In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
May the Lord Jesus give you his peace.
We celebrate today the third class feast of St. Paulinus of Nola, a bishop.
Who was a contemporary and, in fact, a correspondent with St. Ambrose, St. Jerome,
who would correspond with them to kind of explore some more obscure passages of Scripture.
Very well esteemed in his day, a poet, a lot like with St. Ephraim we just celebrated a few days ago.
And well known for his charity, and he dispossessed, he was a wealthy man growing up,
and he dispossessed himself of all of his belongings, and led a hermetic life, a hermetical life.
And to the extent that even as a bishop, he even sold himself.
That as different barbarians would invade the land, Campania, I believe, in Italy.
And his people, his diocese, so to speak, were in want.
And once he would sell everything that he had, and also eventually sold himself.
And he sold himself into slavery.
And it gets at the readings that we looked at this day, Philippians, St. Paul at least,
talking about Christ, although he was rich, became poor.
How was he rich, and how did he become poor?
Well, of course, it's not temporal riches that we're talking about here.
But elsewhere in Scripture, we hear that God is rich in mercy.
God is rich in glory.
And Jesus, of course, in becoming man, emptied himself infinitely, an infinite quantity,
ascension for our sakes, so that we might become partakers of the divinity.
Okay.
So there's a lesson to be learned here for sure, because it's always Jesus' invitation
at every age, it's an evangelical counsel for poverty, to sell what you have, give to
the poor.
St. Thomas Aquinas will look at whether these corporal alms deeds have some spiritual effect.
And of course, they do.
And sometimes you even hear about it.
Some people say, you know, I cleaned out my attic, I cleaned out my basement, I sold
all this stuff, and I feel lighter, I feel different, I feel better.
And it's true that this corporal almsgiving has spiritual effects.
Both, of course, you give bread to someone, it feeds them, there's something substantial
going on there.
But also, if we do it out of love for God and out of love for neighbor, there's a beautiful
passage from the book of Sirach, and it says this.
Sirach 29, verses 13 to 15.
Placing your treasure, basically your whole being into the commandments, observing God's
law.
And then verse 15.
Shut up, or excuse me, close up alms in the heart of the poor, kind of like placing them
in the heart of the poor, and shall obtain help for you from all evil.
Because oftentimes, when you benefit someone, they pray for you.
And it's a beautiful communion that's done that.
That's with corporal almsgiving.
Now, there's a deeper level of almsgiving that Marian consecration plugs us into, where
we give, in a single offering, all of our merits and satisfactions.
Now, what are merits?
What are satisfactions?
What are merits?
What are merits?
What are merits?
What are merits?
They're the spiritual currency by which the life of Jesus Christ, the life of Jesus Christ,
does good deeds in us.
And there's no merit without the infinite merits of Christ.
But St. Paul says that these good deeds, he's prepared for you beforehand, that you might
walk therein.
And so it's the charity of Christ working through us that we might merit eternal life.
And merits are something that are a reward given for a good deed performed.
And they're incommunicable, according to St. Louis de Montfort.
In other words, that your merits you can't share with another.
They're the life.
They're the life of glory, perhaps, by God's grace in heaven that we will enjoy.
And yet we give those to the Immaculate Virgin Mary in Marian consecration.
Satisfactions are communicable.
We can give those, so to speak.
We can say that we basically, I want to pray for, do this penance for somebody else.
And we also give those to the Blessed Virgin Mary as well.
So in so far as we give our merits to the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and don't appropriate them to ourselves, which is a very good spiritual move,
because we have this clinging tendency.
And St. Francis will point it out that even the goods of the soul, the flesh desires to steal.
You know, you're in the chapel praying and receive a consolation of, you know, tears, perhaps.
And soon the flesh or the desire for honor or recognition is starting to think, you know,
anyone seeing me?
And.
Things like that.
So stealing the spiritual goods of the soul.
Giving, the basic line is this, where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
If all of our spiritual treasure is with the Immaculate Virgin Mary, guess what?
So also our heart is with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is exactly where we want to be.
Because that ushers us into this whole immaculation of becoming more and more blameless, spotless,
as Ephesians would talk about, and more and more like transubstantial.
Transubstantiation into the Immaculate Virgin Mary, a very important spiritual concept.
So part of this will go back to the first reading, which is just this, that for your sake, he became poor.
And Blessed John Paul II and Divas at Misery Quarter will talk about how Jesus became mercy deprived.
He's given mercy, showing mercy to everyone in this public ministry.
And precisely at the point where he's deserving of mercy.
He's not giving it himself.
He's mercy deprived.
And so we can expect something similar the more and more we grow into the likeness of the Immaculate.
The more and more we grow into the likeness of Christ, of just this, of experiencing, really, the dregs of the cross.
And but not without hope, because again, there's a great fruitfulness, fecundity in that.
This life is passing, suffering is fleeting, and the glory to come is imminent.
So may St. Paulinus, who fought the good fight, intercede for us, that we might dispossess ourselves of everything, be generous while we have time to do good.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Et estum benedictum fructum ventris tui.