Prayer
2.

Subgroup Report

3.

Another Way to Him
Christ is a unique person in your life. He not only goes

before you as a model for your imitation. Uniquely enough
He is also within you by His grace as a vital force, giving
you the power to do this imitating, to make yourself over
into Him. The pursuit of sanctity consists not merely in
the following of a leader. It is not a lonely one-man
crusade. There are always at least two at work. Your
leader is not way out ahead of you. He is within you,
working along with you to bring about the transforming
process by which you become wholly and completely like
unto Him. Together you strive to make you such a double
of Him that the Father can look on you and say: “This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Project

(1. Discuss from ordinary life parallels that bring out
more clearly the fact that Christ is not only your model but
your co-worker as well, e.g., a mother guiding the childish
mind and unsteady hand of her son as he writes to daddy.

(2. Before going on, ask yourself whether at this point
you know of other ways of . coming in contact with Christ
in addition to those mentioned in the last discussion. When
and where does this initial contact take place ? Is it to
remain in this initial state? or is there to be an increasing
inflow of the Christ-life into your soul? What are the
chief sources of this increase?)

A number of years ago an English publishing firm spon-
sored a symposium on the question “What would Jesus do
if He were on earth today?” The participants were all
famous men. Of them all only one gave the correct answer.
G. K. Chesterton pointed out that the question itself was
stupid. Why? Because there is no would or if about it.
Christ is on earth today. He is in our midst, living and
working with us. Our Lord is with us not only through
grace, not only in the Blessed Sacrament but also in the
Church, which is His body. It is with Him living and
acting here on earth that we first come in strictly vital
contact with Him.

33



Project

(What is the idea behind the words “vital contact”?
Do you make vital contact with another when you bump
into him ? Would you say that your head is in vital contact
with your feet? Work out other examples that illustrate
this idea, e.g., the vital contact between an expectant
mother and the child in her womb, etc.)

Our meeting and union with Christ through the New
Testament is pretty much of a supernaturally psychological
thing. We come to know Him through the pages of a book.
We fall in love with Him. Our love gives birth to ouT
imitation of Him. We begin to think as we know He thinks.
We begin to love as He loves. We commence and continue
to love and act as He did. Our human mind and will and
actions are changed into replicas of His. By prayer, read-
ing, meditation we gradually adopt His way of viewing
things and His way of loving. Our mentality becomes His.
His mind takes the place of our own.

But in the Church and through its liturgy, through that
activity of Christ’s Mystical Body at work, at worship, at
prayer, and at the labor of sanctifying men, Christ actually
comes to our souls and grows in them by actually touching
and vivifying them. Therein He directly applies His divine
action to them.

Project

(Work out together a clear and satisfying example to
show the difference between these two ways of coming in
contact with Our Lord.)

Through that phase of the liturgy which embraces the
holy Sacrifice of the Mass, prayer, the Divine Office, the
sacramentals, man reaches up to God. He climbs to make
contact with Him. Through the other or sacramental phase
God reaches down and lifts his struggling child to the
plane of divinity through His Son, Christ Jesus.

Further, through the cycle of the liturgical year the
Catholic has the life of Christ unfolded before him for
imitation, for reliving in himself. Living that cycle, the
Church and the individuals who are cells in the Mystical
Body relive that divinely human life that flows out of it
and into them.

34



Project

(Let the group get clearly in mind at this point just
what the liturgy is and what it does: what comprises it,
how it is made up of two main divisions, what each affects.
An aid to this would be the reading of Father Ellard’s
Christian Life and Worship and Meii at Work at Worship.)

4. Four Sacraments
An exhaustive or exhausting treatment of the liturgy or

even of the sacramental part of it is beyond the scope of an
outline of this size. Some knowledge of it must however be
included if you are to gain any idea of real Christlike
sanctity. Here then we will present a picture of
those sacraments and of the sacfament that contribute most
to the holiness that has been discovered to be the imitation
of Christ with and through the grace of Christ.

