Our Way and Our Life

The present volume is a shorter edition of Christ in His Mysteries, Dom Columba Marmion’s profound reflection on the Mysteries of Christ’s birth, death, Resurrection, and Ascension as presented in the Gospels and the Liturgical Year. In Blessed Marmion’s words, the mysteries that Jesus lived were lived for us. In them He shows Himself as our model and wills to make Himself one with our souls as Head of the Mystical Body of which we are members. Each of Christ’s mysteries, representing a state of His Sacred Humanity, brings to us a special participation in His Divinity. Advent, Christmas, Holy Week, Paschaltide, the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart—following Christ in this way, uniting ourselves to Him, we share more deeply in His Divinity and His Divine life. This is why, writes Blessed Marmion, the contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus is so fruitful and why contact with the different phases of the life of her Bridegroom, into which the Church places us by means of the Liturgy, is so vital for us. Participation in the mysteries of Jesus requires the co-operation of the soul. If Christ opens to us the unfathomable treasures of His states and mysteries it is that we may draw upon them and make them our own. The Sovereign Pontiff Pius X wrote in his encyclical of November 23rd, 1903, that “the active participation of the faithful in the sacred mysteries and in the public and solemn prayers of the Church is the first and indispensable source of the Christian spirit.” There is no surer way, no more infallible means, of making us one with Christ.