“I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal 2:20)

“I live”- To live is to have being, and to have being we must come to be, this coming to be suggests we were created, and this leads to a Creator, and thus, his Omnipotence over all of creation. God as giver and sustainer of all life, also provided its essential purpose. This essence refers to the meaning of life and its values, believes, in short all that makes up ones fullest expression of self in God.

“The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his Creator” (Catechism #27).

“Now not I …”- Recognizing our purpose in life leads to a purification of the soul, freely chosen. Although it be an interior goal of holiness, it also relies on our exterior causes. “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mark 8:36) The heart that desires to be pure and holy settles for nothing less than eternal fulfillment; that which  not only satisfies the body but the soul. Jesus can and will provide fullness of life, given the soul opens its doors, there is no other choice but to commend ones self into His hands, He is in control! (with your permission).

“If then, says St. Chrysostom, God has given you all, and nothing more remains for him to give you, as indeed he has done in his Passion and in the Holy Eucharist, reason requires that you also should give yourself without reserve to him” (The Way Of Salvation And Of Perfection, 152)

“but Christ liveth in me.”- Now fully given over to, and alive in, Christ’ love we can most definitely live with a sure conviction of His presence. But to recognize the workings of Him who loves us in our darkest moments and to respond as He would respond with the purest of love is no  walk in the park. This takes habitual virtue, it takes acceptance of grace at every moment, it needs the practice of faith, hope, and love and it depends on purity of intellect, will, and emotions.

“The soul tends upward to God, and unites itself with Him: conversion ad Deum. The soul wishes in this way to be faithful to the grace which Our Lord offers to it at every moment. In a word, it lives, united to Jesus, and carries out in actuality the principle: ‘He that lives in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit'” (The Soul Of The Apostolate, 30)