A. A Rebirth
Since you are a human child, you were born into the

world possessed of a human nature; you were a humanly
lovable but a divinely hateful little person. Then one day
you were taken to a church. There Christ in His Mystical
Body, acting through the instrumentality of His minister,
the priest, and the humble elements of water and words,
touched you. In that instant you were filled with supersoul
life. In that instant Christ’s own grace-life flowed into
your soul. You were incorporated into, made one in body
and soul with. Him. You became a Christ-vitalized cell in
His Mystical Body.

Project

(At this point read from the Roman ritual the ceremony
of Baptism.)

B. A Growing-Up
Christ came to you again in the sacrament of Confirma-

tion. There came a greater inflow of His grace-life into you.
You received the commission to profess the faith openly
and in an adult manner. You were sealed unto the soldierly
and grown-up defense and spread of that same Faith.

(For those who are interested in furthering their knowl-
edge of this sacrament a reading of Laros’ The Sacra-
ment of Confirmation will prove enlightening. We also
recommend Father Lord’s The Sacrament of Catholic Ac-
tion.)

35



C. Back to Life Again
Mortal sin slays the superlife of the soul. By mortal sin

men commit supernatural suicide. In God’s eyes they are
dead, for He no longer sees them alive with His Son’s life.
Because He knev/ our frame, Christ provided another sacra-
ment for just such an emergency. In the sacrament of Pen-
ance He stands before the tomb of the body whence the
super life has gone and calls that superlife back to us again.

If our sins have been but venial, then the divine phy-
sician applies the spiritual medicine of His healing grace
to that superlife which, though it lives within us, is
languishing.

(For further reading and discussion of this sacrament
you will find excellent material in Father Lord’s Confession
Is a Joy? and When We Go to Confession.)

D. For Your Journey’s End

Man’s last moment is the most important one in his
whole life. As you are at journey’s end, so shall you be for
all eternity. To ensure a continuance of your life with
Him in eternity, Christ comes again through the liturgy and
gives you by means of the last anointing the spiritual
strengthening that you need to overcome the weakness left
in you by sin and to beat off the final attacks of that terrible
trio, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Project

(Read in the Roman ritual the ceremony on the sacra-
ment of Extreme Unction. Read also the prayers for the
dying. They are beautiful prayers; and unless you are
familiar with them before you die, it is likely that you will
miss their full beauty and strength-giving quality when
you are actually dying.)

Discussion IX

THE SACRAMENT OF UNION

1.

Mental Prayer

2.

Subgroup Report

3.

A Brief Review . . .
... of the preceding discussion in order to clarify again

your notions of the liturgy, the four sacraments mentioned
there, the connection between all these and sanctity.

36



4. The One Way to God
There is one unique all-necessary way or medium of

human contact with God. That is the humanity of the man
Christ Jesus. He is the one way to the Father. He is the
one channel through which God-life flows into men. He is
the unique source of man’s salvation and sanctification.
Only in union with Him and energized by the Holy Spirit
can we, bearing the family resemblance that He would
have us have come at last to the Father.

Project

(Pick out four of the group. Let each represent one of
the following: A Buddhist, a Hindu, an Australian Bush-
man, an American unbeliever. Though none of them has so
much as heard of Christ, each of them has, as perfectly as
he could, lived up to the light of his conscience. Each is now
at the point of death. Considering each separately, decide
what his chances of salvation are, and the reason for your
decision in each case. If all four are to go to heaven, how
do they get there? Be sure that each in the group under-
stands this point clearly.

(How would you answer the objection: “Then they are
really better off than we Catholics are. They can get to
heaven without all the previous obligations and troubles
that we have to assume here on earth.”

(Father Winfrid Herbst’s pamphlet. Salvation of Non-
Catholics, gives a clear explanation of this subject.)

5. Opened to Men
The vitalizing and quickening force that is Christ is pro-

longed and kept operative in our own day in His Body, the
Church, and through the sacraments. Through none of
these latter is His sanctifying humanity brought into our
own twentieth century so completely as through the Holy
Eucharist. Nowhere else in the Church, in no other sacra-
ment does God act so fully, so directly in His process of
divinizing men as in the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist
as a sacrament is the hand of the divine potter molding our
stiff clay to His form. This sacrament is the chisel in the
hand of the divine sculptor, chipping away at our granite-
like egoism until gradually He sees His own features
emerging from the mass. It is the bread come down from
heaven, bread, not changed into our substance, but trans-

37



forming us into a likeness to itself. Such is the proper
effect of the Eucharist. Such an effect does it infallibly
obtain if serious sin does not hinder its action.

