Meditations for Advent 2024 - Day 10 & 11

What if the divine mystery of Jesus Christ could transform your spiritual journey? Join us as we navigate the profound insights of the Gospel of John, delving into the eternal existence of the Word, both with God and as God. Our meditative reflections guide us to a deeper understanding of the Holy Trinity and the ways in which faith can illuminate our path, urging us to love and obey divine commandments.

Facing technical glitches and health hurdles, we persist in our exploration of spiritual truths. With four contemplative meditations, we emphasize the transformative power of Christ's light and grace, drawing from the first chapter of John. As we reflect on the Word made flesh, we highlight the contrast between Christ's unique grace and the world's emptiness, revealing the boundless grace we receive from His fullness.

Despite challenges, including a few sneezes and coughs along the way, we express heartfelt gratitude for your patience and support. Our extended episode aims to cover missed ground and keep us on track with our spiritual journey together. We invite you to embark on this reflective path, as we anticipate future discussions on Jesus Christ the Anointed One and the virtues of Christian anointing.

Chapters

• 0:02 Morning Meditation on Knowing God
• 4:26 Contemplating the Eternal Word
• 21:47 Meditations on Jesus Christ's Grace
• 27:38 Health Update and Apology

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Sancte, sancte, amare morti decadas nos. Good morning everyone. For those of you wondering why you didn't see me or see these meditations yesterday, that is because, apparently, at about the three-minute mark of them, the audio stopped being captured for whatever reason, and I am hoping so much right now that it is working. Currently it looks like it is. So, after people informed me of that, I was already at work in the middle of the day. I was already at work in the middle of the day, so I pulled it down and we just have to do two today, two sets of meditation. So yeah, so we're going to have to get right to it here, because we have four total meditations to read through today. So we're just going to get right to it. If this is your first time, I'm sorry. I'm not going to do all the explaining I normally do, so please go back, watch day nine or a previous one, because we're just going to get right into it and I'm going to offer very few, if any, thoughts of my own on these, just because the two yesterday were two rather long ones actually. So we have those three, too, through today. So two already long ones, and then plus have those three two through today, so two already long ones, and then plus the two that are actually for today. So let's get to it here. Give me just a second, okay, in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy ghost, amen, jesus my savior, true god and true man, and the true christ, promise to the patriarchs and the prophets from the beginning of the world and, in time, faithfully bestowed to the holy people you had chosen, you have said by your holy and divine mouth this is eternal life, that they know thee, the only true God, in Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Believing in these words and with the help of thy grace, I wish to be attentive to the task of knowing God and knowing you. With that grace, I wish to be attentive to the task of knowing God and knowing you. So do I draw as near to you as I can, with the lively faith to know God in you and by you, and to know him in a manner worthy of God, that is, in a manner that leads me to love and to obey him, in accord with the words of your beloved disciple. He who says I know him but disobeys his commandments is a liar, as well as your very own, he who has my commandments and keeps them. He it is who loves me. To know you well, o my God and dear Savior, I wish always, with the help of thy grace, to contemplate you and all that befalls you, and in all of your mysteries, and, at the same time, to know your Father, who gave you to us and the Holy Ghost that you both have sent to us. So do I wish to love you with the true faith. O faith working through love, amen.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Meditation 15. In the beginning was the Word Can Jesus Christ, as he was before all ages, be an object of our knowledge? He can, for it is to us that the gospel has been addressed. Let us follow the eagle of the evangelist, the beloved among the disciples, another John than John the Baptist. Let us follow John, the son of thunder, who does not speak a human language, but who lights up, who booms, who deafens. John brings every created mind to the obedience of faith. When, by a rapid flight, cutting through the air, piercing the clouds, raising himself above the angels, the virtues, the cherubim and the seraphim, he intones his gospel with these words.

Speaker 1: 4:12

In the beginning was the Word John 1.1.

Speaker 1: 4:18

It is here that he begins to make Jesus Christ known.

