The Daily Meditation that Never Disappoints
Man’s earthly journey is a pilgrimage that is directed heavenward. Heaven is our final destination because God created us for himself. But seduced by Satan’s deception, man gave in to his pride to become like God, his Creator. With this fall into sin, he dragged the whole human race into a miserable condition of sinfulness and vulnerability. Accordingly, the supposedly natural tendency of man toward heaven has been turned upside down and it has become heavy. It has become a journey that is impossible for man to finish.
This is the journey of the people of God, Israel, a pilgrimage from slavery to freedom as the Lenten message of Pope Francis reminds us. Thus, this earthly human pilgrimage is profoundly intertwined with human suffering since the fall of man. Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial St. Augustine affirms. Indeed, the once joyful pilgrimage has become a labored one.
In man’s search for meaning, he encounters a meaningless life surrounded by pains, frustrations, and disappointments. He has to carry the consequences of his wrong and sinful decision as his own personal load. His original capability to reach heaven is obscured and obstructed. Though, not anymore like his original state, man still needs to move forward because life must go on. Thanks to St. Augustine for making us understand that we progress by means of trial. Our humanity has fallen into this human degradation and cannot anymore live according to its original state. Thus, we understand through this wisdom of the saint that no one knows himself except through trial, receives a crown except after victory, or strives against an enemy or temptations. True self-knowledge, that is, the source of our salvation, therefore, is only attainable through the power of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.
St. Hannibal Mary insists on the daily meditation on the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ saying, I will never neglect daily meditation…centered on the mysteries of the life, Passion, and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ (Declarations and Promises [DP], 23). This meditation does not focus only on the physical sufferings of Jesus, which in itself is already horrifying but more deeply on the intimate Passion of Jesus’ Heart, called also mental pains…which surpasses the hardships, the pains, and the torments that Jesus suffered in his most holy humanity (Rogationist Anthology [RA], p. 467).
It is this kind of meditation that does not stop only at the peripherals of Christ’s passion but penetrates into the core of his heart. By penetrating into his inner sorrows we understand his “thirst” for souls and his anguish for the present pathetic condition of his harvest without those who are willing to gather them in. Fr. Hannibal Mary made this meditation his daily bread because this is more beneficial and effective than any other. He writes: it is impossible to persevere in this meditation at least 20 minutes a day without improving in divine love, in interior virtues, and in hating sin (The Father’s Soul, [TFS], p, 242).
Conforming himself to Jesus Fr. Hannibal Mary says: I intend to make my own interests all the interests of this Divine Heart (DP, 23); I will contemplate Him lost and submerged in the ocean of these unspeakable pains in the Garden of Olives (DP, 23). By this contemplation, he made himself one with Jesus in his burning thirst for the salvation of souls (RA, p. 272). This is the Father’s zeal, the true Zeal that naturally flows from his profound Understanding of the Rogate, which as we know, derives from his daily meditation on the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord that gives particular attention on the Intimate Sorrows of the Heart of Jesus (RA, p. 464).
If we truly and deeply understand the intimate sorrows of his most holy Heart, who is begging us to pray for more good and holy workers for his harvest, then he will open his compassionate Heart to us, granting us the gift of true zeal, a compassionate heart towards God and men. The Father Founder says: By going deeply in these sorrows the congregants cannot be apathetic before the interests of the divine Heart (TFS, p. 255). It is from this Understanding and Zeal for the Rogate that we draw our life, existence, and mission in the Church that is for the greater consolation of the Heart of Jesus (cf., RA, p. 225, p. 467; cf. TFS, p. 253).
By meditating and contemplating the intimate sorrows of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, we are able to really enter into the heart of every person. By entering into the heart of Christ, we feel loved by a human heart filled with affections and emotions like our own (Dilexit Nos [DN], 67). Let us then carry on our pilgrimage, even in this most confusing moment of our human journey, guided by hope. Being convinced deeply that by going into the darkest and most tumultuous depth of the ocean of human heart there we find God, the origin of our true self and the salvation of all.
It is indeed in the understanding and zealously fulfilling the interests of the Heart of Jesus that we find our true self as a person and as a congregation because it is in this that we discover “the infinite in the finite” (DN, 67). It is there that we find the hope that never disappoints (cf., Spes Non Confundit).
Fr. Marcelino Diaz II, RCJ, is the responsible and Novice Master of the Rogamina Community. The community seeks to follow the command of unceasing prayer for vocations guarded and guided by a monastic-contemplative lifestyle.