You are become a saint; you go to the Father as another
son only when He sees in you a likeness to His divine Son.
To beget that likeness without fail, you need chiefly to
receive that Son frequently, daily if possible, in Holy Com-
munion. To do this is to make His likeness in you grow
gradually more and more distinct. This mmt happen, for
that is what the receiving of Him does to you. That is
what Communion, being made one with Him, brings to pass
without fail.

Discussion

Without doubt each of you has heard someone ask one
of the following questions:

1. I know men and women who go to Communioh daily,
and yet a lot of them are apparently no better than—often
not so good as—those who do not receive Communion daily.
Why is that?

2. I’ve been going to Holy Communion for years. You
say that from that very fact I ought to be more Chfistlike.
Yet I can’t see that I am more Christlike. How come?

Before proceeding with the outline, discuss your way
through to a satisfactory answer to the above questions.

6. Why So Slow?
Though it is Catholic teaching that the Eucharist in-

fallibly bring^s about its effective transformation of men
into the God-man, it is also Catholic teaching that men
themselves aid or hinder this “automatic” action of the
sacrament. The changing process takes place without fail
in anyone who receives Holy Communion worthily; but the
amount, the quantity, as it were, of its effectiveness varies
with the interior dispositions, the receptivity of the com-
municant.

Much the same thing takes place here in the sphere of
the grace-life as happens in physical life. Two patients, A
and B, are sick with the same disease. The doctor pre-
scribes for them, and the nurse gives both of them the
sanje medicine. That medicine physically enters both
bodies. In A however the effectiveness of the medicine is

38



hampered because he is discouraged, not particularly inter-
ested in becoming well. He makes no effort to cooperate
with the potion. In B on the other hand, who has a pas-
sionate determination to get on his feet again as soon
as possible, the dose administered produces markedly good
effects.

Biscussion

Give other examples from daily Itfe that show how an
effect is greater or less according to the disposition of the
person or thing to be affected, e.g., a child in school who
is well and bright, unwell and dull; molding molten bronze
or cold bronze; a footprint on wet cement or one on dry
cement ; an airplane with adverse winds or following winds.

In the case of Holy Communion you find that the worthy
reception of it by John and Jane and Paul and Polly brings
about an unmistakable greater likeness to Christ, even
though this advance is invisible. Biit with the first set of
twins this union is slight; the likeness is not very marked.
Why ? Because they pray little ; their minds are filled with
worldly thoughts; their hearts are cluttered with earthly
desires; their wills, while not at positive odds with the
divine will, are not completely at one with it. Christ work-
ing within them works in darkness, as it were, and against
at least negative resistance.

In Paul and Polly, hov/ever, the effects are different.
They precede their reception of Holy Communion with real
and earnest prayer. They know that they share Christ’s
priesthood and victimhood, and they give expression to this
knowledge by offering themselves in union with Christ in
the Mass during which they receive Communion. They ask
that as this; bread and wine are soon to be turned into the
body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, so they
too may become one with Him. Even before they receive
Him then, the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the cross, is
in their hearts. There is within them a passionate hunger
and thirst for growth in Him, and theirs is the ideal atti-
tude for His working within them.

Discussion

In view of the above, what ^ould you say is the best
way to prepare for Christ's most effective work in you?

' What should your disposition of soul be when He comes to
you? What petitions should you make when He has come?

39



After you have received Christ in Holy Communion, He
stays with you. He labors with and within you. He gives
you power to live out daily the spirit of the holy Sacrifice
of the Mass, the spirit of His sacrifice and yours. Virtue
flows out of Him and into you, healing, enlivening you. He
does this now with His whole self as He once did it with
a word of His mouth or a touch of His hand. He helps you
to fight your egocentrjcity. He helps you to loosen the fast
grip you have on your poor human judgments, on your self-
will, on your selfish imaginings and daydreams and affec-
tions, on your ambitions and desires for ease and pleasure,
for riches and honors and fame. He strives mightily to
displace you and to put God and His will at the focal point
of your life.

