GUEST POST - Pope St. Gregory the Great
Yesterday I shared how I felt called to consider the sinful attitudes that lurks beneath the surface. Today we have a message of hope and encouragement in that regard from a giant of the Faith, Pope St. Gregory the Great. Coming to us from the Liturgy of the Hours, Pope St. Gregory speaks of the transformation we undergo not just as individuals but corporately as the Church. At present we are that field composed of wheat and weeds, but the Kingdom will come in all its fullness:
Since the daybreak or the dawn is changed gradually from darkness
into light, the Church, which comprises the elect, is fittingly styled
daybreak or dawn. While she is being led from the night of infidelity to
the light of faith, she is opened gradually to the splendor of heavenly
brightness, just as dawn yields to the day after darkness. The Song of
Songs says aptly: Who is this who moves forward like the advancing dawn?
Holy Church, inasmuch as she keeps searching for the rewards of eternal
life, has been called the dawn. While she turns her back on the
darkness of sins, she begins to shine with the light of righteousness.
This reference to the dawn conjures up a still more subtle
consideration. The dawn intimates that the night is over; it does not
yet proclaim the full light of day. While it dispels the darkness and
welcomes the light, it holds both of them, the one mixed with the other,
as it were. Are not all of us who follow the truth in this life
daybreak and dawn? While we do some things which already belong to the
light, we are not free from the remnants of darkness. In Scripture the
Prophet says to God: No living being will be justified in our sight. Scripture also says: In many ways all of us give offense.
When he writes, the night is passed, Paul does not add, the day is come, but rather, the day is at hand.
Since he argues that after the night has passed, the day as yet is not
come but is rather at hand, he shows that the period before full
daylight and after darkness is without doubt the dawn, and that he
himself is living in that period.
It will be fully day for the Church of the elect when she is no
longer darkened by the shadow of sin. It will be fully day for her when
she shines with the perfect brilliance of interior light. This dawn is
aptly shown to be an ongoing process when Scripture says: And you showed the dawn its place.
A thing which is shown its place is certainly called from one place to
another. What is the place of the dawn but the perfect clearness of
eternal vision? When the dawn has been brought there, it will retain
nothing belonging to the darkness of night. When the Psalmist writes: My soul thirsts for the living God; when shall I go and see the face of God?,
does he not refer to the effort made by the dawn to reach its place?
Paul was hastening to the place which he knew the dawn would reach when
he said he wished to die and to be with Christ. He expressed the same
idea when he said: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
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