Speaker 1: 4:21

We must go further back than the Annunciation of Mary.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Let us consider well in the beginning was the Word. Why say the beginning when speaking of the One who had no beginning? It is in order to say that at the beginning, at the origin of things, he was, he was. He did not begin, he was, he was not created, he was not made, he was. And what was he? What was the one who, without having been made and without having a beginning, already was when God began everything? Was it a mixture of matter upon which God set himself to work, to change and to form? No, what was at the beginning was the Word, the interior Word, thought, reason, intelligence, wisdom, the interior discourse, sermo, a discourse without running over, that is, not a discourse from which one derives one thing from another by reasoning, but a discourse in which every truth exists substantially, in which is the truth itself, exists substantially and which is the truth itself. Where am I? What do I see? What do I hear? Be silent Reason Without reasoning, without speech, without images drawn from the senses, without words formed by the tongue, without the help of vibrating air or an imagination that has been stirred, without anxiety or human effort.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Let us say within ourselves, let us say by faith and with a captive and submissive understanding in the beginning, without beginning, beginning before every beginning, above every beginning, was the one who is and who endures forever the Word, the eternal and substantial thought of God. He was, he was subsistent, but not as something separated from God, for he was in God. And how shall we explain to be in God? Was he in God in the manner of an accident, as our individual thoughts happen to be in us? No, the word is not in God in that way. But how, then? How shall we explain what has been said to us by our eagle, by our evangelist? The word was with God, apud Deum.

Speaker 1: 7:14

John 1.1. This was to say that he was not something inhering in God or something that affected God, but something that remained in him as subsisting in him, as being a person in God and another person than this God in whom he is. This person is a divine person, and the word was God. How Was he God without a source? No, because this God is the Son of God, the only Son, as St John will soon call him. We have, he said, beheld his glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father. John 1.14. This word, then, is in God, remains in God, subsists in God, is in God a person processing from God himself and remaining in him, always produced, always in his bosom Unigenitus filius quia est in sinu patris, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. He is produced there inasmuch as he is Son. He remains there because he is the eternally subsisting thought. He is God like Him, for the Word was God, god in God, god from God, begotten by God, subsisting in God. God like Him, over all things, blessed forever.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Amen, in the words of St Paul, romans 9.5. I am lost, I can go no further. I can but say Amen. It is thus what silence, what wonder, what astonishment, what new light, but what ignorance. I see nothing and I see all. I see this God who was at the beginning, who was in the bosom of the Father, and I do not see him. Amen, it is thus. This is all that remains of the whole discourse that I have just made, a simple and irrevocable acquiescence through love and the truth that my faith shows to me. Amen, amen, amen and once more amen and forever. Amen.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Meditation 16,. All Things Were Made Through Him. In the beginning, the Word subsisted in God. Ascend to the beginning of all things. Push your thoughts as far as you can go, go to the beginning of the human race. He was Go to the first day when God said Let there be light. He was Continue to ascend, rise higher than the days before the first day when everything was chaos and darkness. He was when the angels were created, in the truth, in which Satan and his minions did not remain. He was in which Satan and his minions did not remain. He was In the beginning, before everything that had a beginning. He was. He was alone in his father, beside his father, in the bosom of his father. He was.

Speaker 1: 10:38

What was he? Who will be able to say? Who will recount for us? Who will explain his generation? He was Like his father. He is the one who is. He is the perfect one, he is the existent one, the subsistent one, being itself. But what was he? Who knows? We know nothing other than that he was, that is to say, he was, but he was begotten by god, subsistent in god, that is, he was god and he was son. Where do we see that he was? All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.

Speaker 1: 11:23

John 1.3. Let us, if we can conceive of the difference between the one who was and everything that was made, to be the one who was and through whom all things were made and to be made. What an immense distance separates these two things to be and to make. This is what is proper to the word To be made. This is what is proper to the creature. He was, therefore as one by whom all that was made was to have been made. What force, what distinctness to express clearly that all was made by the Word, all through him, nothing without him. What remains in human language to signify that the Word was the creator of all? Or what is the same thing, that God is the Creator of all through the Word? For he is the Creator of all, not by any effort, but by simple commandment, as it is written in the book of Genesis and similarly in this verse of David. For he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood forth.

