How To Be A Christ-Bearer!

Tribulation Times

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August 27, 2010 

THE TRIB TIMES WILL RETURN NEXT WEEK, GOD WILLING (James 4:15).

(Mat 28:19-20) Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

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FROM THE MAILBAG
VIA Bread of Heaven International Prayer Group:

How To Be A Christ-Bearer!
By the late Father Kilian McGowan, C.P.

On the day of your Baptism, you were given a lighted candle along with a command to keep your Baptism without blame and to observe the commandments of God. Through the regenerating power of this sacrament, you were made a Christ-image and urged to carry that image faithfully through life until you looked upon the face of Christ at death.

That was the practical beginning of your vocation as a child of God. At the heart of this vocation was an urgent invitation to manifest Christ in the world through your Christian living. Given the mission of being a Christ-bearer, you have the obligation of manifesting Christ at every stage and in every circumstance of your life. For this reason you are called "the light of the world".

To bring salvation to mankind, Christ had to be seen, understood, and acknowledged as its Savior. Each succeeding generation must still see and accept our Blessed Savior. However, now it is you who make visible His saving power and His transforming grace. The need for this witnessing of Christ was probably never greater than at the present time.

Of course, the essential workmanship of our Lord is found in the hidden realm of souls. This work of our Savior must become apparent in the visible lives of Christians who live and work in the market place. The world will never know of the transforming power and work of Christ in souls unless His action becomes manifest in the holy lives of His followers.

How does this happen? His workmanship in your soul becomes obvious when it breaks out into the open through acts of virtue and a life of holiness. Whether in the unspectacular drudgery of daily duty, or in a wholehearted heroism like some of the martyrs behind the Iron Curtain, we must present to the world another vision of the Crucified Christ.

It's true that this kind of living will make you conspicuously different from the modern pagan. But it should be obvious that your standards of thought and action cannot be the same as his. That's why Cardinal Suhard of Paris once wrote of "our mission of dissimilarity" with the age in which we live.

The saints had a holy eagerness to manifest Christ. Men like Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, and Paul of the Cross were constantly preoccupied with Christ. He was like a spiritual dynamo that supplied the energy for everything they said and did. He was more than this-He was their very life! That's why they could truly say with Saint Paul: "For me to live is Christ."

How can Christ become your life? When all your actions are set in motion by the thought of Him alone. When He becomes the life-giving source of your spiritual life and activity. We are willing enough to admit that without Him we can do nothing; but we must go much further-we should constantly be preoccupied with the thought of Him and His work.

A true Christian is conspicuously different also at the end of his life. For even on his deathbed he should manifest Christ to the world. Thus, he manifests his Savior even unto the end. Just as he manifested Christ the Savior by a holy life, now he can manifest Christ the Conqueror by a calm and hope-filled death. Our late universally loved Holy Father, Pope John XXIII, was outstanding in this-in life and in death.

Thus he tells the world that death is but the doorway to a fuller and more victorious life with Christ. That's what Saint Paul meant when he wrote: "For me to die is gain." Every Christian preaches the same message by a holy death.

Ladder of Divine Ascent excerpt: Step 26- "Brief Summary on Discernment"

3. Love of God is the foundation of exile. The opposite of this is self-evident.        

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