7. Your Part
Your part in the process of sanctification is at once a

simple and a hard one. It is simple because it consists in
doing but one thing. It is hard because that one thing
is so completely distasteful to human nature. You cannot
possibly build the Christ-life within you by your own
efforts. Only the divine carpenter Himself can do that. The
one and only thing that you can do is bend all your efforts,
aided by His grace, to push your disruptive selves out of
the way so that He can enter in and. find you as completely
receptive to His divine action as possible. He does the
work. We but prepare the way by prayer, penance, self-
denial, self-discipline, self-sacrifice. These are hard words
for soft human ears and harder practices for proud human
spirits and weak human flesh. These are, however, the
human instruments that you must use if you are to create
within yourselves an atmosphere favorable for the trans-
forming action of the divine workman, who comes into you
to make you over again into Himself.

Discussion

1. Take a poll of the group to learn . . .
a) how many go to Holy Communion daily;
b) how many should go;
c) what obstacles stand in the way;
d) how these obstacles can be removed.

2. Discuss also means and methods to render yourselves
less resistant to Christ in the Eucharist working within you.

40



3. Draw up definite and usable plans of activities, e.g.,
reading, prayer, self-denials which will at once prepare a
man for a better cooperative reception of Holy Communion
and for a better working with Him throughout the day at
home, in school, at the office, etc.

4. Get as many of the members ’as possible to pledge:
(a) daily Mass and Communion; (b) the following of the
program outlined in No. 3.

Discussion X
A PRIEST AND A VICTIM

1.

Mental Prayer

2. Subgroup Report
3. Unifying Worship

It was Alexis Carrel who once said, “Properly under-
stood, prayer is a mature activity indispensable to the full
development of personality . . . the ultimate integration of
man’s highest faculties. Only in prayer do we achieve that
complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind, and
spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable
strength”—(Notre Dame Bulletin). In other words a man
is most truly a man when he engages in prayer and wor-
ship. In no other activity do his human powers work more
highly at their human best than when he stands before
his Creator and joyously adores Him for His wondrous
perfections, gratefully thanks Him for His myriad gifts,
sorrowfully asks His pardon for his misuse of those gifts,
and humbly pleads for further graces to use those gifts
aright for Him in the future.

Discussion

Answer the following questions:
1. Do you honestly believe that prayer ‘and worship are

the most important activities you can engage in? Do you
honestly think that it is more important to say one Our
Father well than to build an Empire State building without
God in mind? Recall today’s newspaper headlines. Was it
blazoned there that someone said a prayer or that Mass
was offered? Why not? Would these facts be noted above
in today’s Heavenly Herald?

2. When is a person’s personality said to be integrated?
41



force^^^
worship such an integrating or unifying

a) by reason of the person addressed?
b) by reason of the action of worship itself?
c) by reason of the answer to prayer?

4. Why is worship necessary for a man precisely because
ne IS a man? Why is it fitting and proper for him?

5. Why is the statement true that there never has been
^ saint who did not pray often and mnrh ?

6.

Does the chief value of prayer from a psychological
viewpoint come from the getting or from the giving that
the prayer implies? Why?

4. The Prayer of Children
If prayer and acts of worship are fitting and necessary

tor man as man, how much more right and just and need-
ful are they for one who is also a child of God, a son As
human creatures we are God’s, by our natural life. By our
supernatural life we are elevated to be His too, this time
as a son belongs to his father. What has been said above
ot worship becomes even more pertinent when we realize
that we are members of God’s family. Then prayer be-
comes not merely an obligation but a lovely privilege an
opi^rtun^y to talk with God as a child chats with his
tather The good effects of prayer looked at naturally, as
^rrell looked at them, are enhanced in your own case by
their being supernaturalized. Now a cementing of the
natural and the supernatural in a man is effected. Grace
and nature are harmonized throughout the whole being.

5. The Prayer of Prayers
One characteristic of the life of' Christ is that which

marks it out as essentially a life of prayer. Time and again
we read. And . . He prayed.” As He did, so He taught
us to do. Our Lord gave us the perfect prayer, the Our

would be well to note here the number of
petitions in that prayer. Then note how many of them
have to do with temporal things.) He insisted that we
ought always to pray and not to faint. Hence if you are
going to climb the ever heightening reaches of sainthood,
there must be prayer in your life, prayer prayed with Him,
prayer in imitation of His prayer.

