Point 19. The Gospel Transformation.

Jesus has saved the world from Satan’s bondage, and each man from the burden of his own offences, through the human expiation and the divine pardon of the Cross. Thus constituted as our mediator, He has restored us to life and re-opened Heaven to us by His Sacrifice. He is the author of our salvation and His Cross is its means. We are in His debtors, those whom He has saved. He has acquired rights over us, or rather He draws us to love and obey Him. Whence the Phalangist’s devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and His Holy Cross.

1. The Heart and the Cross are our emblem and also our entire programme. For Jesus is already for His disciples the object of their adoration, their contemplation, love and imitation. The glory of God radiates from His outraged Face; the love of God overflows from His pierced Heart; the beauty of God is in His conversation; the grace of God is in His hands. The Phalangist dreams of nothing other than of imitating Him, of living like another Christ.

2. This mystical aesthetic becomes a code of ethics, which in turn becomes a drama. To find the Father through the Son is to reach glory through the Cross, to seek happiness in trials, riches in poverty, life in sacrifice and death. Such are the evangelical Beatitudes, such is the revealed mystery of divine wisdom, “ which is folly in the eyes of men ”, but truth and blessing for those who believe.

The law of Christian holiness transfigures the Mosaic Law, which was already an improvement on natural religion and its carnal prudence. But to him who renounces everything, including himself, and enters on this path, there is promised a hundredfold in this world and eternal life in the next.