domingo, 10 de octubre de 2021

MEDITATED PRAYER OF THE "SOUL OF CHRIST" by Antonio Montero Moreno Archbishop of Mérida-Badajoz

 

I take it for sure, Lord, that thousands and thousands, if not millions, of men and women, throughout more than four centuries, have recited the Soul of Christ, following the recommendation of Saint Ignatius, by the end of the personal prayer or in moments of special religious intensity.  Those litanic letters, which the saint still named in Latin, present to you, Crucified Lord, a brief and silent recital of intimate desires, all of them born of our radical poverty.  They are the precious beads of a mystery of the rosary, both painful and glorious.  I will try to go over, grain by grain, this spike of invocations.

 

Soul of Christ, sanctify me

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  You know better than I how many misunderstandings the very name of the soul lends itself to today.  I understand by soul with the Bible, the Church and the cultural tradition to which I belong, that other founding, invisible and immortal dimension of my being, that animates and sustains the life of my body, that with it makes me a person, where they settle intelligence, freedom, love and the dignity of man.  From which also spring, through his dark face, sin and evil, abjection and moral rottenness.  On my soul, which is myself, on its destitute and sinful nakedness, pour out, oh Christ! The grace, the light and the holiness of yours.

 

Body of Christ, save me

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 I refer to your living and human body, gestated by the Spirit in Mary's womb, suckled at her breasts, grown and tanned in Joseph's workshop.  Enrolled, as a child and as a young man, in games, walks and debates, in the synagogue and in the temple.  Tucked among the people, a thorough Israelite, the carpenter's son.  And then sweaty on the roads of Galilee and Judea, without head for rest, asleep on the boat, prophet upright and endearing, Son of man.  I take refuge in that mortal body of an innocent lamb, brought to the sacrifice, slapped, bleeding and mocked.  Hanging after three nails, pierced by the spear, dead and silent, grain of wheat in the grave.  I adore you, risen and glorious body of my only Lord, alive forever, white heavenly lamb, conqueror of your death and mine.  And, how not ?, Eucharistic body of Jesus, living bread lowered from heaven, resurrection delicacy for my blind and mortal flesh, prone to seven sins.  Save me, mystical body of Christ, head of the Church, of which I am a grateful member!

 

Blood of Christ, intoxicate me

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 Looking at you again, Lord, the Eucharistic reference returns to my lips, fundamental for our earthly condition, memorial of your passion, anticipation of the heavenly banquet.  "I will no longer drink," you told us, "of the fruit of the vine until the day I drink it again in the Kingdom of my Father."  The drunkenness, you know, is not your physical blood, but your Eucharistic wine.  "What a brief immensity of the moment in which your blood waters my organism!", I wrote in a youthful verse.  I do not know if it is asking a lot that you educate me the palate of the soul, the flavor and the inner taste of holy things;  "the sober intoxication of the Spirit" of that Latin liturgical hymn.  "Loca del Sacramento" they called Santa Micaela in life.  They wanted to arrest the apostles for drunkenness on the day of Pentecost.  Get drunk on God, break the boundaries of the spiritual middle class, live without living in me!

 

Water from the side of Christ, wash me

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  What a contrast, ¡Master, between your holy humanity, ready to resurrect, and our dragged and dusty existence, ¡always waiting for a bath of grace!  You have washed us, Lord, with your blood.  Give me the white tunic of those who accompany the Lamb in the heavenly meadows.  Blessed is the baptismal font, blessed is the lustral water of the sacrament of forgiveness.  Body cleansing, my God, so pleasant and relaxing, that it makes us respect ourselves and value others.  Purity of heart, clarity of intentions, truthfulness in words, transparency in conduct.  Miracle of the water from your side.

