Dominica In Albis Or Low Sunday The Gospel John 20 v.19 Monday Meditation: A Plaine Path-way To Heaven Thomas Hill 1634


GOSPEL John 20:19-31 
At that time, when it was late the same day, the first of the week, and the doors were shut, where the disciples were gathered together, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them: "Peace be to you." And when he had said this, he shewed them his hands and his side. The disciples therefore were glad, when they saw the Lord. He said therefore to them again: "Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them: and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." Now Thomas, one of the twelve, who is called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him: "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them: "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." And after eight days, again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said: "Peace be to you." Then he said to Thomas: "Put in thy finger hither and see my hands. And bring hither the hand and put it into my side. And be not faithless, but believing." Thomas answered and said to him: "My Lord and my God." Jesus saith to him: "Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed." Many other signs also did Jesus in the sight of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing, you may have life in his name.


MONDAY

The first words that Christ spake to his disciples after his resurrection were these: Peace be unto you, as if he should say: I am the God of peace, I came down from heaven to the earth, and humbled myself as much as is between heaven & earth; nay I might say as much as between hell and earth, for thither I descended also.

To make peace I labored, and fought with men, as St. Paul said he did, after the manner of beasts, that is to say: with men as unreasonable as beasts, three and thirty years for peace between you and my Father: I have now obtained it, I am ready to give it to men of good will. as you are, the honor and glory of it, is mine, the peace yours: so did my angels proclaim to the world at my Nativity: Glory to God in the highest, and peace unto men of good will.

I was born with peace, all the world being then at peace, subdued to the Empire of Rome.

I died with peace, pardoning my persecutors; I arose again with peace giving my disciples peace, and in them all others that have a good will to be my disciples: but what peace?

Not that peace which the world giveth. The peace of the world is to give contentment to our sensual appetites & desires, be they never so inordinate or without reason.

This doth the world account, and call Peace; but this is not indeed the peace that Christ gave to his disciples.

Nay there is no peace to them that follow their inordinate desires: for even as men whose arable Land lyeth together in the common fields. decided only by certain bounds, or limits called Meerstones, if one neighbor plow beyond those limits and encroach upon hie neighbor, though he seemeth for a time to take some contentment therein: yet when his neighbor findeth it, his peace & contentment is turned into war and contention, and in the end the Law allotteth him to pay dearly for it.

Our sensual appetites border upon the right and inheritance of Almighty God; his divine law & the soul of reason, and our promise in baptism are the limits, or meerstones between God and us; If to give contentment to ourselves, we exceed and go beyond those limits, we offend God, we encroach upon his right: hereof followeth the wrath & displeasure of God, we break peace with him; an though we seem to the world to be at peace, yet there is no true peace unto us with God and our own conscience, till we have made our peace by true & hearty penance for our transgressions, which is we do not here in the life we shall be at open war with God forever in the next, and in this life with our own conscience of we have any.

Not this, but the other is the Peace, which Christ gave unto his disciples & commended unto us, which no man can take from us but ourselves, not death itself, but rather turneth it to an everlasting peace.

Let us therefore imagine every day, yea every hour of the day, that Christ appeareth unto us, as he did to his disciples, and salute us all with this peace, and show us his death and passion, he purchased this peace unto us, that we may continually remember the preciousness thereof, and so may be more careful not to lose that which was so dearly bought.

Of this the Church likewise putteth us daily in mind, in the holy Service of the Mass, for the Priest praying for peace, directing his prayer unto the Blessed Sacrament & saying unto it: O lamb of God which takest away the sins of the world, the Clerk offereth him a picture of Christ crucified, or of the holy lamb, or the like, to kiss; he kisseth it, and saith unto the Clerk in the name of the people: Peace be unto thee, and the Clerk giveth it to the people, and sayeth to everyone, peace be to you, to put them in mind how Christ saluted his disciples with peace, & saluting one another with St. Paul’s holy kiss of peace, to put them in mind of the peace they should have one to another, & hoping to receive some grace thereby to conserve themselves in peace.


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