Christ's mysteries are ours. The union that Christ wishes to contract with our souls is such that all is common between Him and us. With divine liberality, He wishes to give us a share in the inexhaustible graces of salvation and sanctification that He merited for us by each of His mysteries, in order to communicate to us the spirit of His states and thus to realise in each one of us a likeness to Himself, the infallible pledge of our eternal predestination.
Christ has passed through divers states. He has been a Child, a Youth, a Doctor of the truth, a Victim upon the Cross, He has been glorious in His Resurrection and His Ascension: in thus traversing all the successive stages of His earthly existence, He has sanctified all human life.
But there is one essential state which He never leaves: He is always “the Only-begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father”: Unigenitus Filius qui EST in sinu Patris.
Christ is the Incarnate Son of God, the Word-made-Flesh. Before becoming man, Christ was God; in becoming man, He did not cease to be God: Quod fuit permansit. Whether we consider Him as a little Infant in the manger, toiling in the workshop of Nazareth, preaching in Judea, dying upon Calvary, manifesting to His apostles his triumphant victory over death, or ascending to Heaven, He is always and above all the Only-begotten Son of the Father.
It is, then, His Divinity that we must first of all contemplate before speaking of the mysteries which proceed from the Incarnation itself; all the mysteries of Jesus are based upon His Divinity; from it they derive all their splendour; in it they find all fecundity.
The beginning of St. John's Gospel is very different from that of the other Evangelists who open their narrative by drawing up the human genealogy of Jesus in order to show how He was descended from the royal race of David. But St. John, who is reluctant to dwell upon earth, first rises, like an eagle, with a marvellous flight, to the highest heavens and tells us what takes place in the sanctuary of the divinity.
Before relating the life of Jesus, this Evangelist tells us what Christ was before His Incarnation. And in what terms does he speak? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”: In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum... And to reassure us as to the weight of his testimony, He at once adds: “No man hath seen God at any time: the Only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him”: Deum nemo videt unquam: Unigenitus Filius qui est in sinu Patris ipse enarravit.
In fact, during three years, Jesus explained the divine secrets to His disciples; on the eve of His death, He recalled these secrets to them, saying that this was a mark of friendship which He gave only to them and to those who coming after them should believe in His words: Vos dixi amicos: quia omnia quaecumque audivi a Patre meo nota feci vobis.
In order to know what Jesus is, what He was, we have then only to listen to Jesus Himself. But let us listen to Him with faith, with love, with adoration; for He Who reveals Himself to us is the very Son of God.
The words that He brings to us are not words to be apprehended merely with bodily ears; they are altogether heavenly words of eternal life: Verba quae ego locutus sum vobis spiritus et vita sunt. Only a humble and faithful soul can understand them.
Neither let us be astonished in that these words reveal profound mysteries to us: Jesus Himself willed it to be so. He has spoken these words to us in order to bring about our union with Him; He willed that they should be gathered up by the sacred writers; He sends His Holy Spirit Who "searcheth the deep things of God,” to recall them to our minds, so that "in all wisdom and spiritual understanding" we may savour the mysteries of the innermost life of God. Does not participation in this divine life constitute the very basis of Christianity and the substance of all holiness?
Taken from Christ in His Mysteries by Dom Columba Marmion.