United with Christ in His Love
3. United with Christ in His Love
and His Oblation to the Father
We are called to serve the Church [16]
in the Congregation
of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Our response to this call presupposes a spiritual life:
A common approach to the mystery of Christ,
under the guidance of the Spirit,
and a particular attention to what,
in the inexhaustible richness of this mystery,
corresponds to the experience of Father Dehon
and of our predecessors.
As disciples of Father Dehon, [17]
we want to make union with Christ
in His love for the Father and for people
the principle and center of our life.
With special love
We meditate on these words of the Lord:
"Live on in the, as I do in you.
no more than a branch can bear fruit
of itself apart from the vine,
can you bear fruit
apart from me" (John 15:4).
Faithful to hearing the Word
and sharing the Bread,
we are invited to discover more and more
the person of Christ and the mystery of His Heart,
and to proclaim His love
which surpasses all understanding.
"May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith,
and may charity be the root
and foundation of your life.
Thus you will be able to grasp fully,
with all the holy ones,
the breadth and length and height and depth
of Christ's love,
and experience this love
which surpasses all knowledge,
so that you may attain to the fullness
of God himself" (Eph. 3:17-19).
We also live out our union with Christ [18]
In our availablity and our love for all,
especially for the lowly,
for those who suffer.
For how can we really understand Christ's love for us,
if not in loving as He did,
in deed and in truth?
In this love of Christ
we are assured that human fraternity can succeed,
and we find the strength to work for it.
The Father sent His son [19]
formed before the creation of the world
in accord with His plan of love
(cf. Eph. 1:3-14);
"he handed him over for the sake of us all" (Rom. 8:32).
By raising Him
He established Him as Lord,
Heart of humanity and of the world,
hope of salvation
for all who listen to His voice.
"Son though he was,
he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when perfected,
he became the source of eternal salvation
for all who obey him" (Heb. 5:8-9).
Christ carries out this salvation [20]
by stirring up in hearts
love for the Father and for each other:
love which regenerates,
source of the full development
of persons and of human communities.
It will reach its full manifestation
when all shall be brought together under Christ as head.
With Saint John [21]
we see in the open side of the Crucified
the sign of a love, which,
in the total gift of self,
recreates humanity in the image of God.
We are affirmed in our vocation
through contemplating the Heart of Christ,
the favored symbol of this love.
For we are called
to enter into this movement
of redemptive love,
by giving ourselves,
with and as Christ,
for our brothers and sisters.
"The way we came to understand love
was that he laid down his life for us;
we too trust lay down our lives
for our brothers" (1 John 3:16).
Though entangled in sin, [22]
we participate in redemptive grace.
We want to be in union with Christ,
present in the life of the world,
through the service of our various tasks.
And in solidarity with Him,
and with all of humanity and creation,
we want to offer ourselves to the Father,
as a living, holy offering
that might be pleasing to Him (cf. Rom. 12:1).
"Follow the way of love
even as Christ loved you.
He gave himself for us
as an offering to God,
a gift of pleasing fragrance" (Eph. 5:2).
This is how we understand "reparation": [23]
as a welcome to the Spirit (cf. I Thess. 4:8),
as a response to Christ's love for us,
a communion in His love for the Father
and a cooperation
in His work of redemption
in the midst of the world.
For there,
He today frees people from sin
and restores humanity in unity.
There, too, He calls us
to live out our reparative vocation,
as the incentive for our apostolate
(cf. GS 38).
Sometimes the reparative life will be lived out [24]
by offering sufferings
borne with patience and abandonment,
even in darkness and loneliness,
as a pre-eminent and mysterious communion
in the sufferings and death of Christ
for the redemption of the world.
"Even now I find my joy
in the sufferings I endure for you.
In my own flesh 1 fill up
what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ
for the sake of his body,
the church" (Col. 1:24).
Our love, [25]
thus animating all that we are,
what we do and suffer in serving the Gospel,
heals humanity
through our participation in the work of reconciliation,
gathers humanity together in the Body of Christ,
and consecrates it for the glory and joy of God.