 

Passion of Christ, comfort me

 It is not logic that rules here, but the heart.  Your Passion includes everything said and part of what is missing.  This blessed word tells your disciples everything.  Your sacred passion runs from Ramos to Gloria, from the Cenacle to Calvary.  It includes the agony of the garden, the slap before Annas, the crown of thorns, the humiliation with Barabbas, the street of Bitterness, the seven words, the five wounds.  This, Lord, is your chalice, the one that asks the Zebedee and us: ¿Are you capable of drinking it?  There it hurts, Lord.  Your passion is not a golden legend;  it is an unfathomable experience, a source of salvation, a chair of wisdom.  "I don't want to know about anything else, your apostle Paul would tell us, but about Jesus Christ and this crucified man."  While the surgeon sliced ​​his leg to Felipe II, they read pages of your passion to him.  (Passion means two things: extreme love and total suffering).  From her the Christian virgins drew love, the martyrs fired, the apostles fire, the doctors lucidity, the oppressed hope.  Come on, Lord, comfort me.

 

¡Oh good Jesus, hear me!

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 This is not very relevant either, in a litany of specific requests.  I would have to say to you like you to the Father: ¡I know that you always hear me!  But I am asking you for holiness, salvation, purity of soul, experience of you, strength in my crosses.  Sorry, I am assailed by the doubt whether you are not listening to me, or I am asking too much of you.  It's a saying, Lord.  What happens is that, among us men, I am the first, it often happens that you do not give an account to the one who unburdens himself with you, to the one who awaits your listening to his worries.  I follow, then, my litany, after this affective landing, and forgive my daring in what I happen to tell you.

 

Within your wounds, hide me

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  This would go to San Francisco or Santa Teresa.  But to me?  There have been contemplatives in the Church who, by singular grace, have carried in their hands, on their feet and on their side the stigmata of your wounds.  Jesus, I do not ask so much, but I do mystically hide myself in your sacrosanct wounds, which is to say in the most intimate part of your divine being.  ¡I don’t pretend to be the only one, we could go as far as that!  Open your five windows, today of light and glory, to the infinite pile of Christians who seek your face.  Lord you know that I love you

 

Don't let me get away from you

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 But how can I, my Christ, sing victory?  ¿Are we already in the eternal Weddings, in the Father’s house, in the mansion of light and peace?  No, by the way, and unfortunately.  Even if you make the ineffable metaphor of hiding myself in your blessed wounds a reality with me, still in this flesh of sin, you do not trust a hair of the foolish use and abuse that I can do of my will.  In the same way, I would ask you and your Father for the inheritance that you have assigned me, to then burn it at my ease throughout the world.  I am not of different paste than that of the apostates, adulterers, or simple crazy heads that have been in the world.  Therefore, Lord, just as on Holy Thursday the priest keeps the precious key of the monument hanging around his neck, do the same with the keys of your five wounds so that, once inside, I will never feel the outburst. to escape.  You already know us.  So don't let me get away from you.

 

 

From the evil enemy defend me

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  It is that, Lord, we live in anxiety.  We receive and savor your exquisite gifts, while the world, the devil, and the flesh exert constant and overwhelming pressure on us.  They are the forces of evil, the mystery of iniquity, or the thorn of sin that pierced the flesh of Saint Paul.  Things are like that and we, as the apostle himself confessed, "are not fighting only against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, powers and dominations of this dark world, against the evil spirits of the air."  I know, ¿how not ?, the smile of superiority of some before these supposed mythologies, an attitude that tempts us all a bit.  But who, who is engaged in Christian combat every day, does not experience, to spare, all that and much more?  You, Lord, defeated the evil one in the desert of Judah.

 

At the hour of my death, call me and send me to you, so that with your saints I may praise you for ever and ever.

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  at the end, blessed Jesus, my tongue and my heart are untied to me, imploring from you without detours the good luck of a good death.  Take then, my friend, the final initiative to take me to the most solemn moment of my destiny.  Make me pass, then and forever, from the realm of complaint to that of praise.  That is what I want, perhaps with underhanded selfishness: to sing your praises eternally, even if this does not mean for me the eternal fullness of bliss.  It turns out, however, that for that very reason it is.  Therefore, mine is an eternal vocation as a musician and singer.  ¡Tune the instrument, sovereign Lord!  Amen.

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