Representation

Extract

The Catholic is aware of his solidarity with all men, aware too that in the sacrifice of Christ the whole of human history presses upon our present immolation and oblation for the achievement of Christ’s kingdom. It is certain that in being dead to ourselves we may become channels of the Church's redemptive action upon the body of mankind. We know first of all that what God now demands of us is not that which we possess but that for which Christ died. Nothing can be restored to Christ that does not belong to Him already. Our vision of the boundaries of the Church’s redemptive action has extended beyond the saving of our isolated souls to include all existence. And the boundaries of our own action are also extended. We do not have to prove before God the precise relation of our action to its effects, but our action, however partial and limited, is a participation and formulation of mankind’s supplication to the mercy and the victory of Christ.

If we are that grain of wheat which, falling to the ground, has not flinched to die, our fruit is com where men are hungriest and where the poor and the stranger come to glean. To bring the simile into terms of living, this losing of our life that we may gain it is a twofold supplication and identification. Firstly it is that death to self which through the agony and crucifixion is the identification of ourselves in Christ, and the supplication of God for a no less universal intention than that for which Christ died. So much is true of ourselves in so far as there is supernatural life in us.