Dear Reader,

Do you have a spiritual life?

I am not asking if you have the true Faith, if you say the rosary, make novenas, or even recite the Divine Office, if you go to the sacraments and the Traditional Mass, if you read Sacred Scripture, the lives of the saints, their writings, and other spiritual books.

I am not asking if you understand the crisis of the Church, and if you are fighting to preserve Tradition by supporting traditional Catholic schools, seminaries and convents, or if you are actively pro-life.

“If I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

“And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (I Cor. 13:2-3).

Do you have a spiritual life means do you have that charity without which, the apostle says, in spite of all the knowledge you may have and the works you may do, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are speaking of a life, and life is a movement. The spiritual life is then a movement entering in the life of God, “who is a spirit,” vibrating with the living movement within the Blessed Trinity. “The Father loveth the Son.” “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!” Do you have that deep thirst to know God more intimately and to grow in charity “unto the fullness of the age of Christ” in order to “reach that degree of glory which, Thou, O Lord, hath prepared for me in Thy kingdom”?

“I am come that they may have life and may have it more abundantly.” “I thirst!”

One of the keys to that spiritual life is meditation. Without the practice of meditation, one can go to the Traditional Mass for years and have no spiritual life. With a serious and daily practice of it, in a short time, one makes stupendous progresses. That is a fact. Go on an Ignatian retreat to learn how to meditate.

That is also the soul of the apostolate: to see all things as coming from God, and to use all things to go to God. This was the teaching of that master of spiritual life, Dom Chautard. Read his book.

Caritatem habete—Have Charity!

Fr. Daniel Couture