5th Sunday after Easter - Union with the Prayer of Christ
“Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full: for the Father Himself loveth you, because you have loved Me and have believed, alleluia” (Magnificat Antiphon). “Amen, amen, I say to you: If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you” (Gospel).
The liturgy continues to sing of the Risen Christ and exhorts us in this Rogation week to unite ourselves to His prayer, in which He asked almighty God that through His ascension, His Humanity might share in the glory which as God, He had possessed from all eternity (Offertory). We too shall someday share this glory which He has obtained, since He has freed us from sin by the efficacy of His blood (Introit, Alleluia, Communion).
In contrast to the man who beheld himself in a glass and presently forgot what manner of man he was, we must look into the perfect law of liberty and constantly put it into practice (Epistle). And since at His departure Christ has left us a consolation in the power to pray "in His name", "that our joy may be full", ask of God through our Lord, that we may not remain without fruit in His knowledge, and that believing that He "came out from God", we may merit to enter with Him into His Father's Kingdom.
St. Augustine says: “He who thinks of Jesus Christ as he ought to think of Him, this man prays in His name and obtains what he asks, if he asks nothing contrary to his eternal salvation… In Christ’s name we must ask for whatever helps us to win perfect spiritual joy… To ask for anything else is to ask nothing, for everything is but as nothing when compared with so great a good.”
Source: Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, OSB, 1945, adapted and abridged.