42



Discussion

A helpful procedure here would be an examination of the
prayer-life of the group—if the members are humble
enough to submit to it. Cover such points as: (1) the
amount of prayer; (2) the best time to pray; (3) the kind
and methods of prayer to use; (4) how more prayer can
be inserted into the life of each one; (5) the amount of
corporateness in each one’s private prayer, that is, the
amount of prayer for this group as a group and for the
Mystical Body as a whole.

Great as wajs Christ’s prayerful worship and pleasing as
it was to the Father, it was when He, as the great high
priest, went up on the wooden-cross altar on Calvary and
offered Himself as the perfect victim that Our Lord gave
Him the prayer of prayers, the perfect act of worship.

Sacrifice is the best form of worship. There in adora-
tion, thanksgiving, atonement, and petition man offers
himself under the form of a victim in acknowledgment of
God’s supremacy over him. Therein he pledges oneness of
will with God. Therein he finds the fullest expression of
his yearning to climb up to union with Him.

Until the coming of Christ sacrifices were many in num-
ber and in kind. Yet numberless and varied as they were,
these sacrifices were but imperfect things. Then He came
and as an anointed priest offered to God infinitely perfect
worship. He made of Himself the perfect victim for man-
kind. From the tragic gloom of that first Good Friday
there rose to light the courts of heaven for the first time
in the history of the world a human sacrifice worthy of
God. On that day all former sacrifices which had pointed
to this sacrifice were fulfilled. All future sacrifice was
rendered void, save that which should be a re-presentation
of this one great sacrifice.

Discussion

Clarify for yourself, first in general and then in par-
ticular as applied, to Christ, the following notions:

priest ...
victim . . ,

sacrifice (what it is; its essential parts; its aim and
its effects) . . .

43



6. Shared With You

Christ Our Lord was the very antithesis of selfishness.
He was not satisfied' that He alone should be a priest and a
victim. He willed that the whole Christ, His members as
well as He—the head—should perform these offices. That
is why, on the night before He offered His unique sacrifice.
He ordained priests to carry out into lands unknown and
centuries unborn the re-presentation of the morrow’s re-
demptive act.

It is Christ’s teaching through His Church that any
person incorporated in Him through Baptism and made
adult through Confirmation, even though he has not re-
ceived Holy Orders, shares in His priesthood and victim-
hood. Just as a cell in the human priest’s body shares in
that man’s priesthood, so do you as a cell in Christ’s body
share in His priesthood. Baptized and confirmed, you are
made an instrument that He can use to re-present in the
twentieth century the same holy sacrifice He offered and
consummated on the cross in the first century.
The imitation of Christ mentioned before as essential for

sanctity now takes on a clearer character. He is to be imi-
tated, not merely as the perfect man, but as the perfect
man who is also at once a priest and a victim. As He,
so you.

Project

(Some supplementary discussions might be engaged in
here to give each one in the group a greater understand-
ing of his share in the priesthood of Christ. As a help we
suggest the reading of such chapters as are pertinent in
Father Ellard’s Men at Work at Worship.)

7. You as a Priest
The essential work of a priest is to offer sacrifice. So

also then it is your work if you are to share actively in
Christ’s priesthood. And what does that mean for you in
actual everyday living?

1. It means that you are to be on hand to hear Mass as
often as it is possible for you to do so.

Project

(Poll the group to see how many attend daily Mass. Why
is it that more do not go daily? If possible get each one in
the group to pledge himself to daily Mass in the future.)

44



2.

It means that you are to be active in the great action
when you are present at Mass. This can be done . . .

a) By iising a missal. In this way, unless you are tak-
ing part in a recited or a sung Mass, you are best made one
in mind and heart, in spirit and thought and affection with
the priest at the altar and with the great High Priest
invisibly present there.

b) By making at the Offertory a conscious and active
offering of yourself as part of the whole Christ ; by putting
yourself consciously on the paten and into the chalice with
the bread and the wine and holding yourself aloft for ac-
ceptance by the Father in His Son. praying that you may
be changed yet further into Him.

c) By partaking of the bread now become the Body and
Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ Our Lord, and offered
to you as a return gift by God. What an exchange! You
give yourself to God. And in Holy Communion He returns
your gift, giving you not merely yourself but Himself as
well.

