Christ our Way
Jesus, truly God and truly man, while on earth Your whole humanity remained in harmony with God. Your earthly life determined the possibility of each person’s eternal happiness, for we had lost paradise by our sin and rebellion against God. Had You not ‘run the race’ [Saint Paul] taking victory over sin and death, no one could follow Your path into Heaven.
In love for fallen humankind, You became one with us through the womb of a good, faith-filled woman. Hidden in humble goodness pleasing to God, You grew from infancy to young manhood, facing human difficulties and choices with prayer, penance and love. You rejected temptation, and with Your choice against sin, You gained our freedom into God and the fulfilment of our destiny if we follow You.
Because our fallen nature sometimes corrupts gifts intended for our welfare and propagation, we follow You with difficulty and conflict. In succumbing to temptation, we pervert our appetites to sinfulness or selfishness, perhaps not wilfully, but no less effectively.
Our yearning for happiness with God is often confused with desire for material, sensual and intellectual satisfactions. In a world where temptation continues to surround us, give us grace to seek our salvation in Your teaching and witness, and in the testimony of Your resurrection.
Jesus, You understand the difficulties that we encounter in trying to be faithful, for although You are eternal God, You lived in our midst as human person. Strengthen our trust in Your Way and Your Truth so that we walk faithfully in Your light.
Bless those who are discouraged by temptation, by growing acceptance of anti-Christian morality and the rise of spiritual apathy or unbelief. Grasp the hand of those who drift from Your side, perhaps unaware, or perhaps in deference to what they see as modernism or moderation.
Jesus, reveal Your love and mercy to all and reach out to anyone who cannot view self as loved child of God with an eternal destiny. For who will cry out to You for self and others, for Your light and grace in this world’s fallen darkness, if Your existence as loving and personal Saviour is irrelevant or unreal to them?
We thank You for our redemption, we thank the Father who spared You to us and the divine Spirit of love whom You send us lead us to love and eternal joy.
“He has put all things under His feet, and made Him, as the ruler of everything, the head of the Church; which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills the whole creation.” [Ephesians 1:22]