Speaker 1: 12:36

Psalm 33, 9. We must not understand this through to refer to anything material or ministerial. All things were made through the word, just as every intelligent being makes what he makes by his reason, by his thought, by his wisdom. That is why, if it is said here that God made everything through his word, which is his wisdom in his thought, it is said elsewhere that the eternal wisdom that he had begotten in his bosom and that he had conceived and given birth to before the hills, is with him, together with him, ordered and arranged all things, rejoiced in his presence and delighted himself by the facility and variety of his designs and works. Proverbs 8, 22-31. And accordingly, it was said to Moses that God saw all that he had made by his command, which is his word, and that he was pleased and saw that it was good and very good. Where did he see this goodness of the things that he had made if it was not in the very goodness of the wisdom and of the thought by which he had destined and ordered them? This is also why he said he had possessed, that is to say that he had begotten, he had conceived, he had given birth to his wisdom Proverbs 8.22.

Speaker 1: 14:33

John 1.14, who talks to us in a profound and wonderful silence. Let us lend him the ear of our heart, let us say to him, like Samuel Speak, lord, for thy servant hears. 1 Samuel 3.10. Let us love prayer, which is communication with and familiarity with God. Who will impose silence upon himself and upon all that is not God? And let his heart flow peaceably toward the word, toward the eternal wisdom, especially now that he has been made man and has dwelt among us among us, in no beast, and what is most intimately ours. According to what has been written, he found out all the way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob, his servant, and to Israel, his beloved. Afterward, he was seen upon earth and conversed with men. What virtue should be born in us from this very commerce with God and with his word. What humility, what self-abnegation, what devotion, what love of truth, what generosity, what candor. May our speech be straightforward and plain. May our yes be yes and our no be no, and may we be truthful in all things, for the truth abides with us. Meditation 17. Life and Light and the Word. Meditation 17 Life and Light in the Word, in Him was life and the life was the light of men.

Speaker 1: 16:05

John 1.4. By saying that there is life in plants, we mean that they grow and send forth leaves, buds and fruit. How crude is this life and how dead. How crude is this life? And how dead. We say that animals live because they see, taste and go here and there as they are moved by their senses. How mute is this life.

Speaker 1: 16:30

We also say that life is to understand, to know, to know oneself, to know God and into desire him, to love him and to wish to be happy in Him. This is the true life. Yet what is its source? Who is it that knows Himself, loves Himself and enjoys Himself, unless it is the Word In Him? Therefore, is life. Yet whence does it come, if not from his eternal and living generation? He has come forth alive from a Father who is alive, about whom he himself pronounced. As the Father has life in himself, so also has he granted to the Son to have life in himself.

Speaker 1: 17:18

John 5.26. He did not give him life as drawn forth from nothingness. He gave him life from his own life and proper substance. And as he is the source of life, he has given his Son to be a source of life. And so this life of understanding is the light that enlivens every man.

Speaker 1: 17:40

John 1.9. From the life and light of the Word come forth all understanding and light. This light of life shone in heaven, in the splendor of the saints, on the mountains, on exalted spirits, on the angels, but it also wished to shine among men who had withdrawn from it. The light came near to them and, in order to enlighten them, set a torch before their very eyes by preaching the gospel. So it was that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region in shadow of death, light has dawned. Matthew 4.16. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Proud souls have not understood the humility of Jesus Christ. Souls blinded by their passions have not understood Jesus Christ, who intended nothing but the will of his Father. Curious souls who wish to see for the pleasure of it and not to rule their habits and mortify their concupiscence, have understood nothing of Jesus Christ, who began by doing and then afterward taught no-transcript. Those with preoccupied souls, entirely withdrawn into themselves, have not understood Jesus Christ, nor the heavenly precept of self-renunciation. The light has come and the darkness did not comprehend it. But what of the light? Did the light comprehend the light? Those who said we see and who blinded themselves by their presumption? Have they better comprehended Jesus Christ. No, the priests did not comprehend Him. The Pharisees did not comprehend Him. The doctors of the law did not comprehend Him. Jesus Christ was an enigma to them. They could not suffer. The truth for it humiliated, corrected and condemned them. Do we comprehend it? We who call ourselves his disciples but who nonetheless wish to please men and ourselves? Let us humble ourselves and say the light still shines in the darkness every day, by faith in the gospel. But the darkness has not comprehended it. And Jesus Christ finds hardly anyone willing to imitate him.