Discussion

1. How many in the group use missals at Mass? Get a
summary of the members’ reactions to the use or nonuse
of the missal. Is there any possibility of the group’s having
a recited Mass, or taking part in one, or having the custom
started in the parish or the school? Do any of the group
suffer from “missalitis,” that malady which makes some
missal-users forget that the purpose of the missal is to help
them toward a closer union with the priest and the High
Priest, forget that the missal is not an end in itself?

2. How many of the members consciously offer them-
selves with the bread and wine at the Offertory?

3. How many understand that the holy Sacrifice of the
Mass is a “social” action, that it is the whole Christ at
worship, that the Blessed Sacrament is the sacrament of
union between head and member and member with
member?

4. Work out together some practical implications of this
sharing in Christ’s priesthood in home life (e.g.. Should
two people, at one in Christ, fight?); in social contacts at
work (e.g.. What inconsistency is there in one priest’s
hurting another’s reputation?); at school (e.g.. What

45
'



about cliques?) ; in matters of justice (e.g., Should one
sharer swindle another?)

;
in matters of race (e.g., What

about discrimination against Christ in “ebony”?).

5. For further reading along these lines confer Thorold’s
The Mass and the Life of Prayer.

8. You as Victim

Just as the Mass itself would be incomplete if the priest
offering it stopped with the Offertory, so is your own par-
ticipation in it imperfect and incomplete if you stop with
merely praying the Mass or even merely offering it. To be
a full living counterpart of Christ, the offering and praying
of the Mass must be filled out with the living of it. As
Father Ellard points out, the best translation of the words
Ite missa est is, not, “Go, the Mass is ended,” but rather,
“Go now and work.” Go now and live out what you have
offered here.

As the paten and the chalice were held aloft, you put
yourself onto and into them. Thus you signified that you
were giving yourself completely to God. You said in your
heart that you were willing to do whatever He might
demand of you, that you were willing to accept from His
hand whatever annoyances, dislikes, disappointments, hard-
ships, pains, and joys might lie in the day ahead. You
signed, as it were, a blank check and said you were willing
that God should fill in the amount that you should give
Him during the day.

Now having received Holy Communion, with Christ in
your heart, you leave the church to begin to live out those
demands of His. You work with Our Lord to fulfill God’s
will in your regard by such actions as kindness at home,
full service at work, study in school, avoidance of dan-
gerous amusements, participation with others and for
others in amusements which are healthy. All these you
do as He desires them to be done. You suffer uncomplain-
ingly a headache, a toothache, a heartache. You accept a
reprimand, a zero for a recitation, the disappointment of
not getting a bid to a dance, the impatience of some fellow
worker or family member—all in the spirit of sacrifice, of
the morning’s holy Sacrifice of the Mass. You realize that
these are but tiny splinters that will gradually grow into

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the cross on which you will be crucified with Him; they
are the tiny insignificant instruments of every day by
which Christ’s victimhood is etched into your soul.

When you are living the Mass in this way, you can echo
the words of St. Paul: “Who [Paul] ... fill up those things
that are wanting of the suiferings of Christ, in my flesh, for
His body, which is the Church” (Col. 1:24). You can say
in truth that you are living out your victimhood with Him.
You can never hope to be a saint, another Christ, until
you are not only willing to follow Him even here but are
actually working hard to become a priest and a victim for
and with and in Him.

Discussion

1. What is the idea contained in the word “victim”? in
the word “Host”?

2. How is the whole Christ such a thing?

3. How can St. Paul say that there are deficiencies in
the sufferings of Christ? How can you fill up these defi-
ciencies in yourselves?

4. Work out together:
a) daily occasions for the practice of your victimhood;

b) the spirit in which these should be met;

c) how, by your linking these occasions with the Mass,
life becomes, not easier, but more joyous and fuller;

d) how the corporal and spiritual works of mercy fit
in here.

5. List occasions and opportunities and methods by
which an active campaign of mortification and self-denial
can make you daily a fuller participant in Christ’s victim-
hood.

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