Fr James Brent, O.P., reminds us that whatever happens to us is also happening to Christ in us. You and I are so closely united with Jesus Christ, as branches are to the vine, that our joys, sufferings, and daily experiences are shared in him.

Watch the full episode 41 of Contemplata to reflect on this profound union with Christ.

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The Lord says ‘I am the vine, you are the branches.’ That is how the Lord wants us to think of the life of grace. Jesus is the head of the body, we are his members. There is a distinction, but there is one common life. You and I are branches on the vine of Jesus Christ. 

You and I can say His life is mine, by the gift of His grace. Christ’s own life comes into us - we ingest His body and blood, and His life is something we receive, consume, and eat.

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Every word of scripture is full of fire from the Holy Spirit. Every time you and I take a word of scripture to heart great things begin to happen in our souls. We begin to recover our sense of the presence of God in our lives and in the world around us. The communion of our Lord Jesus Chirst is a heart full of the Holy Spirit - it is friendship with him, and knowledge of His love for us. It is living in His relationship with the Father, and calling His Father as our Father. 

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The great plan of God is to unite human beings everywhere with His eternal Son, Jesus Chirst, by the power of the Holy Spirit. His plan is to make us live on a whole new level, so that we can worship Him with Jesus. In our baptism the love of God was poured forth into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. When you and I have been loved in that special kind of way we come alive. We are regenerated, refashioned, and recreated in the depths of our souls. And we begin to live the supernatural life of grace. 

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Very often it doesn’t seem like God has a plan. It can feel like everything is going wrong. But we need to remember—God has a plan for the whole world, and for each of us personally. 

St. Paul called God’s plan “the mystery.” Through Scripture, he was authorized by God to reveal this secret plan, hidden in God’s heart since the beginning of the world. What has been revealed is that God’s plan is Jesus Christ. In Him, we are drawn into the Mystical Body of Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit, and invited to live according to God’s eternal wisdom and love.

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In order for us to live the spiritual life and really grow in our awareness and knowledge and love of the Holy Trinity dwelling in our hearts, one of the best practices we can take up is the practice of Lectio Divina—the slow prayerful reading of Sacred Scripture. Sacred Scripture is God's present and active medium of communication with us. Reading, meditating, and praying with Scripture is the way to contemplation. 

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Each of us has an interior life—an inner room which Scripture often calls the heart, or the deep heart. And the Lord is telling us to go there to our inner room within each of us. He also tells us to close the door. That's what we've been talking about over the course of this podcast—we are called to become contemplative souls, to wake up to the mystery of the Trinity living and dwelling in our hearts by grace and grow in the sense of the presence of God.

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How do we interact with the indwelling Trinity and live in this presence of God? In this episode, Fr. James tells us there are three things we need to do. First, we need to guard our hearts, and not be pulled away from God by distractions and sin. Second, we need to enter our hearts by finding times of silence and recollection. And, third, we need to simply talk and pray to the persons dwelling within us—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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God is commonly present to all things, but in our baptism, God comes to be present in our souls in a new way, in a special mode. So how can we understand this special mode of the presence of God that we call the indwelling Trinity? In this episode, Fr. James explains that this mode of God’s presence in our souls is something really distinct. It's a way of being present that's person to person, heart to heart, so to speak. 

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Through our baptism, and so long as we are living in a state of grace, each of us has the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living and dwelling in the depths of our hearts. In this episode, Fr. James explains the mystery of the indwelling Trinity, which is so important because this particular mystery describes the point of contact between the highest mystery of them all, the Holy Trinity, and the mystery of our own souls. And one of the marks of the contemplative soul is becoming more and more aware of the gift of the indwelling Trinity that was given to us in our baptism.

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