Speaker 1: 20:43

The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world and dwelt among us, but without having been noticed. He was in the world, the one who was the light and the world was made through him. Yet the world knew him not, came into his own home and his own people received him. Not john 1, 9 through 11. His own people did not receive him, but in another sense, his own people did receive him. Those who were touched by a certain instinct of grace did receive him. The sinners whom he called left everything to follow him. A tax collector followed him at his first word, all the humble followed him, and these were truly his own people, the proud, the falsely wise, the Pharisees were also his people, for he had made them and he had made this faithless world that did not wish to know him. O Jesus, I would be like them if you had not converted me.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Complete the work. Pull me away from the world that you have made but whose corruption you did not make. Everything in it is curiosity, greed, the concupiscence of the eyes, impurity, the concupiscence of the flesh and the pride of life, a pride with which all of life is infected. 1 John 2.16. O Jesus, send to me one of your heavenly fishermen who will pull me out of this sea of corruption and catch me in the net of your word. Meditation 18.

Speaker 1: 22:28

And the word was made flesh. To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. In his name, he gave power to become children of God. John 1, 12. To believe in the name of Jesus Christ is to recognize him as the Christ, as the Son of God, as the Word who was before all time and who became man. To be ready, at the sound of that name and for the glory of that name alone, to do all things, to attempt all things, to suffer all things. This is what it means to believe in the name of Jesus Christ. They are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God John 1.13.

Speaker 1: 23:14

God has given us the freedom to choose, to become His children and to cooperate in our generation by faith. This power nevertheless comes from God, who places in us the divine seed of his word, not one that strikes the ears, but one that finds a secret path into our hearts. And what is the source of this great gift? And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, this great gift. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father John 1.14.

Speaker 1: 23:54

To make us children of God, it was necessary that His only Son become a man. It must be through this unique and essential Son that we receive the spirit of adoption. The Son has come to us and we have seen His glory. He was the light, and it is by the brilliance and in the reflection of this light that we have been regenerated. He was the true light that enlightens the children that come into the world, giving them their reason which, obscured as it is, is nevertheless a light and will develop with time. Yet another light by which he comes to enlighten the world is His gospel, which he continually offers to the whole world, even to the little children who are enlightened by baptism. And when he regenerates us and makes us children of God, what does he do but cause his light to be born in our hearts, a light by which we see him full of grace and truth, full of grace from his miracles and truth from his words. For it is the God who said Let light shine out of the darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Speaker 1: 25:03

2 Corinthians 4.6. The world that wishes to lure us has no grace at all. Or the deceitful pomp of human grandeur, all of it is false, all of it is darkness. The world that wishes to lure us has no grace at all. Jesus Christ alone, full of grace and truth, knows how to fill our hearts, and he alone should attract us. Grace is poured out upon his lips and upon his speech. Everything in him is pleasing, even his cross, where we see shining forth His obedience, his generosity, his grace, his redemption, his salvation. All the rest is less than nothing. Jesus Christ alone is full of grace and truth. It is for us that he is full. It is for us that he is full, and from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace, john 1.16. And there we go.

Speaker 1: 26:10

There are our four meditations for today, and they are four meditations really all taken from homilies on the gospel of John, which John, chapter one is my favorite chapter of scripture hands down, and these four meditations really really capture why that is really really captured the that chapter of the gospel so well, especially that first meditation, um on on just what and who, uh who, christ is. Um. So I really enjoyed these meditations. I wish, I wish the recording I had made yesterday worked, because I I had a lot of thoughts on that, that very first meditation, but we are, uh, 30 minutes into this um. So so we will, we will be done for the day. Tomorrow we have two meditations. We have one on Jesus Christ, the anointed one, and one on the virtues of the anointing of a Christian. So, yeah, that is it for the day.

Speaker 1: 27:38

I feel like I'm coming down with something. I feel like I'm coming down with something. I feel like I'm coming down with something. I will end up having to make a lot of cuts and edits of this to cut out sneezes and coughs and the like. So if the editing is noticeable and annoying, I sincerely apologize. But thank you all for being patient with the screw up yesterday and having to redo it today. And I apologize if this recording today is significantly longer than they usually are, but I feel like we just had to hammer out both days together to keep on track. So anyways, thank you all for joining me in these. I hope you join me again tomorrow and I hope you have a great day today, thank you.